More Evidence That Things Need to Change

 If there's anything that proponents of Canada's current approach to aboriginal affairs have to say about the notion of change, it's that they don't like it.

Yet an increasing number of thinkers have begun to urge a new approach to the issue -- and it's one that the proponents of the current approach will almost certainly despise.

Yet the clear evidence that changes are desperately needed continues to mount. Not only is there the spectre of lingering and grinding aboriginal poverty, but more and more aboriginal Canadians are moving off-reserve and into cities. It's only natural that they would do this, as that is where most of the opportunities for them seem to lay.

“The fastest growing population is the young aboriginal population and we need those young people to be educated and in the workforce,” says Calvin Helin. “Not for reasons of a moral imperative, but for the very prosperity and competitiveness of Canada as a nation.”

This isn't a bad thing or a good thing, unless one depends upon the views of any particular paradigm on aboriginal affairs. Those who would prefer to see strong on-reserve communities must be concerned about this development. Those who prefer to see aboriginals assimilate likely welcome it.

If those who wish to see strong on-reserve cultural communities wish to see those communities thrive they will need a way to provide opportunities to youths who decide to stay on-reserve. But the currently dominant model for aboriginal affairs in Canada -- simply pumping more and more funds into reserves -- has clearly failed to provide such opportunities.

A change is urgently needed.

A key may be found in Tom Flanagan's theories. According to Flanagan, the key to aleviating aboriginal poverty is to allow aboriginal bands to make use of the resources they already have.

"Canada's first nations are potentially wealthy landlords, with land reserves totalling nearly three million hectares," Flanagan recently wrote in the Globe and Mail. "Dozens of reserves are near major cities such as Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Montreal, as well as rapidly growing smaller towns such as Kamloops, Kelowna and Courtenay-Comox. This land base represents an economic asset that could make a major contribution to raising first nations' standard of living."

Flanagan notes that passing legislation allowing aboriginal bands to assume property rights over their land on a voluntary basis would repair key inadequacies in the current state of aboriginal property rights.

Flanagan also argues that it would settle the debate over the best course for aboriginal Canadians.

"The political left in Canada believes in aboriginal self-government, while the political right emphasizes the integration of native peoples into the mainstream," Flanagan writes. "In this case, left and right can come together: First nations will be able to get underlying title to their land, an important part of self-government; and they will also find it easier to adopt individual property rights for their landholdings, which will facilitate their participation in the Canadian economy."

This, of course, will not be a panacea for aboriginal poverty. Decades of government investment in fighting poverty will remain necessary, but at least the prospect of self-spurred economic development on Canadian aboriginal reserves will provide some light at the end of the tunnel.

In the meantime, there are some other key reforms that will be necessary.

The movement of aboriginal youths into cities has left many of them feeling unrepresented, according to a recent poll.

Off-reserve aboriginals are supposed to be represented by the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples. Yet 40% of off-reserve aboriginals couldn't identify the organization as representing them.

Helin suggests that aboriginals don't recognize CAP as their representation because they get no opportunity to elect them.

“There’s a lot of resentment that there isn’t any representation, and I think that clearly came out in the study,” he says. “Once there is equal representation, and everybody has the chance to elect the national chief of the AFN, for example, people I think will have a much greater sense of ownership.”

Democratic reform is the other side of aboriginal self-government that aboriginal bands will need to address. Those who insist the hereditary nature of political leadership is an aboriginal tradition that must be preserved will need to recognize that this decision will ultimately be up to aboriginals, but should be up to all aboriginals -- not just their chiefs.

One thing is certain: the status quo on aboriginal affairs doesn't work, and there is no reason to expect that will change any time soon.

The evidence for the need for change is apparent: now all we need is for our political leaders -- both aboriginal and non-aboriginal -- to recognize it.

What Are They Going to Do, Threaten A Coalition?

 Conservatives to campaign on end to political subsidies

When Pierre Poilievre appeared on CTV's Power Play recently, host Tom Clark was notably disappointed when Poilievre mused about the Conservative Party taking on the opposition parties over per-vote political subsidies, then declined to announce they would table legislation in the house.

Clark may be less disappointed today, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office has confirmed that the Tories will campaign against per-vote subsidies during the next federal election.

This comes after opposition parties voted to end the privilege for MPs to mail ten percenters outside of their riding.

"The position of our government is clear. If all the parties wish to abolish this particular subsidy for mailings outside of an MP's own riding, of course this party would be delighted to do that. Of course, we would also like to see the $30-million direct tax subsidy to political parties abolished," Harper announced.

Some may recall that it was the Harper government's last move to eliminate the per-vote subsidy that led to the ill-fated Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition push. But with the coalition effective redudiated by Canadians, one may wonder precisely what the opposition would do about such an arrangement.

Interestingly enough, Tom Flanagan suggests that the per-vote subsidy should be replaced with some measure that would allow the opposition parties to receive a comparable level of funding.

"As much as I applaud that, there would be bound to be a backlash from that," Flanagan predicted. "The media would beat you up for deliberately bankrupting your competition and I think the blowback from that would be pretty intense, so if they are going to do it, they have to find some practical way of replacing at least a substantial portion of the lost revenue."

"It's hard to find an approach that would yield the amount of money that's equal to the subsidies unless you go back to some level of corporate donations or raising the level on individual donations," Flanagan continued. "The other one is a taxpayer check-off system, which is used in the United States."

For his own part, Minister of Democratic Reform Steven Fletcher doesn't seem to think that any replacement of the subsidy is necessary at all.

"We believe that the per-vote subsidy is not necessary, particularly in these tough economic times," Fletcher insisted. "People voluntarily donate to political parties in Canada. That's one of the problems with the per-vote subsidy, is that it's not a voluntary donation."

As Tasha Kheirddin points out, however, abolishing the per-vote subsidy would require the Conservatives to win a majority government.

"If the Conservatives fail to get a majority, this promise will be impossible to keep, as other parties will want to keep riding that public gravy train," Kheirridin writes. "And while this pledge may be a vote getter, it’s hard to see it as the defining issue of a campaign, with so many other things on the table."

Indeed, it seems unlikely that Canadians will grant the Conservative Party a majority government based on a $30 million budget line item.

But as much as the last desperate hold-overs from the pro-coalition crowd (those who have yet to realize the folly of dealing with a regressive separatist party) may hold out hope that Layton and Ignatieff will threaten a coalition again, or even try to pull it off, it's simply incredibly unlikely.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Walker Morrow - "Pro-active Voter Apathy. I Like That Strategy."

Chrystal Ocean - "Per-Vote Subsidy is Baaaack!"

Don't Be So Bloody Sensitive

Liberals back FNUC out of "cultural sensitivity"

In an era in which being insufficiently sensitive to any number of things can result in a complaint to a human rights commission, a great many people are feeling pressure to twist themselves in the name of cultural sensitivity.

For the Liberal Party of Canada, the demands of cultural sensitivity also seem to include supporting the embattled First Nations University of Canada, which recently had its funding cut by the federal government and government of Saskatchewan.

At issue are numerous issues -- ranging from questions of academic freedom related to the search of computers (an arbitration board eventually found insufficient evidence for violation of academic freedom), governance issues related to the Board of Directors, and questions regarding financial mismanagement.

The FNUC board of governors recently offered a plan to solve some of the problems at the university, a plan of which Minister of Indian Affairs Chuck Strahl seems skeptical.

There are many good reasons to support an institution like FNUC.

Liberal House leader Ralph Goodale insists that FNUC should be supported because many of its students allegedly wouldn't continue their education due to an alleged lack of cultural sensitivity.

That isn't a terribly compelling reason to support FNUC.

To begin with, many of Canada's universities have Native Studies departments where students at institutions like the FNUC could study in an environment every bit as culturally sensitive as FNUC.

But one can't help but wonder what kind of "cultural sensitivity" it is that Goodale believes the FNUC supplies. Many aboriginal leaders have expressed disagreement and even outrage at the views of Tom Flanagan, who is an outspoken critic of the current model of first nations governance.

