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. 

 

Young Rebel

Stephen Harper in younger days:

"Stephen had broken with his family because they had wanted him to be a chartered accountant at the University of Toronto, where his brothers were. He decided he was going to be a pioneer, he was going out West. He was going to find his own way.

"I was virtually told to hire him, but I did. And he was a very troubled boy when he came. I think what upset him the most was rebelling against what the family wanted him to do.

I'm not sure working as an office clerk in Edmonton qualifies as "rebelling" in most people's view. As is well known Stephen "Che" Harper later went onto the University of Calgary and became, wait for it, an economist! I bet he didn't even wear a pocket protector during exams! Fight the power!

Giving up the high-paying moderately nerdy world of accounting, for the moderately paying highly nerdy world of economics, must have been an exhilarating experience for the future Prime Minister. Then he went off and worked for Preston Manning, the Timothy Leary of Canadian politics. Nothing says "dropping out" like running for elected office in your twenties.

The above article is actually a somewhat touching story. Stephen Harper was a confused young man trying to find his way in the world. Meeting Frank Glenfield was the Tory leader's Tuesdays with Morrie moment. As with most good mentor figures, Glenfield was a better listener than talker, allowing Harper to work his way through becoming an adult. The article headline "Young Harper rebelled against family and headed West" is technically correct. Keeping in mind that the sons of chartered accountants rebel differently than normal people.

The story is important in reminding ordinary voters that politicians, however much we despise them, are people too. The button downed Prime Minister of Canada was once, many years ago, a slightly less buttoned down young adult. The only constant in life is change. Glenfield, who died earlier this month, noted that when Stephen Harper arrived in Alberta he regarded Pierre Trudeau as a "god." Twenty years later he was cracking jokes about "Trudeaupia." We all believed in stupid things when we were young. Publius wanted to be financial analyst at one point. Thankfully I grew up and became a blogger. Nice steady work.

The turning point in Stephen Harper's political life came when he moved to Calgary, enrolling in that school's economics program. Looking back on Harper decision to return to school, Glenfield observed that: "He entered the University of Calgary, which is right . . . of the Ayatollah Khomeini, as you probably know, and he became very much under that influence." So they say. 

It doesn't take much to imagine an alternate path for Harper. Going to U of T, becoming a CA, settling into a life of productive boredom somewhere in the vast sprawl lands of the GTA. This isn't to say that everyone who goes to U of T becomes a Liberal voting CA. Andrew Coyne was there at about the same time as Harper and escaped unharmed. Still, the shock and difference of Alberta, it's greater individualism and informality, seem to have gotten the wheels spinning in Harper's formidable brain.

That the young Harper worshiped Trudeau is not surprising. Most Central Canadians at the time regarded PET as a tough, clever and decisive leader. For the young, even in the late 1970s, he still had cache. So long as you didn't know much about economics or public policy, Trudeau was very cool. Bitch slapping Quebec nationalists by day, bedding hot young women by night. Could Joe Clark or Bob Stanfield do that? Heck Stanfield couldn't even catch a football.

Most high schools have guidance counsellors. As high schoolers know most provide little actual guidance: "So, I see you have an aptitude in mathematics, thought about becoming an engineer?" How many aborted majors have their start in such off the cuff remarks? Our actual guidance counsellors are often people we run into along the way. What Frank Glenfield, and the University of Calgary faculty he didn't much like, show is the power of good people at the right moment in the lives of the young. 

 

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. 

 

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. 

 

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.

 

Herding the Cats

That was Peter C Newman's famous job description for leaders of the old Progressive Conservative Party. It was a party that seemed to spend most of the twentieth century fighting itself rather than the Liberal Party. In rare moments of party unity the Tories would muster up their collective strength, and then move quickly to the Left of the Liberal Party. Note Bob Stanfield's support for wage and price controls in the 1974 election. Zap your frozen indeed. 

Stephen of Leaside seemed to have solved the problem of herding cats: Appropriately sized choke chains. Some of those chains seem to have come off. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that there is a Tory majority government for the first time in eighteen years. Or might it be that after May 2nd the Liberal Party has political prospects that would have seemed bleak to Jean Charest and Elsie Wayne back in 1993. 

