1988 Again?

I'm the last person to draw comparisons between elections, but the upcoming (ongoing?) election campaign feels a lot like 1988, doesn't it?

For one, all major parties are in agreement on shelving some of the most 'dangerous' issues (in 1988: Meech Lake; in 2006: health care). Plus the Tories have managed to find an issue over which they can divide the left (in 1988: Free Trade; in 2006: the environment).

I'm not saying that Harper can achieve a "Mulroney Majority" (built on the strength of a meagre share of the popular vote). But the potential is there. This is especially true if the environment remains the focus of the campaign. Think about it: the Tories are looking to make gains in BC, Ontario and Quebec. In all of those regions, the left is split between two of three parties (the Grits, Greens and Dippers). Dion knows this, which is why he's swinging deals with Elizabeth May. Layton, if he's smart, would do the same. In this election, perhaps more than ever before, a vote for a third party (Bloc, NDP, Greens) really is a vote for the Conservatives.

What's more, just like Free Trade in 1988, there's no need for the Tories to moderate their policy on the environment. They can own the business-friendly, fiscally-responsible vote (larger than you'd think, by the way), with little fear that a single left-wing alternative will defeat them in many ridings. It's a complete reversal from the 1990s, when the Liberals were able to champion healthcare at the expense of a divided right.

Remember: Leading up to the 1988 election, nobody expected Mulroney to win as big a majority as he did. Harper's had the same opportunity handed to him on a silver platter: an issue over which a divided left can't possibly defeat him.

Back-Seat Governing?

Here's a scary thought.... What if the Liberals decide to implement their entire 2006 platform through a series of private member's bills? If C-288 (the Kyoto Implementation Bill) worked, what's to stop them from moving forward with the rest of their programme? John Ivison's column suggests that Paul Martin is preparing to move a 'Kelowna Implementation Bill', requiring the government to come up with a plan to implement a Liberal pact with Aboriginal groups. (The bill was to be debated last night, but the government managed to delay it's introduction.) What next? A Liberal childcare plan? As long as the Bloc and NDP are on-side, and as long as the bill "asks the House to approve certain objectives" (i.e., make a plan) as opposed to "asking the House to approve the measures to achieve certain objectives" (i.e., spend money), the Speaker is prepared to allow its passage. It's a fuzzy distinction, though. Back-seat governing is an interesting tactic, but questionably constitutional. At some point, the government will have to come up with a counter-strategy.

Respecting Parliament

Thank you, Mr. Harper. The government will respect the will of Parliament with regard to the most recent Kyoto Bill. No matter how ridiculous its judgment in this case, we ought to abide by legislation enacted in the House. It's simply tory principle. But it's also an opportunity.

As I said on Hobbs's blog yesterday, the opposition's handed the Conservatives a gift with this bill. I don't think Harper should come out against the legislation, but embrace it for what it is: the opportunity to table a report on precisely how damaging Kyoto will be. Tell the public that shutting down the Oil Sands completely, plus every coal generator in Ontario, will only get us halfway to meeting the Kyoto targets. Make sure the report also includes shutting down churches, schools and abortion clinics in Quebec (people have to drive to them -- creates too many emissions). Send the report as a bill, itself, through two readings. Have the Liberals make their own suggestions for how to destroy the economy. Accept every single Liberal amendment. Then table the report for the third reading in the House. Make it a confidence motion. Debate it on national television. Have the entire Conservative caucus vote against the bill. The Bloc will join you. The government falls. You then run the election on Dion's plan. Brilliant.

Comparing Eco-Plans

In the interests of full-disclosure, let's have a look at what each of the major parties is planning to do to save our planet:

From the Globe and Mail (07/02/16):

The Conservative plan

Total Cost: Will be revealed in next month's budget.

Environment Minister John Baird has said meeting Kyoto's 2012 targets at this point would cause "economic collapse" because the Liberals allowed emissions to rise too high.

Mandatory regulations will soon be announced requiring reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions from all industry, including the automotive sector.

