The tradition of prime-ministerial year-end interviews with the media resembles nothing so much as a department store Santa Claus seated in benign magnificence to deal with a lineup of impatient kids. Like the children, the journalists assembled for their turn with the PM all have something they feel is pressing to ask. And like a wise mall Santa, a well-prepped prime minister traditionally responds, not with precise promises or candid remarks, but with a studied, jovial vagueness. "Ho, ho, ho. Well, let’s see come the New Year. I’m sure you’ll like whatever I bring you."

Miracle at 24 Sussex Dr. was acted out this week with due respect for form. The official residence never looks better than when it's draped in fresh snow, especially of the plush thickness that graced the old pile of stones this month. Inside, the reporters fidgeted in a holding room that afforded a sweeping view of the Ottawa River. We were called one after another for our turns. Prime Minister Stephen Harper was seated in front of a Christmas tree, with poinsettias placed strategically for alternate camera angles. He’s portly enough for the role, but the distinct lack of twinkle in those icy eyes discourages hopping up on his knee.

Unlike his predecessors, Harper tends to defy the seasonal tone once he gets talking. There’s less fireside reflectiveness, less optimistic turn-the-calendar casting forward, than either Jean Chrétien or Paul Martin indulged in for this set-piece moment. Harper’s main goal seemed to be diminishing expectations for 2008, even if it put a damper on any holiday mood. He predicted, to note the key points, alarm over his environmental policy, a tough economy and not much in the budget to specifically address that worry, and a rather grim coming to terms with the reality of Afghanistan. The word “merry” does not spring to mind.

On all three of these key files Harper might well have taken a more upbeat tack. On global warming, for instance, he might have hoped for credit once his government starts implementing the plan announced last spring by Environment Minister John Baird. Instead, the PM highlighted the discord he expects over emissions restrictions. “Regulations will be published, they will start to be implemented, businesses will have to start behaving accordingly,” he said. “Actual, mandatory reductions require short-term costs, there’s no way around it.” The result: provinces that have been complaining the Tory government isn’t doing enough will soon be griping, Harper said, that he’s now doing too much.

When it comes to taxes and spending, some might end up complaining he isn’t doing enough. Harper promised no more tax cuts beyond those announced in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s fall mini-budget, and no significant new spending either. “The [2008] budget will be a stand-pat budget,” he said. “We will be doing what households and businesses do in a time of uncertainty—concentrating on stability and paying down our debt.” And he is braced for unsettling economic times. “It’s hard for me to see,” he said, “how we can continue to have the kind of uncertainty and potential slowdown in the United States and elsewhere without that having some impact on the Canadian economy.”

On Afghanistan, the dominant defence and foreign policy file, Harper again looks ahead to tough choices. Rather than talking up the military mission in Kandahar as an inspiring undertaking, he used the year-end sit-down to vent frustration at slow progress in building a self-sufficient Afghan government. “You know, the United Nations and our allies will have been in Afghanistan 10 years in 2011. For God’s sakes, Germany was basically fully restored within four years; Germany joined NATO ten years after it was conquered.”

He does not seem to be willing to accept anything like an open-ended commitment in central Asia. “To say that Afghanistan would need decades and decades just to do the basic security work, I think is pushing credibility,” Harper said. “Not just pushing the patience of the Canadian public and the military, pushing the credibility of the effort. A sovereign government must, at some point, say, ‘We can actually deal with this on a day-to-day basis. We can be responsible.’”

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