The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Harper's Courtiers

In the presence of the Sun King:

In the mid-1990s, under Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien, there was the equivalent of 662 people employed on a full-time basis in the Privy Council Office, the bureaucracy that supports and advises the prime minister and his cabinet. 

By 2010-11, that number swelled to 1,066, according to the office's annual performance reports. 
During the same time, costs of running the office increased to $160 million from $79.7 million. 

Every years thousands of tourists visit the national capital. There not being all that much to do in Ottawa they wander through the ByWard Market, get lost along Sparks Street and make a dutiful pilgrimage up Parliament Hill. Some even take the tour and walk through the Green Chamber itself, the fulcrum of Canadian democracy. When I took this rite of passage years ago one awestruck lady from Victoria remarked: "Wow. What power these people have."

Well, sort of.

The real power in Canada is not on Parliament Hill. Power lives in an elegant Second Empire building across the street, Langevin Block. It is here where the central organs of the Canadian state function: The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the Privy Council Office (PCO).

The former holds the minions of the Prime Minister. His enforcers, flacks and backroom operators who ensure that the will of the Canadian Sun King is carried out. The latter is the preserve of senior bureaucrats and high flyers destined for great things in the public service. If the PMO represents the will of government, the PCO represents the how of government.

Dull stuff really. Politicians talking to bureaucrats about policy and politics. For most people the above description alone is a pretty surefire cure for insomnia. So far as people pay attention to politics in this country its not to the PMO and PCO, it is to Question Period. Whatever it's historical origins QP has long ago descended to the level of vulgar theatre.

Television is still the dominant news medium. It is how most people stay informed of current events. The internet appeals mostly to the young and the politically addicted. The former regard television news as an inefficient method of communication delivered at an arbitrary time. The latter find television news to be very thin gruel, preferring in years past magazines and newspapers. The young don't vote and the addicts have long ago made up their minds. This leaves the swing voters and their rabbit ears.

The sound bite, which has shrunk from about 30 seconds in the 1960s to 5 seconds today, is the principal method of political discourse in Canada. Typical TV news report:  Backdrop of an entrance to Centre Block. Blow dried hack reports that the government came under fire today during Question Period. Clip shown of leading opposition MP yelling something at the government side. Second clip of a minister of the crown yelling something back. Third clip of the blow dried hack saying something ponderous though not terribly important.

Should time allow we'll also get the lobby shot or a scrum. The scrum seems to be dying out. All those reporters surrounding a politician is hazardous to everyone's health. It also makes the politicos especially touchy. All that sweating from the lights doesn't help. The lobby shot, with the pol standing at a microphone using Centre Block's interior Gothic glories as a backdrop, adds a certain gravitas to the bloviation.

This is but a small fraction of the politicking that goes on in Ottawa. Politics is in turn a small fraction of the wider and somewhat nebulous business of government. The posturing of pols does not sweep the streets, finance hospitals or ensure that the Army does not go into battle with another Ross Rifle. It's the bureaucrats and those under their direction that actually run government. 

While this may cause discomfiture to those raised on notions of democratic supremacy, it is likely for the better. Most politicians have limited experience in administration and management. Their skill set lends itself to talking rather than doing. While the faults of bureaucracy are well known, they lie less in the men and women, many of whom are sincere individuals with great expertise in their fields. The problem is not the people, it's what we expect of them.

When the role of the government, at least at the federal level, was to deliver the mail, enforce some of the laws and keep the railroads from going bankrupt, the degree of governmental incompetence was kept to a reasonable minimum. Defence in those days being an Imperial responsibility, the blame could be easily shifted to London. Just as today the provinces blame the federal government for every surgery waiting list in the country.

Government long ago stopped just screwing up the mail deliveries. The modern Canadian public expects the government, not a specific level of government but just the nebulous abstraction called government, to educate, medicate, conserve, regulate and mediate every problem that confronts the nation. It is hard to imagine that a beaver fells a tree without the relevant department filing the relevant paperwork with the relevant official.

A small and highly focused government could be managed by talented amateurs (cabinet ministers) with the assistance of dedicated and low-key professionals (bureaucrats). A government that has become as complex and vast as ours requires, if it is to have even a modicum of coherence, professional management. To ensure that the bureaucrats are at least somewhat accountable to the elected power, the PMO has grown larger and larger. Partisan flacks monitoring grey paper-pushers. 

When the welfare and regulatory state was first proposed one of its selling points was that it would bring democracy to capitalism, empowering the poor and middle class against the supposed malfeasors of wealth. Instead Big Government is crushing both democracy and capitalism under its own weight. 

A Big PMO is the product of Big Government. 

 

Tour of Duty

The former Minister of Complex Files speaks:

I left elected politics with a range of feelings – appreciative of the numerous talented people from all political parties who enter public life and, at the same time, despairing of the toxic partisanship of the system that’s one of the obstacles to making progress on matters of national interest.

Strange. When Belinda Stronach left politics most Conservatives (and conservatives) were utterly delighted that this vainglorious twit had gone back to work for Daddy. Here is how I, as well as many other Right-wing bloggers, reacted to the news of Little Miss Princess' floor crossing in 2005. Six and a half years later and I wouldn't change a word. 

In many ways the young Stronach was, however briefly, the Justin Trudeau of the Right. An individual whose thin resume, lack of talent and vaunting ambition made them a dangerous nuisance in the nation's political life. Looking back it's difficult to understand why anyone took Belinda Stronach seriously, or why the Globe decided to give so much space to this loosely linked sequence of cliches. How desperate is the Grey Old Lady of Front Street? 

The article is a glimpse into the mind of the Magna Heiress, perhaps even more so if it was ghosted. The word entitlement comes to mind, yet it fails to do justice to this mediocrity claiming her supposed due. Take this hum-dinger of an insight:

The role of parliamentarians should be to work for the best interests of the country in a constant and postpartisan search for solutions. In the way our current electoral system is structured, the focus is almost entirely on the mechanics of getting re-elected once elected, and the time horizon for assessing the impact of decisions tends to be the immediate electoral cycle rather than what’s good for future generations of Canadians. The emphasis must be on public service where politics isn’t seen as a career but rather as a tour of duty. Terms limits could encourage this fundamental shift.

Yes, she's arguing for term limits. An idea that went out of fashion with Newt Gingrich. I mean the first time he went out of fashion. While there is some merit to the old British tradition of MPs as part-time amateurs, parliament has always needed some focused and highly experienced members to keep the machinery of government working. Or not working depending on your perspective.

To the casual observer parliament seems to be little better than a talk shop staffed by trained seals. There is certainly an element of truth to this belief. Parliament today is a sad shadow of its traditional role as a serious deliberative body. In years gone by the great issues of the day were openly and frankly debated. Politics might have been more corrupt, and certainly less democratic, it was however more vital and less intrusive in private life.

That was before the rise of all-powerful party leaders and a scandal chasing media. The role of an MP today is to spout government talking points and vote at the direction of the whips. Electoral cannon fodder for the modern welfare state. This bleak state of affairs is naturally repulsive to most men and women of talent, ability and self-respect. What CEO of a large firm, accustomed to guiding the destiny of thousands of workers and billions of dollars, is going to relish the prospect of kowtowing to the pompous mediocrities who typically reside in the Green Chamber?

So when Belinda of Newmarket made her appearance all were aflutter. She was the CEO of a multinational company! She was occasionally blond! She looked pretty! Politics, the old truism holds, is show business for ugly people. Extending that logic a bit further it also well paying employment for the otherwise unemployable, a view given added weight with the recent arrival of all those instant Dipper MPs from Quebec.

