OTTAWA — Stephen Harper was representing Canada at the funeral of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in London this week.
Was this the proper time and place to try to score partisan political points back home?
Many of our allies have hard and fast protocols about taking domestic fights abroad — U.S. Democrats will not criticize Republican Middle East policy, or vice versa, during a visit to Israel. Woe to the U.S. politician who ignores this unwritten rule.
But when Canadian leaders travel abroad, the rules depend on who’s talking.
There is one rule for Stephen Harper and another rule for everyone else.
Either foreign trips mean political barbs are not tossed back over the ocean, or everything goes and we pack our political battles in our luggage wherever we go.
Wednesday, after the Thatcher funeral, Harper found time to take issue with new Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s response to the Boston Marathon bombings.
The prime minister’s eagerness was understandable. Trudeau gave a rambling, sociological response more fitting to a political science major than a party leader when asked for his reaction by CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge.
It wasn’t what Harper said. It was where he said it.
Harper actually wasn’t asked about Trudeau in London. He volunteered it to Canadian reporters who asked about Canada-U.S. border security in the wake of the bombing.
He could have taken the high road, acted like a statesman abroad, spoken of his own response and left the shots at Trudeau to his surrogates in Ottawa. They were already on the job.
But he couldn’t help himself.
It has barely been a month, however, since NDP leader Tom Mulcair, traveling in his position of official opposition leader, visited Washington and also responded to Canadian reporters
When Mulcair questioned Canada’s commitment to fighting climate change, raising the Conservative decision to abandon Kyoto and its inability to meet its Copenhagen greenhouse gas emission targets, the government went apoplectic.
Mulcair was accused of “trash talking’’ Canada, killing Canadian jobs, ignoring Canadian interests, refusing to, as Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver put it, “leave politics at the border.”
Two encounters with Canadian reporters, both seemingly benign, but with two radically different reactions. One leader apparently can take his politics with him, the other was expected to check his views at the border.
Harper has a history of using international forums for settling domestic scores.
In 2009 he had to apologize to then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff after he went after him at a G8 wrap-up press conference in Italy.
Harper had accused Ignatieff of denigrating Canada’s international interests, except the quote he cited to attack his foe was never spoken by Ignatieff.
This week, Trudeau accused Harper of “politicizing” the Boston tragedy.
“I really hope that Mr. Harper rethinks the extents and the lengths he’s willing to go to personally attack people and to politicize tragedies like that,’’ Trudeau said.
That’s a stretch and Trudeau had no one but himself to blame for the criticism.
‘We have to look at the root causes,” he said two hours after the bombing. “Now, we don’t know if it was terrorism or a single crazy or a domestic issue or a foreign issue.
“But there is no question this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocents, at war with a society. And our approach has to be, okay, where do those tensions comes from?”
The Harper response needs proper context.
As he met with reporters, he joked about the nice weather, and offered a few words on the funeral service and reflections on Thatcher, a “historic personage, a legend.”
He offered some boilerplate on security in response to the question, then added: “The one thing I would say is this: When you see this type of violent act, you do not sit around trying to rationalize it or make excuses for it or figure out its root causes. You condemn it categorically and to the extent you can deal with the perpetrators, you deal with them as harshly as possible.”
Fair comment, but if Harper believes he can play Canadian politics while traveling abroad, then his government has to shake the overwrought umbrage when the tables are turned.
It would be ideal if our leaders, when representing the country, could leave the fights for the sandbox at home, but failing that, let’s at least eliminate the double standard.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Tim Harper
Was this the proper time and place to try to score partisan political points back home?
Many of our allies have hard and fast protocols about taking domestic fights abroad — U.S. Democrats will not criticize Republican Middle East policy, or vice versa, during a visit to Israel. Woe to the U.S. politician who ignores this unwritten rule.
But when Canadian leaders travel abroad, the rules depend on who’s talking.
There is one rule for Stephen Harper and another rule for everyone else.
Either foreign trips mean political barbs are not tossed back over the ocean, or everything goes and we pack our political battles in our luggage wherever we go.
Wednesday, after the Thatcher funeral, Harper found time to take issue with new Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s response to the Boston Marathon bombings.
The prime minister’s eagerness was understandable. Trudeau gave a rambling, sociological response more fitting to a political science major than a party leader when asked for his reaction by CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge.
It wasn’t what Harper said. It was where he said it.
Harper actually wasn’t asked about Trudeau in London. He volunteered it to Canadian reporters who asked about Canada-U.S. border security in the wake of the bombing.
He could have taken the high road, acted like a statesman abroad, spoken of his own response and left the shots at Trudeau to his surrogates in Ottawa. They were already on the job.
But he couldn’t help himself.
It has barely been a month, however, since NDP leader Tom Mulcair, traveling in his position of official opposition leader, visited Washington and also responded to Canadian reporters
When Mulcair questioned Canada’s commitment to fighting climate change, raising the Conservative decision to abandon Kyoto and its inability to meet its Copenhagen greenhouse gas emission targets, the government went apoplectic.
Mulcair was accused of “trash talking’’ Canada, killing Canadian jobs, ignoring Canadian interests, refusing to, as Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver put it, “leave politics at the border.”
Two encounters with Canadian reporters, both seemingly benign, but with two radically different reactions. One leader apparently can take his politics with him, the other was expected to check his views at the border.
Harper has a history of using international forums for settling domestic scores.
In 2009 he had to apologize to then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff after he went after him at a G8 wrap-up press conference in Italy.
Harper had accused Ignatieff of denigrating Canada’s international interests, except the quote he cited to attack his foe was never spoken by Ignatieff.
This week, Trudeau accused Harper of “politicizing” the Boston tragedy.
“I really hope that Mr. Harper rethinks the extents and the lengths he’s willing to go to personally attack people and to politicize tragedies like that,’’ Trudeau said.
That’s a stretch and Trudeau had no one but himself to blame for the criticism.
‘We have to look at the root causes,” he said two hours after the bombing. “Now, we don’t know if it was terrorism or a single crazy or a domestic issue or a foreign issue.
“But there is no question this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocents, at war with a society. And our approach has to be, okay, where do those tensions comes from?”
The Harper response needs proper context.
As he met with reporters, he joked about the nice weather, and offered a few words on the funeral service and reflections on Thatcher, a “historic personage, a legend.”
He offered some boilerplate on security in response to the question, then added: “The one thing I would say is this: When you see this type of violent act, you do not sit around trying to rationalize it or make excuses for it or figure out its root causes. You condemn it categorically and to the extent you can deal with the perpetrators, you deal with them as harshly as possible.”
Fair comment, but if Harper believes he can play Canadian politics while traveling abroad, then his government has to shake the overwrought umbrage when the tables are turned.
It would be ideal if our leaders, when representing the country, could leave the fights for the sandbox at home, but failing that, let’s at least eliminate the double standard.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Tim Harper
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