Stephen Harper’s heartless abstractions

In the first half of that first majority government, a Canadian prime minister can truly express himself.

Stephen Harper’s actions this year confirm that he’s not merely a micro-manager, vetting press releases, hoarding votes, and fattening files on his enemies. Rather, he has a few stubborn ideas about the country and that he’s prepared to use his political capital to advance them.

Opposition attention focuses largely on Harper’s ruthless means: the use, for instance, of an elephantine omnibus bill and a majority of votes in the House of Commons to get his way. Thomas Walkom of the Toronto Star stands out by taking on what actually drives him.

“When Stephen Harper’s Conservatives talk about protecting the economy, they are speaking of an abstraction . . . .

“But the real economy is not an abstraction. It is people’s jobs and wages. It is our livelihood. It is how we get by.”

Click on: www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1204343--walkom-gm-oshawa-job-cuts-show-real-economy-hurting-under-stephen-harper

Walkom suspects that Harper has real people on his mind too—corporate executives and market analysts, for sure. However, Walkom is onto something: Harper does appear to be very serious about a number of abstractions.

Here are three propositions that seem to guide his government: protect Canada’s economy, but don’t drive it; don’t do health and education policy for the provinces; and Washington is Canada’s over-riding foreign policy concern.

The federal government, he’s demonstrated, shouldn’t refuse to rescue the economy when it’s in a crisis. He’s closer to Obama as a reluctant Keynesian than to Paul Ryan Republicans. He participated in bailing out GM and Chrysler corporations in the midst of an unprecedented crisis, but offered nothing to help two troubled high-tech giants (Nortel and RIM) after the recession had bottomed out.

Harper hopes he’s transferred sufficient $billions to the provinces that their electorates and social policy stakeholders will concentrate on their management, not their advocacy in Ottawa. In foreign policy and in social policy, he’s quite prepared to disappoint numerous constituencies in Ottawa, across Canada, and in the world.

Those who believe that a federation’s central government must be more creative than its provinces or states and cities; that creative government is, by definition, always interested in what’s interesting; and that Ottawa can conduct itself abroad as if Canada is a significant power in its own right will eventually mount a powerful challenge to the Harper majority.

You can reject his abstractions with abstractions of your own. However, it would be foolhardy to complain about abstract thinking per se.

The West has had many leaders who were relatively free of abstractions. They loved the game and were affected by the faces of every supplicant. However, we're finding that living in their future is no abstraction.

Is the right wing strong enough to save Canada’s Liberal Party?

Does Canada’s Liberal Party have a poison pill to block a merger with the New Democrats? Objective observers see only twisted arguments—but no compelling logic—for maintaining their separate political enterprises.

Thomas Walkom, the Toronto Star’s most experienced and demanding follower of left economics and politics in Canada, put it nicely:

“There may be some points of distinction between pro-business, socially compassionate Liberals and pro-business, socially compassionate New Democrats. But for many voters, these differences are increasingly difficult to see.”

Click on: www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1072608--walkom-a-plan-to-unite-the-left-that-just-might-work

Liberals win more Catholic votes and New Democrats enjoy more support from unionized workers. Nevertheless, neither party provides formal privileges for any distinct block of votes. Both parties do better than Conservatives in slower growth regions and multicultural ridings and both appeal to people who look to Ottawa for economic and social redress. Both disdain the religiosity and heedless capitalism of the new right—they would like Canada to be freer of the US and they align themselves with good science and civilizing forces globally.

Neither one would have to purge their rhetoric or shed close friends in order to live together. A joint team of wordsmiths could smooth out their platforms over beer and martinis at Toronto’s iconic Royal York Hotel. The NDP’s angry socialist caucus and the Liberal’s angry anti-abortionists could remain as they are—harmlessly reviewing their options.

However, John Turner, the former Liberal prime minister whose liberalism was inspired by Canada’s earliest liberals, has offered a simple reason why the Liberal Party can carry on calling itself Canada’s political center:     

“We’re a centre-left, centre-right party. They’ve got a historic, legitimate relationship with the trade-union movement and so on. It’s a different focus.”

Click on: www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/1074341--john-turner-still-fighting-for-the-liberals

The logic is decisive: being on both sides does put you in the middle. However, is there anything alive on the right in the Liberal Party today? Do right wing liberals ever meet except at funerals?

