Many Canadian small “c” conservatives are unhappy with the budget that Stephen Harper tabled two weeks ago. There certainly was very little “conservative” about it.
Joining the worldwide panic over the market and economic meltdown the budget calls for Canada to go into deficit in the amount of $85 billion for the next two years. Real conservatives believe that the markets should be left to sort the economy out and that the current problem will not be solved by simply throwing money at it. It is of course trendy to say that this is the worst of times since the Great Depression although the current situation pales in comparison to the recession of the 1980s when interest rates and unemployment were both in double digits.
There is no doubt that Stephen Harper brought his government to the brink after last fall’s economic statement that called for the abolition of taxpayer subsidies to political parties; something that would have been destructive to the opposition parties but not the government. The Conservatives came within a governor general’s decision of falling to a Liberal/NDP coalition that was propped up by a more than willing Bloc Quebecois. Although it’s hard to say that the recent budget was a coalition budget, it could have equally been drafted by Michael Ignatieff, the current Liberal leader who unlike his predecessor is more of a centrist than a global warming obsessed lefty.
Small “c” conservatives are right; the idea that a government can spend its way out of a recession or depression has never worked before and will not work now. And the tax cuts provided in the budget not deep enough to be much good. People who are worried about their jobs or their savings or both are more likely to save any reduction in taxes rather than spend or invest it and thereby stimulate the economy. Of course the Conservative Party of Canada knows all this; they just had to cave to the high spending opposition parties in order to remain in power. But what should the small “c” Canadian conservatives do?
Well, they could break away from the CPC and form their own party. As a philosopher, if not the greatest that ever lived then certainly the only one to catch a perfect game in the World Series once said, it seems like déjà vu all over again. The reality is that Canada pretty well lost all hope of ever getting a real conservative government when the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance merged to form the party that is now in government. Much like the current economic crisis, it might not have been foreseeable that it would happen under Harper’s leadership but the Conservative Party was bound to morph into the old Progressive Conservative Party; a party slightly to the right of the Liberals and one that easily tends to be more “progressive” than “conservative”. We are now pretty well where we were before the merger, minus of course the Reform/Canadian Alliance.
Conservatism is not the norm for Canada. It is not enough to simply campaign on the grounds that Conservatives can run the country better than the Liberals can.
Conservatism has to be sold in much the way that Mike Harris did in Ontario in the mid 90s. A conservative party must be content, at least in the foreseeable future of affecting power instead of obtaining it. Small “c” conservatives could learn a lot from the NDP. Love them or hate them, they generally adhere to what they believe in.
Whenever someone in that party suggests that they move towards the centre in order to increase their vote, they are gently (ok, usually not that gently) told that these centrist policies are not what they believe in. Despite the fact that the NDP has never held power federally, they have affected much of this country’s social policies. A party on the right could also influence the two centrist parties, one of which is always in power.
The move to unite the right did not, nor likely never will, result in a “conservative” government. Small “c” conservatives who are happy with the Harper government are merely settling; forgoing conservative principles in favour of a liberal-light party whose main claim to fame is that it is more palatable than the Liberal Party.
If the principles of conservatism are ever going to make inroads in Canada, we need a political party to advance them. It’s time to disunite the right.
