In the normal course of normal events, Stephen Harper might well by now have become prime minister of Canada. It seems so long ago, but in the early days of 2004 Paul Martin and his Liberals had been on the road to a landslide victory when circumstance and incompetence conspired to drive them to the brink of defeat. They were saved from that ignominy by the more dazzling incompetence of Harper and his colleagues in the new Conservative Party. Since the election of June 2004, Martin seems almost to have been trying to persuade Canadian voters that they made a terrible mistake in returning the Liberals to power. The evidence at the Gomery Commission has been as sordid as was feared; the bright promise of Martin’s inevitable arrival at 24 Sussex Drive is now quite forgotten; Martin’s government has had scant purpose, and his pursuit of political survival at any price has been craven. Belinda Stronach? Is he serious?
Yet the citizens of Ottawa have not marched down...
John Gray wrote for a number of newspapers, including the Globe and Mail, for which he was Ottawa bureau chief, national editor, foreign editor, foreign correspondent, and national correspondent. He published Paul Martin: The Power of Ambition in 2003.
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