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, saith the pundit. The old Progressive Conservative wing of the United Right is not especially fond of the old Reform wing. They shared a common bond of loathing for the Natural Government Party. This is quite understandable. It was and is a thing quite worthy of loathing. Having common hatreds, even for the most bleak of human beings, does not make for a good marriage. Sorting out what it means to a conservative in modern Canada is one of those unresolved issues of our politics. The answer so far has been that conservatives are very fond of the colour blue. 

The deep royal blue of the Conservative Party logo, much like the lilac blue of Stephen Harper's iconic fluffy blue sweater, has a calming effect on the observer. It helps to reduce the outrage among actual conservatives about the party's leftward drift. Think blue thoughts and all will be well. Red is a bad colour. Inflames the passions and boils the blood. Devil's colour as the old priests of pre-Quiet Revolution Quebec would not so casually observe when their flock asked for political guidance.

Speaking of ancient history, we have it resurfacing in the Tory party. Sadly it is not an outbreak of Diefenbaker-style One Canada patriotism - which might offend the ethnic vote. No it is the old Reform faction trying to stamp out the old Red Tory / PC faction. You can practically hear the blades being sharpened:

A battle is shaping up inside Tory ranks ahead of the party's national convention next month, once again pitting members of the old Canadian Alliance party against former Progressive Conservatives in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, the Canadian Press has learned.

The matter has even prompted Defence Minister Peter MacKay, one of the founding fathers of the Conservative party, to speak out in a letter to fellow Conservatives.At issue is the "deal-breaker" policy that brought the two parties together in 2003 — the concept that all riding associations would be treated equally during a leadership and policy conventions no matter how many members they had.

The rule was important to Progressive Conservatives because it would keep a check on the power of large western Canadian associations that could easily swamp a leadership vote.

Long time readers of this space will recall my rants against Quebec and Maritime over-representation in the House of Commons. This lack of rep-by-pop (to quote George Brown) afflicts Harper's Big Blue Machine. This means that the old Red Tories wield a disproportionate influence in the party. Now some of you are already plotting this out. A parallel emerges between Harper's attempt to scrap the vote subsidy and this new bid to introduce one member one vote for the party. 

Excitedly many Harper fans - yes, amazingly he does have actual fans - will tell you the old chess master is about to checkmate the Grits and Red Tories in one felled swoop. Getting even with the ghosts of Mulroney and Trudeau. It would also silence the party's small Quebec rump. If those twelve card carrying members in Laurier-Mercier-Gatineau don't like their new irrelevance, tough. We'll win the West (of the Ottawa River), the NDP can have the rest.

Is the New Right Wing Jerusalem upon us? As I've noted through out this week the PM doesn't know his Right from someone else's Left. The standing joke about Canadian national identity is that we are not American. That same joke seems to apply to the modern Conservative Party i.e. they are not Liberals. This is certainly true. With the exception of the last decade of Trudeau's reign the Grits have a far better fiscal record than the Harper Tories. Even factoring in the Pierre Le Grande spending spree, which was not that much worse than Mulroney's adjusted for inflation, the Grits still come out ahead.

But Canada is a centre-left country? Well the Liberals spent decades campaigning to the centre-left and governing mostly from the centre-right. There is a segment of the Canadian electorate that likes feeling centre-left while acting centre-right. We call these people Blue LIberals. If you're goal was to push Canada further to the right, appropriating some of the rhetoric of the Left might not be a bad idea. Note that I say rhetoric not ideas.

Take compassion. The Liberals of old loved to talk about compassion. The Liberals of today are more likely to be asking for it. Compassion is a code word for government spending. Why can't it mean government getting out of the way of families and charities? How is a large unaccountable bureaucracy compassionate? Change the terms of the debate. That is if you understand where you are going. If the goal is power than more of the same is fine. If the goal is power to advance a principle than carefully executed change is necessary. Even if the old Reformers - the few that are left - are able to crush the remaining Red Tories it will be a hollow victory. Simply one faction settling scores with another. The Harperites have power. But what will they do with it? Do they even know?

