Party of One by Michael Harris Read Free Book Online

three-hour meeting, no one had asked him any questions about policy.
    The team around Ontario premier Mike Harris was also talking to Harper, promising that the Harris machine would be there to help his campaign if he decided to run. But Harper knew that he couldn’t pull off the kind of victory he needed without the help of Reformers, who were now the Official Opposition nationally. Harper began to make discreet calls to members of Manning’s caucus, mindful of the fact that a lot of the financial support for the NCC came from Reformers. If Harper upset Manning any more than he already had by abandoning the party before the 1997 federal election, the NCC’s finances could take a hit. Manning might even undermine Harper with the NCC board.
    One of the more startling revelations made by Gerry Nicholls about his NCC years with Harper was the way Stephen Harper’s political mind worked. Fearing that Manning might work against him, Harper decided to make a proactive strike. Nicholls was asked to write a memo to his boss, Harper, which would then be leaked, claiming that Manning was undermining Harper. Nicholls refused to take part in the subterfuge and came to the conclusion that the enmity Harper bore Manning was not just based on disagreementover conservative principles. It was personal, as he recorded in his diary: “Captain Ahab hunting the white whale.”
    The seduction song to lure Stephen Harper back to the Progressive Conservative Party came to an end in Toronto on June 16, 1998. The formidable Arthur Finkelstein himself had been asked to conduct a special poll to assess Harper’s chances in such a race, and on that day he came to Toronto to deliver the results in person, as he almost always did. The ambitious politician must have been crestfallen. Finkelstein found that although Harper was a star in media and political circles, he had no name recognition with the vast majority of voters. Name recognition was critical to winning. The disappointing poll, combined with the lack of hoped-for support from Reform members, convinced Stephen Harper that this was not the time to run.
    Instead, he took the NCC into his hands like a lump of clay and made a statue of himself. He was the NCC. From now on, there would be more policy delineation and more court battles, like the one to have spending limits for third parties during an election declared unconstitutional. He began criticizing the Canadian Wheat Board with even greater fervour than the NCC had shown before. As for Elections Canada, those “jackasses” were “out of control,” as Harper put it in an NCC fundraising letter. He continued to war with the media, particularly the CBC. NCC news releases were sent to select journalists only, and a trusted few would be contacted directly by Harper himself if he wanted to get a particular story out. As for the NCC itself, he wanted it leaner and meaner, even cancelling the Christmas bonus to set an example of frugality.
    F ROM HIS PERCH at the NCC, Harper kept a watchful eye on the national conservative scene over the next two years. In July 2000, Stockwell Day bested Preston Manning as leader of the CanadianAlliance, a new party made up of the old Reform Party and a few provincial PC organizations. By April 2001, Harper could see that Day was in trouble. Despite bursting onto the national scene in a wetsuit aboard a Sea-Doo, Day never did get his bat going in what Mike Duffy liked to call “the big leagues.” Day’s Christian fundamentalism was a problem, as was his awkward relationship with the media. Ottawa was foreign territory: the man who was a star as Alberta’s treasurer just wasn’t a movable feast.
    Harper was furious when he learned that pollster and strategist Arthur Finkelstein was talking to Day about helping him, a move that Harper viewed as a betrayal. Finkelstein called his trusted acolyte at the NCC, Gerry Nicholls, and asked if he should go to work for Day. Nicholls responded that if the American