Why Canada needs a liberal party

[Edward Campbell]

This article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen suggests that the Liberal Party of Canada needs a real (small l) liberal like Margaret Thatcher. I would go a bit farther and say that Canada needs a real (small l, Gladstonian)) liberal political party:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/Liberals+need+Margaret+Thatcher/8235786/story.html

Why the Liberals need a Margaret Thatcher
 
By Brian Lee Crowley, Ottawa Citizen

April 13, 2013

She was a liberal in the classical sense.

Having lived in the United Kingdom for the first half of Margaret Thatcher’s time in office, I saw her handiwork up close, just as I saw the electrifying effect she had on the British people, for both good and ill.

But in all the commentary I have read after her death, very few writers have, in my estimation, rightly understood her politics. And no one has mentioned how very relevant the Thatcherite legacy is to the Liberal Party of Canada, whose new leader is about to be chosen.

To begin with, anybody who thinks Margaret Thatcher was a conservative mistakes packaging for substance. What were her signature policies: the individualism of middle class aspiration and opportunity; a mistrust of monopoly and unaccountable institutions; free trade; a muscular and moralistic foreign policy; moderate taxes; and responsible public finances.

These are not the policies of British conservatism, which is the party of privilege and class, of deference to established institutions and authority, of paternalism, trimming and compromise. Truth be told, the Tories shared responsibility with Labour for the sad decline of Britain during the years before Thatcher. Long known in British politics as the stupid party, they allowed Labour to generate the ideas, with the Tories simply promising to run things better than the socialists. That produced a rudderless leftward drift.

Thus it was that Margaret Thatcher’s rise to the leadership of the Conservatives was resisted by the party establishment. She wasn’t just a woman, and a conviction politician. She represented a liberal insurgency that ripped the Tories from their moorings. The Conservative Party was the first British institution to be pummelled by her famous handbag.

Margaret Thatcher’s ideas were unambiguously those that had animated the British Liberals for generations. Her father, whom she revered, was a prominent Liberal and she learned her politics at his knee.

If Thatcher had heroes in Britain’s political past, they were not Benjamin Disraeli or Stanley Baldwin. They were Edmund Burke and William Gladstone. Her Conservatism, she said, “would be best described as liberal, in the old-fashioned sense. And I mean the liberalism of Mr. Gladstone, not of the latter day collectivists.”

The British Liberal Party, however, abandoned Gladstonian liberalism, a transmogrification that began under David Lloyd George. The party sank to third party status where it remains mired today, albeit in coalition with the Conservatives. By losing the balance between Gladstonian and big government Liberals, the party’s forces were scattered to the winds, with most, like Churchill and Thatcher, ending up as an influential minority within the Tories.

But when, by force of personality and moral conviction, Thatcher imposed her views on the reluctant mainstream of the Conservatives, she revealed that while classical liberal ideas might no longer dominate in any party, they continued to resonate with the great British public. When offered real liberalism after years of socialist-Tory drift, they embraced it with enthusiasm. When Thatcher strayed, as she did with the poll tax that helped bring her down, they would not follow.

The real measure of her success was that the Labour Party became unelectable until it too embraced the basic tenets of liberalism. They jettisoned anti-liberal policies like nationalization of industry and overweening trade unions that had been Labour orthodoxy. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

As for the Liberal Party of Canada, prior to the ’60s it was made up of enthusiastic Gladstonians. Virtually every tenet of Thatcherism they would have claimed as their own. It was the party of liberty, the individual, responsible finances, middle class aspiration and opportunity.

In the 1960s the party became divided between classical liberals who celebrated individual freedom and those who thought the burgeoning state could solve all our ills. The tension was a creative one for a while, but ultimately gave way to a party less moved by ideas and more preoccupied by the management of client groups clamouring for the state’s largesse.

Classical liberalism’s last hurrah within the party was the fiscal reforms of the 1990s that tamed the very state whose growth they had so assiduously cultivated since Lester Pearson. That was no break with tradition, but a return to the party’s roots. Like Thatcherism, it was highly popular at the time. But since then they have reverted to post-1960s type.

Perplexingly for Liberals, the Tories are now where classical liberal ideas are most welcome, while the NDP is the more convincing advocate of the big government alternative. Can the centre hold?

If the Liberal Party of Canada is to have a hope of revival, it must have a leader capable of holding those opposites together again, staking out that distinctive middle ground and promising to be more than just the least offensive dispenser of the state’s munificence. That’s a job that calls for a doughty handbag-wielder; alas, there are none on the horizon.

Brian Lee Crowley (twitter.com/brianleecrowley) is Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an independent non-partisan public policy think tank in Ottawa: www.macdonaldlaurier.ca.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

I've plowed this ground before, commenting on the tenets of liberalism and the drift away from them, in the Liberal Party of Canada ever since the Kingston Conference of 1960.

Gladstone stood for individual choice, limited government, protection of the individual from the government, fiscal prudence and equality. He was the antithesis of Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper all of whom ran or run too large, too intrusive, too expensive and too privileged governments.


Edit: typo

 

[ModlrMike]

Ironic that Liberals today don't accept that they've strayed from the liberal path. For them to accept that the Torries are the closest thing to true liberals in Canada would send them into fits of apoplexy.

 

[a_majoor]

This article, which is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen suggests that the Liberal Party of Canada needs a real (small l) liberal like Margaret Thatcher. I would go a bit farther and say that Canada needs a real (small l, Gladstonian)) liberal political party:

Say, Edward, aren't you free these days....?

 

[GAP]

So..........you want to bring in a ringer?.................that didn't work out so well last time.......... :camo:

 

[a_majoor]

A ringer? Whatever do you mean? Edward is the very epitome of a Gladstonian politician, having learned from the master himself....

 

[Edward Campbell]

A ringer? Whatever do you mean? Edward is the very epitome of a Gladstonian politician, having learned from the master himself....