With Conservatives Like These

One step forward:

The Conservative government will use its majority in the House of Commons to end the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly on marketing wheat and barley, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said Wednesday.

The government will likely introduce legislation this fall, Ritz said, with the changes expected to take effect in August 2012.

"Everybody recognizes the complexity of this," Ritz told reporters in Ottawa. "It's going to take a certain amount of work.

One step backward:

The first prong mandates the disclosure of Internet provider customer information without court oversight. Under current privacy laws, providers may voluntarily disclose customer information but are not required to do so. The new system would require the disclosure of customer name, address, phone number, e-mail address, Internet protocol address, and a series of device identification numbers.

I sometimes think the Prime Minister has a remarkably dark sense of humour. After nearly three-quarters of a century of depriving western farmers of a basic commercial freedom, taken for granted in other parts of the country, Ottawa is at last putting the free back into the market for wheat. Then almost within the same breadth this newly minted - and long awaited - Conservative Majority Government of National Salvation decides that the internet age can do without pesky things like warrants.

Selling your wheat to whomever you choose is a wonderful thing, which greatly impacts the daily lives of only a small minority of Canadians. Denying basic legal protection for users of the internet - something the overwhelming majority of us in modern Canada use daily - seems to be going in the opposite direct. Pro-freedom one moment then anti-freedom the next.

For some years your humble correspondent has been denouncing the PM as a traitor to conservative values. I'm not alone. Gerry Nicholls, who used to work for the hockey-helmet haired wonder, wrote a whole book on the Prime Minister's conversion on the road to Ottawa. Having these two stories juxtapositioned in so crude and obvious a way, along with the appointment of three defeated Tory candidates to the Senate, a pattern begins to emerge. The Prime Minister of Canada, the leader of the Conservative Part of Canada, does not know what conservatism actually means.

Surely I jest? No gentle readers. Stephen Harper couldn't tell actual conservatism from a barn door. How do I know this? Because the PM does not behave like a conservative who is afraid of losing power, he behaves like someone pretending to be a conservative who is afraid of losing power. Harper's policies and rhetoric are not conservative, or incrementally conservative, or hidden agenda conservative, they are instead a cliched version of conservatism. 

Law and order agenda? How much more conservative can you get? Granting the police sweeping new powers to snoop on people without warrants is not law and order. It is not orderly to allow the police to do as they please. The very idea of order implies limits to behaviour both on the part of civilians and the police. Giving the former unquestioned latitude is anarchy, giving the latter the same is a police state. The government is not saying that such powers are needed to fight crime, or any particular crimes, or why the old fashioned requirement to get a warrant is too onerous. The government is not really saying anything. It is just trying to slip this in without anyone noticing. 

It's not quite Tim Horton's conservatism. It's the Toronto Star's idea of what the loudmouth in a Tim Horton's would do if he found himself near the levers of power. The police are the good guys and therefore should be allowed to do whatever they want to catch the bad guys. How many moments of thought are required before a reasonably intelligent person grasps that police officers are human beings and - horror! - government employees. At their best they are heroes, at their worst bureaucrats with guns. Civil liberties, like all restraints on government, are there to protect you from the agents of the state behaving incompetently or maliciously. 

A thinking conservatism begins with the assumption that human beings have free will, they may act for good or evil. This essential aspect of our humanity does not change when someone is hired by the government and given a badge. The idea that a special class of state employees are possessed of a moral superiority over their fellows citizens, and engaged in a holy and unlimited crusade to rid the world of evil and injustice, is a statist notion. The Left calls this special class teachers, social workers or Human Rights Tribunals. Harper's cliche conservatism declares the special class to be constables. Muscular statism or wishy-washy statism, they are both immoral and impractical.

Perhaps this new legislation is in fact just a sop to the police? Yes but it is worse than that. A thinking conservative - certainly a description we should be able to apply to a man with a masters in economics? - would hesitate at granting the police such sweeping powers. There is no popular clamour for this law. If the goal is simply to reward the police associations for their political support, a cynical political calculation, there are other ways to do it.