(Right wing thinking in liberal circles can be more than merely progressive foot-dragging. Neo-liberalism represents a coherent and positive set of ideas about the efficiency of private markets and the importance of checking the bureaucratizing and centralizing tendencies of modern government.)

Neo-liberals kept the Liberal Party in the center in Canada, as they have in the United States. Liberal reformers actually supported privatizing unnecessary public assets and reduced income and corporate taxes. In the US, in the Obama and in other Democrat administrations, liberal reformers have championed electricity and airline deregulation, performance pay for teachers, and extensive private involvement in health care. The former Liberal premier of British Columbia Gordon Campbell vigorously championed carbon taxes and other market incentives explicitly to avoid excessive regulation.

Today, Liberal Party politicians will talk about new markets and partnerships with the private sector, and transparency and evidence-based government. These inclusive pieties, however, don’t set them apart or justify their persistence as an organized political entity.

Of course, the Liberal Party could end all this morbid speculation if it demonstrated a serious division opinion on contemporary liberal challenges.

When was the last time a prominent Liberal upheld the primary responsibility of the provinces in health and education, or the merit of fewer monopolies in public as well as in private services, or the idea that economic growth and robust markets are more important than business-government bureaucracies in driving innovation and generating wealth?

When prominent Liberals start attacking the Harper government for doing too little and being too timid, they’ll have the center back to guard.

Running on the Canadian economy leaves too much to the imagination

A good plan for an election—an election Harper truly may not want—offers offer more sizzle than just promising to keep a steady hand on a fragile economic recovery. Managing the economy and surviving five years with a minority has given Harper one precious asset—a reputation for competence. However, that reputation has to be put to work or his unlovable personality will be the issue.

The case for the opposition was effectively framed by Thomas Walkom of the Toronto Star:

“The Conservatives will play on this by presenting Harper as the Buckley’s cough syrup of politics — hard to swallow but good for you. The opposition parties will showcase a different view.

Which leaves it to us. How much do we dislike him? How much do we mistrust him? Do we dislike and mistrust the other party leaders more?

Is he the strong Prime Minister required by perilous times? Or is he just nasty?”

Click on:

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/949101--walkom-there-s-only-one-election-issue-harper

The logic of making Harper the issue appropriately reflects electoral circumstances. He’s so close to a majority government now that it is fair to ask: do you want more of Stephen Harper in your face? Do you want to give that wilfull man even more power?

Here’s a proposition for the Conservatives to consider. Competence is a two edged sword: as merely a prize for surviving, it leaves Harper looking like a bully. However, as a tool to get big things done—to break down opposition to change—it makes the promise of leadership possible.

Harper could make a winning case for a majority if he put his reputation for competence behind a new agenda. Whether negotiating a constitutional amendment to democratize the Senate or a new deal with the US or the provinces, Harper could make iffy good ideas look like they’d have their best chance under his leadership.  

“New Border Vision” (2)

The “New Border Vision” negotiators and communicators will want to studying closely Thomas Walkom’s article “Why Ottawa’s new border scheme is such a loser”, in the December 11^th Toronto Star.  Others, who are free to think more broadly, should also read his critique.

Click on: http://www.thestar.com/article/905413--walkom-why-ottawa-s-new-border-scheme-is-such-a-loser

Walkom, the Star’s National Affairs columnist, argues that Canada’s possible loss of sovereignty—envisioned in the draft statement released last week—won’t be offset by the restoration of a hassle-free border between Canada and the US. “So the upshot of any perimeter deal will be to give the US two borders—an outer one around North America and an inner one at the 49^th parallel.”

He damns this negotiation, however, not really because it will fail but because it might limit our sovereignty, unnecessarily. Unnecessary, in his view, because: “the deal will tie our fortunes more closely to a nation that, while still powerful, is in economic decline.” Here’s Harper’s fundamental challenge.

The Canadian Government should design and then defend—likely in an election—a package big enough to re-open the border, for the sake of both countries. (To remove the border, American security services would likely want to be free to operate in Canada as they operate at home.) If the deal isn’t big, however, the border won’t effectively re-open.

If it is big Canadians will have to decide again to embrace the US as their principal partner for future prosperity and progress.

Canadians and their political leaders would have to talk openly, as Europeans have, about how citizen and democratic rights can be maintained in an integrated, economic and security union.

Then we’d actually be talking about—a new vision.