So the Manley Report came out this past week. Or as it's formally known, "The Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan."

It's a scintillating read. Now I don't want to give away the ending but basically it says that Canada should stay the course. It also says that Canadians have no idea what that course actually means.

Which is why - for Stephen Harper - this is the feel good read of the year. Because believe me, even though it's his government's job to tell us why we're in Afghanistan and they haven't bothered to do that, he does not view this as a failure to communicate. He views this as a triumph of modern leadership.

In fact in the two years since they've formed the government, the words "Harper government" and "communicate" have never appeared in the same sentence without the word "won't" in the middle. Now granted, first goin' off, this was a bit of breath of fresh air coming off the Liberals where you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing some cabinet minister on there blathering on about whatever their department was up to.

But with Harper, the pendulum has swung the other way. He doesn't have cabinet ministers so much as he has chalk outlines on the sidewalk. And to be successful in Harper's Cabinet you have to abide by the three D's: don't see, don't hear, don't say. If Helen Keller were alive today, she could have any job she wanted. They promised accountability, they've delivered invisibility.

You could take a hundred bucks, you could stand on a any street corner in Canada, offer people five bucks if they can name three cabinet ministers off the top of their head - double their money if they can name the minister of health. At the end of the day you'd still have enough money for dinner and a movie. Which is exactly the way Stephen Harper likes it. As far as he's concerned, good government is out of sight and out of mind. And fine, that might make his life easier, but he's gotta remember, the conservatives were hired to run this country, not to hide from it. And these things, they come in threes: out of sight, out of mind, could mean out of office.