Toronto Sun

Not that long ago a piano-playing Stephen Harper bestrode his world like a colossus. Now, here he is, rocked yet again by a pair of issues that do not want to stay dead, no matter how often or how hard he tries to kill them.

The climate change conference in Copenhagen was a three-ring circus. If anything good comes of it, regardless of what was said in the immediate aftermath, it will be a miracle. Harper initially was not going to attend. He and the people around him will be wondering today why they changed their minds.

That said, Harper did go to Copenhagen. All indications were on Friday that he would come home with nothing.

What will stick in the public mind, if anything, is that Canada was humiliated internationally by the merry pranksters known as the Yes Men. Their intricately executed press stunt last week neatly highlighted how far behind we've fallen in the effort to combat global warming.

Doesn't matter? There's a school of thought that says so. Conservative party pollster Dimitri Pantzopoulos reportedly thinks our collective interest in the environment has waned and isn't coming back. Senior Conservatives apparently agree. The recession has pushed all that aside, according to this line of thinking.

Here's the wrinkle: The recession will end. They always do. Global economic growth will resume, stronger than ever. The Chinese and the Indians will continue buying cars and fridges. Crude oil prices will rise and the oceans will continue to fill up with plastic. And the polar ice caps will continue to shrink.

So logic dictates that Green is here to stay and it will trend bigger, not smaller. Harper has been behind on this issue from day one and he remains behind. Had he gotten out ahead in 2006 it's a safe bet he would be leading a majority government now.

Next, Afghanistan. Here again there's a school of thought that says detainee torture doesn't really matter. Canadians aren't all that fussed about what happens to Afghan insurgents and we're leaving Kandahar soon anyway. So ride it out and it will pass.

That's wrong. It will not pass. The reason can be summarized in two words: Richard Colvin.

Rebuttal

Last Thursday Colvin tabled a 16-page rebuttal to the flurry of denials, excuses and smear attempts that followed his initial claim that Canada had turned a blind eye to torture in 2006 and early 2007.

Colvin provides names, details and dates, as well as the specific numbers of reports that he filed. His memo is a devastating, point-by-point deconstruction, in the clearest and simplest of language, of the government's position on the detainee file.

The only effective response now would be for the PMO to simply release all Colvin's reports, thus proving that the diplomat warned no one of torture and it's all a Liberal-NDP-Taliban plot. Except if they can't, because he did warn them, and they are guilty of lying repeatedly to the Canadian people. That would make it tougher to explain.

Harper might personally relish the idea of throwing Defence Minister Peter MacKay to the wolves. But he can't do that without splitting his party. MacKay, one of the Conservatives' two founding partners, is no Maxime Bernier.

So, at year's end, because of self-inflicted wounds and some bad luck, Harper is no closer to the promised land than he was a year ago. And Liberal partisans are left wondering: When will Michael Ignatieff pick himself up, dust himself off, and start pounding the body? Is he a warrior or a doormat?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

michael.dentandt@sunmedia.ca