Back in 2004 the Tory High Command, just having recently merged, was desperate. As such various things were overlooked in the dynamo package that was Belinda. Sure she was the CEO of a large company, which her Daddy founded. Her post-secondary education consisted of one year at York, which in the modern Canadian economy barely qualifies you to be a receptionist. Her public speaking skills were as lively and convincing as those of a ventriloquist dummy. Her explanations of public policy issues were less insightful than what you overhear at Tim Hortons on a typical weekday.

Desperate they were. That is until Belinda became a nuisance. Having been given all the prizes in life, without having to earn them, she was miffed at not winning the leadership of the newly united Right. This brought her into conflict with the actual winner, Stephen Harper. Rumours have circulated ever since of a spectacular backroom showdown between Harper and Stronach, with the latter storming off to the Liberals in protest.

I would have paid good money to see a blow-up between the two. In one corner Stephen Joseph Harper, the finest political mind of his generation, and in the other corner a woman who couldn't hack second year accounting at York. What must have been going through the mind of the future Prime Minister as he witnessed this absurd woman's overweening ambition? Certainly annoyance. Perhaps even bemusement, assuming that Mr Harper is capable of being bemused at anything.

History records that Belinda betrayed the Conservatives, made a deal with the Martin Devils and sat in cabinet for a few months. Judas, at least, was smart enough to get some silver. Paulie got defeated, Stephen went in and Belinda is off overseeing Daddy's philanthropic enterprises. Leaving us, the poor benighted voters of Canada, having to bake our own economic pies.

The Government of What Now

The long gun registry is dead. The vote subsidy is dead. The Canadian Wheat Board is pretty much dead, unless a supreme court judge discovers an obscure constitutional rule banning wheat sales by private parties. Something I'm sure Macdonald, Mowatt and Brown had in mind back in the 1860s. So now that the government has slayed most of the dragons it couldn't slay over the last five years, minority government and all that, what happens next? What does a government do that has stable majority?

Some of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s most trusted members of Cabinet are playing their cards close on what the government has in store for 2012, emphasizing the economy and denying rumours of prorogation, but John Manley, president and CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which is the most powerful lobby group in the country, says Cabinet’s credibility depends on taking a strong stand on health care and trade in the new year.

Which I'm sure they'll get around to when they win next their majority government. Or maybe the one after that. These things take time. I'm sure you understand. May 2, 2011 may turn out to be the pinnacle of the modern Conservative Party and the career of Stephen Harper. The long-sought for majority at least achieved! Sure a few things had to get ditched along the way. A few cranks, some obnoxious staffers and, oh yes, their principles.

A political philosophy is a cumbersome thing. It requires thought in formulating, clarity of expression in communicating and consistency in observing. Then there are the critics. Always trying to, well, criticize your ideas. That can make you look bad in front of the electorate. For an ambitious politician having a coherent political philosophy can really hurt their career. 

The sharp fellows, keen to climb up Disraeli's greasy pole, try to wear their ideological allegiances lightly. A few platitudes for the after dinner crowd at the local Legion Hall, or ethnically themed community centre, making the necessary adjustments for the crowd. Audience full of old WASPs? Stress Canada's hallowed traditions and historic freedoms. Young WASPs? Note how much you like spicy food and that some of your best friends are from the Punjab. Non-WASPs? Canada is a land of opportunity! Oh, don't worry the paperwork for that grant will be clearing next week. OK. They wouldn't admit that publicly but a few hints can always help in swing ridings.

Naturally this strategy has some problems. In Quebec it doesn't really work anymore. A vast swath of the Quebec electorate considers being bribed and pandered to a natural right. Like an aging Beauty Queen who is accustomed to being told she is stunning and young. It's not really true anymore but no one wants to see the full Diva rage should anyone mention the crow's feet. The NDP have bet their electorate future on being the groupie of the no longer so belle province. Bon chance with that.

The Conservatives tried pandering to Quebec between 2006 and 2008. Then they cut funding to some obscure arts program and everyone got cross at them. Politicians often speak about issues that matter to Canadians. Clearly different issues matter to the Quebecois. Having failed with Plan A the Harper Tories then began pandering to the 905 once again. That worked out well enough.

So now they've got the power. Four long years stretch out before them like a Prairie horizon. Slowly the realization will be dawning that winning is a long-term disaster. Having jettisons much of their conservatism, save a few tokens for their base, they are now in government without much idea of what to do. Sure, they could reform health care, balance the budget early or restructure the tax code. They will do none of those things, unless forced to by a political or economic crisis. It would just be too risky.

The Harper Tories gained power by pretending to be better Liberals than the Liberals, just as David Peterson and Dalton McGuinty won governments by mimicking Bill Davis sans the pipe. Ontario is where Canadian elections have been mostly won since Confederation. The imperial province likes its politics bland and moderate. Doesn't matter what those policies are, so long as everyone agrees they are bland and moderate. Being extremists, in other words principled, is very rude. Rather American as well.

Great politicians shift the political goal posts. Mediocre ones just play with the field they're given. After nearly six years in power Stephen Harper is well on his way to a comfortable mediocrity. Had he spent his career at small think-tanks, continuing his low-key but successful political activism, he might have made a real impact on our political life. Instead he decided to become Prime Minister, arguably the least powerful man in the country. 

Sure, he's got the office, the official resident and the driver, yet he's basically running a government that is fiscally to the Left of Jean Chretien, and a bit symbolically to the Right of Brian Mulroney. What's the point of power if you run a government much like the people you once opposed?

I hope the PM enjoys the next four years worth of photo-ops and Question Period mud slinging sessions. A few PR stunts aside, that's pretty much his agenda until 2015. Taking some real risks might lead to losing power. That's the point of politics, isn't it? To win? Sure. But to win as what?

 

The Omniscience Prime Minister

It mostly began in 1968:

Prior to the Trudeau era, the PMO and PCO were small. That was deliberate. Gordon Robertson, the legendary clerk of the Privy Council, warned that growth at the centre would make it difficult for ministries, under the leadership of powerful deputy ministers, to develop and implement innovative policies.

Trudeau thought he knew better. "Trudeau was not a student of politics and government. He never understood Parliament, truly," Savoie says.

No disagreement here. In a parliamentary system the procedure is the point. Any tyrant can pass a law, and any bureaucrat a regulation, the creation of rules in an open manner by the people's representatives is something very different. PET failed to understand this because his goal was to remake Canada in his own image. Philosopher kings hate having to sweat the details. A more centralized government would be more efficient in carrying out the will of the leader. Making government more efficient, as Trudeau hoped, failed because governments cannot be efficient.

Take an extreme example: A dictatorship seems to be an extremely efficient type of government. One man, one vote and no dissent. In practice, as Dan Gardner notes in the above piece, no single individual can possible run an entire nation state. Legions of administrators are required. Given too much authority, those wielding delegated power become effectively independent of the center, and a polycratic chaos ensues. Delegate too little power, as with the over centralization as we are seeing with the modern PMO, sclerosis is the result.

The over-centralized state, its crown jewels being the PMO (Prime Minister's Office) and PCO (Privy Council Office), is a product of the modern welfare state. A small and limited government could hope to be both somewhat effective and mostly decentralized. Individual cabinet ministers could wield considerable power, since that power was limited and rarely overlapped with other departments. The various ministries, excepting defence and the post office, employed a few hundred people at most. Spans of control were small and, compared to modern governments, easily managed.

The philosophy that underpinned Canadian government shifted in the 1960s. Government, especially the federal level, changed its focus from (mostly) defending individual rights and overseeing certain pieces of infrastructure, to providing a cornucopia of social services. Free health care, subsidized post secondary education, social housing, social assistance and environmental regulation grew the state beyond the ability of any individual to comprehend, much less properly manage. 

