The last time speculation was in the air in Ottawa about change, there was this member of Parliament named Stephen Harper who had some fresh ideas for how to govern Canada better.

Among those ideas was the creation of a parliamentary budget officer and tough new rules to clean up the lobbying industry. As we know, both those things came to pass. They were successfully implemented – so successfully, in fact, that the Opposition defends them as important principles in guarding democracy.

Eight years later, these two initiatives have turned out to be more than a little too successful for the Harper government’s liking.

We know how creation of the budget officer turned out for the government. It has been a nightmare.

The Federal Accountability Act, which created a very strict regulatory regime for the lobbying industry, has created problems for the government as well – but in a far less visual way.

Both initiatives will be remembered as key parts of the Harper legacy. But they also illustrate an important lesson in wielding power. When you seek to gain power, you don’t just plan policies that will win support from the electorate. You also plan policies you can live with once you are in power. And beware of unintended consequences.

Back in the days when former Finance Minister Paul Martin was treating us to bigger and bigger surprise surpluses every year, Harper quite rightly accused the Liberals of deliberately underprojecting budget outcomes in order to dazzle the electorate by delivering bigger than expected surpluses. Harper said at the time that governments shouldn’t be able to use the budget as a campaign tool by manipulating the numbers.

So, he proposed a parliamentary budget officer to prevent governments from having fun with figures. A veteran bureaucrat named Kevin Page was plucked from anonymity in the Department of Finance Canada and made the first parliamentary budget officer (PBO). As we would soon learn, Page was prepared to do the job as Harper first envisioned. Indeed, he was too tenacious for the Tories.

The government attacked Page personally, making him a hero to the Opposition and a martyr in the eyes of many voters. Page was hounded out of the civil service and replaced by someone from the library of Parliament, Jean-Denis Frechette.

This prompted concern that the budget watchdog was being defanged. But the new PBO soon turned out to be another, albeit quieter headache for the government.

For example, the PBO released a scathing assessment of the government’s decision in September to cut employment insurance (EI) premiums for small businesses to create jobs, although the report did not say how many jobs would be created.

About a month later, the PBO pronounced the initiative would cost the government $550 million over two years, create just 800 jobs, actually reduce job creation by 9,000 jobs and force Canadians to pay $4.5 billion more in EI premiums.

The lesson here: if you are going to create an office with strong assessment powers, be in a position to live with them.

Politics is filled with irony. A good example is how the Harper government is affected most by its own reforms to the lobbying rules. The reforms made it illegal for someone designated as a “public office” holder to work as a registered lobbyist for five years after leaving the federal government, including people working in ministers’ offices.

It is human nature after putting up with a non-competitive salary and crazy hours to want to cash in on unique experience and knowledge by taking a better-paying job in the private sector. As a result, the Harper government has had trouble luring senior people into jobs as aides to ministers. Who would leave a good job in government relations for Parliament Hill if they couldn’t legally return to their profession?

The Conservatives have been forced to rely on young zealots and fresh university grads looking to buff up their resumés to staff government ministers’ offices.

This situation probably accounts for some of the government’s recent, head-scratching manoeuvres – moves such as the baseless attempt to undermine the integrity of the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

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