The answer to such criticisms is not to insulate students from them. Rather, the proper way to answer such criticisms is to debate them -- an approach taken by the University of Manitoba when students and faculty objected to a speech by Flanagan at the institution.

On the other hand, to insulate aboriginal students from criticisms of their governance model does them a great disservice -- it doesn't lead them to confront any of the numerous shortcomings of that model (including an absolultely massive democratic deficit) so that they may one day fix them.

So, the lesson for Ralph Goodale and the Liberal Party should be: don't be so bloody sensitive.

Sensitivity has its time and place -- a university campus is rarely one of them.

Stephen Harper's Senate Master Plan

Harper may democratize Senate by making it more controversial than ever

As any political thinker who has ventured anywhere near the topic of the Senate knows, Senate reform is an extremely tumultuous topic in Canada.

With Prime Minister Stephen Harper's governing Conservative Party finally taking control of the Senate, it's about to get much worse.

Part of the increased controversy will have to do with Senate committees, and how Harper may intend to use them. Where these committees were once obstacles to Senate reform, for example, they will now become tools of it -- at least according to Tom Flanagan.

"When the two reform bills are reintroduced –- one to limit senatorial terms to eight years, the other to provide for consultative elections –- the government doesn't have to worry about the bills being held up in committees," Flanagan wrote in a recent op/ed in the Globe and Mail.

Flanagan notes that Harper could even appoint four to eight additional Senators (the Constitution actually allows for this) in order to claim an outright majority in the upper chamber, as opposed to a slim plurality.

Flanagan was optimistically cautious about this potential move.

"Invoking Section 26 would be risky, because the opposition would paint it as another tricky power play," Flanagan warned. "But it would also showcase Mr Harper at his strategic best – using power politics not just to confound the opposition but to democratize the Canadian Constitution."

Flanagan's plan also involves something mused about by Chantal Hebert: legislating from the Senate, even on the matter of Senate reform.

Harper could legislate on almost any matter from the Senate -- exempting financial matters.

"In the future, Harper will also have the leisure to use the Senate as a safe launching pad for legislative initiatives that might be dead on arrival with the opposition majority in the Commons," Hebert wrote in a recent op/ed in the Toronto Star. "Both houses would still have to concur for those to become law but it could be good politics to use the more hospitable Senate to showcase them, especially in the lead-up to an election."

Nothing would provoke Harper's critics to declare his use of the Senate to be undemocratic -- using the appointed Senate to legislate, and transforming the elected House of Commons into a chamber of sober second thought.

But Harper's answer to those charges would be simple: if the Senate is undemocratic, then let us democratize it.

After all, in an elected Senate -- even one elected through "consultative" elections -- majorities would prove just as elusive as in the House of Commons.

"A look at the fractured federal political landscape suggests that, far from acquiring more control over the legislative destiny of its agenda, the Conservative government would almost certainly have had to give some up," Hebert wrote. "Sheer logic dictates that achieving a government majority in an elected Senate would be no easier than securing one in the Commons, and certainly harder than crafting one through patronage appointments."

If the amount of power that Harper himself would surrender, as well as the influence that could be lost by Western Canada, is at all dissuasive to Harper, he doesn't seem to be showing it. He continues to promise Senate reform.

Then again, the key part of promising such reforms is delivering on them. If Stephen Harper's Master Senate Plan is anything like that hinted at by Tom Flanagan and Chantal Hebert, the proof will be in the pudding -- and Canadians won't taste it until it's delivered.

Harper Needs a Better Explanation

Prime Minister claims proroguement necessary for economic work

Speaking to reporters about the recent proroguement of Parliament, Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended the increasingly-controversial move on the basis of the need to prepare his economic agenda.

Harper accused the opposition parties of being obstructive in Parliament, and distracting his government from the important work ahead of it -- something that Harper doesn't expect to change when Parliament resumes.

"The games begin when Parliament returns," Harper said. "The government can take our time now to do the important work to prepare the economic agenda ahead."

"That said, as soon as Parliament comes back ... the first thing that happens is a vote of confidence and there'll be votes of confidence and election speculation for every single week after that for the rest of the year," Harper continued. "That's the kind of instability markets are actually worried about."

Many of the Canadians who are following the story legitimately believe Harper, that numerous factors -- including the diplomatic opportunity offered by the presence of numerous foreign dignitaries in Vancouver during the Olympics, and his need to prepare his new economic agenda -- have made the proroguation of Parliament necessary. Others are supporting his proroguation out of sheer partisan fervour.

For Harper, the problem is that many Canadians don't seem to believe him. A recent poll indicated that, of the 67% of Canadians who are following the proroguation story, 58% opposed the move.

Included in this were a significant portion of Conservative supporters.

Among those Conservative Party supporters, one will find an unexpected figure -- none other than Tom Flanagan.

“The governments talking points don’t have much credibility," Flanagan said. "Everybody knows that Parliament was prorogued in order to shut down the Afghan inquiry, and the trouble is that the government doesn’t want to explain why that was necessary. I personally think it was a highly defensible action but instead of having an adult defense of it the government comes up with these childish talking points.“

The thing about the controversy is that, considering all of the facts surrounding the issue, few Canadians could be blamed for believing the worst about Harper's proroguement.

In the Afghan torture allegations the Conservative Party has handled what is actually a low-value scandal -- the revelation that failures in the chain of command may have obscured the torture of Afghan detainees from the government -- very poorly.

Considering the way in which Harper has handled the issue -- a better response would have been to call a complete inquiry into the entire timeline of Canada's operations in Afghanistan, including the period prior to 2006 -- and present the full reality of the matter: that the pre-2006 Liberal government was actually responsible for the state of affairs in the first place.

Instead, Harper and the Conservatives flailed clumsily, and executed what was very likely a long-planned proroguation of Parliament when opposition pressure just happened to be most intense.

No one could blame so many Canadians for believing that Harper prorogued Parliament to escape the pressure.

Among the Canadians who oppose the proroguement on a principled of basis are those who oppose it on partisan grounds. Murray Dobbin seems to firmly understand that stage two of Harper's economic plan is at the centre of the proroguement (and considers it unthinkable that the government would ever want to reduce government spending).

Stephen Harper needs a better explanation for his actions. For every reason that a Canadian may hear Harper's explanation and believe it, there are just as many reasons to not believe him.

Right now, the opposition is telling a better story.

Now, This is How These Matters Should be Handled

Opposition to Flanagan visit calmed with constructive dialogue

On University Campuses across North America, a disturbing number of vocal minorities have often learned that they can quiet viewpoints they don't want to be heard on campus if they just make enough noise.

Many of those who value free speech have long decried these incidents.

But in an episode that deserves every bit of attention it can possibly get, a recent visit by Tom Flanagan to the University of Manitoba -- which at first provoked a loud protest by groups that objected to Flanagan's stance on aboriginal affairs -- in the end wound up proceeding when the objecting groups were granted a public forum with Flanagan, wherein they could question him and comment on his ideas.

A greater victory for freedom of speech -- and for the intellectual climate of university campuses -- would be difficult to find.

Commending on the matter in the Winnipeg Free Press, Carson Jerema writes that "Scholarly relevance is the only criterion that should determine whether or not a speaker is suitable for a university audience."

"It has nothing to do with political appropriateness, as campus censors sometimes like to think," he continued. "Nor does it have anything to do with the lofty ideals of free expression that are so often, and erroneously, conflated with the business of teaching and learning."

"Universities are concerned with academic worth, not with ensuring an inclusive environment, or with providing a forum for everyone, as if universities were no different from street corners," he concluded.

He couldn't have been more right about that.

Sadly, not all of Canada's Universities are as enlightened. At various universities across Canada, speeches by Jose Ruba comparing abortion to the Holocaust are frequently disrupted by pro-abortion groups, who refuse him the opportunity to speak.

These protesters tend to categorically refuse to even hear Ruba's ideas. Certainly, anyone is entitled to take offense to the character of Ruba's ideas or to the interpretations that he draws. But that is not to say that such individuals have the right to silence someone based on that offense.