Nope; see the quote from Scutenaire in Journeyman's signature, not even advancing year can make me over.

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
I've plowed this ground before, commenting on the tenets of liberalism and the drift away from them, in the Liberal Party of Canada ever since the Kingston Conference of 1960.

Gladstone stood for individual choice, limited government, protection of the individual from the government, fiscal prudence and equality. He was the antithesis of Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper all of whom ran or run too large, too intrusive, too expensive and too privileged governments.


Edit: typo

I'm putting this report, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen, here because of it's connection to the highlighted bit, above:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/Liberals+rebuilding+still+come/8241541/story.html

The Liberals’ rebuilding is still to come

By Andrew Cohen, Ottawa Citizen

April 14, 2013

So it’s done. The Liberal Party of Canada, having been rudely unseated as the country’s natural governing party in 2006, has found the Moses to lead it out of the wilderness in 2015.

In electing Justin Trudeau — and electing him with an overwhelming 80 per cent of the vote — the giddy Liberals are no longer thinking only of their survival as a centrist political party. Buoyed by perplexing polls that show them ahead of the Conservatives, they are dreaming of their restoration.

Having rejected Bob Rae, their seasoned interim leader, they are placing their hopes on a meteoric wunderkind with the right name, the right looks, the right age, the right words and the right instincts.

The rest — policy, money, organization, candidates — will fall into place later, they hope.

Actually, for Liberals, there wasn’t a big choice, which happens when you are reduced to the country’s third party. Four of the original nine contenders in the race had never held public office. Another (Martin Cauchon) left Parliament nine years ago while another (Martha Hall Findlay) lost her seat in 2011.

The leading contenders were Joyce Murray, the former provincial cabinet minister from British Columbia, and Marc Garneau, the former astronaut. Solid and sensible, they lacked sizzle.

That left Trudeau, with so little interest in the job that he had mused about leaving politics in 2011. Elected in 2008, he remains untested. Now, as politics go, the party’s lowly critic on amateur sport becomes its leader.

From the beginning, the race was his to lose. His opponents hoped that he would. He didn’t. There were no gaffes or pratfalls. In fact, even without stiff competition for the leadership — which his father faced in 1968 — he ends the campaign with more popularity than when he began.

The conventional wisdom, from the mouths of those from Brian Mulroney to pollster Darrell Bricker, is that this Trudeau — to detractors a callow arriviste who was a high school drama teacher before politics — is the genuine article. His success, they say, is not a creation of the media.

Of course, he will have to prove that he is no comet flashing across the political sky. As politicians from John Turner to Kim Campbell to Edward Kennedy have learned when they sought the brass ring, enthusiasm can fade like a soft summer mist.

The argument for Trudeau is that he is a politician who understands the instincts and rhythms of the game, gifts his brainy but aloof predecessors — Michael Ignatieff and Stéphane Dion — did not possess.

There is no doubt that Trudeau’s understanding of the political arts will carry him a long way. It may even carry him all the way, as some Liberals predict, persuaded the party’s fall from grace seven years ago was a mistake that Canadians now regret, and their return to power is inevitable.

In Trudeau, they may have found a cultural phenomenon. After all, who else in Canadian politics answers to his first name alone? No one calls the bloodless Stephen Harper “Stephen” nor the dark Thomas Mulcair “Thomas” (or, is it Tom?). In charm, the sunny Justin bests Harper, the accountant, and Mulcair, the undertaker.

But charm won’t be enough. The Liberals like the politics of personality, which worked with Laurier, St. Laurent, Trudeau and Pearson. It did not with Michael Ignatieff.

However important personality is in the age of celebrity, Trudeau’s challenge will be rebuilding a party with little policy, no regional base and ebbing support among new Canadians, who have gone to the Conservatives in Ontario.

For Trudeau, the good news is that the party has been in dire straits before (though never in the third place). He would be well advised to revisit how Lester Pearson rebuilt the party between 1958 and 1963, when he led it back to power after John Diefenbaker won the greatest parliamentary majority in history.

It means developing policy. Trudeau will have to take positions that give him gravitas, which the Conservatives will surely suggest that his age and inexperience deny him. Pearson held the Kingston Conference, an incubator of ideas that filled the party’s intellectual reservoir for the 1960s.

It means recruiting candidates. Pearson found the Liberals of the next generation, including Jean Chrétien, Pierre Trudeau, John Turner, Jean Marchand, Eugene Whelan. Trudeau will have to find the stars of this generation; opening nomination meetings will bring in new blood.

It will mean rebuilding the structure of the national party, which must be more flexible and innovative. Pearson made the innovative Keith Davey national director, and he embraced new methods and ideas.

It will mean raising money. It will mean modernizing polling and voter identification and incorporating the revolutionary electoral techniques used brilliantly by Barack Obama. The election is two and a half years way. For Justin Trudeau, the party is just beginning.

Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University. Email: [email protected]

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

This is the important bit: "For Trudeau, the good news is that the party has been in dire straits before ... He would be well advised to revisit how Lester Pearson rebuilt the party between 1958 and 1963 ... It means developing policy ... Pearson held the Kingston Conference, an incubator of ideas that filled the party’s intellectual reservoir for the 1960s."

Now, it is no secret that the 1960 Kingston Conference did re-energize an old, tired and dispirited Liberal Party; it did make it attractive to a new generation of (especially) young, leftist Quebecers (who were more naturally inclined to either  the exiting NDP or a nascent left wing Quebec nationalist party); but I would argue that it also led (drove?) the Liberals into a rash and naive set of social policies that had dire economic consequences for Canada.

In my opinion everything that is wrong with the 21st century Liberal Party of Canada is directly attributable to the Kingston Conference: it developed unsound policies which attracted the wrong new people who led the Party and the country down the socio-economic and political rabbit hole. The Kingston Conference gave us silly policies and Pierre Trudeau who led, directly, to Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatief.

