 Prime Minister Stephen Harper talks with QMI's David Akin in his office Tuesday in Ottawa June 22, 2010. (Andre Forget/QMI Agency)
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OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper is scared that "next-to-non existent" job creation and growth in Canada's most important trading partners threatens Canada's otherwise robust economic recovery.
In an exclusive interview with QMI Agency, as he prepares to host this weekend's G8 and G20 summits, Harper voiced his fears about debt crises in Europe and an American economy that could take years to recover.
"This is going to remain a very delicate, a very dangerous situation," Harper said.
"I think what Canadians really need to understand - I think they do but let me punch it home - how fragile the global recovery really is. And Canada really is an exception where we have strong growth and strong job creation.
"That is next to non-existent in the developed world, in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Canada really is very unique and very isolated in this regard. And this speaks to how fragile this recovery really is."
A former top foreign affairs bureaucrat recently described Harper as "incurious about the world" when he became prime minister in 2006. Now, on the eve of the historic summits, the same bureaucrat says Harper has become a master of summit politics. Harper himself said the success of the G20 may be a more significant policy development for Canada than the Afghanistan mission.
"I would say though that the most important development for all countries in the last decade has been what's happened in the last two years and that's the development of the G20 as the world's principal economic forum," Harper said.
"As a Conservative, I'm a big advocate of a market economy but we do know from history that markets, even free markets, require some form of governance to avoid instability. So now, there has developed, through the G20, a semblance of global governance. And that is a very important development."
Critics, though, say Harper has missed opportunities on the world stage. It took him, for example, three years to engage China in any meaningful dialogue.
"Fundamentally, the government started out as an opposition party and they were an opposition party for a long time while they were in government, in terms of their opposition to the bureaucracy, their suspicion of things that had been done before. He was an anti-summit guy," said Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae.
"There's still an ideological core at the heart of the Harper government."
But if the ideological core is still there, it is, perhaps, less rigid after four years in government.
Harper has moved to warm relations with China. He has, by his own admission, become a free marketer who believes in some form of government restraint.
And he is now one of the senior statesmen on the annual summit tour.
"Some of the annual circuit of summits are less productive than they should be," Harper said. "And I'm not much for the diplomatic game ... at these summits, [but] often, a lot of real business is done."