The simplest is allocate more funds to allow municipalities to hire more officers. It accomplishes a political goal with a minimal amount of damage to civil liberties. That is if you think through the issue and understand the importance of personal freedom. If you don't understand the importance of freedom then, rather logically, this granting of the authority to riffle through confidential record is no big deal. It's a cheap way to keep the police associations happy. More than being a sell out, it's a dumb sell out.

This is not an isolated incident. Take Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Ever since the Western Standard's persecution it - and counterpart provincial legislation - has become the embodiment of political correctness run amok. Sincere conservatives from Ezra Levant on down have demanded it's repeal. Removing this infringement on free speech would be enormously popular with the conservative base.

So why has it not been done? My initial assumption was the Tories were terrified of frightening their new allies in the ethnic communities. Leftist opinion would denounce any attack on the HRT network as a racist plot. A political strategist of Stephen Harper's alleged cunning could have easily neutralized this smear. If he cared enough to seriously try.

Rather than having a white male be the spokesperson for repeal, have a minority MP promote the bill. There is no shortage of non-white critics of the Human Rights Tribunals outside elected politics that would provide political cover. Tarek Fatah (a Leftist) and Salim Mansur (a conservative) to take two examples.  Perhaps the Tory High Command decided that the political risks were too high. But for a genuine conservative, who understood the importance of freedom, the risks would never have been too high. There is no point in having a conservative government that oversees the destruction of free speech in Canada.

This is not simply a matter of principles but of political survival. Whose speech is going to be curtailed first? The typical Toronto Leftist making hysterical claims about climate change? Or the conservative questioning our hesitancy in fighting certain types of religious fanatics? A passing understanding of conservative principles would force a realization that freedom of speech is the only chance we have of reforming this country. A far more powerful force that a generation worth of Tory majority governments. A thought that seems beyond the cliched conservatives now ensconced in Ottawa. They don't try to be conservative because they don't know what it means.

 

So-Con, So Long

Are you a libertarian or classical liberal who is a current or former supporter of the Conservative Party of Canada? Do you feel shafted by Stephen Harper's leftward drift? Well I've got good news! Things could be much, much worse. You could be a so-con:

"We're now just seen as eccentric," said Link Byfield, a long-time social conservative activist and current provincial candidate for the Wildrose Party in Alberta. "I understand why political people avoid these topics. Politicians are not there to be imaginative or perceptive; they're there to be popular. Whatever makes people angry they're going to avoid.

"Harper has made it abundantly and compellingly clear that the social conservative agenda is not to be contemplated in his government and not to be advocated or advanced. And he will have come to this conclusion because he has seen it necessary to get centre voters. As long as he's leader that will remain the case."

One of these days Harper is going piss just enough of the grassroots to start a good old fashioned prairie fire. Like the kind that sent the old PCs into history. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon and it'll be plenty tasty. I'll try not to be too smug when that happens. I'll really, really try.

Better To Be Feared Than Loved

Don Stephen casts his shadow:

Unfortunately for the Tories, the recent findings suggest Ontarians still have reservations about both Harper and the party.

Nearly six out of 10 respondents agreed with the statement “Stephen Harper scares me”—an increase over the number who said so in 2008. One out of two said they found the Conservative Party too extreme, and almost as many said they had a strongly unfavourable impression of the Prime Minister.

Still, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff shouldn’t plan his victory party just yet. While many Ontarians fear Harper, they also respect him: 34 per cent said they think he would make the best prime minister, compared to 26 per cent for Ignatieff and 15 per cent for the NDP’s Jack Layton. Five per cent gave the nod to the Green party’s Elizabeth May.

The Prime Minister doesn't scare me. He annoys me. The above poll doesn't suggest so much that the Conservative have work to do in improving the PM's image. It suggest how very much we need an alternate voice to the status quo statism of the MSM. How is Stephen Harper scary? Do the respondents imagine that the Tory leader goes out and whacks people in his off hours? Does he dispatch John Baird and Tony Clement to make offers his opponents can't refuse? Has Lord Iggy been roughed up? Does that explain his stilted performance? If he does too well in the election will he be finding his favourite poodle floating in the Rideau Canal next spring?