Now, I think, Andrew Cohen is right. Justin Trudeau should (maybe must) try to repeat the success of Kingston 1960, but he has a chance to do what Lester Pearson could not do: he can lead (guide or direct) the process so that the output will be sensible - socially and economically sustainable. The risk is that sensible policies are unattractive. The genius of Kingston in 1960 was that it offered the "big rock candy mountain," the problem was that it offered no plan to pay for it all. It was perfect for retail political professionals like Jim Coutts and Keith Davey and for ideological left wingers like Pierre Trudeau; it was bad for Canada. If M. Trudeau wants to undo the damage, if his interest is more about the country than the party, then he will seek to re-energize his party but his model will not be Jean Chrétien, nor his own father, nor Lester Pearson, it will be Louis St Laurent, a man who used image politics to win elections but then governed on the pillars of moderate, affordable social progress, a robust foreign olicy and solid fiscal conservatism ~ a Gladstonian Liberal.

 

[a_majoor]

Sadly, I see little evidence of Gladstone and a much higher proportion of that other Justin character who is so popular outside of the political bubble. Is there any evidence at all to suport the idea that the Young Dauphin is capable of organizing a "Kingston 3.0" (Micheal Ignatieff attempted a Kingston 2.0 with his "Thinkers" conference), much less guiding it and leading the party behind the policy outputs of Kingston 3.0?

I think the real answer is far worse. Using your thesis, Edward, the Young Dauphin represents the triumph of the "Pearson, Trudeau, Chreitien" wing of the party and the crushing of the Laurier ("Manley" Liberals) wing of the party. The powers that be who do the organization and running of the party in the back rooms have a very effective "sock puppet" to mouth thier words and attract positive attention; they do not mean to give up their perques and power and are making a final throw of the dice to get access to the public trough.

There won't be an open revolt or anything like that, but the Blue Liberals will drift to the Conservatives in ever greater numbers, and I expect to see a trickle of Liberal MPs retire between now and the next election as well. What is left of the Liberal party will face a cage match in Quebec between them and the NDP and whatever Quebec Nationalist party that may arise as per your predictions, but I also see the NDP going full tilt against remaining Liberal strongholds in Urba Canada, while also having the means to fight the CPC for some of the suburban ridings as well. The Liberals will have a difficult time emerging from third place, if the CPC can maintain a lock on the "New Canada" running from Cornwall to the Pacific and the NDP hold Quebec and win some seats in Urban Canada, the Liberals have no place to go.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Michael den Tandt gets it pretty much right, I think, in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/national/Justin+Trudeau+Liberal+party+become+truly+liberal+party/8261550/story.html

Can Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party become a truly liberal party?

By Michael Den Tandt, Postmedia News

April 18, 2013

“Audacity and ambition, always,” Justin Trudeau declared within minutes of being named Liberal leader.

“We must have evidence-based decision-making,” Liberal MPs proclaim, virtually any time one of them is handed a live microphone.

Which begs this question: What manner of policy can we expect to eventually emerge from the latest iteration of the Liberal party, assuming its new leader intends to keep his promises?

The next Liberal platform, Trudeau has acknowledged, needs to be a reinvention. It must appeal to long-suffering, diehard Liberals, but also to those who’ve moved to the New Democrats, or the Conservatives, since 2004. The plan must be fully costed, as has been standard since Jean Chretien’s Red Book of 1993. Taken together it’s a tall order – some might say, impossible. How will Trudeau manage it?

He hasn’t said, in so many words. But he has dropped broad hints. Last December Trudeau referred to Sir Wilfrid Laurier as his “second-favourite prime minister.”

Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s close friend and a senior adviser, has said that he and Trudeau are “classical liberals.” Trudeau’s speeches are peppered with references to free trade and, this week in the House, lower taxes. His economic and social policies, he has said, will be built around a single goal, that of improving the lot of the middle class. He often speaks about his father’s Charter of Rights, which guarantees equality for all before the law.

Here’s what all that points to: a peculiarly modern, Canadian brand of libertarianism. For Laurier – who was prime minister from 1896 to 1911 – was famously libertarian. Classical liberalism, in a Canadian context, begins with him. The nub of it is a belief in individual freedom and less, not more, state control – over economic decisions, but also personal ones.

Libertarianism’s great intellectual virtue is that it is internally consistent, across the range of issues that any government faces. Its great drawback, in practical political terms, is that no Canadian government in modern memory has embraced it. Since Pierre Trudeau, Liberal governments in particular have been progressive socially, but statist economically.  The deficit-fighting and trade agenda of the federal government in the 1990s may be the lone exception. But arguably, this partial outbreak of classical liberalism occurred not by design, but by necessity. For a federal party to adopt classical liberalism by choice would be different and, in modern Canada, new.

Social policy in such a system would look distinctly left and economic policy distinctly right. The tactical political result would be a “fork” – a two-pronged attack from the centre, outflanking both Conservatives and New Democrats on what is now their home turf. In every case, policy would be “evidence-based,” in that outcomes could be measured against metrics of human liberty, equality, justice and prosperity for the middle class.

So for example, on drug and justice policy, in addition to legalizing marijuana, jail terms for non-violent crimes, including narcotics-related crimes, might be reduced, through diversion. Prostitution might be legalized and regulated. At the same time, barriers to inter-provincial and international trade, investment and commerce might be systematically reduced. Business competition would be enhanced; state subsidies to corporations reduced.

Across the board, social policy would be measured against these barometers: Does the policy foster equality of opportunity and equality under the law? Does it foster individual freedom? Does it foster personal responsibility? Is it just?

