PM AND THE MANDARINS
By James Travers

Chronicle Herald, Nova Scotia, Canada
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June 27 2007

STEPHEN HARPER is right when he says policy is set by the prime
minister, not public servants.

It’s such a clear principle that it disguises how wrong he is about the
particulars.So it is with Harper’s secret poke at mandarins revealed
this week by the Toronto Star’s Allan Woods.

Using the 2006 decision to recognize the deaths of about 1.5 million
Armenians in Turkey in 1915 as genocide, the prime minister beat
hard on bureaucrats accused of responding donkey slowly to changes in
political direction. No question, advisers advise and election-winners
decide. But servant and master are connected by an essential process
known as speaking truth to power.

It’s every deputy’s duty to provide their minister with the benefit
of empirical analysis, historical continuity and collective wisdom.

That includes the prime minister and is never more needed than when
the government changes hands or the country’s international reputation
is at risk.

Joe Clark best explained it by pointing out recently that domestic
politics is the strength that makes winners of party leaders while
foreign policy is commonly their weakness. Clark let his audience
connect the dots to an obvious example.

Harper and his clique came to power without exposure to global
complexities that reward wanderlust. Seeing the planet through a
provincial prism encourages certainty over caution and, as a glance
toward the Middle East confirms, is often catastrophic.

Blaming a prime minister for the Lebanon and Gaza mess is ludicrous:
That rests squarely on super as well as regional powers that meddle
where they shouldn’t and fail to act when they should.

Still, in exercising his foreign policy prerogatives Harper
repositioned the country from being a small part of an elusive
solution to the centre of an entrenched problem. In ignoring schooled,
non-partisan advice, Harper drew hard lines that forced him to control
political damage from last summer’s Lebanon exodus and ultimately
helped destabilize governments in Beirut and Jerusalem.

Equally, Canada’s decisions to ignore the ballots of Palestinians
exasperated with Fatah corruption and to blink at arming anti-Hamas
forces inevitably contributed to the current chaos.

Every federal government supports Israel; no party condones
extremism. But in stripping precedence and nuance from Middle East
positions Harper made his policy judgment and political motivation
suspect.

Lester Pearson once famously noted that foreign policy is domestic
policy with its hat on. True now as then, Harper goes a dangerous
step further by dressing international affairs in partisan clothing.

What mandarins resisted was the sacrifice of national interest to
diaspora politics. Their concern wasn’t that the Tories would win
by using foreign policy to wedge minority groups away from Liberals;
it was that Canada would lose.

Harper should challenge public servants. Perception shaped by
generations serving a party with an almost perpetual hold on power
is not necessarily in the national interest, even if the consensus
reflects Canada’s default character. But the prime minister is also
twice wrong. Mandarins should be forceful when policy is being formed
and there’s no reason to believe that bureaucrats who were relieved
to see the end of Liberal dithering are now wilfully undermining
Conservative decisiveness.

Policy discipline is loyalty to Canadians, not disloyalty to the
ruling party.

James Travers is a national affairs columnist with the Toronto Star.