Canada’s conservatives should ease up on Harper - The Globe and Mail

By Neil Reynolds - from the Globe and Mail

Throughout his two minority governments, Prime Minister Stephen Harper endured incessant carping from the right: especially from conservatives who wanted more ideological purity. Mr. Harper wisely ignored them. The purer the ideology, the more problematic the politics. Mr. Harper diligently pursued the political centre (with right-ward forays: for example, unequivocal support for Israel). It all worked out fine. The Conservatives took the centre, held it and won a transformative majority in Election 2011. But conservatives now need, once again, to relax a bit. Nothing extraordinary is about to happen.

Mr. Harper made this clear in his election-night comments. He would govern, he said, for the whole country – not (he implied) for hard-core conservatives or soft-core libertarians. These people have their own work to do, in moving the political centre, but this philosophical task is fundamentally different than governing. In Canada’s democracy, social and economic change will inevitably be incremental and erratic. After all, if the more than 14 million Canadians who voted wanted more radical change, they could have voted Libertarian – as 6,017 of them did.

This isn’t to say that Mr. Harper won’t make fundamental reforms: especially toward freer trade with Europe (and other countries) and closer economic integration with the U.S. It is merely to observe that Canadians themselves – and not the federal government – will determine how far and how fast the political centre pivots.

The political centre in Canada has been drifting to the right for almost 30 years – since the last Liberal government (1984) of prime minister Pierre Trudeau, whose excesses pushed the country toward conservatism. Every federal government since has governed to the right – with the single, ironic exception of Paul Martin (who had done so much for the country as finance minister). Progressive Conservative Brian Mulroney (free trade with the U.S.), Liberal Jean Chrétien (fiscal restraint) and Conservative Stephen Harper (tax cuts): all remained firmly centred even as the country itself rotated, slowly, to the right.

Mr. Harper is the most impressive politician among all these small-c conservative prime ministers.

Read more...

Canada’s conservatives should ease up on Harper - The Globe and Mail

John Ivison: Relaxed Harper misplaces the Secret Agenda | Full Comment | National Post

By John Ivison - from the National Post

For Stephen Harper’s critics, who warned he would announce plans to re-introduce the death penalty and two-tier health care as soon as he won a majority, Tuesday’s press conference must have been a huge disappointment.

The Prime Minister is now secure in his post for the next four years or so and could have afforded the mask to slip on his hidden agenda, if there was one. Yet, he was the very essence of the strong, stable, national government he has promised every day for the last month.

On healthcare, he said he supports Canada’s system of universal public health care. He confirmed his election pledge to increase spending by 6% a year. “We do want to sit down as we renegotiate to look at how to ensure better and clearer results and outcomes,” he said. There was room for experimentation but he said his government would not question the fundamentals of the universal public system.

He was asked how he would convince those who voted for him that they’d made the right move. He answered that he intends to move forward in the same way he has proceeded in the last five years. “One of the things I’ve learned is that surprises are not generally well received by the public. We will move forward with what they are comfortable with,” he said. “In minority government you face a hanging every day. We will try to gain more trust in places where we won and where we didn’t win.”

In a pre-election interview, Mr. Harper told the National Post that with a majority government he would be more concerned with governing than with self-preservation. And how would he govern? My take is that he will do exactly what he’s been saying he has wanted to do for the past five years — Senate reform, abolish the gun registry, get tough on crime and shrink the size of government. As someone who knows him well put it: “The hidden agenda has been sitting on the order paper in the House of Commons for five years.”

As one of his biographers, William Johnson, has noted: “Unlike most politicians, he almost always means what he says because he has thought long and hard about an issue before he speaks. He is consistent in his thinking and speaking because he is a conviction politician.” Read more...

John Ivison: Relaxed Harper misplaces the Secret Agenda | Full Comment | National Post

Who's Afraid of Virginia - or the Rest of the United States?

 “U.S. style...”

“American style...”

And every time these words are spoken by the Liberals, NDP, Greens or Bloc, they are used as pejoratives. And yet, when confronted with this fact, the same candidates who just used the terms to bludgeon the local Conservative will deny any anti-American intent in their usage. And yet, there is no other way it can be understood.

Because of the history of Canada, a certain latent anti-Americanism is to be accepted. This is, after all, a country which had one part invaded by the American rebel armies during their Revolutionary War (Quebec), had another part principally populated by refugees from the nascent United States (and in some cases suffered significant atrocities and economic loss in the process – Ontario) and was then attacked by the still young United States during the War of 1812.

Since then, there have been a few American politicians preaching a “Manifest Destiny” that included Canada, and the influx of thousands of American draft-dodgers and leftists during the Vietnam era. The last of these, often well educated before they came to Canada, have exerted a significant social pressure within Canadian society as they became teachers and assumed other positions of social influence in the decades since.

So it isn't a radical concept to expect that at least some voters might, at least in the right circumstances, might respond to the use of the United States as a land of negative examples. And the opposition parties have done so at every opportunity.

New super-sized prisons are “American style”, arguments against the purchase of new fighters are couched in terms such as “American militarism”, and of course the one of the most over used, abused, and misunderstood quotes in the history of the United States presidency, “military-industrial complex”.

Oppose corporate tax cuts? “American style”, or “Bush-esque”.

Military spending? “We are peacekeepers, not warmongers like the US”

Don't want changes to the current health care system? “US style healthcare, bankrupting people for care...” etc.

Why not just oppose issues based on the interpretation of the merits of a given issue? If the purchase of new fighters is wrong, make the argument logically – don't say “we aren't the US”. Same with health care reform or any other issue.

Canada as a nation has matured since the Trudeau years, when as Prime Minister he took the art of political anti-Americanism to heights not seen since the early years of Confederation. Canada is capable of pursuing policies, or not, based not on any similarity or lack thereof to American policies, but instead based on whether they are good and appropriate for this nation.

So argue the merits of military spending based on costs, missions, and national interests. Argue health care based on what is economically viable and best cares for Canadian patients. Base taxes on what will best work to build Canada's economy and job market.

And leave the name calling to poorly-behaved children. At least, as kids, they have an excuse.