Of course, there are enormous obstacles in the way of such idealistic and radical notions becoming Liberal party policy, let alone the policy of a future federal government. Chief among them is that most modern Liberals, that is any who remember governments from Lester B. Pearson onward, are not actually liberals; they’re social democrats. The philosophical shift would be painful for those who believe bigger and more government is always better. In order to be consistent, such a shift would also require some rethinking on Trudeau’s part. It’s difficult to see how supply management in dairy and poultry squares with a fact-based system dedicated to fostering prosperity for consumers, ie the middle class.

But here’s the potential benefit: A classically liberal Liberal party would be, for the first time in modern memory, about an ideal. It would be a party based on principle. And it would be distinct from either the Mulcair New Democratic party, or the Harper Conservative party, both of whom are shifting to the centre these days, in pursuit of power.

This is one way Trudeau can deliver policy that is both true to his party’s history – though distantly – and to his father’s legacy, and to his promise to uphold the interests of the middle class. It may be the only way he can do so.

The trail of bread crumbs suggests he knows this, and would like to try. Whether he will – and whether he’ll succeed, if he does try – remains to be seen.

Twitter.com/mdentandt

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

To create a truly liberal party from the Liberal Party of Canada Justin Trudeau will have to say, "My favourite prime minister, my father, was fundamentally wrong in almost every social and economic policy he pursued; he governed with his heart, not his head; I will have to wring almost all of his ideas out of our government; he wasn't a real liberal; he was a social democrat and we Liberals are not."

In that, reminding us that Liberals aren't liberal, they are social democrats, Michael den Tandt is absolutely correct.

His describes "fork" strategy: to the right of Stephen Harper's Conservatives on many economic, trade and foreign policy issues and to the left of Thomas Mulcair's NDP on many social issues. But he also needs to be firmly in the middle on many key issues (like defence and law and order). Thus he really needs a three pronged fork, a trident:


                                                              Liberals
                                                                    |
                                                                    |
Small Government                                  Defence                            Equality of Opportunity
    Fiscal Policy        Conservatives    Social Services    NDP                  Social Justice
        Trade                                          Law & Order                            Non-violent crime

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Good Grey Globe's Jeffrey Simpson offers a typical big government whinge explaining why we absolutely must have new, bigger taxes to keep on paying for everything that now exists and, presumably, add more to it, in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/so-many-political-promises-so-little-money-coming-in/article11395088/

So many political promises, so little money coming in

JEFFREY SIMPSON
The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Apr. 19 2013

B.C. Premier Christy Clark opens her re-election campaign by promising to freeze personal income taxes and the carbon tax for five years. New Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau pledges not to raise personal income taxes, business taxes or the GST. Alberta Premier Alison Redford rules out a sales tax the province so evidently needs. Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter, facing an uphill re-election fight, cuts the HST his NDP government once raised.

The only government that has sharply increased taxes is Quebec. The Jean Charest Liberals had upped the sales tax by two points. Now the secessionist Parti Québécois has raised capital gains taxes and personal income taxes on the better off – knowing, as all Quebec governments do, that francophones aren’t very mobile and so must sit and take it.

Manitoba’s NDP government just raised the sales tax by one point (a defensible policy), but then bragged in its budget speech about how much it had lowered taxes, how it was going to eliminate school taxes for seniors and how it would keep refusing to harmonize the provincial sales tax with the federal GST – very bad tax policy.

The NDP will still run a $500-million deficit, despite Manitoba’s receiving 13 per cent ($1.7-billion) of its total revenues from equalization payments – in a province with a much lower unemployment rate than Ontario and British Columbia.

Generally speaking, however, it’s hard to find an intelligent debate anywhere about taxes, even when a good case can be made that they should either be restructured – shifting to consumption taxes from business and personal taxes – or increased to meet serious social needs.

A critical debate that should be watched is occurring in the Greater Toronto Area. Anyone who lives there or visits frequently knows that the entire region desperately needs more mass transit. People have known it for years and years, yet no government has done enough about it.

Now, finally, the Ontario Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne appears ready to get more money from drivers – who use the roads, after all – to help pay for the billions of dollars needed to ease gridlock. It’s a multi-decade requirement and it can’t be dealt with by the “no new taxes” mantra of the Progressive Conservatives or the NDP’s ducking of the issue.

Can tolls or taxes, or both, be sold when forceful voices such as Toronto’s mayor (with whatever credibility he still has) and the province’s Official Opposition and the federal Conservatives beat the drum that all additional revenues for the government are wrong, a burden on “hard-working taxpayers,” to quote their favourite cliché? The country should watch.

The Harper Conservatives have a schizophrenic attitude toward taxes and spending. We know that the party’s attack machine cares nothing for truthfulness, as in the consistent claim that the NDP is planning a “$20-billion carbon tax.” We know, too, that whereas the party brags about lowering taxes and cutting spending, ministers and MPs spend every week that Parliament is not in session fanning out across Canada to participate in announcements of new spending initiatives.

The only politicians apparently prepared to contest this “no new tax” nostrum are certain New Democrats, but by no means all of them. Their favourite target for additional taxes is business, especially of the large variety. But even there, the NDP sometimes uses weasel words, as when Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath declared that “Ontario will lose more than a billion dollars as corporations have ways to avoid paying HST.”

She offered no details, analysis or explanation. It’s just cheap populism: an imputation about a “free ride,” the end of which would enable the government to spend more money. This kind of avoidance of straight talk gives the NDP – and all politicians who slide around reality – a bad name.

As the population ages, infrastructure wears out and the demand for public services continues unabated, citizens are going to have to pay more, through user fees (as for transit improvement), social insurance (the best way to finance drugs for seniors and better pensions) or higher consumption taxes. It’s a reality not many citizens and their governments want to face.

Look at this list. It's HUGE, it tells us that we have a bloated, undeniably inefficient and ineffective bureaucracy; it cries out for cuts. BUT every single department, agency and office on that list has a "cheering section:" a segment of Canadian voters believes that Assisted Human Reproduction Canada, the Military Police Complaints Commission and Virtual Museum of Canada are all doing vital work for Canadians. I do not.

