Stephen Harper likely won’t take the slow road to his majority policies in Parliament

It's odd that a guy who reportedly has a soft spot for cats and who was devastated when he once saw a family pet struck down by a car, is as soft and cuddly and forgiving as a bear when it comes to his political opponents.

But Stephen Harper showed no mercy at all with Stephane Dion, and was often accused of being a bully when he and his party attacked the well-meaning and sincere professor over a range of alleged inadequacies.

The same held with Michael Ignatieff, and the two years of relentless and dark television attack ads that eventually sealed his fate and drove him back to teaching. No one should underestimate the determination, focus and ideological cement that has led Harper to where he is today.

So, as he prepares to exercise the power he now has over federal lawmaking in Parliament, with a majority in both the Senate and the Commons, and his firm grip on the entire apparatus of government, it could be reasonable to expect he will shape a range of institutions and systems in a way that will reflect his core values, those he has expressed in written and spoken style since he began his political journey with the Reform Party and successive iterations. Many say the current Conservative party is far more reflective of the Reform Party and, say, the Ontario Conservative party of Mike Harris, than it is of the defunct Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

Certainly, Preston Manning was jubilant as Harper incrementally edged forward over the previous two elections and ecstatic to a nearly religious point after the May 2 election.

It leads us to believe that Harper, even though he did say on election night he's learned his lessons over the past five years, will have some surprises to spring upon the citizenry over the next four years.

Paul Szabo, the long-serving Liberal who lost his Mississauga South riding to the Conservatives, says people who believe the government will take a slow and steady approach to things like department spending, and other aspects of Harper's agenda, are dead wrong. He says Harper will begin almost immediately. He has indicated already the spring sittings set to begin in June will be occupied primarily with the budget, its passage interrupted by the, in retrospect, precipitous decisions by the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois to actually ignite the election.

After a cabinet shuffle in a few days, Harper will begin preparing for the new Parliament and its first session in that deliberate, meticulous way he has likely approached every political stage and problem in his life. The government will introduce its promised omnibus crime bill, which will require a warehouse cart to move around since it will amalgamate no fewer than 18 separate bills that died on the House order paper with the dissolution of the last Parliament. And the Conservatives this year might take the first steps toward another campaign promise Harper made — elimination of the $2 a vote subsidy all federal parties get if they win more than two per cent of the ballots cast in the latest federal election.

Harper has promised he will phase it out, in consultation with the opposition parties. But that doesn't make sense, since all the opposition parties oppose the idea, so strongly Harper's first proposal to end the subsidy in 2008 nearly sparked an election, two months after one had just been held. What is there to consult about?

When Harper tables legislation to amend the Canada Elections Act to eliminate the party allowances, it his highly possible he won't stop there.

Harper has a lot of beefs with Canada's federal election law, not the least of which is the severe spending limit it puts on citizens and third parties, including a range of lobby groups, who want to advertise while opposing or supporting parties or candidates during elections. When he was head of the right-wing National Citizens Coalition, which wasn't so long ago, only a decade, Harper went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to challenge those spending limits.

The court ruled the restrictions were an acceptable limit to free speech in a free and democratic society, that they help to maintain a level playing field in an election, so powerful and moneyed interests can't overwhelm the voices of candidates and parties, whose spending is limited, as the electorate makes up its mind.

Harper, who called it a gag law, argued in a 2000 letter to newspaper editors: "Gag laws clearly infringe on the right of citizens to freely and peacefully express themselves, and to work with other citizens to advance their views."

There may be nothing Harper might like better than to use his new majority to finally overturn that Supreme Court decision. No legal briefs needed, just an instruction to lawyers in the Justice Department to begin drafting a bill. Passage through Parliament would almost be a formality, considering the government majority.

And after that, what about those election spending limits?

(AFP Photo)