To the incrementalists the above poll is proof that Canadians - particular Central Canadians - are not ready for a conservative Conservative government. But it's not Conservative Party policies that people find scary, it's Harper. It is certainly true that the Prime Minister has the emotional projection of an ice sculpture.  We've always known that. Aloof, however, is not the same thing as scary.

The Prime Minister hardly sounds like a demagogue in his public pronouncements. He sounds boring and dull. Sure, there's the partisan hackery about how the Liberals will destroy Canada. That's ordinary party spin that the Grits used to relish deploying against their opponents. The current Conservative Party is just better at the hack and slash than the Grits these days, which is why the Grits keep crying foul about "attack ads." They weren't calling such media drive-bys "attack ads" when they were directed at Brian Mulroney in 1988. 

The scary Harper meme comes from desperation. The Harperized Tories have so denuded themselves of principles that they can pass themselves off as Blue Liberals with little difficulty. There's little point in attacking actual Tory policies - their law and order approach excepted - because the Liberal Party's own policies are only a few decimal points away. Instead the Grits and  the MSM must drill into the minds of the electorate that the PM is "scary." It's worked. A dull as dishwater politico has been transformed into Canada's version of Oswald Mosley. 

A take away from the Scary Harper poll is that the PM is becoming a liability. Using the Mrs strategically to help soften his image has probably helped a bit. Nor is it without precedent. Margaret Trudeau was regarded as the Liberal's secret weapon in 1974. Rather less so in 1979. Still she was effective at making the Philosopher King look more human for a time. Whereas Trudeau wore out his welcome Harper has never gotten one. Confronted with a competent Conservative leader for the first time in nearly a generation, the MSM and the Liberal Party responded with apoplectic fury. Recall the "troops in the streets" ad from 2006. 

The Catch-22 for Stephen Harper is that whether he preaches fire and brimstone conservatism, or imitation liberalism, he'll be damned as "scary." Five plus years of incrementalism haven't done much to persuade Central Canadians that the Prime Minister isn't a proto-fascist. They have done quite a bit to convince principled conservatives and libertarians that there is little for them in contemporary practical politics.

So if pragmatism still doesn't get you a slam dunk majority - after three weak Liberal leaders in a row - perhaps a turn back to principles is in order. No matter what Stephen Harper does he'll be branded as "scary." No matter what a Conservative Party platform promises it will be declared "extreme." The harder the Conservatives try to sound moderate the more they are suspected of having a hidden agenda.

So why bother trying to appease the MSM with incrementalist rhetoric and policy? No matter what the Right compromises on the Left will demand more compromise. It's how they work. Canada isn't a conservative country? It won't become one by conservatives and libertarians genuflecting to the Leftist totems of the age.

So How's That Incrementalism Working for You?

Moving slowly in the wrong direction:

At the same time, Harper said a re-elected Conservative government would "continue to resolutely defend" the supply management system.

Under the system, provincial marketing boards strictly regulate production "quotas," keeping prices high for Canadian farmers.

All three opposition parties have supported supply management in the past. However, the Tories noted that the Liberal platform doesn't mention "supply management."

But of course the Liberals would be worse. Right now I'm thinking the Canadian Wheat Board is going to outlast the pyramids. 

The Bogey Harper

Beware the sinister menace of Harper:

Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe was first off the mark: "A Stephen Harper majority means the complete denial of what we are, we Québécois. It means new attacks against Québécois culture. A Stephen Harper majority means that our economic interests are completely ignored and that our regions will be even more abandoned." He called on all Quebecers to rally around the flag to prevent the cataclysm of a Conservative majority.

He'll burn the forests! He'll pave the Arctic!  He'll order the womenfolk back into the kitchen! The whole of the province of Quebec will be napalmed into submission! If Bush was Hitler then Harper is Hitler and Stalin's evil love child! Hosannah! Hosannah!