Even where the role of the federal government was merely that of financier, as in health care, and the responsibility for administration remained with the provinces, ministries still grew to the size of mid or large sized corporations. The enormous power such ministries wielded could compromise the center of the political machine, the Prime Minister. Rather than have a government with a dozen different semi-independent ministerial fiefdoms, Trudeau began to concentrate power in his own office.

His successors at 24 Sussex Drive simply continued the process. They could do nothing else. So long as government retained its gargantuan size, the alternative to over-centralization was chaos. Power had to remain at the center or it would be no power at all. When Paul Martin loosened the reins, failing to impose a few key priorities at a time, the result was paralysis for the government and his reputation was forever tarnished as a "ditherer." 

To run the machinery of modern government, in anything like a coherent fashion, would require a nearly omniscient Prime Minister. With the actual human beings that get elected to high office, not all of them of the highest integrity or intelligence, the result is naturally disappointing. The machine grows too big and weakens itself. In time it may even collapsed under its own weight. That thought might gladden the heart of some free marketers. Keep in mind that when something as big as a Leviathan state collapses, it takes many innocents along with it.

 

The Canadian Jackboot

Lawrence Martin phones it in:

If someone had predicted a few years ago that Canada would fall into the embrace of right-wing nationalism, they would have been sent off to the nearest home for the mentally encumbered.

A nationalism of the left, maybe. We had some of that, at least as conservatives saw it, in the Trudeau years with the National Energy Program, the Committee for an Independent Canada and the like.

Forget the hidden agenda. Harper is now a cross between a Mitteleuropa fascist and an American right-wing blow hard. What a difference a majority government makes: Harper derangement syndrome has gone from chronic to acute. For a good Trudeaupian like Lawrence Martin any reversal of the Great Man's legacy is to be denounced. Counter-revolutionaries are to be suppressed!

While Martin complains about Harper's anti-Trudeau tendencies, he misses that Harper as symbolist is really just taking us back to the Canadian mainstream circa 1967. This is not "right-wing nationalism" with all its dark connotations, or a low grade American Republican import, it's the old Canada that Martin so clearly loathes. 

Exhibit A in the Harper as right-wing revisionist case is the revival of the military. Partly this has come from a boost in defence spending, which actually began in the Paul Martin years, and partly from an increased profile of the military in government policy and pronouncements. This Martin calls "The Glorification of the Military." As opposed to the contemptuous neglect of the military in the four decades between Hellyer and Harper.

This is the new cornerstone of Harper nationalism. He boasts proudly that Canada is now a warrior nation and uses every opportunity to salute the armed forces. A recent report by the National Defence Department, in contrast to other years, says the Canadian identity should be shaped in good part by the military. It is 200 years since Canada was last invaded, but safeguarding Canada, says the prime minister, is his and foremost priority.

The first duty of any government is to defend a country's borders. Saying that Canada has not been invaded in a long-time is the sort of complacency that allowed this country's armed forces to become under-equipped, under-trained and undermanned in 1914, 1939 and arguably 1950 as well. A mistake that was paid for in blood in the early stages of those conflicts. This is not the nineteenth century and threats to Canada's security and interests are global.   

Admiration for the military is not a bad thing. Heck, glorification of the military is a good thing, though it is not the same thing as the glorification of war. Part and parcel of having a real nation state is having a credible military. Our soldiers, sailors and airmen are not simply government employees in unusual costumes, they represent Canada to the world in a way far more concrete than multilateralist rhetoric. Giving the military the short-end of the national budget, and the national spot-light, is a clear sign of a country that no longer takes itself seriously.

Much of the rest of Martin's criticism, such as "Cult of the Leader" and his "Anti-Democratic Instincts," could just as easily apply to every Liberal leader since 1968. There are also the usual sly hints that the Harper Tories are bigots down to the bone:

The Harperites, while not xenophobic, are less inclined toward multiculturalism and inclusivity than previous governments. They have imposed tighter immigration requirements, narrowed the definition of citizenship and blocked entry to war resisters and other unsavoury types. Their less than favourable take on the United Nations resulted in their being denied a seat on the Security Council.

They're not technically racists, you see, they just don't like those people. There is a great difference between an ethnically diverse society and a multicultural one. The former is simply a description of a demographic reality, the latter an engraved invitation to Balkanization. The Tories are not less inclusive than their predecessors. Instead they are arguing, in the stilted manner allowed by our political discourse, for a common cultural core. Given the number of high-profile "honour killings" in recent years, that's a necessary thing. Tolerating ourselves out of existence should not be a "Canadian value."

The Harper government's low opinion of the United Nations is understandable. It's a collection of preening despots that spends its time denouncing Israel, while ignoring or excusing the crimes of many of its member states. Canada was denied a seat on the Security Council because it was not Portugal, i.e. country that had the implicit backing of both Europe and Latin America. Failing to win that booby prize is hardly a national disgrace.

The Canada that Trudeau bequeath, Martin extols and Harper is steadily undermining was a nation of conceits. We could have all the benefits of being a First World and first class middle power, without any of the downside. A seat at the grown-up table of geopolitics, without paying for a credible military. A lavishly generous welfare state, without an economy capable of carrying it along. The Prime Minister's partial volte face from this aging utopianism is not "right-wing nationalism," it's as Canadian as maple syrup. It was Trudeau's vision that doesn't fit with the long-trend of Canadian history. 

 

Just A Simple Guy

Stephen from Leaside:

"The West Block with Tom Clark" on Sunday. The interview was taped last week during the G20 leaders' meeting in Cannes, France. Clark remarked that winning a majority government was the ambition of Harper's lifetime. Harper politely disagreed.

"Obviously I'm pretty proud of the achievement. I would say, probably my even bigger ambition of a lifetime is the ambition that most families have, and that's to see my children grow up and be happy, and be productive citizens," Harper said of his children Ben, 15, and Rachel, 12.

You know I want to believe him. Really I do. Stephen Harper is the most normal man to have held the PM's job since Lester Pearson. By normal I mean that he does not seem to be unusually weird by political standards. Still, we should not forget that he has an IQ north of 130 and a political erudition that is frightening to behold. Most of his waking hours over the last quarter century have been spent plotting the destruction of the Liberal Party of Canada. The rest of his time seems to be divided between his family, considering the history of the slap-shot and patronising the worst barber shops in the country.

It's a relative normality.

Most normal people do consider the success of their children an important life goal. It would not be unusual for Stephen Harper to have the same warm and fuzzy ambitions. I still gagged when I read the above quote. The thought running through my head? Please. You're a political obsessive. People like that often regard their families as something between props and encumbrances. 

Politicians, as I keep having to remind myself, are people too. While Harper does sometimes go a bit heavy on the fluffy blue sweater shtick, he does project a sense of genuineness. No one ambitious for high office would ever strive to be that awkward and wonkish. It's who he is. God help him. If the guy says he hopes for family happiness and health, I'll take him at his word.

Now compare him with that great also ran of 2011, one Michael Grant Ignatieff. Among the many reasons Lord Iggy lost was that he was being a phony. I don't mean that the former head of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy is a phony by nature, he was just a phony while in electoral politics. Rather than trying to be Michael Ignatieff he pretended to be an ordinary guy.

This he obviously is not. He tried to be plebeian when every inch of him is patrician. He tried to converse with the voters by means of talking points, ejecting into the air the sort of meaningless platitudes he used to skewer as a journalist. Pretending to be the guy next door is difficult when being short-listed for the Booker Prize is a footnote on your CV. The sensible thing would have been to calmly and coolly admit he was, dare we say it, a world class intellectual and then moved on.