The budget is expected to include a host of environmental initiatives. The Prime Minister has already announced a $1.5-billion EcoTrust to finance large projects in the provinces that reduce greenhouse gases.

An EcoEnergy Renewable Initiative, worth $1.5-billion over 10 years, was announced to encourage more renewable power production.

Budget 2006 contained tax credits amounting to two months of free bus passes for citizens who buy passes each month.

The Liberal plan

Stéphane Dion said yesterday he stands by his 2005 Project Green plan for honouring Canada's Kyoto commitments, but will be updating it shortly.

Total Cost: $10-billion

Key elements include the following:

Large Final Emitter System: Regulations would set maximum emission levels for each industrial facility in the country. Companies that are under the target could sell emission credits to companies that are over the target, creating a financial incentive to reduce emissions.

Partnership Fund: Between $2-billion and $3-billion to finance projects jointly with the provinces to reduce greenhouse gases.

Climate Fund: Between $4-billion and $5-billion for technology that reduces greenhouse gases and to buy foreign and domestic emission credits.

Automobile Industry: A voluntary agreement with the auto industry to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 5.3 megatonnes.

Renewable Energy: $1.8-billion over 15 years to encourage more wind and renewable power.

The New Democratic plan

Total Cost: $15.1-billion (net cost of $6.7-billion over seven years after cancelling the capital cost allowance for the oil sands)

The plan is divided into five parts:

A greener homes strategy, including energy retrofit projects: $1.3-billion over seven years.

A greener communities strategy, including reductions in landfill emissions and funds for municipal projects: $5.4-billion over seven years.

A greener transportation strategy, including GST rebates on the purchase of low-emission cars: $2.8-billion over seven years.

A greener industry strategy, including caps on industrial emissions and an end to oil-sands subsidies: saving $8.4-billion over seven years.

A greener Canada and the world, including incentives for renewable power and earning Kyoto credits through investments in the developing world that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: $5.6-billion over five years.

Judicial Appointments and the Conservative Divide

All conservatives support the idea of increasing the security of our communities. Law and order figures prominently in all versions of right-wing thought. There's room for debate over approach, though.

Neoconservatives-- some of my very good friends -- are right to criticize the overly-activist nature of judicial review in Canada. We may disagree over the righteousness of some of the Supreme Court decisions lately, but we agree that parliaments, not judges, should enforce the Charter.

Yet their most recent approach toward fixing the problem is puzzling. Stacking a court to favor right-wing values -- in this case, law and order -- may offer Conservatives revenge for years of leftward drift. But it contains a heavy dose of irony. [Liberals encountered the same irony following the Chaoulli case, having defended a Court that turned on them.]

After years of criticizing the judicial system, why do we want to give it credibility by putting our own people in places of power? Stacking judicial committees to ensure non-activist judges are appointed is one thing; if we stop there, this is more than appropriate. But putting pro-conservative judges on the bench? Getting tough on crime is important, but do we need to sacrifice our principles regarding parliamentary sovereignty? These are open questions, and I welcome comments.

The red tory solution lies in getting proactive about debating Charter issues in parliament, including having the guts to publicly consider using the notwithstanding clause. I admired the Harper government's attempt to do so with regard to same-sex marriage, regardless if I agree with their desired outcome. Why not in this case? Their attempts at legislating mandatory minimums are a step in the right direction. (Have patience and faith, and these will become law.) Do we really need to stack courts, as well?

In short, the red tory answer is to put judges in their place, not to replace judges. We can't do both at the same time and remain consistent. Can we? Am I missing something?

Frozen Tuition: A Socialist Myth

The Myth

Increasing affordable access to education -- or "educare", as it's now hearalded by left-wing student advocacy groups -- is a noble endeavour. And to a large extent they're right: Young Canadians should not enter their 30s with the equivalent of two mortgages: one for the house and one for student loan debt.

When it comes to tuition freezes, however, it should be obvious by now: governments and students are being forced to choose between quality education and cheap degrees. (I mean 'cheap' in more than one sense.) So let's dispell one common myth about frozen fees.

