Is there really going to be a 2011 Canadian federal election that changes the  present arrangement of the musical chairs in Ottawa, in any significant way? Who knows? But if there is, it will probably be the result of a few wonky issues that, somewhat unexpectedly (in at least some quarters), hit we the Canadian people at angles disadvantageous to the Harper Conservative minority government – on a vaguely surprising and twisted campaign trail.

As things look right now, there seem to be at least two wonky issue candidates of this sort. The first is corporate tax cuts. The provocative intelligence here is a “new poll” which “finds that four in 10 Canadians believe that not only should the government scrap a planned round of corporate tax cuts,” it “should be hiking corporate income taxes.” Moreover, “just one in 10 people nation-wide believe that companies should pay less income tax than they pay now. Nearly one in four believe corporate tax cuts are about right and one in four had no opinion.”

The second wonky issue candidate turns around this Friday’s meeting between Stephen Harper and Barack Obama in Washington, at which (well, maybe this is true?) “the Prime Minister and the US President will order a working group of senior bureaucrats to finalize within a few months agreements that would transform the 49th parallel through co-operative arrangements on trade, security and management of the boundary line” between the United States and Canada.

According to a report by John Ibbitson and Steven Chase in today’s Globe and Mail, these agreements “would mean sharing intelligence, harmonizing regulations for everything from cereal to fighter jets, and creating a bilateral agency to oversee the building and upgrading of bridges, roads and other border infrastructure … Those concerned about protecting privacy and Canadian sovereignty will strongly oppose what some call a continental security perimeter … The negotiations will be politically controversial, especially on what could be the eve of a spring election. While it plays to key Conservative priorities – protecting the economy while deterring crime – many Canadians oppose closer ties to what they see as a declining power that has compromised its democracy in the war on terrorism.”

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Of course, those who fervently hope for some anti-Harper impact in  this potential descendant of the 1891 Canada-US unrestricted reciprocity, 1911 reciprocity, and 1988 free trade elections (at least two of which blew up in the faces of those advocating closer Canada-US ties) should not be jumping to any too hasty conclusions. President Obama remains considerably more popular in Canada than in his own country. And just being seen (agreeably enough?) in the president’s company could prove quite an electoral asset for minority PM Harper. (Assuming that we do finally have the election he keeps on saying he does not want – “Nudge, Nudge, wink wink, Say no more,” etc.)

Personally, I think there are some very good reasons for remaining quite sceptical about the real economic and/or any other need  for any kind of Canada-US “continental security perimeter” at the present juncture in world history. And, like some other Canadians, this is one kind of issue on which, rather profoundly, I still don’t quite trust Stephen Harper and his deeper motivations – no matter what he or Jason Kenney or any other loud voice in his unusually long-lived minority government may say.

At the same time, like others as well, I have acquired some fresh respect for Mr. Harper’s political savvy over the past five years. I have a little trouble understanding how anyone as smart as he obviously is could advocate quite the kind of Canada-US “continental security perimeter”Â  that would, altogether unambiguously, be the kiss of death in Canadian domestic politics.

The clearest intelligence we seem to have right now is that almost no one actually knows just what the working group that Mr. Harper and Mr. Obama may or may not be appointing this Friday will actually wind up doing. And there are many things it might do that would likely enough not get the Harper Conservatives into much trouble at all (and/or could even redound to their political benefit?).

At the same time again, there have also been a few occasions over the past five years when sheer common sense – to say nothing of cunning and sophisticated political savvy – does appear to have altogether deserted Mr. Harper, at some crucial moments in contemporary Canadian political history. And it seems at least a plausible argument that he has finally survived these moments only through sheer luck, and the transitory but troubling weaknesses of his opponents.

So … for some of us at any rate it is hard not to wonder whether this intermittent tragic failure of common sense might be afflicting the Harper Conservatives yet again, on their intransigence over continuing corporate tax cuts and especially their apparent quiet enthusiasm for something that at least looks a bit like an unnecessary and unwanted Canada-US “continental security perimeter”? (And, if so, to wonder too whether luck and the transitory but troubling weaknesses of his opponents can be counted on to bail out Mr. Harper one more time?)

Randall White is the author of a number of books on Canadian history and politics, including Fur Trade to Free Trade: Putting the Canada US Trade Agreement in Historical Perspective.