- There has been a lot of noise about the victory of Stephen
Harper, leader of Canada's new Conservative party, but just what did he
win?
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- Votes in the recent election for progressive parties
- Liberals, New Democrats, and Bloc Quebecois (quite progressive on social
issues) - went from 64.8% in the 2004 election to 58.2% in 2006, a handsome
majority that would be rated a landslide in an American presidential election.
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- Harper's minority-government party went from 29.6% of
the vote in 2004 to 36.3% in 2006, hardly a mandate for change, and certainly
not revolutionary change. Even Conservative diehards, while blowing about
victory, were perceptibly disappointed: you could almost hear the breath
whistling through their teeth. The new Conservatives remain decidedly a
minority party.
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- When we consider that the Liberals were divided by their
change in leadership, plagued by scandals and rumors of scandals, and ran
an unappealing campaign, the still-small vote for Conservatives gains is
telling.
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- Stephen Harper's muzzling of the Conservatives' Social-Neanderthal
Wing, largely resident in Alberta, during the 2006 campaign also must be
taken into account. In 2004, several of Harper's religious-right throwbacks
made embarrassing public statements about social policy, reminding Canadians
voters that they might just be letting a gang of Jehovah's Witnesses into
their living rooms. Harper silenced these people in 2006.
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- Harper himself spoke more calmly than he did in 2004,
when he sometimes resembled a flat-footed, angry kid, and I truly believe
Canadians, determined to punish the Liberals, with their usual sensible
and practical approach to politics, realized that a minority Harper government
represents little threat.
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- Harper simply will not be in a position to change any
of the major social policies most hated in heavily American-influenced
Alberta. Even if Harper were in a better position to try, Canada's enlightened
courts stand ready to strike down any poorly-conceived legislation. In
some cases, notably that of gay marriage, it was the courts themselves
that brought important human-rights issues to the point where legislation
was required.
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- Harper has already spoken of the courts. I don't know
why it is, but right-wingers always castigate courts for doing their jobs.
Thomas Jefferson, the intellectual godfather of the American extreme right,
absolutely hated federal courts, and it had nothing to do with democracy
because Jefferson didn't believe in democracy, and his Virginia was a place
were a tiny portion of the population white, male owners of substantial
property (roughly one percent of the population, even after the Revolution)
- got to vote.
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- Jefferson was ready to have Virginia separate, more than
half a century before the Civil War, over the issue of the Supreme Court's
interpreting the Bill of Rights. Jefferson thought the words were just
fine as advertising, but any attempt at their enforcement threatened his
comfortable world as slaveholder, local aristocrat, and narrow-minded states-righter.
His view reflected his own life in which he wrote many high-sounding phrases
as a false legacy while living off the avails of slavery and believing
blacks and women and others were not suited to play a role in government.
A toned-down version of this nasty American intellectual heritage crops
up in Alberta frequently, and Harper sometimes mimics it, though admittedly
with a less hateful tone than that of its chief American exponent, ex-cockroach
exterminator and big-time political money-launderer, Tom Delay of Texas.
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- The new Conservatives did pick up their first seats in
Quebec, but despite Quebec's reputation as a progressive society, we should
not forget that it was not all that long ago a base for social credit,
that strange amalgam of conservatism, rural values, and financial mysticism.
The Bloc Quebecois stretched hard to sweep the province over Liberal scandal
but only succeeded in sounding tired as well as highlighting its disingenuousness
over the connection between it and separatism. Who else was there to turn
to? The NDP is viewed as a boring troop of Anglo Boy Scouts in Quebec.
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- So long as Harper sticks to reforms like sensible new
rules for government accountability, no one can object. Other relatively
minor changes, likely to be supported by one or another party, will do
no harm.
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- There is one change that will be regrettable if Harper
can get support from another party in parliament for it. The Liberals did
a lot of work at building a genuine national day-care system, an important
concept in a society where more than three-quarters of women work.
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- In places like the violence-plagued Jamaican areas of
Toronto, real day-care is badly needed and the city has planned, based
on agreements with the Liberals, to create many new sites. But Harper's
campaign promise is instead for a monthly cheque, kind of a super baby-bonus,
although not large enough to buy day-care for anyone. A cheque will be
welcomed by anyone getting it, and will be especially so by Harper's stay-at-home,
mothers-in-apron crowd, but will it do anything to create good day-care
where it is most needed? Does any honest person believe that a cheque will
do what a well-organized, easily-accessed system would do, especially where
serious problems already involve poor parenting?