According to reports out of Manitoba and Quebec, tuition freezes have failed to bring more children from low-income families to university. In both provinces, university officials are reporting that, while overall enrollment figures are up (as high as 40%) since their freezes came into effect, there has been no noticeable increase in the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. None. (It should be noted: the universities are not fudging these numbers. Statistics Canada provides them with the data.) Middle-class and upper-middle class students are the ones taking advantage of the freezes, according to these reports -- not poor ones.

This is not to say that bringing more middle-class children to university is necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps we should look at it another way.

The Solution

Instead of pushing freezes as a socialist tool to lift up the lower classes, let's use them as a means of increasing the opportunities of those who most deserve it, those who can make best use of a university education -- regardless of their income.

Thus, as a learned friend told me this week, the solution to our crumbling universities may not be to raise tuition. This particular approach has failed miserably in Saskatchewan, where -- by all accounts -- NDP Premier Lorne Calvert's decision to lift the province's freeze has neither improved the quality of education markedly, nor stemmed the flow of students to Alberta and BC. And goodness knows, high tuition rates at the University of Calgary haven't stopped Maclean's from keeping it at the bottom of the university rankings.

Instead, let's raise entrance requirements to acceptable levels, allowing only the most qualified and dedicated students to attend, and allowing them to do so at reasonable rates of tuiton.

In other words, let's stop our universities from becoming glorified (?) high schools -- where everyone with a 60% average and a modest student loan can attend. This would reduce the number of 'casual' students, many of whom attend university simply for the piece of paper, and many of whom fail to earn even that. Community colleges and trades schools could shoulder the burden of increased enrollment, and the private sector could be leaned upon to provide financial support. And if students with low entrance grades -- let's say below 85 to 90% -- still want to attend university, they should have to pay an increased rate of tuition. If their grades improve while in university, they could 'earn' a lower rate of tuition in subsequent years. This is the equivalent of a built-in scholarship system for high-achievers, and the profits made from the differential fees program could be used to fund bursaries for low-income students.

For universities, this would decrease class sizes, increase the quality of classroom learning, and increase the overall value of degrees. It has the added bonus of encouraging our best and brightest high school students to stay in Manitoba, not to mention luring those from out-of-province. Maclean's might take notice and move Manitoba's schools up their list of top universities (entrance requirements factor prominently in their formula). In short, it would mark a return to the quality of education we enjoyed only a few decades ago, before tuition freezes turned our universities into Grade 13 and sent our finest minds elsewhere in search of better education.

To me, there's really only one choice here: if you want to keep tuition freezes in place, you have to increase entrance requirements.

The Politics

In Quebec, it's understandable that the Charest Liberals are reluctant to lift the tuition freeze -- young people in that province are among the most politically-engaged in the country, and they are among the most likely segment of society to vote for the PQ in an upcoming election. (The threat of separatism trumps poor universities any day.)

The same pressures simply do not exist in Manitoba. While the Opposition Tories have removed the "unfreeze tuition" policy from their platform, there's no way they would oppose NDP legislation to lift the cap. As for student pressure -- While lifting the freeze may anger Student Unions across the province, their ability to resist would be hampered in two ways. First, as unfortunate as it is, Manitoba youth are among the most politically disengaged in Canada. While thawing tuition may mobilize some SU cronies and left-wing activists, there's nowhere else for them to turn come election day. The NDP won't lose votes on this issue; like Harper with the Oil Patch and Income Trusts, Premier Doer can simply say to his base, "the guys on the other side of the aisle would do much worse." Second, students are far from unified when it comes to the tuition issue. Several hundred at the UofM have actually banded together in support of raising tuition fees for Engineering and Law.

Kudos to them. It's sad that the Manitoba government isn't siding with these students instead of listening to its socialist base. If it intends to keep the freeze in place, to spare students from the huge burden of debt and maintain affordable access to quality education, there's only one option left to save our universities: raise entrance requirements. Expecting more from our students doesn't have to mean demanding more from their wallets. Serious students -- the ones who most deserve to attend university -- would never disapprove of that.