Last week in this space I called for another Conservative minority government. The best of bleak alternatives. I'm not carrying any candles for Stephen of Leaside. While reading the above Ottawa Citizen column, however, I was struck by its photograph of a young Stephen Joseph Harper fighting his first campaign in 1988. It's not Stephen on the sign, just Steve. The blue eyes and the mop-top are almost endearing. The future Prime Minister looks like the great young conservative hero of that era, Alex P Keaton.

Whatever youthful Keaton-like spirit might have suffused Harper then, his record in power is some distance from those Reaganite salad days. This does nothing to stop the opposition parties' hysterical denunciations of the Prime Minister. There is that hidden agenda, you know.

They are not really attacking Harper's ideas. The Liberal Party had no qualms about balancing the budget in three years - just as the Harper authored Reform Party manifesto had called for - and taking all the credit for it. Jean Chretien the reckless Trudeau-era Finance Minister became the Great Budget Balancer aided by his sometime side-kick / usual nemesis Paul Martin. Brian Mulroney and Michael Wilson achieving an operational surplus, well that was heartless. A few years later even deeper cuts were written off as wise statesmanship by the centrist team of Chretien and Martin.

In a post last week I decried the empty symbolism of Canadian political discourse. The vilification of the Prime Minister is a prime example. There is little that Stephen Harper has done in government that could not have plausibly been done by a Liberal leader, with the notable exception of a more pro-Israel foreign policy. There is also nothing he has done that justifies the devil-incarnate rhetoric of the opposition parties. 

The Harper Tories are the supposed masters of the American-style attack-ad. This dozy informs Canadians that a vote for the Liberal Party is a vote for Michael Ignatieff. Hardly a bombshell revelation to anyone familiar with our parliamentary system. The Cosh dissects the ad here. These attack-ads are described by many in the MSM as something akin to hydrogen bombs. Political instruments of such unimaginable power and devastation that they will destroy Canadian democracy. It'll be nothing but Caudillos and Duces from here on in.

Compared to actual American attack ads they are very tame. More than tame they are also rather funny. The black and white images. The over-the-top ominous music. The somewhat out of context quotes. The repeated insistence that a Coalition is in the offing. You can almost hear the voice-over guy shouting: "Hey stupid! Michael Ignatieff is a nasty bum who hates puppy dogs."

We are told that attack-ads work. Well sort of. They work at reinforcing an already established image type. Stephane Dion was an out-touch and befuddled university professor playing at politics? Check! Michael Ignatieff is a pompous opportunist? Check! Now try imagining an attack-ad that accuses Jack Layton of being in the back-pocket of Bay Street. Not going to work. Short of having Jack on tape sharing a shiraz with Lord Black, while mocking the rank file at the CAW, very little is going to convince voters that he's turned reactionary capitalist.

The main benefit of an attack ad is in its repetition. Keep saying that Michael Ignatieff didn't come back for you and - if you're not paying attention - you'll start believing it. Now Old Publius doesn't believe that Lord Iggy came back for him. He accepts the Tory charge that the Liberal leader is a craven opportunist who looks down on ordinary people with the contempt of the august. He is to the manor born and acts it, occasional pandering to us proles aside.

This belief, however, is derived from some study of Iggy's biography. I doubt one Canadian out of a hundred knows what universities the Liberal leader attended, that he studied under Isaiah Berlin, that he was a leading public intellectual in Britain and is a well regarded fiction writer. It is not the job of the Conservative War Room to advertise their opponents C.V. Saying that Michael Ignatieff didn't come back for ordinary people does nothing, however, to explain what Stephen Harper will do for ordinary Canadians, or perhaps even for the extraordinary ones. 

Some of you, gentle readers, will be engaged in the rolling of eyes. "Oh, come on Publius, this isn't the nineteenth century. No one plays politics by the Marquess of Queensberry rules anymore." No, they don't. There are no rules anymore. It's a rush to the lowest common denominator.

The vilification of the Prime Minister on one hand, and the simplification of Michael Ignatieff on the other are symptoms of the same disease. It is an election about nothing in a political environment about nothing. The pressures of globalization, the crisis of demographic decline, Medicare lingering on well past its best before date and all the political class can talk about is Lord Iggy's personal ambition. Not asking for nice here. Just for a little substance with the vitriol. 