"Hi, I'm Michael and I am smarter than most of you. This is what I can do for Canada."

If he'd tried that approach, perhaps more tactfully than I've presented it, he might not now be cooling his heels at U of T. Even when Trudeau tried to be common he never forgot he was still Trudeau. Iggy forgot about Iggy.

The Liberal Party war-room, blessed with a tin-ear that puts many American Idol contestants to shame, decided that transforming an accomplished academic into a political drone was a good idea. A decade of block headed moves like that have allowed the vultures to place themselves in permanent orbit above Grit HQ. The party of Mackenzie King is being outwitted at the moment by the NDP, which is run by trade unionists and people who couldn't get tenure at Ryerson. Somewhere C.D. Howe is scowling. 

Image is everything in politics, except when it is not. Try Jack Layton. The bon homme Jack routine took decades to perfect. Watching old tapes of Councillor Layton and he come off as a cranky hippie with a Ph.D. Twenty years of municipal politics seem to have worn off the grumpy philosopher king sheen. Yet Layton did not try to be the guy next door. He was the cool guy you knew in college, who is nice enough to remember your name when you meet on the subway.

Bob Rae understands the comfortable in your skin approach. He's a dork. He knows he's a dork, but he's a dork who has mellowed through the years. In someways he's kind of a cool dork. A decent blazer and a well timed shoulder shrug in front of the cameras balances out the inherent dorkness of the man. The ex-Premier is also as well practiced a pol as exists in Canada. He helped bring down Joe Clark's government when Stephen Harper was still in university. 

This all should make Bob Rae electoral poison. That he is also a contender for the title "Worst Ontario Premier Ever" does not help his electability. Still, there he is, trying to lead the Grits out of their near oblivion. He's there because unlike most pols he's a likable guy who repeats talking points without sounding like he is repeating talking points. He sounds sort of like a natural human, though hardly "an average guy."

The mistake far too many political handlers make - Hello to Team Hudak! - is to imagine people want to vote for someone like them. This is not true. If it were they'd vote for incoherent schleps. By definition someone who is a serious candidate for high office is not the guy next door, he or she has distinguished themselves, if only in the art of not tripping over their tongue in front of a camera crew. 

Voters want someone who is smarter than they are and understands their concerns. It's not being the guy next door, it's being relatable. I can see where this politician is coming from, so hopefully he can see where I'm coming from too. Humanizing does not mean levelling. Putting an ordinary schmuck in 24 Sussex is the plot for a bad CBC sitcom, not a winning political strategy. One of the many things the Conservative Party of Canada understands far better than the Liberals.

 

The Guilty Men

With Conservatives like these...

“In Canada we have a progressive income tax and it favours people with lower incomes who are vulnerable, quite frankly, in Canadian society. Our tax system is clearly progressive. Having said that I see a point that income distribution is important and that there is a concern that a very, very small group of people have very large incomes.”

Jim Flaherty, Federal Minister of Finance

Once upon a time the children of our fair Dominion were taught that envy was a sin. Today envy is a public policy approach so well entrenched that a "conservative" finance minister thinks nothing of genuflecting toward it. The United States too has a "progressive" income tax system, a fact of which the Minister cannot be ignorant. Perhaps the suggestion is that our system is somewhat more "progressive" than its American equivalent. If that is so, it should not be a point for boasting.

It is a strange understanding of progress that punishes people for, well, progressing. Most high-income earners were once low-income earners. The better they do the more they are punished. Imagine a hockey league where the most successful teams are deducted points to help out the least successful. Our "progressive" income tax system functions in much the same way. It is system that makes sense only to those to whom envy is a virtue. Such is the nature of modern ethics and thus modern politics.

Do not confuse, as too many now do, the issue of progressive taxation with a compassionate attitude toward the unfortunate or incapacitated. They have become entwined in the mind of the public because of the bloated and omnivorous welfare state. If the goal is to ensure that the burden of public finances does not fall too heavily on those barely making ends meet, then the approach should be to reduce consumption taxes on personal necessities: Basic foodstuff, rents up to a certain level and clothing below a certain price point.  

Low-income earners should not be completely exempt from net taxation (they put less into government coffers than they take out). People who pay taxes have a stake in the prudent management of government and will be less likely to view government as Santa Claus. Even a small burden of taxation provides a disincentive to run to the state for unearned benefits. The United States is now approaching a point where more than half of Americans pay no income tax. Once a working majority of the electorate is on the dole the prospects for a market economy, perhaps even liberal democracy itself, become increasingly bleak.

Note the obsession among economists and public policy analysts, including it seems the Minister of Finance, with income inequality. While progressive taxation is sold as compassion to the poor, that is not its goal or practical outcome. That someone has more than you does not make you worse off. That someone else is worse off makes you no better.

In a free society the prosperity of the rich helps the poor, something I can personally attest to having cleaned more than a few upper-middle class homes and offices. Their prosperity helped me improve my well being. Getting government involved, taking its own fat percentage for administration, would not have improved the situation.

A tax system which is truly fair would seek to roughly balance what people take from government with what they pay in. The poor man's life is no better protected than the rich by the police, the courts or the military. It would also not try to take blood from a stone. Burdening people with taxes they cannot pay because of their poverty is unjust. Such an approach would also hamper people's ability to improve their lot. For that latter reason alone having low consumption taxes on certain necessities would be to the advantage of all. 

The progressive income is not fair, it simply punishes the successful. It is not helpful to the poor, since it helps to finance a welfare state that entraps them and reduces opportunity by slowing economic growth. Its ultimate rationale is and has always been envy. The hatred by the many of the success of the few. Why would a minister of the crown, a figure often associated with the political Right, say that it is a concern that "a very, very small group of people have very large incomes.” Should not this sort of rhetoric be kept on the Left?

What drives a nominally conservative politician to preach the gospel of envy is the ethics of altruism. If the ultimate goal of man on this earth is to serve other men, then every dollar required above subsistence morally belongs to someone else. Few people practice altruism consistently, Minister Flaherty is quite fond of high-end business suits for instance, but most people in modern Canada at least partially subscribe to the altruist ideal. This is why few question the morality of the Occupy Wall Street / Bay Street protesters, instead focusing on their economic and historical illiteracy. 

Their morals, however, are as shoddy as their education. The latter having led to the former. If an individual has no moral right to what he or she has earned, if all our possessions are held at the sufferance of the "poor"or "society," there can be no proper defence of capitalism. Jim Flaherty genuflected to the politics of envy because he felt guilty. Many of those on Bay Street, who have given half-hearted excuses to the mob at their door step, do so out of that same guilt. Who are we to earn millions while others earn pennies? 

The guilt of the rich, the envy of the poor and ethics of altruism that binds them together is a threat to our freedom. The rich will not properly defend what they have unless they feel a moral right to it. The poor will not stop feeling envious so long as they believe they have a moral right to the unearned. A morality of altruism, too often confused with simple compassion, perpetuates this vicious system. 

The appropriate response to the mobs at St James Park and Bay Street is this: Get haircut, get an education and get a real job. No one here owes you anything.

 

The A-Word

A Conservative acts conservatively:

Brad Trost, the MP for Saskatoon–Humbolt, says on his parliamentary website that the Prime Minister’s Office will listen to members of the Conservative caucus who oppose abortion only when they take an aggressive stand. “We will apply this lesson,” he warns.

[…]

Mr. Trost was reacting to a decision by International Development Minister Bev Oda on Sept. 22 to give the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) $6-million over three years.

Wow. Here is the member for Saskatoon-Humboldt on this website:

In 2009, we became more aggressive and began to take our campaign public.