The Charter at 25

Red tories abound on the pages of the National Post this week. Peter Russell's column in today's paper offers an enlightening take on the role of legislatures -- not courts -- in defending the Charter. Russell's right: the notwithstanding clause -- under which legislatures can insulate certain pieces of legislation from judicial review for five years -- has got a bum rap from Charterphiles like Trudeau, Mulroney, left-wing activists, and right-wing libertarians. But who's to say judges are better at protecting rights than elected representatives?

[As an aside: An Australian colleague once remarked: There are two highly despised groups of people in the world today: lawyers and politicians. Why is it, then, that when politicians get together to select a lawyer, their choice becomes a revered champion of wisdom?]

To quote from Russell's piece,

"To defend the notwithstanding clause is not to oppose the Charter. It was included in the Charter for a very good reason: a belief that there should be a parliamentary check on a fallible judiciary's decisions on the metes and bounds of our fundamental rights and freedoms.

Former premiers like Saskatchewan's Allan Blakeney, Alberta's Peter Lougheed and Manitoba's Sterling Lyon, who insisted on the inclusion of the notwithstanding clause, were no less civil libertarian than Pierre Trudeau. They welcomed the opportunity the Charter gives citizens to test the laws and practices of government against the rights and freedoms in the Charter. While most of the time the country would live with the decisions of judges on the requirements of the Charter, a clause was needed for those exceptional occasions when elected legislators conclude that the way judges have construed a Charter right or freedom is an unreasonable constraint on democratic power or threatens a vital interest of society."

"What is needed is the constitutional wisdom that led to including the notwithstanding clause in the Charter -- sufficient respect for parliamentary democracy not to let the judiciary always have the last word on rights and freedoms. Let us hope that the next generation of political leaders in Canada will eschew the simplistic thinking of Mulroney and Martin and follow the wise statecraft of Blakeney, Lougheed and Lyon."

Hugh Segal's exposition of Charter Myths in yesterday's paper is also worth a read.

No to 'Educare'!

Today's Winnipeg Free Press Editorial hit the nail right on the head: Canadians have the right to universal healthcare, but "educare" is not a fundamental pillar of our society. Education costs money -- money that the provincial public sector simply doesn't have. What's worse, quality education costs even more. Just ask students at the University of Manitoba, who have seen first-hand the impact of a decade-long tuition freeze -- larger class sizes, overloaded professors, crumbling infrastructure... That engineering students at the UofM are pushing for an end to tuition freezes should say something to all of us -- there is more than one side to the tuition debate. There is more than one side to the student body. These folks are not South Winnipeg elitists, either. They care about accessibility, but feel that it shouldn't come at the cost of quality. Like their counterparts in the UofM Law faculty in 2003, the Engineering students' plan includes using a portion of the fee hikes to fund bursaries for less-fortunate students. A red tory solution to rising tuition costs if I ever heard of one. Far better than blind, socialist tuition freezes.

Is Harper a Purple Tory?

To say he's a full-fledged Red Tory is a bit of a stretch, but Stephen Harper has shown signs of promise....

The Same-Sex Marriage Move.... A brilliant play to sidestep the neocons and take the issue off the table. Those of us that support the outcome have got to appreciate the means.

Quebec as a Distinct Society.... A cunning slap at the Bloc, yes, but a throw-back to Joe Clark's concept of Canada as a community of communities. (It's a slap in Joe's face, too -- we all wish he would have thought of this sooner.)

Income Trusts.... It was a decision that had to be made, and Harper put the nation's interest ahead of bloated billionaires'. The free ride is over -- maybe now the provinces can afford to breathe.

Judges.... As the elected conscience of society, Parliament, not the Supreme Court, is the best protector of human rights. Cops and Tories on selection panels might finally put them in their place.

Focus on Families.... The child-care plan was a tentative first step -- better than the Liberal approach. Income-splitting would help... We'll wait to see the budget.

If he's not careful, his true blue neocon friends might get suspicious.

Turncoats Don't Wear Red

Being a Liberal turncoat (either switching from the Liberals to the Conservatives, or vice versa) makes you a lot of things. But being a party defector does not make you a red tory. In fact, it excludes you from consideration.