So even as those at the University of Manitoba who disagree with Tom Flanagan dealt with their disagreement in a calm, mature and constructive fashion by participating in a public debate, not everyone has come to share their wisdom.

Canada's Universities will all be much better off when they do.

Dalton McGuinty Tightening the Screws on Government

HST would eliminate options for an incoming government

A frequent criticism of Stephen Harper's government in Ottawa has been accusations that they're "tightening the screws" on government.

These were actually
the words of Tom Flanagan, who argued that the Conservative Party's tax cuts would limit the ability of future governments to start new programs.

Now, with Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government about to harmonize their provincial sales tax with the federal Goods and Services Tax -- with the help of Harper's federal government -- the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, led by Tim Hudak, is opposing the move.

McGuinty seems to have found what he thinks will be his answer to the matter: challenge the Hudak Conservatives to commit to overturning the Harmonized Sales Tax should they form the government after Ontario's next election.

"I think Ontarians would be interested in knowing why it is that the leader of the Official Opposition is not prepared to repeal the HST," McGuinty recently told Queen's Park.

Of course, what McGuinty isn't giving the HST issue credit for is that, if implemented, it represents a negotiated tax agreement between the federal and provincial government. Each government receives a share.

Because the tax represents an agreement between the two government, it hampers the ability of either government to make reductions in that tax.

So, in its own sense, the passage of the HST -- whether it's a sound econcomic policy or not -- represents a tightening of the screws on government, committing the provincee to a particular taxation regime.

There's a very good reason why Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservatives can't commit to abolishing the HST -- it's because the collaborative nature of the tax limits the options to do so.

History Repeating, History Repeated?

Michael Ignatieff in a very familiar situation

Writing in an op/ed column in the Globe and Mail, Tom Flanagan recounts the recent trials and tribulations of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, and casts them in an interesting -- and familiar -- light:

"The leader of the opposition, after supporting the minority government's budget, decides that he would like to force an election after all. He publicly announces his intention to defeat the government, leaving the Prime Minister lots of time to react. Then the roof caves in at Stornoway.

The government whips up a storm of public opposition to an election, telling people that they will lose benefits that were in the budget but have not yet passed through Parliament. Helping the government to survive, Jack Layton offers crucial support in return for policy concessions that will please NDP supporters. At a major turning point, the unity of the opposition is threatened as the leader loses the support of a key member of the caucus.

Public reaction is savage. People say they don't want an election, and the opposition falls to rock-bottom standing in the polls while the government soars. Pundits indulge in a feeding frenzy over the badly wounded body of the opposition leader. They deride his strategy. They demand that he reveal the platform he will run on in the next election campaign. They speculate that his political career is over. In response, the leader replaces his chief of staff and contemplates further changes in his retinue."

As Flanagan notes, this certainly describes Michael Ignatieff's experience since September. But it also describes the experience of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2005, back when he was occupying Ignatieff's current office.

"After initially supporting Paul Martin's budget, Mr Harper decided to defeat the government when embarrassing revelations started to trickle out from the Gomery inquiry into the Liberal sponsorship scandal.

Then everything happened as just described. The government mobilized public opinion against an election, the NDP changed sides, Belinda Stronach defected to the Liberals, Conservative poll numbers nosedived, Mr Harper was savaged in the media and he reorganized his office."

Of course, there are many differences afoot. The Gomery Inquiry was already underway when Harper made his intentions to defeat the Martin government clear. Canadians already knew that an embarrassment of riches had been stolen by the Liberal party under the guise of the Sponsorship Program.

What we didn't yet know was the brazen flagrance with which the scandal was perpetrated.

Recently, the Liberal party has been making a lot of noise about a disproportionate amount of stimulus funds being spend on projects in their ridings. When asked to disclose precisely where money was being spent, and one what projects, the Tories decided to bury Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page with virtually every document related to the matter.

But there are numerous other factors involved in the matter, including the requirements of regional parity, as well as an alleged disproportionate number of project applications from municipalities within Conservative-held ridings.

It seems highly unlikely that an adscam-level scandal is going to emerge to rescue Ignatieff from his current circumstance.

Still, Flanagan has in his hands the power to improve his party's circumstances, and put it in a position where it can compete with the Conservative party for the privilege to govern the country.

Flanagan describes the steps Ignatieff needs to take very simply:

First, study what Harper did to turn his fortunes around. (Unshockingly, Flanagan suggests some of his own work.) Second, when moving to defeat the government, move quickly. Third, have a reason to defeat the government. Have a pretext.

Many Canadians were confused about Ignatieff's eagerness to defeat the government. It seemed very sudden, and Ignatieff seemed to lack an issue underiding the move other than Harper's time allegedly being "up".

The recent move to recruit Peter Donolo back into the Liberal leader's office suggests that Ignatieff may be following a similar game plan to Harper's. But, as Flanagan notes, it won't be enough on its own:

"Mr Ignatieff has messed up big-time, but the outlook doesn't have to be entirely bleak. Since he has been imitating Mr Harper so closely, he can take solace from the fact that the Conservative leader bounced back, winning the next election and becoming prime minister less than a year after his time of troubles in spring 2005.

Replacing a chief of staff won't solve anything (in politics, the person who is fired is seldom to blame for what went wrong), but it can be an occasion for starting over.

The key is self-interrogation. Someone who wants the ultimate prize of becoming PM has to accept responsibility for all the things that go wrong along the way and figure out how not to repeat those errors (while realizing he will inevitably make others). That's the most important lesson of Mr. Harper's annus horribilis of 2005: that a leader can rebound from disaster to triumph if he accepts responsibility for his mistakes and learns to avoid them in the future."

Of course, there is one potential weakness in Flanagan's advice to Ignatieff.

In following Flanagan's advice, Ignatieff would be trying to emulate the Stephen Harper of 2005. But if the Prime Minister has shown anything over the past three years, it's that Harper has a repertoire packed full of politically savvy maneuvers.

Michael Ignatieff can't fully expect to be able to use Stephen Harper's playbook from 2005 to be able to beat the Harper of today. When Ignatieff's time to move against Harper finally comes, he'd better be able to have a play of his own to call.

Derailing (and Re-Railing) The Train of Public Virtue

Time for the Conservative Party to offer its own model of public virtue

Writing in an op/ed in the Ottawa Citizen, David Warren offers his take on Barry Cooper's recent opus It's the Regime, Stupid!.

Cooper is one of the better-kept secrets of Canadian political science: a paleo-conservative with one eye on Canada's past, another on its future, and his finger on the pulse of Canada's present.

Cooper's book offers a scathing critique of Laurenti-o-centric politics and where it has led the country:

"Looked at from another angle, we are the curious aggregate of 'two founding cultures' -- the combination of French Canadian nationalist whining and extortion, with the old English Canadian Loyalist junction and anti-American malice, in a kleptomanic welfare state -- fuelled by revenue appropriated from Western Canadian resources.

This is not exactly my way of looking at post-war Canada, and perhaps an over-simplification of Cooper's, but there's a lot of truth in it all the same. A 'regime,' which we may fairly associate with the Liberal party (though spread through other parties by such mechanisms as the 'sacred trust' of our dysfunctional medicare system), has embedded itself in Canadian life, in the form of a self-interested and self-serving federal bureaucracy of extraordinary size.

The notion that Canada consists centrally of ourselves -- the Laurentianistas -- plus imperial extensions east, north, and west, would come very close to being the irritant that has inspired Cooper to produce his string of pearls on Canadian politics, the most memorable of which before the book now published was entitled, Deconfederation (1991), co-written with David Bercuson. It was a book that proposed to call Quebec's separatist bluff, by sketching out the benefits to the Rest of Canada over and above the transaction costs, if Quebec would only leave."

Cooper's and Bercuson's argument circulated around the notion of the politics of public virtue. Although they argued that the politics of public virtue -- leaing Canada inexorably into the era of the welfare state -- actually originated with John Diefenbaker, who they identify as the first Prime Minister to govern with social justice as a central preoccupation (although the traces of this notion can be identified earlier at the provincial level, in the Saskatchewan government of Tommy Douglas and Alberta government of -- believe it or not -- William Aberhart), it was the fight against Quebec separatism that truly entrenched those ideals as central to Canadian governance.