Look at the Os. I agree that the Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs Canada (FJA) (which provides administrative services to judges, keeping them properly independent from the bureaucrats in the Justice Ministry) but I suggest that ALL of the others, including Office of Energy Efficiency, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner and Old Port of Montréal Corporation Inc. could be disbanded with minimal damage to the core work of governments. Some functions of Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions are very necessary and can be, should be combined into a branch of Finance. Some "slashing and burning" is necessary, several agencies and offices have no productive role; more efficiency is required throughout.

A real liberal prime minister would start by completely reorganizing my cabinet. I would have a handful of real ministries:

    Aboriginal Affairs - it must exist because we have real moral and legal responsibilities towards aboriginal Canadians, responsibilities which we have, too often, ignored;

    Defence;

    Finance;

    Foreign Affairs;

    Home Affairs - a new ministry that would have many Associate Ministers for everything from fish and health and prisons and police to environment and resources;

    Industry - but without all the "economic" (subsidy) agencies from Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency to Western Economic Diversification Canada;

    Justice;

    Public Works ans Government Services; and

    Treasury - which would be, along with, PCO, the Prime Minister's department, restoring the "office" of First Lord of the Treasury.
 
Several agencies, large and small, are vital and must continue to exist, including: Auditor General of Canada; Bank of Canada; Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation; Federal Court; FINTRAC; Geological Survey of Canada; International Joint Commission; NAFTA Secretariat; and the Tax Court of Canada. But at least an equal number can be wound up and their civil service employees can be given "pink slips and running shoes" as Fibber Muldoon so famously put it back in the 1980s.

The bureaucracy is out of control; it serves special interests rather than the common good. This sort of thing is actually beloved of today's Conservative Party of Canada which wants to slice and dice and serve Canadians in some of their multiple special interests. It's probably good politics but it is lousy policy.

Jeffrey Simpson is wrong. Governments don't need more revenue; they need to cut the fat - and there is a lot of it at every level.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Not only could the federal government use a little trimming, but the trimming could also be extended to their provincial counterparts. Especially when you look at the overlap between federal/provincial agencies (e.g. health departments).

 

[Edward Campbell]

Liberal insider David Herle exporesses his dismay with the evolution of government during Stephen Harper's time in office in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Toronto Star:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/05/02/democracy_and_the_decline_of_parliament_hepburn.html

Democracy and the decline of Parliament: Hepburn
Growing disconnect between Canadians and Parliament may have serious consequences for democracy.

By: Bob Hepburn
Politics

Published on Thu May 02 2013

Since his days as Paul Martin’s campaign chairman ended, David Herle has given a lot of thought to the state of our democracy and the increasing disconnect between Parliament and Canadians.

And the more Herle studies the issue, the more the former prime minister’s strategist worries.

“There’s a growing gap that could have serious long-term implications for the health of our democracy” from voter turnout to policy formation, Herle says over coffee one recent afternoon in downtown Toronto.

“Voters look at Ottawa these days and feel the issues being debated up there have no impact on their daily lives,” he says.

“There’s also a serious decline in what people expect from government. As well, they’ve stopped looking to government for help and for the most part they don’t think it matters who is in power.”

Voicing concern about the growing disconnect between Canadians and Parliament is nothing new.

But Herle brings a unique perspective to the issue. As a principal partner at The Gandalf Group, a Toronto-based research and consulting company, he has access to polls that detail the depth of voter disenchantment with politics in general and Parliament in particular.

For several years now, Herle has examined everything from voter turnout rates to the public satisfaction levels with Ottawa. In virtually all surveys, Canadians are saying they are fed up, tuned out and have given up.

For example, a poll last fall suggested barely 27 per cent of Canadians believe Ottawa is dealing with issues we really care about.

Most people are worried about daily issues, such as their children’s education, looking after aging parents and getting decent health care. But other than writing cheques to the provinces, Ottawa has opted out of health care, education, transportation and other issues that affect our normal lives.

There are no bold new ideas emerging from Ottawa today that will engage Canadians and make them feel that what happens in Parliament really does play a role in their lives.

No longer is there serious talk in Ottawa of programs that would affect most Canadians directly, such as a national child care strategy, a national plan for big cities or an agreement for natives along the lines of the Kelowna Accord signed by Martin.

Instead, there is a narrow set of issues that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is pursuing and for the most part the opposition parties are adhering to them.

Because voters have stopped looking to Parliament for help, Ottawa has stopped responding to their needs, Herle believes.

“People are no longer putting demands on government and aren’t flocking to politicians who claim they can help them,” he says. “They’ve simply given up on Ottawa altogether.”

The implications for democracy are huge when you consider so many people believe it is a waste of time even to try to make a difference or that installing a new government will create meaningful change. Such attitudes provide the ruling party with enormous leeway to abuse parliamentary traditions and procedures.

Herle isn’t alone in voicing concern over the growing gap between voters and Parliament.

Conservative MP Michael Chong (Wellington-Halton Hills), writing in Policy Options magazine in 2010, predicted that “if Parliament is becoming increasingly irrelevant to Canadians and is not central to public debate in Canada, then public policy will be determined in an increasingly non-democratic fashion.”

Chong suggested that reforming question period, the insult-laden daily shouting match that is the only reference most Canadians have with politics, is a necessary first step to restoring Parliament’s relevance. He called for improved decorum, more time both for questions and answers and a requirement that ministers actually respond to questions directed at them.

Chong is correct about the possible consequences for democracy and the role of Parliament. That’s because if voters have given up on Parliament, it means they have lost faith in politicians to look after their interests.

Herle doesn’t claim to have the answers on how best to re-engage disaffected Canadians or how to make Parliament more relevant.

What he does believe, though, is that we require “a paradigm shift” by Ottawa in how it relates to Canadians, in ways that go beyond merely handing out the occasional small tax rebate cheque.