Many, many Conservative MPs pressed the PMO to stop the funds from flowing. Federal funding did stop for a time. Funds allocated to IPPF were considerably reduced. Furthermore, federal grants for IPPF also had more strings attached.

This only happened because of the pressure applied. This was a real victory.

Bureaucrats have fought for years to keep the status quo and continue the funding of the IPPF that was established by the Liberals.

The battle over the IPPF continues.

Pro-Life politicians have been taught a lesson.

All politicians have been taught a lesson. The trained seals on the Ottawa backbenches bounced the ball right at the Prime Minister's head. More than that they have survive. Did we mention that Mr Trost has a petition on his website to defund the CBC? The Age of Miracles has not passed.

What to make of this astonishing outburst of principle in politics? There are fascinating sociological and anthropological implications. How does an individual breakout of the group think of Ottawa? In the near future will a PMO staffer be making Mr Trost an offer he can't refuse? How often can Ezra get away with booking this guy for The Source?

Mr Trost's self-assertion is about far more than abortion. It's about how parliament should work. The silence on the issue of abortion, as on the death penalty, private health care and scores of other issues, is like the old saying goes, deafening. Whether you are for or against any of these ideas, a large number of your fellow citizens do feel passionately about them. So why is there so little debate?

Talk radio will occasionally give an hour for these hot button issues, though most of the air time is still devoted to routine examples of government waste and extravagance, or an especially gruesome crime. Since most people are at work during the peak talk radio hours these shows have a limited impact. The main source of news for most people is television, the internet and newspapers. 

The traditional rationale of the MSM is that Canadians don't want to talk about abortion, capital punishment or private health care, yet these topics easily light up phone boards across the country. When this is pointed out the fall back position is that Canadians want to avoid the social strife that exists in the United States. Why? Are we a nation of wilting violets? Too afraid of a healthy debate?

What the media believes is permissible sets the limits of political debate. Few politicians are brave enough to raise issues that reporters will either ignore or disfigure. The Harper PMO being paranoid about negative publicity, with some justification, narrows the debate even further. Thus contentious issues are raised only when the PMO is backed into a corner.

The caucus revolt is the nuclear option of modern Canadian parliamentary politics. To be successful it has to have just enough members be involved that the PMO cannot easily crush it. One or two recalcitrant MPs can be brought into line by threats of expulsion, thus losing the party's nomination in the next election. In an age when party brand and the leader's image trumps almost everything, backbench defiance is often career suicide. 

This was not always so. Once members like Mr Trost were far more open to speak their mind. The backbenchers of years past could far more easily bring a leader to heel when necessary. It is often forgotten that what brought down John A Macdonald during the Pacific Scandal was not the Liberal opposition, or the press or the electorate, but independently minded Conservative MPs. If a similar scandal was to surface today, Adscam was much smaller by comparison, it is likely that a disciplined backbench would have kept John A in power.

Such dramatic action should be left to desperate situations. The threat of a caucus revolt should not be the only real restraint on the power of the party leader. The cult of the leader in modern politics stems from both a centralization of media in the 20th century, making a single narrative a requirement of political campaigns, and the role of the extra parliamentary party. Until 1919 federal party leaders were chosen by their caucus, not by a circus style convention stacked with Instant Tories and Grits-in-a-Minute. This gave the caucus real power.

While it is unlikely we can completely turn back the clock on the leader cult, we can perhaps borrow a tried and tested idea from the mother country. In the British Conservative Party the backbenchers are represented within the caucus by the 1922 Committee. Being organized they can more effectively oppose the will of the leader and the frontbenchers. They are a check on the power of the Central Office and the party High Command. Just an idea that Mr Trost might want to consider.

 

The Never Ending Harper

Like the Energizer Bunny of watered-down conservatism:

"I think he's safely ensconced for at least another eight years," predicts veteran Parliament Hill journalist and Globe and Mail national affairs columnist Lawrence Martin, who documented Prime Minister Harper's (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) consolidation of power over five years of minority government in Harperland: The Politics of Control. The bestselling book was re-released last week with a new chapter.

Wait. Lawrence Martin believes that Harper will be in for another eight years? Given Martin's crystal ball track record that means the PM will be assassinated in a Cabinet coup some time next year. But seriously, G & M mockery aside, Stephen Harper looks pretty well ensconced in 24 Sussex. Then again, once upon a time, so did Jean Chretien. 

Jack Granatstein, the noted historian, has compared the current PM to no less a figure than Mackenzie King. I've made the same comparisons myself. I was not trying to flatter. Both can be seen as ruthless political operators driven by pragmatism rather than principle. King's lack of vision and conviction lead the lawyer and poet F.R. Scott to pen these famous lines:

He seemed to be in the centre

Because we had no centre,

No vision

To pierce the smoke-screen of his politics.

 

Truly he will be remembered

Wherever men honour ingenuity,

Ambiguity, inactivity, and political longevity.

Let us raise up a temple

To the cult of mediocrity,

Do nothing by halves

Which can be done by quarters.

An epithet as worthy of Canada's 10th prime minister as of our 22nd. Both were technocrats who took away all the prizes at school. King went as far as a Harvard Ph.D while Harper settled for an M.A from the University of Calgary. While Harper's graduate studies suggest an initial skepticism toward big government, King own academic worked pointed in the opposite direction. To Wilfrid Laurier's anointed successor there could be a third way, so to speak, between capitalism and socialism.

In his 1918 book Industry and Humanity King argued that capital and labour were not natural antagonists. With the wise and benevolent assistance of government, as a neutral third party representing the nation as a whole, these two forces of modern life could be brought together for the greater good. This dense and cumbersome tome is in many ways the founding document of the modern Liberal Party.

King's rise to power came from his close relationship with Laurier. The two made a strange contrast, the dapper and elegant classical liberal and the dour and dull modern liberal. Yet it was Laurier, sensing the emerging power of organized labour, who had appointed King as the Dominion's first Minister of Labour. Defeated for re-election in 1911 and 1917, he was among the very few Anglophone Liberals to support Laurier's anti-conscription stand.

While the Borden Tories won a decisive victory in 1917, with the support of many Anglophone pro-conscription Liberals, the party was destroyed as a political force in Quebec. When normal politicking resumed after the war King was one of the few Liberals in the ROC who was respected in Quebec, the party's electoral core since 1896. Upon Laurier's death in 1919 the Toronto schoolmarm was well positioned to take over the leadership of the Liberal Party.

There might seem to be few parallels between the early King and the early Harper, yet our current Prime Minister too had his wilderness years. Few recall now that the Prime Minister was once an aide to Jim Hawkes, a prominent Tory MP in the Mulroney years. In 1986 the once and future PM had heard Preston Manning's siren call and moved over to the Reform Party. During the next election Harper dutifully ran against Jim Hawkes in Calgary West, where he garnered 16.58% to Hawkes' 58.52%. 

Circa election night 1988 the young Harper looked like he'd made an especially dumb politically move. Leaving the winning Tory team in the most fundamentally blue part of the Dominion, just so he could join up with a non-entity whose sole distinction was that his father had been Alberta premier a generation before. Like King siding with Laurier over conscription, it was a very bad short-term move. Over the long-term Harper's joining the Reform Party, as with King's support for Laurier, were prerequisites for both men winning the highest office in the land.

These are men who understood how to play the very long game. A rare trait in a profession as myopic as politics. King's payoff was much quicker. His opposition to conscription lead to political defeat in 1917 and the PM's office, albeit on a tenuous footing, in 1921. Harper had to wait nearly twenty years between walking away from a comfortable staffers' job in a sitting MP's office to 24 Sussex. Yet there he sits, ruler of all he surveys with no serious political threat on the horizon. So long as the Canadian economy continues to outperform the American, he'll be well placed to beat King's 22 years on the job.