By very definition, tories are loyalists. Through thick and thin -- in opposition or in government, in cabinet or in the backbenches, in victory and in defeat -- they stick by their principles and leaders, and act with responsibility when it comes to representing their constituents. They innovate and bring about change within their parties, like Duff Roblin and Robert Stanfield. In bad times, they go down with the ship, like Joe Clark and Bernard Lord. They live to fight another day, like John Diefenbaker and Peter MacKay. To turn a phrase, they don't "cut and run".

Somewhere along the line, the media confused party colors with true colors. Let's set things straight: Belinda Stronach, Scott Bryson, and Garth Turner are opportunists -- they are not red tories. The same goes for David Emerson and Wajid Khan, for that matter. Merely wishing you are a tory does not make you one. You have to earn your true colors.

"3rd Way" was "Our Way".

Ever notice the similarities between social democrats and red tories, these days? No, I'm not talking about Jack Layton -- I mean realistic social dems. If you cover up the byline, you may find yourself nodding at old Tony Blair, Ed Broadbent, Roy Romanow or Gary Doer speeches. It's no coincidence -- the so-called "Third Way" to which these men have committed themselves bears a striking resemblance to classic Red Toryism:

1. Fundamentally, both share an inclusive, organic view of society, including a belief in the necessity of mutual obligation to bind together members of the community. This view conflicts with the atomistic, liberal notion of society as a collection of competing individuals.

2. Both red toryism and the third way treat society and the market as separate, but interdependent. For red tories, this is embodied in the desire to put politics before economics when necessary; for social democrats, it means striving to prevent a market society from evolving out of a market economy.

3. In this vein, both ideologies also view the state as a positive instrument in society, and promote government intervention in the economy when necessary to promote the interests of the community (red toryism) or achieve social justice (the third way).

4. Yet, both are rooted in what Giddens (1998: 66) calls "philosophic conservatism," and stand opposed to revolutionary changes to society and its political institutions. Rooted in a strong distrust or dissatisfaction with the type of sweeping social plans embodied in socialism, red toryism and the third way advocate progressive, incremental reform.

To say that Third Way social dems "stole" our doctrine is a little harsh. After all, imitation is the highest form of flattery. It does help to explain why some of us are drawn to moderates like Doer and Broadbent, though -- especially considering the socon and neocon leanings of so many so-called "Tory" leaders.

What is a red tory?

A red tory is a compassionate conservative, driven by a concern for community over individualism, the collective well-being over personal self-interest, Burke over Mill, social responsibility over token rights, societal responsibility over state responsibility, fiscal responsibility over socialism, and responsible government over mob rule. In particular, four (4) interrelated principles underlie "red toryism" as an ideology:

1. Tradition & Incrementalism: The tory philosophy is one in which society evolves gradually, remains stable but not static, and relies on tradition as a guide for the future.

2. Organicism & the Social Fabric: Core to the red tory ideology is the belief that society is more than a sum of its parts. It was Burke who invoked the term "social fabric" as a metaphor to describe society as a collection of individuals who, when woven together like threads, produce a much stronger and grander entity.

3. Ascription & Imperfection: The very essence of toryism is rooted in the Protestant belief in human imperfection, and the existence of a ‘natural hierarchy’ in society such that only the most capable should assume positions of authority. For red tories, while the social ladder exists, it is still accessible to those with lower social status, who may climb it gradually through their lifetimes and initiative, or over the course of several generations.

4. Paternalism & Noblesse Oblige: In essence, then, toryism is a belief system that combines paternalism and collectivism through the concept of ‘noblesse oblige’. In the tory view of community, one discovers a sense of mutual obligation – of duties and privileges, rights and responsibilities – such that those in positions of privilege owe concern to those of lower social and political status, while the latter owe a certain degree of deference to elites. Labeled "tory democracy", this set of values may help to explain the ebbing of red toryism in an age of declining social and political deference.

Overall, red toryism implies an easy acceptance of, but a low tolerance for, economic and social inequality, and displays a communitarian concern for the care of the less-fortunate in society.