by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
June 16, 2004
Life can sometimes be filled with little ironies. Canadians were in the middle of the federal election campaign when news came in that Ronald Reagan had died. The irony is that the much loved and staunchly conservative 40th president of the United States had passed away at a time when the Liberals and NDP were stepping up their attacks on Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party. according to the Libs and the NDP, Harper was a right wing extremist who was going to take the country backwards. Well, if we could go back to the optimistic Reagan years of the 1980s, that would be a plus for the Conservatives.
Unfortunately, as far as real conservatives go, Stephen Harper is no Ronald Reagan. Reagan believed that the United States was great because the american people are great. Prime Minister Paul Martin thinks that Canada is great because the country has a great government. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are much closer to Martin’s position than they are to Reagan’s.
a major plank in the Conservative platform is tax cuts. although Harper occasionally mentions it, the party is not selling the notion that tax cuts are good because people know how to spend their own money better than the government does. The way the Conservatives present their proposed tax cuts is that people will be better off simply because they will have more money. In that sense they are not unlike the Liberals who attract support by bribing taxpayers with their own money.
When Ronald Reagan cut taxes, the revenue from taxes increased. The huge deficits that occurred during the Reagan years were not because a lack of tax revenue but because of increased spending. Harper makes no mention of the fact that these revenues can increase when taxes are cut. In fact he assumes the opposite and like the Liberals, if tax cuts take effect, there will be a decrease in revenues. To balance it out, the decrease in corporate taxes will be met with a similar decrease in spending on subsidies to corporations.
although the Conservatives pay lip service to the fact that they want to bring in a smaller government, they lack the conservative philosophy that marked the Reagan era. We lack the belief in the ability of individuals to take more control of their own lives and to do things better than the government can do for us. The Conservative Party is in effect saying that, if they assume power, they can control our lives a little less than the Liberals do and a lot better. They are undoubtedly correct and deserve to banish the corrupt and arrogant Liberal government, but this again does not make them conservative. Nowhere can this adherence to government control be seen than in the health care system.
Despite protestations by the Liberals and the NDP, Canada will not have "american style health care" if the Conservatives assume office. Suggesting that we do away with socialized medicine would be political suicide in this country and the Conservatives are not going to go there. But if the Conservatives had any real conservative principles, they would at least consider the notion of "two-tiered health care". But all the Conservatives are suggesting is the opportunity for government funded medical services to be provided by the private sector--something that despite Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew’s backtracking, is already legal and being done by amongst others, Paul Martin’s personal physician. Under a Harper-led government Canadians will still be prevented from purchasing their own health care, a principle that is more socialistic than conservative.
The reality is that there are few Canadian politicians that have any conservative philosophy of the type that Ronald Reagan had. One exception is Jim Flaherty, the former Ontario cabinet minister who ran for the leadership of the provincial Tories. Flaherty had proposed to privatize the sale of Ontario’s Liquor Control Board, not because it was unprofitable but because of his conservative values. One of Flaherty’s principles was that if it is found in the Yellow Pages, the government shouldn’t be involved in it. The federal Conservatives are devoid of any such conservative ideology.
On social issues, Harper has said that he has no plans to change the current laws or lack of them when it comes to abortion. and in the area of same sex marriage, there is no appreciable difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives, the majority of the former having voted a few years ago to retain the traditional definition of marriage.
The attempts by the Liberals to paint the Conservatives as right wing extremists who will destroy Canada as we know it, is laughable.