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Aboriginal affairs, then? A new deal with First Nations, built around education and skills training, could put Canada’s aboriginal peoples at the heart of the fast-growing northwestern resource economy. That was the plan. But it foundered when, for reasons still not entirely clear, the First Nations Education act was allowed to go into the ditch, where it remains a year later.

There is little progress to report on defence procurement, as I wrote recently and as many others have noted. In July it will be five years since then-defence minister Peter MacKay proudly announced a sole-source purchase of 65 F-35 lightning II fighter jets, which the Tories campaigned on in 2011. There’s been talk of a two-fleet solution, that would see Canada buy Boeing Super Hornets or Dassault Rafales, alongside a few F-35s to stay in the loop with the Pentagon. There was talk of a drone purchase. None of it has come to pass. Nor has a competition for a new fighter been announced. A new navy is planned; it will remain planned, for years to come.

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A decade-old effort to physically assert Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, which was plagued by delays last August when Mr. Harper undertook his ninth summer Arctic tour, remains plagued by delays. The opening of a deepwater port at Nanasivik, the strategic linchpin of the whole plan, has been pushed back another year to 2018.

The government’s relationship with veterans is broken, courtesy of former Veterans minister Julian Fantino, and the new minister is still finding his footing. The government’s signature tax-cut proposal, income-splitting, has been panned even by some conservatives as being too generous to the rich. Mr. Harper himself, though supposedly in extremis, has shown no inclination to move beyond his comfort zone and engage with Canadians, say by doing the odd town hall. It’s just not how he works.