Then again it's Canadian politics. Weird stuff happens. Just ask Jim Hawkes. 

 

The Canadian Art of Pandering

The Bob steps in it:

According to a letter sent by the chairman of the Greek Community of Toronto, Nikonas Georgakopoulos, the Community expresses a strong opposition to the temporary leader of the Liberal Party, Bob Rae, due to the salutation of the Independence day of Fyrom as Democracy Day of Macedonia.

To those not in the know, including it seems the Bob, the Greeks object to Macedonia calling itself Macedonia, since there is a region of Greece also called Macedonia. Instead Macedonia is officially known as "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" or by its acronym FYROM. 

For we the distant observers this spectacle has the faint air of two beggars arguing over the naming of a cardboard box. But Bob is no ordinary observer. He's the "interim" Liberal leader and therefore must engage in that most time honoured of Liberal traditions, the ethnic pander. Along with that other hallowed tradition, the corporate shakedown by Grit bagmen, the art of the Liberal pander has been essential to the party's success since the days of Mackenzie King. Before then the Grits would occasionally fight on matters of principle. Many moons ago.

So Bob the Rebuilder, as Charles Adler calls him, accidentally pissed off the Greeks while trying to pander to the Macedonians. The life of a modern Canadian politician is not without its hazards. Yet should not the Bob, now well into the uglier precincts of middle age, not have grasped that most essential of democratic skills, electoral math. In Canada there are far more Greeks than Macedonians, therefore you pander to the Greeks and tactfully ignore the Macedonians. One of the reasons, perhaps, the Bob was premier for only a single term.

While multicultural themed pandering is certainly a blight in our politics, it is hardly new. John A Macdonald was a master at pandering to the Orange Irish, the Catholic Irish and the French Catholics, often within the same day. Much of politics is patronage and pandering. The Bob just goofed. Petty stuff in the back and forth of political life. These things happen. They also pale before the greatest pandering racket in the history of the Dominion, that directed at la belle province.

Quebec should join B.C., Alberta and Ontario in getting extra House of Commons seats when Canada's political map is next redrawn, says New Democratic Party leadership candidate Brian Topp.

Topp, first out of the starting gate Monday to replace the late Jack Layton, addressed the potentially divisive issue in advance of his first leadership campaign appearance in Western Canada on Tuesday.

He said giving extra seats to Quebec would be a way to recognize its status as a nation within Canada.

And all must have prizes. Parliamentary seats too. Mr Topp went onto say that we need to find "an appropriate Canadian compromise." That's political code for "shut up and cave into Quebec." Giving Quebec extra seats rather misses the point. The goal of giving more seats to the West and Ontario is to correct their under-representation in the House, moving us somewhat closer to the ideal of representation by population. Those with long historical memories may recall that rep by pop was one of the reasons the Fathers pushed for Confederation. It was certainly the main political goal of George Brown. 

Dead white men matter little in modern political discourse. What did they know? Should those DWM also have spoken English, rather than an appropriately oppressed language, we can safely dismiss their opinions as racist and reactionary. Even those of the abolitionists and reformers. In our enlightened age we have evolved past such silly nonsense as equality before the law, One Canada and individual rights. The French are special and so should be treated especially well.

To those beleaguered survivors of the Enlightenment, clinging to our batter copies of Locke and Smith, special privileges for members of a particular group sounds rather like blacksliding into tribalism. Saying that Quebec is a nation within a united Canada, as the Harper Tories did back in 2006, is saying there is no such thing as Canada. There can be no nation within a nation. To suggest otherwise is to invite tribal conflict.

In most countries such a policy would be dangerous, in a nation as diverse as Canada it is suicidal. How can we turn to the assembled ethnic groups that have come to Canada since the war and demand assimilation? If Quebec is a nation within a nation, not a subset of a wider whole but an actual nation, why cannot the Chinese of Vancouver or the Italians of St. Clair make the same demand? If there is no One Canada there is no Canada. 

Such thoughts, which should concern the statesman, trouble not our political leadership. Content are they to pander and to bribe those willing to kick up a fuss:

The air force won’t be able to meet the Harper government’s promises to create a new aviation unit in Quebec because it doesn’t have enough personnel, according to documents obtained by the Citizen.

Air force commander Lt.-Gen. André Deschamps has been told to come up with alternate ways to meet a 2007 promise by the Harper government to create a new air expeditionary wing at Bagotville, Que.

Hmm. Is the St Lawrence again being menaced by U-boats? Perhaps the Fenians are plotting additional raids. Why must Quebec have its own aviation unit? For the same reason it must have more seats than it deserves in the House of Commons. The Quebecois are different from you and me. They are from Quebec.

 

Behold the Harper!

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus, and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs and peep about

To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II

Let me wax nostalgic for a moment. Out of character, I know. Once upon a time, in an MSM meme far, far away, Stephen Harper was an unelectable Right-wing fanatic. His hidden agenda would frighten the soft and gentle souls of all good Canadians. The basic decency of ordinary Canadians - aka their propensity to swallow Leftist bile - would never allow so evil a man to obtain power. Like with many prophecies from the secular pulpit this one did not come to pass. 

Those advocates of the "politics is the art of the possible" school will point to Harper's moderation of the party. The sober and wise Torydom of today is a far cry from the wild eye radicalism of the long ago 1990s. That was like six elections ago. Several eternities in the world of Canadian politics. Should these High Tory priests be frank in their talk they may also admit, with the usual qualifications, that Harper-Flaherty has spent with the fun loving abandon of a Trudeau-era cabinet minister.

Talk moderate, spend reckless and wear fluffy blue sweaters. Rinse and repeat until majority is formed. So far, so electable. Yet in any successful political movement there are the forgotten people: the party's base. The conventional opinion is that you must betray, to some extent, your base in order to reach out to moderate voters. This works only so long as you don't over do it. If you do happen to take your base of diehard supporters too much for granted, you get what happened to the Mulroney PCs in the early 1990s: A single party splitting into three mutually antagonistic regional factions. 

The Harper Tories are some ways from that. While in power for over five years they've had about four months of real and unobstructed power. The sheen has yet to wear off. The standing excuse of "we didn't have a majority" is probably good, so far as the base is concerned, for another year. While the trappings of power will keep the elected class happy for many moons to come, it's unlikely the party's core supporters, at least those not seeking patronage appointments, will be so long satisfied.

As Papa Jean learned well, the most important aspect to running an electorally successful government is an incompetent and divided opposition. Looking across the aisle of the House of Commons the Prime Minister has got to be thinking that every day is a gift from the mint. The NDP is being run with all the professionalism of a high school student council. The Liberals have no idea what direction is up anymore. They do have the considerable advantage of having the most experienced politician in the country as their "interim" leader. Unfortunately he's Bob Rae. Not to worry, Sheila Copps is plotting a come back.

Having little political danger to their Left the Tories have none to their Right. What had kept the Chretien-Martin governments of the 1990s on the fiscal straight and narrow was the Reform Party. Veer too much into high spending ways and the crazy Alberta cowboys might start picking up seats in the 905, pushing the Grits into minority territory. The close call of the 1997 election reinforced this mind set. Keep Right or else the real Right-wingers might take over.

Starting a new political party isn't really an option. We really don't need that again. Please. Since there is no electoral threat sincere conservatives will need to hold their party leadership to account by other means. The dearest thing to all politicians is power, followed closely by status. To get and keep these treasured things pols need money. The CPC has the best grassroots financing system in the country. Reliant on thousands of small donations from ordinary Canadians, the system is less susceptible to big institutional manipulation. There are no corporate donors in the wings, as once sustain the Liberal Party in their decades of power. The NDP is still partially a creature of the unions.

