Canada's new prime minister, Stephen Harper, whose minority government was elected on the promise he would break the highly centralized power of "the PMO," the Prime Minister's Office, has begun by establishing what is beginning to look like the most powerful PMO in Canada's peacetime history.

At the same time he has scored a publicity coup by paying a surprise visit to Canadian troops in Afghanistan, gaining top attention in the print and electronic media for three days running. He has also responded to left-wing demands that Canada withdraw from that country by refusing a parliamentary debate on the question and by issuing the flat statement that Canada was there to stay.

Canada does not "run away" from undertaken responsibilities, he said. "We're doing all kinds of great work in terms of helping democracy, advancing the rights of women and the education of children. These are great Canadian values."

It was the first time in years that a Canadian prime minister had stood so squarely behind the armed forces against left-wing criticism, and his very presence in a war theatre stirred the embers of the country's once-vibrant pride in its military.

Notably absent in all this, however, was Gordon O'Connor, Harper's defense minister, into whose jurisdiction he had so visibly intruded himself. This and similar unilateralism was already bespeaking the kind of government he was in the course of creating. He would be his own man, nobody's prisoner, and nobody could expect a sinecure.

The first people to discover this were the "social conservatives," who had worked tirelessly for him in the election campaign. Their influence was significantly non-evident in the "transition team" that last month directed the transfer of power from the outgoing Cabinet of Liberal Paul Martin to the incoming Cabinet of Steve Harper.

The team's spokesperson, for example, was Marie Jos?e Lapointe, also the chief voice of the pro-gay Equal Marriage Canada, who had publicly blasted Harper as an opponent of human rights during the campaign, and whose colleague in Equal Marriage, Alex Munter, had worked actively against the Conservatives. It was this transition team that had kept the articulate Calgary MP and social conservative Jason Kenney out of the Cabinet, appointing instead "Red Tories" like Albertans Jim Prentice and Rona Ambrose.

The underlying message was unmistakable: The social conservatives do not control Steve Harper. Neither, apparently, does anybody or anything else. Including principles. He is in favor, for instance, of appointing only elected senators, but this did not prevent him from appointing his Quebec campaign chief, Montreal's Michael Fortier, to the Senate in order to make him minister of public works.

While in opposition, he had deplored the defection from his party last year of billionairess Toronto's Belinda Stronach to join the Liberal Cabinet. But this did not prevent him this year from persuading Vancouver Liberal MP David Emerson to defect from the Liberal caucus and join the Conservative Cabinet as minister of international trade.

All these moves are clearly intended to identify Harper as a Canadian first, and a Westerner or social conservative second. This is how he wants to present himself in the next election – as a man with a clear vision for the whole country. That election can be brought about whenever the opposition unites against him in a vote in the Commons, or whenever Harper himself decides to call it.

To establish this "national" identity, he must among other things wholly restore the unity of the Conservative Party from the disaster it suffered after the last Conservative administration. This was the government of Brian Mulroney (1984-1993) which so alienated the West that it enabled the Reform Party to spring into existence, splitting the Tory vote and bringing about 13 years of Liberal rule. Calgary's Steve Harper himself was a product of that Reform movement, and then became the chief instrument in its reunion with the Tories.

But in forming his government, he has had to reassure the Tories that the old national party has been re-established. That's why in his administration there are three ministerial chiefs of staff from the old Conservative group for every one with a background in the Reform movement. This, despite the fact that 80 percent of the Conservative Party's present membership and about 75 percent of its MPs come from a Reform background.

But doing it has required a heavy-handed control by the PMO – heavier, say some disgruntled Reformers, than anything they remember occurring under the Liberals. In short, Nice Guy Steve Harper has turned out to be much, much tougher than anybody thought.