Harper by the Numbers

Terence Corcoran on Harpernomics:

A more meaningful indicator of the failure to establish a Harper Nation is the trend in government spending across all levels of government — the national spending culture. The table above shows how the culture of expansionist Big Government returned to Canadian politics within a year of the 1996 fiscal crisis and continued dramatically through the last five years of Harper conservatism. From $13,400 in 1997, the spending of federal, provincial and local governments per capita jumped to $18,000 last year, an increase of more than 33%

Note that these are not a parade of dollars bloated by inflation. These are constant dollars after inflation has been removed, which means that governments in Canada are spending $4,500 more for each person today than in 1997, or about $18,000 for a family of four. Total all-government spending today for a family of four exceeds $72,000 a year.

Somewhere the ghost of Pierre Trudeau is jealous. Please tell me again how Paul Martin would have been worse than this? Only Nixon could go to China and only Stephen Harper could so dramatically expand the size of government. Being a "conservative" the general public naturally assumes that the PM is a fiscal tightwad. He certainly looks and behaves like a repressed chartered accountant. No matter how often Harper's actual fiscal record is pointed out, however, very few voters on the Right or Left of the political spectrum understand it. We are obsessed in politics not by facts but by symbols.

The ordinary voter - who is reluctantly dragged to the polls every few years - pays scant attention to political affairs and virtually none to public policy. A half digested series of symbols and impressions fill out their understanding of our government's role and its operations. The Conservatives (team blue) are the party of fiscal restraint, giving big business a free reign and criminals a hard knock. They are the party of hard practicality. The daddy party as some American commentators have dubbed their Republicans counterparts down south.

The NDP (team orange) are the party of idealistic granola chomping hippies, mouthing happy utopian pleasantries about social justice and being sorry for the poor and weak. The Liberals (team red) are the party of compromise. Some hard practicality (like balancing the budget during the Chretien-Martin era) matched with promises to help the poor and weak, and some nice freebies for the middle class (i.e. "average hardworking Canadian families"). Stephen Harper has successfully convinced enough of the Central Canadian middle class - through bland rhetoric and targeted tax credits - that the Conservatives are now the party of compromise. 

During the Chretien-Martin era the Liberals - thanks to Trudeau's profligacy - had a political achilles heel in fiscal policy. The Grit leadership of the day was continually worried about being outflanked by the Reform Party on the deficit. They knew they had to work hard to counter the public's impression of the party as being poor economic managers. Stephen Harper, MA Economics, in turn has worked hard to counter the public's initial impression of him as a Mike Harris on steroids. 

It is a law of modern politics that you betray your base and flatter your enemies. Brian Mulroney understood that being seen as a right-wing politician (by Canadian standards) it was presumed he was uninterested in environmental issues, preferring to give free reign to his polluting buddies on Bay Street. Mulroney attempted to counter this by enacting environmental legislation that was more aggressive than anything the previous Trudeau governments would have suggested. The result was that Mulroney was - some years after leaving office - dubbed Canada's greenest Prime Minister.

How successful is this approach? Not completely. Political impressions are formed fairly early in adulthood, as are most brand impressions. Marketers understand that the 18-34 demographic is the most easily persuaded to change their buying habits. The political market works in a similar manner. The generation that now compromises the critical swing vote in this election was politically formed in the 1960s and 1970s. This means that for them the Liberal Party equals Pierre Trudeau. To some people that means idealistic nation building and compassionate social policies, to others a fiscal recklessness we spent two decades recovering from. 

I'm dispassionate enough to recognize that the party of Michael Ignatieff - or for that matter Justin Trudeau - is not that party of Pierre Trudeau and Marc Lalonde. Just as the Conservative Party today bears little resemblance to that of Robert Stanfield or Joe Clark (the latter completely disavowed the 2003-4 merger). The brand impression of most voters, however, has changed little since their youth. We live a politics of symbols rather than reality. The result is a hyper-partisanship and national discourse obsessed with trivia and personality.