The power of the purse strings can help rein the Tories moderating ways. The excuses have flowed freely over the last decade: We need to moderate to become electable, we need to moderate to form a government, we need to stay moderate to win a majority. The next batch of excuses will center around a possible Liberal-NDP merger. It's either us or them. Well, no. The opposition is very weak at the moment. No right-wing party has been in so strong a position in decades. Whatever worth the excuses may have had so far, they are nothing more than excuses now. Tell the Tories to balance the nation's books or they'll fail to balance their own. 

 

Quitting Quebec

The Prime Minister tells Quebec to get stuffed, indirectly:

Quebec federalists and separatists lambasted the prime minister Friday for appointing a top aide who doesn't speak French and who once said there are too many francophones in government.

Liberal MP Denis Coderre described the hiring of former Toronto Star columnist Angelo Persichilli as director of communications at the Prime Minister's Office as "bullsh--t."

Ah, good ol' Denis Coderre. Even in the rarefied world of federal politics no one does feigned outraged like the fomer Minister of Immigration. You'd think the PM had appointed Goebbels to handle his communication work, rather than a mild mannered Italian from Toronto. Has M. Coderre ever ended a sentence without a profanity? I suppose so, though I have no proof to support that supposition.

Appointing Mr. Persichilli can be seen as just replacing the ever reliable Mr. Soudas. Angelo looks like he'll do a fine job and there is a long tradtion of appointing journalists to handle government PR work. Which says quite a lot about jouranlists and government, but we'll leave that for another time. What's interesting is that until recently Angelo was seen as a Blue Grit, hanging out as one of the more sane columnists at the Red Star. What's he doing in the PMO?

The cynical interpretation, that would be mine, is that Harper has drifted so far to Left he is basically running a Blue Grit government. With Bob Rae in "temporary" charge of the Liberals, the right-wing of the former Natural Government Party is gradually becoming the left-wing of the new Natural Governing Party. The times they have a changed. It therefore made sense for Angelo to get lost in Harper's Fluffy Blue Sweater. Metaphorically.

An Italian immigrant has replaced the son of Greek immigrants in the PMO PR Ops Room. It's a diverse country, so no one much notices these things, except in la belle province. Obsequious observance of the French Fact has not been made and the new communicator-in-chief is not fluent in la langue de Moliere and Levesque. Added to these manifest sins is that Mr. Persichilli has complained in the past about Quebec's special status in Confederation. Take this firebrand rhetoric:

"Many are tired of the annoying lament from a province that keeps yelling at those who pay part of its bills and are concerned by the over-representation of francophones in our bureaucracy, our Parliament and our institutions."

He continued: "The special treatment given to Quebec is balkanizing this country so that all the provinces are starting to consider Ottawa only as an ATM machine that dispenses money."

Which is the sort of thing Publius says on a mild day, under heavy sedation. These bigoted outbursts - i.e. statements of the blindingly obvious - has led a Quebec nationalist to call for the Grand Inquistors over at the CHRC to investigate Angelo's appointment. Those who complain about the prickliness of certain Muslims should note where this all began: Quebec. 

The ROC's misguided attempt to assuage Quebecois grievances slipped in the 1960s into outright appeasement. Long before anyone thought of hounding Ezra and Mark, the Great and Good of Pearson-Trudeaupia understood that any criticsm of French Quebec was tantamount to bigotry. Thus the Quebecois were tranformed into a superior class of Canadian. 

This process went far beyond the historic turning of a blind eye to the role of the Catholic Church in Quebec, which violated Canadian norms on the separation of church and state. Now the once frugal and isolationist Francophones would demand to live off the national largesse. For about two generations this worked well enough because it relied upon Canada's own version of white liberal guilt: WASP Liberal Guilt.

Well, the Liberals have seen better and brighter days, the WASPs are slowly fading into the Canadian tableau. Into the breech comes the swarty foreigners, like Angelo, Dmitri and Publius too. None of our ancestors fought with Montcalm or Wolfe. My monarchism and anglophilia is acquired not inheirted. Like the fella said, we the "ethnics" have no dog in this fight. The Two Solitudes are meaningless to those of us who grew up on College, St. Clair or the Danforth. 

The Canada we, or our parents, signed up for is not the one Denis "bullshit" Coderre seems to live in. The French-English thing is for the history book. It's very hard to feel sympathy for someone complaining about their grandmother not being served in English at Eaton's seventy years ago, especially when the people living around you have survived war and brutal poverty to become Canadian.

If there has one clear advantage to the muliethnic society it is that it has revealed the smallness of Anglo-French quarrelling. The bitchin' about Angelo's appointment is a final chapter in this smallness.

 

 

 

Red Neck Threatens the Red Eminences?

Be afraid:

A Conservative MP from rural Manitoba who fought against the long-gun registry is leading a panel to help select new judges for the Supreme Court of Canada — but she’s unlikely to be in a position to stack the court with judges cut from her cloth, say experts.

Well thank goodness. The thought of an elected member of parliament having any sort of power was terrifying. Glad that was put to rest. The seals will be again barking in unision during the Fall session. I do love the "Conservative MP from rural Manitoba" leader. You can almost hear the banjo. Not that Ms Hoeppner would ever be mistaken for a Deliverance hillbilly. 

Hoeppner has been appointed chair of a five MP committee to review candidates for the Supreme Court. They must give the Prime Minister and Minister of Justice three recommnedations for every vacancy on the court. There are currently two openings on the bench. Before being appointed chair the member for Portage-Lisgar was best known as a forceful critic of the long-gun registry. This advocacy has made some question where she is capable of separating the judicial wheat from the legal chaff. 

The committee, however, is little more than parliamentary kabuki. The Prime Minister appoints the committee which then reviews the candidates to submit to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice (who is appointed by guess who?). It's like asking your secretary to sort through a pile of CVs. The committee seems to be about delegation rather than actual decision making. Unless you believe the committee would be wiling to offer their boss a list of feminist Osgoode Hall lecturers.

It need not be added that if Ms Hoeppner has been a fierce supporter of the registry, few would have objected to her appointment. It's only people crazy enough to think that gun owners should not be harassed by the state that have their legal views questioned. While hacks will usually dub the soon to be defunct registry as "controversial" that rather depends on where you live.

Most urbanites are afraid of loud noises not under government control. Many country folk have been using guns since they were knee high to daddy. The family hunting rifile or shotgun is a tool, good for keeping animal or human predators at bay. You can describe this as a rural-urban cultural split and you'd mostly be right. There is also, however, a common sense element that gets missed. Urban areas are not like rural areas.

Handling a firearm in a dense urban enviroment, especially in areas prone to crime, is a perfectly legitimate concern. The vast majority of people in Canadian urban areas don't need guns for daily use and there is little tradition of people using guns for recreation. The gun culture is simply alien. In cities where crime is relatively low, then the need for armed protection is far less. This isn't to say that the ownership of firearms in cities should be banned, nor that laws on safe handling and storage shouldn't be enforced, it's that the application of laws must be done in social context. A handgun in downtown Toronto is not the samething as a hunting rifle in rural Manitoba. Shouldn't the law be flexible enough to make that distinction?

The real fear of the long-gun registry was that it was the slippery slope. I doubt most gun owners have a problem with a piece of property being registered, they certainly don't object to their homes and cars being registered with the government. Then again there is no political momentum for the government seizing people's homes and cars. Well not yet anyway. I'm sure the Greenistas are working on something.