The Liberals struggles to find ways to fund their efforts to use democratic socialism to soften the demand for Quebec sovereignty often led to ham-fisted attempts to suck revenue out of the Western provinces, and often became as big a threat to national unity as anything imagined by Rene Levesque or Luicen Bouchard.

The growing public bureaucracy became a symbol to the west of the country financing Liberal attempts to pander to Quebec separatism at Western Canada's expense.

The election of (briefly) Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney as Prime Minister did little to stem this slide itno a bureaucratic and self-interested state. By the time Paul Martin -- who at times seemed to possess the will to turn the tide -- his party's own excesses in twisting Canadian governance to their own benefit finally bit him.

The election of Stephen Harper resulted not only from the nadir of the sense of entitlement born out of the Liberal party's vision of the politics of public virtue, but also of a slowly-emerging distaste for that particular status quo, and a desire for real change.

But, just as the Liberal vision of the politics of public virtue was fraught with peril, so is Warren's view of how Stephen Harper should proceed:

"My own view, that Harper's political strategy is simply to remain in power for as long as possible, governing with as much common sense as circumstances will allow, until the hegemony of the Liberal party recedes into memory, would probably answer to Cooper's requirements. Harper is a transitional figure; not the new regime but the man who allows one to emerge over time. He is astute in his grasp of his own limitations.

In particular, he must stay in power until the threat has passed of the Liberals replacing their old divide-and-conquer 'national unity' fraud, with a new divide-and-conquer environmentalist fraud. The global warming hysteria -- seized upon by bureaucrats all over the world as the means to advance and consolidate the Nanny State -- is itself receding. We must wait it out."

Warren's view seems to be that the Conservative party should simply outwait the allegedly waning surge of environmentalism. But this may is an ultimately short-sighted view.

The enthusiasm for the apocalyptic view of environmentalism may indeed be waning -- it's usually difficult to tell for certain.

But to pretend that the Liberal party couldn't profit politically from a new environmental focus is naive. Even if Canadians stop fearing an environmental apocalypse, the environment is still central to the issue of quality of life.

This is the conservative angle on the environmental issue. Even if apocalyptic zealots are outraged at the very idea that an environmental catastrophe may not be as imminent as activist scientists have insisted it is.

The other issue with Warren's thesis is the notion of Stephen Harper needing to remain in power for as long as possible.

The strength of Cooper's thesis is that it reflects a change in the purpose of Canadian government. Retaining power for power's own sake -- or even out-waiting political changes that may favour his party -- doesn't reflect these changes away from aelf-serving politics of public virtue and toward more responsible and accountable government.

Harper achieved this by doing what Tom Flanagan described as "tightening the screws" on government -- not only through a program of tax cuts, but also by trimming old Liberal party-era social engineering projects, as embodied by the court challenges program and by the ideological direction of the Status of Women.

Some would have expected that Harper's re-adjustment of the Royal Commission for the Status of Women -- as well as suggestions that Harper has treated women as a "left-wing fringe group" -- it seems that female voters are continually softening toward Harper.

The termination of the Liberal agenda of social engineering via various pet projects doesn't seem nearly as threatening to many Canadians as left-wing Canadians would have the rest of us believe.

Last but not least, dismissing national unity and environmentalism as fraudulent is intellectually perilous. Canada came within less than a percentage point of breaking up during the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum because the Liberal government of Jean Chretien was inattentive to, and bungled, the national unity file. Not because concerns regarding national unity are fraudulent.

Brian Lee Crowley has recently noted (and Denis Stairs noted before him), demographic shifts within Quebec will soon take the teeth out of Quebec separatism. This will change the form the national unity debate takes in Canada, but it will not lay the issue to rest.

Likewise environmentalism is not fraudulent. Whether the action taken on preserving the environment is taken to head off an apocalypse or is taken simply to improve the quality of life of Canadians, the issue of the environment is crucial.

The Conservative party needs to stop short of abolishing the politics of public virtue, and instead offer Canadians an alternative to the tired version of it to which they had once resigned themselves.

A conservative version of the politics of public virtue will very likely share the most compelling elements of the Liberal version. The difference, of course, should be that the conservative model shouldn't rely on state action to achieve that vision, but rather make it possible for citizens to accomplish those goals on their own -- even if the state provides some help along the way.

Wildrose Alliance Attracting Big Fish...

...And lots of them

As the Alberta Progressive Conservatives look on at the Wildrose Allaicne leadership campaign they must be feeling a certain combination of fascination and trepidation.

As the Alberta Alliance and the Wildrose party, the Alliance is a party that has dwelled on the margins of Albertan politics. But as popular discontent with the leadership of Ed "Stalemate" Stelmach is spreading, so is the membership of the Alliance.

In June, the party had a mere 1,800 members. Now, the party's leadership has exploded, adding 10,200 members in the intervening months.

But amongst the masses flocking to the Alliance are conservative magnates such as Tom Flanagan and Betty Unger. And most recently, former Alberta Minister of Public Works and Agriculture Ernie Isley has joined the party.

Isley has, in particular, pointed toward the Stelmach government's approach to health care.

"[You] give up a billion dollars in revenue and then shortly thereafter you start coming up with a program whereby you're going to make your seniors pay more for prescription drugs. That doesn't seem to me to be the direction to go," Isley explained. "We appear to be going through the slash-and-burn era of the early '90s."

The vibrant conservative debate taking place between Danielle Smith and Mark Dyrholm has a lot to do with the new loyalties the party has been attracting.

Although sonme of the predictable themes of conservative leadership campaigns have emerged -- with each candidate accusing one another of either being too extreme or too uncommitted -- the campaign is attracting a great deal of attention for a party that holds only one seat in the Legislature.

This very much could be taken as a sign that Albertans are finally ready for a change.

Or, in time, it could be just another case in which the promise of political change was snuffed out by the status quo.

Wildrose Alliance Makes The Scene

Alberta's number two conservative party makes bid for relevance

When Alberta's political history books are written, one may wonder how Ed Stelmach will be remembered:

As "Steady Eddie" Stemlach, or as Ed "Stalemate" Stelmach?

Political pundits and historians alike may be leaning toward the latter as the Progressive Conservative party lost its seat in Calgary-Glenmore, a riding the party has held since it first won power in 1971.

The loss is a shock, but a different shock from the one incurred in 2007 when the party lost Ralph Klein's former seat, Calgary-Elbow, to Liberal Craig Cheffins.

This time around, the Conservatives have lost out to the Wildrose Alliance, its conservative competition in Alberta, as Paul Hinman has chipped a little piece off of Stelmach's dominating majority government.

Just as was the case when Cheffins won a longtime Conservative seat away from them, Hinman's victory is being treated as a protest vote against Stelmach.

"Diane Colley-Urquhart took the bullet, but this was aimed at Ed," mused University of Calgary political scientist Duane Bratt.

Hinman seemed to echo Bratt's sentiment.

"I was talking to strong Tory supporters. They said, 'We need to deal with Ed, but we've got to remain loyal (to the party),'" Hinman said. "I said, 'Well you've got to make a choice because if you vote for Diane, it's a vote for Ed and you're endorsing his leadership.'"

Hinman insisted "that they're fed up with the way things are run, the divide and conquer from north to south, east to west, rural vs urban, one industry against another, people do not like it."

"We want an equal, level playing field across the province," Hinman added.

It seems that a lot of high-profile Albertans are giving the Wildrose Alliance a good hard look. Tom Flanagan and Phil Klein (father of Ralph Klein) are both supporters of the party.

Many of those people are looking at Hinnan's victory as the first step to big things -- maybe even supplanting the Progressive Conservatives as the government.

Bratt's U of C colleague Doreen Barrie, however, isn't in a hurry to exaggerate the by-election's significance.

"In byelections, you kick the tires and you don't damage the vehicle," she said. "I think people are being a bit premature when they see this as the first tremor in a political earthquake that's going to dispatch the Conservatives and install a new party."