Such a shift is essential because Canadians need to feel connected to Parliament and Parliament needs to be seen as relevant to their lives.

Only then can we begin to close the gap between voters and our political institutions with the goal of ultimately strengthening our democracy.

Bob Hepburn’s column appears Thursday. [email protected]

It is hard to know where to begin, but ...

It was Stephen Harper's stated intention to shrink government or, at least, to make it less intrusive. It appears that, in the minds of David Herle and Bob Hepburn, he has succeeded. It is not, in any way, clear that Prime Minister Harper's aim was wrong. Canadian are, indeed, interested in "daily issues, such as their children’s education, looking after aging parents and getting decent health care" and it is equally true that "other than writing cheques to the provinces, Ottawa has opted out of health care, education, transportation and other issues that affect our normal lives." So what? Those "daily issues" are, as they always were, in the domain of provincial and local governments; Ottawa ought not to do much beyond writing the occasional cheque. I'm not sure why Canadians need to feel more "connected" to parliament; parliament already matters - the low voter turnout says a whole lot more about Canadians than it does about parliament. We are, broadly and generally, a fat, idle, lazy and greedy lot who want "free" this and "subsidized' that and who do not, in truth, give much of damn about who signs the cheques.

Stephen Harper has some real liberal instincts, I think, but he is governing a profoundly conservative country - conservative is the sense that John Stuart Mill used that term when he is reputed to have said that "although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative," and conservative in the sense that they want to preserve the unsound, unaffordable socio-economic system that Pierre Trudeau tried to implement in the 1970s.

 

[CougarKing]

A real liberal prime minister would start by completely reorganizing my cabinet. I would have a handful of real ministries:

    Aboriginal Affairs - it must exist because we have real moral and legal responsibilities towards aboriginal Canadians, responsibilities which we have, too often, ignored;

    Defence;

    Finance;

    Foreign Affairs;

    Home Affairs - a new ministry that would have many Associate Ministers for everything from fish and health and prisons and police to environment and resources;

    Industry - but without all the "economic" (subsidy) agencies from Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency to Western Economic Diversification Canada;

    Justice;

    Public Works ans Government Services; and

    Treasury - which would be, along with, PCO, the Prime Minister's department, restoring the "office" of First Lord of the Treasury.
 
Several agencies, large and small, are vital and must continue to exist, including: Auditor General of Canada; Bank of Canada; Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation; Federal Court; FINTRAC; Geological Survey of Canada; International Joint Commission; NAFTA Secretariat; and the Tax Court of Canada. But at least an equal number can be wound up and their civil service employees can be given "pink slips and running shoes" as Fibber Muldoon so famously put it back in the 1980s.

I trust this list of yours is not exhaustive? I was wondering why you didn't include the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), since the Canadian Coast Guard falls under that Department. The CCG's importance in roles such as SAR, icebreaking, maintenance of navigation aids, as well as their transport role for law enforcement agencies such as the RCMP in Canadian waters, cannot be overstated.

Their supplementary role to the RCN and the RCMP for also showing the flag up north will also help enforce Canada's stances on Arctic sovereignty. 

 

[Edward Campbell]

I trust this list of yours is not exhaustive? I was wondering why you didn't include the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), since the Canadian Coast Guard falls under that Department. The CCG's importance in roles such as SAR, icebreaking, maintenance of navigation aids, as well as their transport role for law enforcement agencies such as the RCMP in Canadian waters, cannot be overstated.

Their supplementary role to the RCN and the RCMP for also showing the flag up north will also help enforce Canada's stances on Arctic sovereignty.

I actually mentioned fish in the "Home Affairs" portfolio. But my list is not engraved in stone; the point is that we have too many ministries, most of which are, really, not worth a full time, full rate seat at the cabinet table and some of which intrude (too far, in my opinion) into areas of provincial jurisdiction.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

CCG came out of the melding of the Dept of Marine Transportation and RCAF air-sea rescue service, it lived under the Transport Canada umbrella, until punted to DFO to fuze the "3 fleets" together, with much kicking and screaming on all sides. The amount of vessels cut was significant, in the range of about 20 vessels on the west coast. Public Works also lost it's vessels around the same time. 

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Good Grey Globe's Jeffrey Simpson offers a typical big government whinge explaining why we absolutely must have new, bigger taxes to keep on paying for everything that now exists and, presumably, add more to it, in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/so-many-political-promises-so-little-money-coming-in/article11395088/

Look at this list. It's HUGE, it tells us that we have a bloated, undeniably inefficient and ineffective bureaucracy; it cries out for cuts. BUT every single department, agency and office on that list has a "cheering section:" a segment of Canadian voters believes that Assisted Human Reproduction Canada, the Military Police Complaints Commission and Virtual Museum of Canada are all doing vital work for Canadians. I do not.

Look at the Os. I agree that the Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs Canada (FJA) (which provides administrative services to judges, keeping them properly independent from the bureaucrats in the Justice Ministry) but I suggest that ALL of the others, including Office of Energy Efficiency, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner and Old Port of Montréal Corporation Inc. could be disbanded with minimal damage to the core work of governments. Some functions of Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions are very necessary and can be, should be combined into a branch of Finance. Some "slashing and burning" is necessary, several agencies and offices have no productive role; more efficiency is required throughout.

A real liberal prime minister would start by completely reorganizing my cabinet. I would have a handful of real ministries:

    Aboriginal Affairs - it must exist because we have real moral and legal responsibilities towards aboriginal Canadians, responsibilities which we have, too often, ignored;

    Defence;

    Finance;

    Foreign Affairs;

    Home Affairs - a new ministry that would have many Associate Ministers for everything from fish and health and prisons and police to environment and resources;

    Industry - but without all the "economic" (subsidy) agencies from Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency to Western Economic Diversification Canada;

    Justice;

    Public Works ans Government Services; and

    Treasury - which would be, along with, PCO, the Prime Minister's department, restoring the "office" of First Lord of the Treasury.
 