The paranoia of urbanites who are afraid of what they don't understand drove the creation of the long-gun registry. The power monopolistic instincts of bureaucrats and some police officers took care of the rest. Here in the Imperial Capital I often hear people rhetorically ask why anyone would need to own a gun. The implication being that only the criminal or the mad would want to own a firearm. 

It's a standing joke among conservatives that the Left is in favour of all sorts of diversity, except diversity of opinion. That's half true. The Left is intolerant of that which is not part of itself. It's a clique like any other, just somewhat more affluent. Back in the early 1990s the defence of homosexuality being spun by the Left was that such behaviour was a lifestyle choice. In time the argument shifted to biology (which I happen to agree with).

But choice for the Left is a narrow thing. You can choose to terminate your pregnancy, choose to bugger your best friend (should you be so inclined) and choose to live-off the taxpayer's dime from adolescence to old age. These are all choices which a modern tolerant society should accept and celebrate. But no group, tribe, ideology or nation has ever been dumb enough - yet - to tolerate itself out of existence. The Left is no different.

So there are certain things their idea of a tolerant society will not tolerate. Private individuals owning guns is one of those things. Using the Left's normal logic one could argue that owning guns, as well as auxiliary activities like hunting, are just lifestyle choices. Other choices would include living in a rural areas, engaging in manual labour or a mother deciding to stay home and raise her children.

While politely ignoring, or even condoning, the barbaric customs of certain immigrant groups (so long as they are not European) the Left is far less insousiant about the "lifestyle choices" of Canada's "red neck community." Why? Because the hicks the from the sticks are their enemy, not the girl mutilators from Whereitstan. Normality is what the progressive realms of the Left are rebelling against.  Fighting the suburban and rural middle class is far more important than fighting the enemies of western civilization. 

 

Plugging Away

Problem solved:

The “brain drain,” once decried by academics and pundits who saw the flight of the brightest Canadians in industry, research and medicine to higher paying jobs in the United States as one of the country’s top challenges, has been plugged to such an extent that the Conservative government declared victory on Wednesday.

Both Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, and Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology, said the net gain has exceeded the loss of top talent.

“Canada has gone from brain drain to brain gain,” Mr. Harper said, attributing the pronouncement to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a Washington, D.C.-based journal.

Well done chaps. A massive triumph for the Dominion. Our streets will soon be flooded with socially awkward young men well versed in scientific notion. Well sort of.

The recipients at McMaster are studying in the fields of clinical epidemiology and biostatistics, psychiatry, neuroscience, English, chemistry, biomedical engineering and geography.

Which of the above is not like the others?

Exactly. Everyone knows biomedical engineering is a pseudo-science comparable to that guy across the street building a perpetual motion machine into the wee hours. OK. OK. I'll stop.

So how exactly did English wind up next to chemistry and neuroscience? I'm a sane enough a humanities major to know that yet another dissertation on the feminist subtexts in Titus Adronicus contributes little to economic growth. I won't venture to say what it might contribute to the culture. Perhaps less than it does to the GDP. 

Let's leave aside the odd literary grant and focus on the big picture: Stephen Harper has saved the future of Canada. Flushed with brainiac excellence we shall power into a brilliant new dawn. The hovercars await! All thanks to the bold vision of the Prime Minister. Though for the life of me I can't figure out what he's actually done.

Yes, he did hand out tuition grants. Though it is a long standing policy for governments, at both the senior levels, to subsidize post-secondary education. This particular grant, named in honour of former GG Georges Vanier, has been handed out since 2009. So some credit to the Tories. But has the brain drain really been reversed because of one grants program?

A subject of national angst a decade ago, the brain drain saw highly skilled professionals seek higher pay and better benefits down south. The biggest hit sectors were health care, for reasons that need not be elaborated here, and IT. This process started to slow down, and then somewhat reverse, at about the time American economy began to sputter after 9/11. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis the brain drain became a gain.

This reversal of intellectual fortunes has precious little to do with Canadian strength, rather more to do with American weakness. The end of the brain drain, years after most people stopped noticing, is akin to winning a race after your nearest competitor tripped on his shoelaces. You look good only compared to the klutz in the next lane. If it's only a two man race, that's good enough. Canada is no longer in a two man race.

 

Let Stephen Be Stephen

OK. OK. I'll stop with the West Wing references:

The past five years suggest that Cautious Stephen will keep Wild Steve in check. But if the Prime Minister does want to let his inner über-conservative twin loose, this is the time to do it.

The Conservatives in Ottawa have virtually no opposition. Both the Liberals and the NDP are in disarray, struggling with the challenges of interim leaders and internal contradictions, while a raft of provincial elections this fall could put rookie conservative premiers in office across much of the country. Politically, this is as close to carte blanche as it gets.

Ibbitson then goes onto check box a few long-wished for minor conservative reforms. Removing the regional bias from EI, fixing the equalization formula and allowing the provinces greater rein in health care policy. All good hearty Blue Tory oatmeal. Not too flashy. Not too libertarian. Just fixing up some of the loonier bits of the Trudeuapian welfare state that haven't been gotten to yet. Nothing radical. Bland and blue. Like the Prime Minister's fluffy blue sweaters.

So what are the chances of Wild Steve overwhelming Cautious Stephen? Nil. Wild Steve, if he ever truly existed, died of loneliness after living the better part of two decades in Ottawa. Being a certified conservative politician in the nation's capital, to say nothing of still "wilder" creatures like libertarians and classical liberals, is akin to being a year round nudist in Whitehorse. Brave to the point of suicidal. I'm sure there are a few kicking around in Ottawa. Genuine conservatives I mean. They are kept a safe distance from the PMO, lest example breed.

Let's say Old Publius is being too cynical. Perhaps the old chess-master has been waiting ten years to checkmate the Mandarins and the Socialists. A few more deft moves and Canada will look just the way Laurier left it. Though without the influenza and the whalebone corsets. Even right-wingers evolve. Somewhat.

Sure. It's possible. It's just not very likely. While tinkering with equalization is a very strong likelihood, if only because Ontario is now on the dole, this has a very low political cost. No one understands how the equalization formula works. Therefore any changes can be made with impunity. The PR flacks just have to sell any changes as "making the system fairer" and denounce any NDP yapping as "fiscal recklessness." Just keep it bland because, as Bill Davis so frequently observed, bland works. 

In obtaining power Stephen of Leaside (which is not that far away from Brampton), channeled Bill Davis.  In any major issue, split the difference between the extremes. There is a political logic to it, though not much of a public policy one. So in 1970s Ontario a "conservative" premier introduced rent control, causing a decades long housing shortage. In twenty-first century Canada we have a "conservative" prime minister spending like a drunken Trudeau-era finance minister - Jean Chretien perhaps? - while we console ourselves with the comparative fiscal incontinence of our neighbours. 

In fairness it must be noted that the former Ontario Premier had far better sartorial style than the current Prime Minister. Can you imagine Stephen Harper, even Wild Steve, wielding a tobacco pipe? The retro-chic would have been amazing. But that wouldn't be the bland thing to do.

Having spent a decade denying he had a hidden agenda, Stephen Harper is not now going to reveal that he in fact had a hidden agenda. He simply does not have the political mandate to engage in substantial reforms. The cabinet, the caucus and the extra parliamentary party would never back him. Having sung from the Davis Hymnal he can't now start doing a Harris-style guitar solo.

Should the urge overcome the PM and he, say, decided to scrap the Canada Health Act, the knives of his internal party rivals would be quickly drawn. You won't have to wait for the CBC or the Toronto Star, the Tories will devour their own. As they have through out the decades. The only Stephen Harper left is the cautious one. Which is just how the party faithful like him.