"The Alliance is going to get a big bounce out of this because their leadership race is coming up in October," Barrie added. "It's going to attract more attention."

Which it will. But Liberals expected big things after their party's victory in Calgary-Elbow. In the next election the Conservatives reclaimed that seat with a victory by Alison Redford.

In other words, one electoral victory does not mean that the Wildrose Alliance has definitively arrived.

But it's a big step toward bigger things if they can maitnain their momentum.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Leight Patrick Sullivan - "Message Sent!"

Earl Amsterdam - "Wild Upset in Alberta"

Rusty Idols - "Talk About Mixed Feelings..."

Sometimes You Really Can't Go Home Again

Harper's former contemporaries unimpressed by Senate appointments

The question that has been on the minds of many Canadians since Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent appointment of nine new Senators this week, has been this:

What would his old Reform party contemporaries think of this?

In fact, that question has been on the minds of many since last December, when Harper appointed another 18 Senators to Parliament's upper chamber.

Fortunately, many of Harper's Reform party colleagues have been vocal on the subject, and they aren't entirely happy.

"It does look a little top-heavy, inside out, shall we say," said Deborah Grey, the MP for whom Harper went to work for upon her election to Parliament. "That will rankle lots of people."

"You better be ready to run for an elected seat," she added, referring to Harper's new batch of Senators.

Myron Thompson admitted to sympathizing with Harper for the position he's been in, but doesn't accept that as an excuse. "We don't like to see him go that route at all," he said. "The average strong conservative would say, 'Stay the course.'"

Former MPs Bob Mills and Ray Speaker seem much more comfortable with the appointments.

Tom Flanagan admitted that even he was taken by surprise when Harper appointed Carolyn Stewart-Olsen.

Naturally, Harper's political opponents have been quite vocal on the subject of these appointments. As Maclean's magazine writer Andrew Coyne notes, Harper's appointments may well have given them something to cry about. That may have even been the intent.

Yet the one individual who has been oddly quiet on the issue is former Reform party leader and Harper mentor Preston Manning. It was Manning's dedication to the issue of Senate reform that put, and has kept, it as a substantive issue in Canadian politics.

One would think that Manning would have something to say about Harper's Senate appointments, but has all along declined to comment.

Ever since Harper became Conservative party leader and Prime Minister, however, Manning has made a point of restraining his criticisms of Harper to those that are constructive and not damaging.

It isn't inconceivable that Manning's silence on the matter is indicative that he takes significant umbrage with it. A Manning 20 years younger may have even leaped back into the political fray over the issue.

It's all enough to make one wonder what would be said if Harper and his former colleagues sat down over a private dinner. Sometimes, one really can't go home again, and it isn't outrageous to wonder if Stephen Harper's former Reform party colleagues would welcome him as enthusiastically as once before.

Wishful Thinking and Political Naivete

Proportional representation is not a miracle cure

Writing in an op/ed column on The Mark, Michael Urban offers an optimistic, but ultimately incredibly naive insistence that proportional representation will ultimately fix all that ails the Canadian political system -- in this case, the disturbing lack of cooperation between political parties.

He begins by invoking a recent (and surprising) call from Tom Flanagan for increased political cooperation in Parliament:

"In a recent piece in The Globe and Mail, former Conservative Party advisor Tom Flanagan claims that, as of 2004, we have entered a period of chronic minority parliaments. Canada’s electoral map, Flanagan argues, is simply too divided for any single party to gain the support needed for a majority government – a situation he sees continuing into the future.

As Flanagan correctly notes, the obvious consequence of this state of affairs is that in order for Parliament to accomplish anything of substance, our political parties will need to cooperate more regularly and effectively than they are accustomed to.

In this vein, he points to the recent Harper/Ignatieff 'power-sharing' agreement to study employment insurance as an important step towards the type of sustainable cooperation he believes is needed. Flanagan ends his piece by expressing a hope that this sort of cooperation will continue in the months, and indeed years, to come.

While Flanagan’s analysis of Canada’s contemporary political geography is correct, his conclusion – in which he adopts a strangely Pollyanna-esque prescription for the future – does not follow. Whatever he may hope for, Flanagan ought to know that Canada’s political system – at least in its current configuration – is systematically biased against inter-party teamwork. This makes sustained cooperation highly unlikely.

One of the main sources of this bias is our electoral system. By making majority governments a real possibility, our current system creates perverse incentives against cooperation. Essentially, parties are presented with the following questionable choice: why cooperate now – something that necessarily entails compromise and getting less than what one wants – when one can stall progress, allow the situation to deteriorate, blame the other side for the negative outcome, use the unhappiness and anger with the situation to propel one to a majority in the next election, and then do what one really wants without having to compromise?"

This could certainly be argued to account for the uncooperative nature of the Liberal and Conservative parties -- the two parties with any chance of all at governing in any election.

It doesn't account for the uncooperative nature of the NDP and especially the Bloc Quebecois -- the two parties with no chance at all of attaining a minority government in virtually any election, let alone a majority government.

Effectively erasing the possibility of majority governments won't ensure greater levels of cooperation in Parliament. If anything, it will increase the incentive for minor and comparatively minor political parties, such as the NDP, BQ and Green party, to conflate comparatively minor political issues in hopes of minimal gains in the proportionately-elected Parliament in order to more effectively be able to play kingmaker.

"This structural bias is exacerbated by the fact that despite claiming to desire more cooperative politics, voters routinely punish politicians when they seek to cooperate.

The 2008 coalition debacle demonstrated that many Canadians, apparently unaware of – or at least uncomfortable with – how our parliamentary system works, opposed an unprecedented level of cooperation that would have installed a government supported by representatives who garnered a greater percentage of the popular vote (53.72 per cent) than any other peacetime government in Canadian history. Granted, some of this opposition was based on certain reasonable objections, but no small amount of it emerged from other mistaken notions that what the coalition proposed to do was somehow unfair or unconstitutional."

Of course, this argument makes the common error of assuming that Canadians voted for the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois with a coalition government in mind as a possibility emerging from the election.

Considering that then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion had ruled that option out during the election itself, there was no reason why Canadians would consider that to be a realistic option.

When historians look back on the Liberal/NDP/BQ coalition proposal, they will recognize in it a clear case of bait and switch politics. Stephane Dion had disavowed coalition government as a post-election option in order to dissuade Liberal voters from casting their votes for the NDP in key difference-making ridings.

Yet, when it became apparent after the election -- after his promise of a resignation as Liberal leader, no less -- that such a scheme could make him Prime Minister, Dion seemed to change his mind at the earliest opportunity.

There were countless reasons why Canadians rejected the Liberal/NDP/BQ coalition. Expectations that parliament would respect the democratically-expressed will of the people is certainly the strongest.

"All of this gives one more reason, though a too-often-neglected one, for electoral reform in the direction of increased proportionality in our electoral system. By creating 'false majorities' (majority governments that don’t actually command majority electoral support) our current system has inured Canadians into believing that minority governments are an aberration, and a distasteful one at that, despite the fact that they actually represent a much more realistic representation of Canadians’ preferences.

Indeed, one of the most powerful arguments against increasing the proportionality of the system is that the current first-past-the-post system is more likely to deliver majority governments and 'strong government.' If we accept Flanagan’s analysis, this trade-off no longer holds and the current system loses one its most important supports.

By removing the lure of false majorities, a more proportional system would force the parties to cooperate and actually work with the preferences expressed by Canadian voters. While it does not completely eliminate the incentives structures I detailed above, it does reduce their salience and introduce more positive countervailing incentives.

Instead of hoping that the parties will change their ways without changing any of the incentives to do so, as Flanagan suggests, proportional representation offers a realistic prescription for more cooperation and more representative public policy."

Urban is right about one thing: minority governments are not such a great and terrible thing.

Because minority governments must seek and gain the confidence of opposition parties in order to survive, it ensures that the views of a broader variety of Canadians will be reflected within the government's policies.