Several agencies, large and small, are vital and must continue to exist, including: Auditor General of Canada; Bank of Canada; Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation; Federal Court; FINTRAC; Geological Survey of Canada; International Joint Commission; NAFTA Secretariat; and the Tax Court of Canada. But at least an equal number can be wound up and their civil service employees can be given "pink slips and running shoes" as Fibber Muldoon so famously put it back in the 1980s.

The bureaucracy is out of control; it serves special interests rather than the common good. This sort of thing is actually beloved of today's Conservative Party of Canada which wants to slice and dice and serve Canadians in some of their multiple special interests. It's probably good politics but it is lousy policy.

Jeffrey Simpson is wrong. Governments don't need more revenue; they need to cut the fat - and there is a lot of it at every level.

Regarding the highlighted bit, this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, explains that a strong minister can gain and exercise proper control over his bureaucrats:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/case-study-highlights-conflict-between-bureaucrats-minister-kenney-on-direction-of-multiculturalism-programs/article14394002/#dashboard/follows/

Case study highlights conflict between bureaucrats, Minister Kenney on direction of multiculturalism programs

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

John Ibbitson
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Sep. 18 2013

A new minister with strong views confronts an entrenched bureaucracy determined to thwart him. This could be the story line from an episode of Yes, Minister. But in this real-life case the minister was Jason Kenney, the bureaucrats belonged to the federal Multiculturalism program, and instead of the bureaucrats thwarting the minister, the minister thwarted the bureaucrats.

Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias is a case study by Andrew Griffith, who spent four years as Director General for Multiculturalism under Mr. Kenney. He chronicles the conflict between public servants steeped in consensus on how citizenship and multiculturalism programs should be run, and a minister who was determined to transform both the programs and the assumptions on which they were based.

“In many cases, officials had to work through the Kubler-Ross states of grief and loss – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – in dealing with the traumatic changes to their role,” Mr. Griffith writes.

Officials relied on surveys and reports to shape policy; Mr. Kenney relied on anecdotal evidence. Officials followed procedures for recommending grants and contributions to non-governmental organizations. Mr. Kenney vetoed most of them.

At root, bureaucrats embraced a set of assumptions laid down in the days of Pierre Trudeau and maintained by every Conservative and Liberal government that followed: Multiculturalism programs should foster mutual tolerance among cultural communities. Citizenship should be easy to acquire, and citizenship classes and programs should emphasize the federal government’s contribution to peacekeeping, the United Nations and expanding civil liberties at home and abroad.

The Harper government saw things differently. As Minister of State for Multiculturalism, and then as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Mr. Kenney preferred the word “plurality” to “multiculturalism.” Instead of an emphasis on cross-cultural understanding, he wanted to promote the integration of new Canadians into a socially cohesive society. (“Exactly!” Quebec Premier Pauline Marois might respond.)

Anti-racism programs should focus less on oppression by the majority toward minorities and more on conflicts within and between minority groups, he believed. There should be more outreach to religious groups within each community and greater attention paid to the concerns of the Jewish community.

Citizenship should be harder to acquire, language requirements should be stricter, and new Canadians should hear less about peacekeeping and gay marriage and more about Canada’s military past and the importance of the Queen.

Bureaucrats would produce plans and priorities based on evidence-based research of key concerns within different cultural communities. Nonsense, Mr. Kenney would retort; I talk to these people and that’s not what they’re saying.

Between 2007 and 2011, the Minister delivered 273 speeches and statements: 37 concerned Canadian Jews; Chinese Canadians were the target of 30 and Indo-Canadians of 22. The other seven in the top 10 included Black Canadians, Christians, Muslims, Asian Canadians, Ukranian Canadians, American Canadians and Ismali Muslims. Mr. Kenney believed he had his finger on the pulse of immigrant communities.

To their surprise, when public officials convened focus groups to test Mr. Kenney’s assertions, they often found that those interviewed reflected the minister’s priorities more than their own research had indicated.

In the best Yes, Minister tradition, officials also found that they could secure Mr. Kenney’s acceptance of a proposal more easily if it was larded with quotes from the Minister’s speeches. Over time, the bureaucrats found ways to satisfy the new boss’s demands while also sliding in a few of their own priorities.

Mr. Griffith’s conclusion is a surprising admission for a former public servant: “All of us, including public servants, have our biases and prejudices, which influence our evidence base, networks, and advice,” he writes. “…Public servants did not have the complete picture and were often too disconnected from the realities on the ground to understand the limitations of their analysis and advice.”

That does not mean that Mr. Kenney in particular or the Harper government in general were without blame. Mr. Griffith’s decries the cutbacks that have degraded the bureaucracy’s ability to create and test policy, the rush to decision and implementation and the mistakes that resulted. And although the language and the judgments are carefully balanced, one suspects that Mr. Griffith still believes the old ways and assumptions were better than the new Conservative ones.

That said, he predicts that because of Mr. Kenney’s reforms, “multiculturalism will, over time, become closer to the original Reform Party objective … of abolishing multiculturalism and strengthening a strong common narrative of citizenship.”

Unless, of course, the Conservatives are defeated in the next election and the universe goes back to unfolding as it should.

John Ibbitson is the chief political writer in the Ottawa bureau.

Mr Griffith's book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism is available for E-readers.

