OTTAWA — A new book by a former Conservative MP casts Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a bully obsessed with secrecy and his caucus as a sycophantic squad of yes-men.
It’s not a very flattering portrait of the Tory team — made immediately evident by the book’s title, Sheeple, and its cover art that depicts a barnyard animal grazing on the Parliament Hill lawn.
By all accounts, the loathing is mutual. Conservatives don’t like the book’s author, Garth Turner, much either and they deployed significant organizational resources to ensure his defeat in last fall’s election.
So Turner has emerged from forced political retirement to take a swing at former colleagues he likens to compliant mammals led by a farmer-in-chief who values their silence far more than their opinions.
It’s a 219-page chronicle of a whirlwind two years that saw Garth Turner go from Halton candidate, to Tory MP, to embattled Tory MP, to Independent booted from the Tory caucus, to Liberal, to defeated candidate.
The book’s general tone is summed up in his account of a 2006 Conservative private meeting where the prime minister warned his caucus that $1 billion in spending cuts were on the way.
“There will be impacts in some of your ridings,” Harper told his MPs, according to the book.
“They will affect people, and you will be tempted to talk about them. But don’t. Anyone who has anything to say about this will soon find out they have a very short political career.”
MPs exchanged nervous glances. Calgary’s Lee Richardson whispered under his breath, “Well, that’s pretty f—— clear, wouldn’t you say?” So nobody uttered a peep about the program cuts.
It’s a common theme in a book where Harper and his staff repeatedly sing the praises of silence and warn parliamentarians about the dire consequences of talking.
The PMO offered a two-word reply when asked whether Turner’s book reflected events accurately: “Garth who?” said PM spokesman Kory Teneycke.
