On the world stage, seniority counts.
So do personal relationships and political capital at home.
As he heads to France for his first international summit as a new, more muscular G8 majority leader, Stephen Harper can check off all three boxes.
He is in a position to find this country’s world voice again, but will he?
As a minority leader, Harper too often played what is known as “diaspora politics’’ at world gatherings, speaking to voting blocks at home, using foreign policy as a wedge issue to win votes in the next inevitable election.
Now he can play statesman.
And maybe display a little uncharacteristic Canadian swagger.
Harper leaves Wednesday for the G8 summit in Deauville, France, leading a country at war on two fronts.
He then heads to Greece, the first domino in what could be a cascading economic collapse across Europe.
Besides the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a man whose antics at home have cost him any credibility in this exclusive club, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Harper is now the senior statesman at these summits.
He is close with both Merkel and the summit host, French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
He speaks regularly with fellow Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron, his minority brother-in-arms before May 2.
U.S. President Barack Obama, although not always politically in sync with Harper, respects the views of the Canadian Prime Minister.
“Harper is knowledgeable and respected by his summit colleagues,’’ said Fen Hampson, director of Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.
“He can and should play an elder statesman role.’’
John Kirton, the G8 expert at the University of Toronto, likens the gathering to a “lonely hearts club’’ where only the eight men and women around the table know what it takes to get to the top of the political heap.
“It’s an emotional bond,’’ he says. “They understand that if they don’t get their act together, everyone could go down with them.’’
For Harper, that means catching up to the rest of the world on the number one issue, the Arab Awakening and the changed Middle East and North Africa that will emerge after it.
His government imposed sanctions on Syria, where troops have now killed an estimated 1,100 civilians over two months of pro-democracy protests.
Canada is leading a NATO mission in Libya, but it is a mission which is falling short of its goal, the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi.
As Harper prepared for this summit, NATO ramped up its most intense round of airstrikes in Tripoli, striking closer to Gadhafi’s compound.
But still the stalemate remains between rebels in the eastern part of the country and Gadhafi, who controls most of the west.
Key for Harper will be his goal, on the one hand, of ousting the Libyan leader, while resisting the shouts from his host that NATO boots are needed on the ground in Tripoli.
But if Harper is to play statesman, there is an item that is not officially on the agenda where his diplomacy could pull off a coup for Canada.
After the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex scandal, Harper will be strong-armed by his European counterparts to support the candidacy of French Finance Minister Christine Large to head the International Monetary Fund.
But there is pushback over the European dominance of the IMF from the likes of China, Brazil, India, South Africa and Russia.
If there is deadlock, that’s when Harper can gain his economic swagger and put forward the name of Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney.
The odds remain long, but such a choice would represent a huge international nod to the economic stewardship of Harper and the senior G8 finance minister, Jim Flaherty.
Tim Harper is a national affairs writer for The Toronto Star.