I owe former prime minister Brian Mulroney an apology.

Several years ago, I wrote that Mulroney, more than any politician in modern history, is responsible for the current level of disdain and lack of interest that Canadians have for politicians and politics in general.

I based that claim on the fact that during his winning 1984 election Mulroney pledged to wipe out corruption and political patronage and bring new openness to government, but he ultimately failed voters badly.

Under his leadership, corruption, patronage, secrecy and government arrogance actually grew. The result was that, unlike any time before, Canadians in droves gave up on politicians of all parties, writing them off as simply “more of the same.”

I am apologizing because I now realize it’s Stephen Harper, not Mulroney, who has set the standard for how far — and how low — a government and a party will go to win.

I came to that realization while attending a funeral earlier this week in Leamington, a town as far away from Parliament Hill as you can get in southern Ontario.

After the service, I talked with a United Church minister who once ran, unsuccessfully, in Saskatchewan for the NDP. We started to talk about the NDP leadership race, but he quickly admitted he no longer follows politics closely. Politics today, he said, is more about sleaze, personal attacks, dirty tricks, cheating, and rarely about issues that affect the lives of people like those in Leamington.

And he pointed a finger specifically at the robocall affair, which he said reinforces the view that politics as practised today is dirty and corrupt.

No wonder voter turnout is low, he said, adding that to many the scandal, which deals with election telephone calls that steered voters to fake voting sites in dozens of ridings, further erodes democracy.

While some dismiss it as trite and boring, the robocall affair is fuelling public cynicism about politics and our political institutions.

Canadians have a right to expect our leaders to play by the rules.

But there’s a disturbing pattern of campaign wrongdoing within the Conservative party — and it all comes back to Harper.

In November, the Harper Tories pleaded guilty to breaking election financing rules in the 2006 campaign and were fined $25,000, the maximum allowable. Charges against four top Tories were dropped as part of a plea deal.

And the Conservatives have admitted they were behind recent phone calls to residents in Liberal MP Irwin Cotler’s riding in Montreal falsely telling them that he had resigned and asking them to back the Tories in a coming byelection.

Even if Harper had no direct role in these infractions or the robocalls, he allowed an attitude to develop within his party and among his supporters in which it’s okay to do almost anything you want to win. It’s an attitude voters saw with the Tories’ vicious pre-election assaults on Liberals Paul Martin, Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff.

Sadly, there will be more perverted attacks on democracy such as the robocall affair and illegal election financing will be the norm that voters will suffer again and again. Harper and his political crew have concluded it’s the way to win and they’re not going to stop doing it.

That’s because too much power is at stake in every election not to fight with smear tactics, attack ads and, yes, more robocalls.

We need to combat this win-at-all-costs mentality that’s undermining our politics and eroding the public’s faith in our democratic institutions with campaigns that aim to destroy opposing candidates’ reputations or to steal elections with such scummy tactics as misleading robocalls

We can speak up whenever we see sleaze in politics. Clearly, Harper isn’t listening now, knowing he’s got three more years before the next election. But he may have no choice if enough people raise their voices.

It can happen, as Mulroney learned when so many voters let him know they were fed up with Tory sleaze, patronage and arrogance that he resigned in 1993 rather than face one more election.

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Canadians don’t have to endure more rotten campaigns.

We can bring some sanity back into our elections.

Bob Hepburn’s column appears Thursday. bhepburn@thestar.ca

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