Steyn’s take on Canada’s next prime minister

In today’s Wall Street Journal Mark Steyn discusses Monday’s Canadian election and offers his take on where he thinks the new prime minister, Stephen Harper, will lead the country. Here some of what he says:

Mr. Harper, the incoming prime minister, will not be "George Bush's new best friend" -- that's a more competitive field than John Kerry and Jimmy Carter think. But at the very least a Harper government won't rely on reflexive anti-Americanism as the defining element of Canadian identity.
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Stephen Harper (will) move the country incrementally. On the environment, his views are compatible with Mr. Bush, John Howard and now Tony Blair: That's to say, if "climate change" is a problem, Kyoto's not the answer to it.

On missile defense, the Conservatives will string along with Washington because it's the easy option and we'll be covered by it anyway: Even Canadians aren't prepared to argue that, if there's something headed toward Winnipeg or Montreal, we'd rather the Americans minded their own bloody business and didn't tell us about it.

But it's a good gauge of the deterioration in U.S.-Canadian relations that a quintessential piece of postmodern, humbug multilateralism -- an issue that required Canada to be minimally supportive without being helpful, at no political cost and in return for some lucrative contracts for northern defense contractors -- was whooped up by the Liberals into a big scare about Washington's plans for the "weaponization of space."

On missile defense, Mr. Harper will be more down to earth in every sense.

There’s much more, all of it here and laced with Steyn’s wry humor.