Leadership Quote by Stephen Harper

Incrementalism dressed up as pragmatism: Harper’s line is a small sentence with a big governing philosophy hiding inside it. “Change it” is conspicuously vague, a placeholder that can mean the country, a policy regime, a scandal, even public expectations. That vagueness is the point. It keeps the speaker flexible while implying there is a “way” forward that isn’t ideological upheaval, but calibrated management.

The key phrase is “handle issues individually.” On the surface, it’s common-sense: don’t let one fight contaminate another; solve problems case by case. In Canadian political context, it also signals a preference for technocratic compartmentalization over grand narratives. Treat each controversy as discrete, and you reduce the risk of a unifying story forming around systemic failure. Opposition movements thrive on pattern recognition; “individually” breaks the pattern.

Then there’s the conditional: “when it’s essential.” Essential to whom, and by what standard? The subtext is control. Action becomes a matter of necessity as defined by the government, not urgency as felt by the public. It’s a way to promise responsiveness while pre-justifying delay: if the government doesn’t move, it wasn’t “essential.”

Coming from Harper, a politician often associated with message discipline and cautious institutional change, the line reads as both reassurance and boundary-setting. It offers voters the comfort of stability while quietly narrowing the conditions under which transformation is even allowed to begin.