Note this: "Mr. Griffith’s decries the cutbacks that have degraded the bureaucracy’s ability to create and test policy ... one suspects that Mr. Griffith still believes the old ways and assumptions were better than the new Conservative ones." That is the standard position of the Laurentian Consensus and a (still) decidedly Liberal civil service; it is the duty of the politicians to bend to the consensus. Now, there is a civil service national policy, it has been there since Arnold Heeney and O.D. Skelton managed the country of Prime Minister King's behalf. That policy changes, to be sure, but slowly and, generally, without too much regard for the wishes and views of the government of the day. The main elements of the policy that still exists today were set forth by Norman Robertson and Robert Bryce in the 1950s and early '60s, they have survived Liberal and Conservative governments with leaders as diverse as Pierre Trudeau and Stephen Harper. Mr Kenney did what good ministers do: he changed the direction of one component of the national policy. Most ministers, including, almost always, the MND, lack either or both of the political strength and top level support to do that.

 

[pbi]

[size=10pt]A high tone has been set, as ever. Discussions like this are some of the things that make this site such a great and unique place. (That, and we keep idiots out...)

To go back to the question that opened this thread, I'll open by saying that I'm a life-long Tory voter who is seriously reevaluating his voting choices, and has been for the last few years. Unfortunately, I don't really see a whole lot of realistic choices. My "gut feel" (ie: based on my own opinions and observations, not on research) worries about the current government are:

-they don't really believe in accountability and transparency any more than any other Govt ever has, and possibly less. They sometimes seem to regard public watchdogs as their enemy, to be thwarted at every turn, including by neutralizing the office in question;

-there seems to be a strong tendency to revert to the last refuge of the scoundrel: loud protestations of "patriotism" designed to characterize anybody who questions them as somehow unpatriotic, un-Canadian or perhaps in league with evil forces. Is this approach unique to the Tories of the 21st century? Probably not, but it seems more shrill and insidious with them. It reminds me too much of the "you hate America!" mantra we hear in the US political discourse;

-a nagging suspicion that they are, at heart, fundamentally antidemocratic. Prorogation and closure are certainly correct in the letter of the laws of our Parliament; my worry is whether or not their frequent use any longer has a place in a democratic government. Imagine, for a moment, if the President of the US attempted to foist those measures on Congress: an absolute nonstarter. (Granted on the other hand that he has veto powers that our PM may not...)

-a possibly unhealthy (if not to say unethical...) close relationship with big business. While I am not in any way in favour of punitive corporate taxes or "overweening unions", I am very, very much in favour of strict enforcement of environmental and safety regulations. How many times will we need to be reminded about this? I recently listened to the Minister of Transport talk about the TSB's revelation that the MM&A freight train that devastated Lac Megantic was carrying a misidentified cargo, far more volatile that what was officially reported. Her response was mealymouthed and evasive (nothing necessarily unique there) and what I was listening for but didn't hear was an expression of real concern about enforcing the laws to keep Canadians safe from disasters like this one; and

-a too-ready acceptance that more intrusive surveillance of Canadians, and more police powers, and more locking people up, are all good and useful measures. Maybe, in some specific and time-limited cases, these might be true. Might be. How all this squares with  freedom and individual rights I'm not clear.

So now that I've qualified (or disqualified...) myself, I'd say that we do need a liberal party (ala the party led by Laurier), and probably a Liberal Party too. It's already been noted that if you read some of the things Laurier said, and the positions his government took, you can see that he was much closer to "classic" liberalism than today's social democratic successors. However, I am not at all certain that the Tory party we see before us now is actually a "liberal" party, in its heart of hearts.

We also need a "Liberal Party" just as we need an "NDP", very badly, if only to avoid a slip into de facto one party rule. Another thing that a three-way split helps to avoid is the monolithic division of political culture (and maybe society at large) that the US system seems to have created. I think the Tories are beginning to drink the old Liberal Koolaid of the "natural governing party": there has to be a healthy field of opposing political viewpoints to counter this: the Liberal Party, as unimpressive as it might be right now, is part of the mechanism that does this.[size=10pt][/size][/size]

 

[Privateer]

:goodpost:

 

[Brad Sallows]

There isn't anything in that list I couldn't apply to any other federal or provincial governing party in Canada, but I have a longer memory than most people I know when it comes to distasteful government behaviour.  I suspect that the slow boil of that arrogance, often garnished with an intolerable scandal, is what ensures - thankfully - a fresh party in government every few years.

A majority parliament is always fundamentally undemocratic.  It's simultaneously the strength and weakness which sets ours most apart from the US system.

What worries me most about an intrusive state security apparatus is that one day it will eventually be run by a "progressive" party.  And I question whether the CPC has more and more prominent ties to big business establishment Canada than the LPC.

I hoped that after Ignatieff the LPC would come to its senses and take up policy as its weapon rather than star personality.  But for Trudeau and the lemon gin* effect he has on the media, it might have.  There is one more election I'd like to see the Conservatives win, so maybe that will work itself out in 2016.

*colloquially named "panty remover" in the olden days

 

[Edward Campbell]

There isn't anything in that list I couldn't apply to any other federal or provincial governing party in Canada, but I have a longer memory than most people I know when it comes to distasteful government behaviour.  I suspect that the slow boil of that arrogance, often garnished with an intolerable scandal, is what ensures - thankfully - a fresh party in government every few years.

A majority parliament is always fundamentally undemocratic.  It's simultaneously the strength and weakness which sets ours most apart from the US system.

What worries me most about an intrusive state security apparatus is that one day it will eventually be run by a "progressive" party.  And I question whether the CPC has more and more prominent ties to big business establishment Canada than the LPC.

I hoped that after Ignatieff the LPC would come to its senses and take up policy as its weapon rather than star personality.  But for Trudeau and the lemon gin* effect he has on the media, it might have.  There is one more election I'd like to see the Conservatives win, so maybe that will work itself out in 2016.

*colloquially named "panty remover" in the olden days

I think you are quite right on the highlighted bit. The Liberals were, since King in the 1930s, the party of big business ~ St. James Street and, later, Bay Street. The Tories were the party of small, main street, business. Early in this, the 21st, century the Liberals scored the conservative double play: securing the explicit endorsement of Big Labour while retaining the loyalty of the Big Banks, Big Insurance, etc by promising Big Government.