But there are good reasons for Canadians to prefer the stability of majority governments to the inherent instability of minority governments. Majority governments have proven to be more effective, even if they tend to marginalize the opposition.

These problems with Urban's proportional representation proposal are only the beginning. Key questions about representation and accountability to voters also loom over any proportional representation proposal.

Whatever wishful thinkers such as Michael Urban may wish to believe, proportional representation unequivocally is not a miracle panacea to everything that ails Canadian politics. If anything, it will create more problems than it will solve.

The Strange Puzzle of Conservative Anti-Aboriginal Bias

Conservatives launch new Aboriginal Caucus

Reality dealt the notion of an anti-Aboriginal bias within the Conservative party a savage kick to the nads recently, as the party unveiled its Aboriginal Caucus.

The caucus is made up of four aboriginal MPs -- Rob Clarke, Rod Bruinooge, Leona Aglukkaq and Shelly Glover -- and Senators Gerry St Germain and Patrick Brazeau.

By contrast, the Liberal party has three aboriginal Senators and a single aboriginal MP. The NDP has a single aboriginal senator.

Yet with many people in Canada insisting that the Conservative party has an anti-aborginal bias -- as embodied by the comments and academic work of MP Pierre Poilevre and strategist Tom Flanagan -- the fact that the Conservative party has the largest aboriginal caucus out of any party in Canada. Yet that particular dilemma, as are so many in Canada, is purely political.

In reality, this matter seems to revolve almost entirely around a difference in opinion regarding to how aboriginal issues in Canada are best dealt with -- a difference in opinion cleaved by a massive ideological divide.

On one side of this ideological divide are entrenched political figures within aboriginal bands and organizations who relish the political clientelism that has been promoted by the Liberal party and NDP for decades. To these people -- and those who support them -- the very notion of transforming aboriginal politics is utterly offensive, even clientelism has proven to be an abject failure.

Thousands upon thousands of aboriginal people in Canada continue to live in poverty despite the billions of dollars spent trying to solve this problem.

When individuals such as Flanagan, Poilievre or Frances Widdowson dare speak out about this fact they are often accused of uttering "hurtful" remarks about aboriginal Canadians -- if not outright hate speech.

But the fact that the Conservative party has succeeded in not only admitting to Parliament, but in actually electing more aboriginal parliamentarians than their allegedly more "sympathetic" political counterparts should give pause to many Canadians when they stop to ponder which party is truly looking for answers to the problems that have plagued Canada's aboriginals for so many decades.

It certainly isn't the political parties who have benefited politically by pandering to organizations who sputter with outrage if the Prime Minister meets with the "wrong" aboriginal groups that don't support the old system of poverty-perpetuating clientelism.

That the Conservative party has the largest caucus of aboriginal representatives should give these people pause as well. It probably won't, but it should.

The Slow Rebuilding of Stephen Harper's Reputation

Harper rides to Obama's defense

Writing in an update of Harper's Team, Tom Flanagan makes some interesting points regarding Stephen Harper's actions which -- at least according to the arguments of opposition leaders -- precipitated the move to defeat his government and replace it with a Liberal-NDP-Bloc Quebecois coalition government.

In November of 2008, Harper moved to strike subsidies for political parties from the federal budget. The result was a Constitutional Crisis of potentially-monumental proportions.

“Before the fall fiasco, [Mr. Harper] wasn't exactly loved by the public, but he was widely respected by political observers as a competent manager and shrewd strategist. After his misadventure with the political subsidy issue, many are saying that his strategic sense has been overrated,” Flanagan writes. “This is a dangerous development, for if you are not to be loved you must at least be respected.”

Flanagan also notes that many of Harper's reversals of policy -- fixed election dates and Senate reform being obvious examples -- have significantly tattered Harper's image.

“This is a major loss for a political leader ... once seen as a man of conviction," he continues. "How long will voters continue to support someone who is thought to be mainly a cunning tactician, especially if a run of mistakes makes him seem not even particularly cunning?”

As it regarded his (actually sensible) move to eliminate subsidies for political parties, Harper was said to be "playing silly political games" (by Liberal Gerard Kennedy), and attempting to destroy the opposition.

While the many Canadians who question whether or not the government should prop up political parties that can't raise their own funds may reject this particular treatment, there's little question that the optics of the situation lend themselves to that.

So it's against the backdrop of a need to rehabilitate his image that Stephen Harper took a calculated political risk while appearing on FOX News.

Harper defended US President Barack Obama -- an individual that many Candians expected to treat as a cross-border political opponent -- during an interview on the FOX Business News.

Harper not only refused to condemn Obama's stimulus spending, but he defended it. "We need stimulus spending now, and I say that as a conservative," Harper said.

"When the house is on fire ... you have to bring the hoses and spray water all over it, you can't worry about the basement," he continued. "The reality is, the fiscal situation in the United States is very worrisome, but that said, President Obama came into office with a deep structural deficit position, at a time when fiscal stimulus is actually required economically."

"There are a lot of similarities between what we're doing in Canada with stimulus [and] what President Obama is doing, what many other countries are doing," he added.
"In relative terms in the G7, we are actually able to have the biggest stimulus package and we're actually in the best position to return to surplus with the recession is over."

Harper certainly is taking a risk in defending Obama on FOX News.

The treatment of many of the United States' most fervent right-wing commentators at anyone who dares flirt with any sort of defense of Obama has been well documented.

Although the Canadian version of conservatism is generally far more moderate and restrained than its American counterpart, an unfortunate number of Canadian conservatives seem to hang on the every word of individuals such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

Should individuals like these decide to attack Harper for not joining in an obligatory right-wing dog pile on Obama, the rupture within the Canadian conservative movement may not be catastrophic, but it will be noticeable.

Whether Stephen Harper's defense of Barack Obama was actually calculated as an attempt to try to reach back to moderate Canadian voters or was sincere will almost certainly be the matter of significant speculation, but in the end will ultimately be known only by Harper himself.

In the meantime, the efforts to rehabilitate Harper's image are obviously underway.

A Foolish Assumption

There's nothing rational about discrimination

Writing in an op/ed column in the Globe and Mail, Tom Flanagan attempts to make the case that the Canadian Human Rights Commission is, essentially, obsolete and should be abolished.

In many ways, as Flanagan notes, Canada's Human Rights Commissions are largely responsible for their own current predicament -- that of a lack of public credibility:

"For the first time in a long time, human-rights commissions are on the defensive. The Harper government is taking away pay equity from the Canadian commission and University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon's report has recommended repeal of the commission's right to interfere with free speech.

Both federal and provincial commissions are suffering blowback from their unsuccessful attempts to muzzle media gadflies Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. Mr. Levant, in particular, has declared a jihad against the commissions, drawing attention to the one-sided nature of the legislation under which they operate. For example, commissions pay expenses for complainants but not respondents; successful respondents cannot sue complainants to recover costs; commissions allow complaints for the same alleged offence to be lodged in multiple jurisdictions, amounting to double jeopardy."

There's certainly a case to made for this. The extremely self-destructive behaviour of many of the CHRC's investigators, including the one who was unscrupulous enough to hack the wireless internet connection of a private citizen, has made the CHRC extremely suspect in the eyes of many Canadian citizens.

The toll taken on the commissions by Levant alone has left the CHRC struggling to maintain its public sense of credibility.

But continuing Flanagan's analysis of the predicament confronting the CHRC hits an incredibly fatal flaw, when he attempts to analyze the phenomenon of discrimination -- with the CHRC is meant to combat -- in the same manner as would an economist:

"In a competitive market, discrimination is costly to the discriminator. An employer who refuses to hire workers because of race, religion or ethnicity restricts his own choices and imposes a disadvantage on his firm. Meanwhile, his competitors gain by being able to hire from a larger pool. The same logic applies to restaurateurs turning away potential customers, or landlords refusing to lease to people of particular categories. (I'll never forget the experience of owning rental property in the recession of the 1980s; I would have rented to Martians if they had showed up with a damage deposit.)

