“You can’t expect people to bark like seals forever.”

That’s what Nathan Cullen, the surprising star of the recent NDP federal leadership race, said about the current state of the party in power. The island of stability that was supposed to be ushered in for the Conservatives with a majority win is showing signs of going sideways.

Not in democracy-challenged Ontario; not in separatist-harrumphing Quebec; not in rich but crotchety Alberta – no, in nature-loving British Columbia.

For it is British Columbia that may prove to be Stephen Harper’s Waterloo. Has anyone ever been interred by a pipeline? Has anyone drowned in an ocean of bitumen? Or strangled on a tangle of national giveaways of the kind that lay snarled in the recent trade deal with China, the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act (FIPPA)? The deal is so bad for Canada that it was consummated with all the secrecy of the Manhattan Project. Astonishingly, it is set to become law on November 1, 2012 – without a word of parliamentary debate.

Oscar Wilde once wrote about the Decay of Lying. What Cullen is talking about is the decay of control. Depending on the celerity of that process, a large question looms: will Stephen Harper ever again run for election in Canada? Will he even serve out his term? Surprisingly, for he loves power the way kids love ice-cream, the answer might be no if caucus grumbling becomes a roar.

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. He is currently working on a book about the Harper majority government to be published in the autumn of 2014 by Penguin Canada.

“His leadership style is ruthless but brittle. There will be no protracted exit for Stephen Harper. Any suggestion of opposition from within, he’ll be gone,” Nathan Cullen says.

Consider the cross-party whispering in the no-media zones of parliament. Yes, MPs are human too. Money may be the mother’s milk of politics, but gossip is the carrot puree. These guys talk to each other across party lines all the time. So what is being said away from the enslaved TV cameras, the bumptious scrums, and those TV panels that look like low budget funerals most nights? It is that Fear, carefully nurtured by the current administration to maintain control, is losing its grip in the most unlikely place of all – the Conservative caucus.

Cullen makes several telling points. The most interesting one is this: when MPs hit the mid-life wall in politics, they know the Wizard has no plans for them in Oz. They know they are never going to make it all the way down the Yellow Brick Road – cabinet. They are not swept off their feet by the chance of landing a spot on a committee and picking up a few more bucks on their pay-cheques. Their knees don’t wobble at the prospect of free booze on a foreign junket.

The carrot has simply disappeared for a lot of no-hopers on the Conservative backbench. All that’s left is the stick. Jab an old dog enough times with that stick and the licking stops. Keep it up, he bites.

“We have noticed that the Tory back-benchers have stopped asking the phony attack questions in Question Period,” Cullen says.

They have grown sullen. Ears down, they will not do Master’s bidding with anything like the Pavlovian alacrity of old. So if dog-whistle politics is beginning to falter, what has happened?

Well, for starters, nobody likes leaning hopelessly against the gymnasium wall knowing they will never be asked to dance. But there is more to this failure of Obedience School Rules in Harperland than the realization that you will be the political equivalent of ballast for the rest of your time in Ottawa.

There is also the question of authenticity, the conservative acid-test that more than a few party faithful are beginning to suspect the PM himself couldn’t pass. Is he in fact a Conservative at all, or a plutocratic pragmatist even more ruthless than the Liberals for whom he holds such a personal hatred?

There was a time when the prime minister could tell the Conservative base, the ones who wish Ronald Reagan had been born in Calgary, that he couldn’t move on issues like abortion or gay marriage. That was, according to the mantra of the day, because the evil-doers in the opposition controlled the agenda in his minority governments. But since May 2011, the yellow light has switched to green at the intersection of Right Wing dreams. Yet Harper is not even proceeding with caution, he is idling on these hot button issues. Where is the neo-conservative lead foot, the squeal of tires?

It was not like a chunk of glacier the size of PEI breaking away from the polar ice cap, but neither was it inconsequential when trusted field lieutenant Jason Kenney voted in favor of a private member’s bill calling for a debate on when life actually begins. The PM doesn’t want any part of a renewed debate on abortion and everyone in the party knows that. Yet Kenney defied him.

Was it the first sign Kenney is already thinking perhaps of the people he may one day need to make a run at the top job himself? Is he trying to stand up for issues instantly recognized as Conservative against the growing suspicion that they have been abandoned?

True, the whole thing may have been a little bit of political chicanery, a show of mock-independence with no price attached and even a small dividend to be reaped; perhaps Kenney’s maverick vote would suggest that the PM isn’t quite the control freak he is thought to be. A few cracks in party unity notwithstanding, everyone knew the bill would fail.

But the distance that has opened up between Harper and Kenney on China, where they once marched lock-step against Jean Chretien’s detente with Beijing, can’t be papered over. Into that gaping abyss, a whole party could disappear. As the Conservatives used to remind everyone, China is run by Communists, it spies on everyone, it wantonly purloins other people’s intellectual property, and oh yes, it executed 10,000 of its own people.

Is this the kind of country a Conservative prime minister wants to empower in the name of investment in a deal that can’t be broken for thirty years? Is it prudent to give Sinopec, a huge investor in the Northern Gateway Pipeline, “the right to full protection and security from public opposition”? (Isn’t that us?) And is it advisable to okay the deal to sell Nexen to CNOOC, when other oil-producing countries like Kazakhstan are expanding refining capacity, not selling off the raw product like there’s no tomorrow so that others can reap the value added?

There’s not much political gain in asking politicized evangelicals to square dance with the devil. If the PM doubles down on his bad choices, and uses his raw power to push ahead on the China front, Nathan Cullen sees fire on the horizon.

“If he sends in the bulldozers to BC, which is what he’ll have to do, it will make Clayoquot Sound look like a picnic. He’s painted himself into a corner. He can’t be the one to scuttle the deal, so all that’s left is to ask the company to stand down.”

The Chinese, the only people who do less well with the word “No” than the prime minister himself, will be watching. And so, for a very different reason, ears down, will be the government backbench.

Readers can reach the author at [email protected]. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.

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