president Harper?

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Much has been made about the new style of Stephen Harper as Prime Minister. He is different from several immediate predecessors in how he conducts himself and how he relates to his cabinet and Parliament. The clue to his behaviour may be that Harper really wishes that he were president of Canada. Harper seems to take the U.S. presidency as his model, where the president is both head of government and head of state, and has a power and deference unknown and inappropriate to parliamentary governments.

Bush is the executive, he is not a legislator. He picks his cabinet and they are responsible only to him. Harper is also the executive, but he gets that position by being the leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Commons, our legislative body. He picks his cabinet and they are responsible to both him and to Parliament. The Prime Minister is really just another parliamentarian, responsible to the Senate and the Commons.

I wonder whether Harper gets it.

We didn't elect him, the voters of his riding did. He is the leader of his party and the Prime Minister, but we don't want or need a president. The greatest danger to our constitutional development is if the style that Harper has displayed in the past several months actually becomes accepted practice for him and future prime ministers. Then we will lose something of our political identity, as both the cabinet and Parliament get much weaker and much less important than anyone should want them to be.

— Arthur Haberman, Toronto Star (2006/04/19)

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