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- The greatest threat Harper's minority represents is agreement
with the Bloc Quebecois to de-centralizing programs with cash flowing to
the provinces. The reason for the Bloc's support of such programs is obvious.
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- I do not oppose specific new agreements where old ones
are out of date, as for example involving disproportionate impacts of immigration
on a city like Toronto. But wholesale changes are fraught with difficulties.
You only have to look at Bush's colossal blunders in reordering American
taxes, depleting the American treasury while rewarding segments of society
with windfall wealth, and yet spending like a drunken sailor on the things
he thinks important. Gigantic tax cuts like Bush's have huge long-term
implications for a society, many of them unpleasant or destructive.
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- Just one example of such destructive tax changes, perhaps
many Canadians do not appreciate, is the tremendous burden that has fallen
on American local governments, many of which are poor because they are
home mainly to poor people. Property taxes on homes in many U.S. cities
have reached extortionate levels, further driving people to distant suburbs
and encouraging mindless sprawl and the choking off of healthy cities.
Another example is multilevel income taxes in the U.S. with individual
states generally having their own separate systems, rules, and forms -
this even involves some people filing and paying income taxes to more than
one state. Many American cities, too, now levy taxes we do not associate
with urban jurisdiction.
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- Canada already is a more de-centralized society, dangerously
so in some aspects. The informal coalition of a Quebec separatist party
and the implicitly separatist sentiments of Harper's Alberta crowd is a
risky combination for the nation's future health and stability. This is
exactly the path by which Quebec separatism is truly dangerous: federal
politicians making gradual cozy arrangements which weaken the bonds of
national identity. Any referendum on separation with a clear question,
under prevailing arrangements in Canada, cannot produce a majority in Quebec,
much less a convincing majority. The Bloc's behavior and results in this
election, even at a time of heightened resentment over past federal Liberal
behavior, demonstrates this forcefully, as do endless polls over many years,
and as does the last referendum with its impossibly-ambiguous and complex
question. Even were it possible to imagine a referendum producing a yes,
the years of detailed negotiation over assets and liabilities required
to sort out a fair divorce would soon exhaust the momentum for change.
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- In Alberta, we already have a government that doesn't
know what to do with its new-found wealth. What on earth would it do with
more? It's all code for a form of separatism, a severe weakening of the
national government. If you listen to some Alberta voices, you hear silly
things like you might expect from a pimply teenage rock star that has overnight
become a multimillionaire. Alberta has simply lucked out in the tarsands
with world oil prices exploding. None of the province's new affluence is
due to the wisdom of its premier, Ralph Klein, or to the philosophy of
Harper's crowd. Klein balanced the budget with an unanticipated flood of
cash, something with which any premier could balance a budget. Were world
oil prices to collapse, all of the braggadocio over right-wing intellectual
nonsense like "not being afraid of excellence in Alberta" would
dry up like prairie grass in a drought.
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- Important social programs that almost define the character
of Canada need to apply, with accommodating variations, coast to coast,
and they need the resources from wealthier parts of the country to assist
the poorer parts. When we seriously depart from this principle, Canada
will have become the United States North.
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- I hope the Liberals take their rebuke by the electorate
seriously, making it abundantly clear before the next election that the
party is thoroughly clean and repentant. That and a sympathetic new leader,
perhaps an altogether fresh voice, are the sine qua non of coming back
before the Conservative-separatist axis inflicts too much damage on the
country.
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- Harper's almost wet-eyed puppy attitude towards the United
States is dangerous over any extended period, especially at a time of American
unapologetic imperial hubris, the kind of thing that makes the ongoing,
pointless destruction in Iraq possible. If the Liberals do things right,
Harper will not have the time.
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- We can expect, in the not-too-distant future, American-led
action against Iran. With America's over-stretched military forces, the
bad taste in many Congressmen's mouths of a unbelievably costly, failed
policy in Iraq, plus new lows in Bush's popularity, actual invasion seems
unlikely. However, severe sanctions and bombing or missile attacks seem
likely. The price of oil will soar yet again since Iran is one of the world's
great crude oil reservoirs, sending a great, unpleasant shock through the
economies of Western nations. Islamic countries will yet again feel insultingly
stung by the unbalanced justice of American policy. Will Prime Minister
Harper embrace such a de-stabilizing policy that is not in Canada's long-term
interest but is solely guided by America's will to re-order the planet?
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