The argument applies no matter how rampant prejudice and discrimination may be. Those who discriminate impose burdens on themselves and confer advantages on their competitors. Competitive markets don't immediately abolish discriminatory practices, but they tend to erode them, not by trying to enlighten bigoted people, but by making discrimination unprofitable."

Flanagan overlooks two basic truths: one of economics, and one of discrimination.

Economics proceeds from the assumption that most people make rational choices. In any particular situation, they will make the decision that benefits them most fully -- or at least believes will benefit them the most.

Discrimination, meanwhile, is not rational. And although Flanagan's argument that discrimination is self-defeating and thus unsustainable in a competitive environment is an elegant argument, it overlooks the fact that discrimination has often taken place in some extremely competitive environments.

In Canada, few things have ever been as competitive as the sport of hockey. Yet the disadvantage of discriminating against the most talented or hard-working players on the basis of race or ethnicity has often proven to be a less-than-convincing incentive to not discriminate.

Canadian hockey offers numerous examples of this.

Perhaps the most little-known is the discrimination against the Winnipeg Falcons, the Canadian team that won the first Olympic Hockey Championship in 1920. The Falcons had won the Allan Cup as the champions of a league in Winnipeg staffed entirely by players of Icelandic descent. Players of Icelandic descent in Winnipeg had to start this league because other leagues wouldn't allow them to play because of their Icelandic heritage.

Their triumph at the Olympics -- which also won them a World Championship, as the World Championship was awarded to the winner of the Olympic tournament -- eventually won them a warm, if uncomfortable, welcome back in Winnipeg.

Players like Herb Carnegie -- who played excellently in training camps for the New York Rangers but were never allowed an opportunity to play for the club -- were discriminated against for the colour of their skin. Carnegie won MVP honours in the Quebec Provincial League in 1946, '47 and '48. The New York Rangers had won a Stanley Cup in 1940, but could have well won another with a player like Carnegie, whose skills were often considered comparable to those of Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau.

If discrimination could be defeated by the self-interested rationality of those who need top-caliber talents to excel in highly competitive environments, as Flanagan insists, one would have to imagine that such historical episodes never would have happened.

The truth is that there is nothing rational about discrimination. It's predicated on emotional responses to evident differences between people, and in cases of racism doesn't even necessarily rely on differently-coloured skin.

Discrimination proves to be one of those instances where the free market isn't enough to ensure justice for those involved.

Flanagan is eager to argue that cases wherein discrimination turns out to be profitable are so because of government interference in the free market:

"Government can use its coercive powers, however, to protect discriminatory practices in the private sector from being undermined by competition.

There is a long and dishonourable history of propping up discrimination in the private sector - refusing to enforce laws against violence (lynching), passing discriminatory legislation (Jim Crow laws in the American South) and authorizing business cartels (sports leagues) and labour cartels (trade unions). Satchel Paige would have been pitching against Babe Ruth if professional baseball had been a competitive industry.

Government, using its monopoly of coercion, imposes the costs of discrimination on its hapless targets. Think of the episodes in our history that make Canadians feel ashamed and for which our governments have been busy apologizing: disregard of aboriginal property rights; sending Indian children to residential schools; closing the doors to Jewish refugees; keeping out Chinese and Sikh immigrants; relocating the Japanese during the Second World War; interning Ukrainians during the First World War and Italians during the Second World War; eugenic sterilization of the mentally and physically handicapped.

Every one of these was an exercise of governmental power. Political majorities undoubtedly approved at the time, but public opinion did not relocate the Japanese or send Indian children to residential schools. Governmental authority did, backed up by the coercive monopoly of the state. Authorizing a government agency to stamp out discrimination in the private sector is truly setting the fox to guard the henhouse."

Yet the Winnipeg Falcons were the victim of discrimination within an amateur league, unprotected by government legislation, and that Carnegie actually excelled within a Quebec league that was.

As Flanagan notes, discrimination in the private sector may well be self-liquidating over time, as those who very much do disadvantage themselves by discriminating against those with valuable talents inevitably lose out.

But that does absolutely nothing for those being discriminated against today. That is where Human Rights Commissions come in handy, and that is a valuable role that they fill.

While few Canadians will pretend that Human Rights Commissions are perfect, fewer still would pretend that those imperfections couldn't be rectified with a program of reform, not abolition.




Other bloggers writing about this topic:

George Young - "World According to Flanagan (And Harper)"

Cracked Crystal Ball - "Tom Flanagan: It's All About Social Darwinism"

Pragmatism Is No Excuse

Democracy in short order in Conservative party

The Conservative party has surrendered any democratic high ground it may have had today, as all of its sitting MPs have been automatically renominated for Canada's next federal election -- whenever that may be.

The party had sent mail-in ballots to all of its members to ask them whether or not they wished to challenge the nomination of their local MP. A two-thirds "yes" vote was necessary in order to challenge.

Conservative party President Don Plett and sometimes-Tory strategist Tom Flanagan have both defended this move based on pragmatism.

"In a minority Parliament situation, our MPs were forever looking over their [shoulder] to try to figure out whether they were going to be challenged in a nomination and couldn't properly do their job they were elected to do," Plett explained.

"Politics isn't like mathematics," Flanagan mused about the decision, which is a departure from traditional Conservative party policy on nominations. "[it's] not a realm of eternal truths. When circumstances change radically you may have to change some of your organizing principles."

Yet when one of those organizing principles is a fundamental principle of your party -- in this case the populism championed by Reform party and Canadian Alliance founder Preston Manning -- compromising on it is a very bad idea.

In this case, the move has left the Conservative party facing a very severe democratic deficit within its own ranks.

NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis hits the nail on the head when he suggested that, for any party with the ambition to lead democratically, democracy must begin within the party itself.

"Every nomination race is a challenge to the sitting MP to prove that they've still got the support of their riding's members," she said.

Which is a very important point. Even if the Tories wanted to reserve nomination contests for when they're truly necessary, a simple majority vote would be a much more democratic margin than a two-thirds margin.

Even Canadian Christian Coaliton President Charles McVety has his share of concerns about the move. "The democratic deficit in this country is already large enough," he said. "We don't need the governing party to be sinking deeper into ... a culture of entitlement."

Pragmatim is no excuse for a political party undermining its own fundamental principles -- particularly when one of thoe principles is supposed to be grassroots democracy.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Richard Evans - "Fiddlefudging by the Conservative Party"

Views from the Lake, eh? - "Where 'No' Means 'Yes'"

And Therein Lies the Problem

Ultra-secretive environment of Canadian politics keeps too many mysteries

Bob Woodward's journalism has transformed him into an American icon.

Not in the mold of Walter Kronkite or Walter Lippmann, but rather in the mold of an enterprising muckraker.

Woodward was the man who broke the story about Richard Nixon's misdeeds in the infamous Watergate affair -- the scandal that has become the prototypical American political scandal.

Woodward can make it all sound terribly easy. At a recent speaking engagement in Calgary, University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan was amazed at precisely how.

"Your career in Canada would be inconceivable," Flanagan mused. "No Prime Minister in Canada would give you seven minutes, let alone seven hours. And the thought that you would get all these hundreds of interviews with underlings, and meetings, it just wouldn't happen. There's like light years of difference between Canada and the United States."

"From the evidence I have, I think that's true," Woodward agreed, suggesting that Canada may have a unique national character trait as a result of its decidedly non-revolutionary nature.

While American history was forged out of the challenging of authority figures, Canadian history has emerged out of respect for, and deference to, authority as the independent Canadian state emerged slowly and steadily out of British colonialism.

Flanagan notes that an affair like the lingering Brian Mulroney/Karlheinz Schreiber affair could never have occurred in the United States.

"We have a judicial commission appointed to investigate things that Brian Mulroney did in the final years of his administration 15 years ago and we still don't know the truth, and we probably won't know the truth even after this commission is finished," Flanagan said. "I imagine in the United States, the truth would have been published at the time on the front page of the Washington Post."

In Canada, the first inklings of the Sponsorship Scandal were detected as early as 2000. Yet it took until 2005 for a judicial inquiry to begin to establish responsibility for the scandal.

In the United States, it took only two years for the Watergate Hotel break-in to lead to Richard Nixon's resignation.

This difference in response time to scandals allows for time to obscure the facts and dodge responsibility. Then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien continues to evade the scope of his responsibility for the Sponsorship Scandal despite the fact that the Spnsorship Program was run out of the Prime Minister's office, and run by his staff.

The Sponsorship Scandal isn't the only Canadian scandal to be obscured by time. The tainted blood scandal concluded with a stonewalling compensation package rammed through the House of Commons that left thousands of blood-injured Canadians uncompensated.

The federal government had collaborated with several provincial governments to force a compensation package through Parliament that had set a largely-arbitrary cut-off date for victims' eligibility for compensation.

These are only three of numerous scandals that have never been exposed to the full light of day. The low standard of transparency in Canadian politics should be alarming to many Canadians.

Woodward's words should give nearly any Canadian pause.

"Democracies die in darkness."

The Case For Canadian Conservatism

Hugh Segal insists Canadian conservatism is unique

When most people think about conservatism they think about Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan or Dwight Eisenhower.

Conservative Senator Hugh Segal would like to add a few figures to the iconography of conservatism -- a few Canadians like sir John A MacDonald, John Diefenbaker or Bill Davis.

In order to do this, Segal understands that he must make the case that Canadian conservatism is unique.

"Canadian conservatism is about Canadian values, not about American values or British values," Segal explained during a recent speech in Regina. "It's shaped by our feeling for community and the rights of local groups to do things in their own way. It's shaped by our strong belief in the Crown as a strong constitution structure that protects our democracy and as such, it's one of the reasons that we have a separate identity in this country from the United States who are such a powerful cultural force."

Unlike in the United States, where conservative politicians can build quick electoral coalitions then drift away from them while in office, Canadian conservatives must keep in touch with the conservative movement.

"The Conservative government in any province or the Conservative government in Ottawa is only successful when it reaches out to embrace all the brands of conservatism," Segal continued. "They all are welcome in the Tory family and this Prime Minister is doing a pretty good job of that in difficult economic times."

Intriguingly, this may have a lot to do with the never-ending American election cycles. In the United States, one third of all Senators -- the more powerful house of the American Congress -- are elected every two years.

This means that American conservative Senators are effectively granted political cover by another looming election. Even if they fail to make good on promises to conservative voters, odds are that there will quickly be another election to distract them. This allows them to quickly rebuild an electoral coalition under the guise of being a conservative.

In order to be successful, Canadian conservatives need to actually govern as conservatives.

But embracing all of the various camps of the conservative movement -- from deep blue conservatives, libertarians, reformers and progressive conservatives -- can sometimes lead to policies that don't appear conservative to people with simplistic views on the concept.

Therein lies the dilemma.

Stephen Harper's gradual program of tax reform -- a program Tom Flanagan has described as "tightening the screws" on government -- is clearly a Conservative policy, even if the stimulus-spending produced deficit obscures this considerably.

Once one gets into the issue of social policy, the matter becomes even more obscure.

"That's really the message. We have a unique brand of conservatism that those people who think that it's all simply American-brand George (W.) Bush conservatism I think got a lesson or got a different view of the kind of moderate brand of conservatism," added Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy director Ken Rasumussen.

"I think there is a debate within conservatism about what it is and of course, Senator Segal represents a strain, certainly the traditional strain, about the moderate brand of conservatism that's necessary to appeal to Canadians and I think that's the message he gave," Rasmussen continued.

Of course, the importance of the moderate, progressive strain of conservatism goes deeper than simply appealing to Canadians. It reflects the importance of respecting Canadian values, which have always been moderate and progressive in nature.

That's the ultimate litmus test for Canadian conservatism: it must be progressive in order to survive. Even if John Diefenbaker didn't fully understand this when he opposed renaming the Conservative party as the Progressive Conservatives, his understanding of this was demonstrated by his policies.

Dr Ignatieff's Coalition

Liberal leader may need to play Dr Frankenstein with coalition

In an op/ed appearing in today's Globe and Mail, Tom Flanagan writes about musings that the Liberal party may attempt to force a fall election.

Flanagan notes that, after his refutal of the Liberal/NDP coalition, defeating the government may require Ignatieff to reassemble and reanimate that very coalition.

"Mr Ignatieff can't force an election by himself," Flanagan rightly notes. "He needs the votes of the New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois to defeat the Conservatives on a vote of no-confidence. In other words, he has to reactivate the coalition with the socialists and separatists against which Canadians reacted so strongly last fall."

But because Ignatieff's decision to abandon the proposed coalition so deeply offended Jack Layton and the NDP -- Layton accused Ignatieff of abandoning opposition in favour of simply backing the government -- the NDP and Bloc Quebecois' will to defeat the government has to exceed the diminished good will between themselves and the Liberals.

There are no guarantees.

For one thing, as Flanagan notes, the NDP may not be well-situated financially to wage an election campaign, having nearly matched the Conservative party's expenditures on the past campaign.

And while recent polls show that both the Liberals and NDP are gaining support, those polls can often be deceptive. Swings in support between the Conservatives and Liberals are likely to have the biggest impact in Liberal-NDP swing ridings, where narrow margins of voters opting for the Conservatives over the Liberals have delivered increasing numbers of seats to the NDP.

The noted lack of substantive difference between Harper and Ignatieff on many issues may make an election gamble less tempting for the NDP -- and there's no question Layton would be risking a lot.

"In the six elections starting in 1993, the result has always been the same: When the Liberals go up, the NDP goes down, and vice versa," Flanagan notes. "Jack Layton has worked hard in three campaigns to build up his party's caucus from 13 members when he became leader to 37 after the 2008 election. Will he risk those gains trying to put in power a Liberal leader who mirrors the Conservative leader on so many major issues?"

The Liberals and NDP could, however, skip an election entirely by once again presenting Governor General Michaelle Jean with the option of appointing their coalition in the government's place. This would certainly take the risk off of Layton's shoulders, as they could terminate the coalition at any point if they were unsatisfied with their partner -- as could the Bloc Quebecois.

But then Ignatieff risks doing precisely what the coalition did the last time it was dangled -- energize Conservative party support back into majority territory.

This is all depending on whether or not the Liberals and NDP can find themselves a willing partner in the Bloc Quebecois. But under the previous coalition proposal, the Liberals and NDP treated the Bloc as if would be the coaltion's equivalent of a feral family member, stowed away in the attic and subsisted off of raw fish heads.

While they certainly seemed to enjoy the attention they received the last time the coalition reared its head -- the question of mortgaging Canada's government to a separatist party naturally forced Quebec separatism back into the limelight -- one can legitimately wonder whether they'd be as eager to expose themselves to this treatment again.

Moreover, as Flanagan notes, increased Liberal support poses key dilemmas for the Bloc as well.

"The Bloc may also balk at an early election," he writes. "Money is not the problem; since the Bloquistes operate only in Quebec, their campaign costs are so low that they can live off the federal subsidy without worrying about fundraising. But if the Liberal vote goes up in Quebec, the Bloc could lose seats in the Montreal area. It might compensate by picking up Conservative seats around Quebec City; but that's not a sure thing, because most of those seats are held by well-entrenched incumbents who might win re-election on their individual reputations."

Flanagan goes on to insist that Ignatieff's refutal of the coalition upon becoming Liberal leader is not written in stone.

"There is the little matter of Mr Ignatieff's signature on the coalition agreement, around which a whole suite of Conservative ads could be designed," Flanagan writes.

But here he is in error. After all, it is not Ignatieff's signature on the coalition agreement, but rather Stephane Dion's. And while Ignatieff did conditionally back the coalition -- even agreeing, along with Bob Rae and Dominic LeBlanc, to suspend the leadership campaign -- he never signed that particular agreement, nor did he volunteer himself to lead any such coalition.

Flanagan is right to note that Ignatieff could have terminated the coalition by opposing it. But in order to do so he would have had to oppose his party at the time when it was most vulnerable. That would have been political suicide not only for his leadership ambitions, but for his party as well.