Conservative Self-Delusion

These days I find I have little desire to think, let alone write, about the Harper regime. Despite the fact that we lived so long under its oppressive and toxic shadow, I prefer these days to think about future possibilities. However, the current 'introspection' the defeated party is undergoing merits some attention; it is a process that seems doomed to failure as revisionism about its sordid and dark record is rampant. Stoutly declaring that they got the 'big things' right, Conservative stalwarts seem doomed to a fruitless rebirth that will, at best, be cosmetic, at least until they are willing to confront some unpleasant truths, something I frankly doubt they are capable of.

In today's Star, Carol Gore offers them a framework for renewal that I doubt their hubris will allow them to entertain.

Since the Conservative were ousted on Oct. 19, former cabinet minister Jason Kenney has told anyone who will listen: “We got the big things right. We got the tone wrong.”

But the 47-year-old leadership aspirant is deluding himself if he thinks his party’s problems are only skin deep. The reason the Conservatives lost power is that Canadians no longer wanted a government obsessed with security, fiscal austerity and big oil. Harper’s relentless negativity only reinforced that.

Their 'sins were many; here are but a few of them:

Their Fiscal Record:

They spent the $13.8-billion surplus they inherited within two years, leaving Ottawa with no economic cushion when the 2008 recession hit.

On their watch, the national debt grew by $176.4 billion. Almost a quarter (24 per cent) of Canada’s accumulated debt was amassed since 2008.

Their Job-Creation Record:

Year after year, they brought down budgets that promised to increase employment and prosperity. When they took power in 2006, the unemployment rate stood at 6.4 per cent. When they lost power, it was 7 per cent.

Add to that the fact that many of the jobs are precarious and part-time, forcing more people into poverty.

Their Record On Political Accountability:

They shut off access to government documents, silenced public officials, denigrated or drove out parliamentary watchdogs, rolled dozens of legislative changes into book-length omnibus bills and refused to let opposition MPs examine their expenditures.

Their Record ON Advancing Canadian Values On The World Stage:

Jason Kenney was front and centre on many of these issues. He was the minister who banned niqabs at citizenship ceremonies; who opened the floodgates to a massive influx of foreign temporary workers; who insisted Canada had a great “skills gap” (based on a misreading of Kijiji’s jobs vacancy data); who boasted about defunding charities that criticized Israel; and who blasted a United Nations official for revealing that nearly 900,000 Canadians used food banks every month.

Carol Goar lists additional examples of how the Conservatives squandered their power during their reign, but I think you get the picture. It is one, I suspect, that will be forever beyond the grasp of a party that seems to prefer sweet lies to bitter truths, thereby likely dooming them to wander the political wilderness well into the future.

A Shameful Legacy

Yesterday I attended a funeral service for the father of my good friend and former colleague, John. Although I never met John's father, a retired Presbyterian minister, his son's stirring eulogy was such that I left the service feeling that I somehow knew him in some way, such was his legacy.

Like his father, John is a man of great integrity, passion and commitment to his family and his country. Hearing him speak, of course, initially got me thinking about what others might say about me when my time comes; although I have not led a particularly accomplished life, I hope the one thing that will be remembered, if modesty permits, is that I tried to live my life with both personal and professional integrity.

Which got me to thinking about our last government. As I have mused at times in this blog, I still do not understand how the men and women who were part of Stephen Harper's regime can, even for a moment, delude themselves into thinking that their public lives were even remotely honourable ones. They allowed themselves and their principles to be dictated to by a martinet, almost no one protesting or asserting any objections whatsoever (Brent Rathgeber and Michael Chong notable exceptions). Surely this should be a source of deep shame, no matter how much they try to spin their defeat as a result of tone rather than policy.

They will not be missed.

When their time comes, each of the defeated and still-standing Conservative Members of Parliament will no doubt be remembered fondly by family and friends. Yet for others in living memory, they will be recalled for their manifest failure to do anything to better their country and their fellow-citizens. Our most recent election saw them being repudiated for a host of reasons as voters fled

[f]rom a hyper-partisan Conservative party that had grown cynical, sneering and closed under Stephen Harper. From practices that showed contempt for Parliament, the Supreme Court and science itself. From ugly, divisive, Muslim-baiting electoral tactics. And from deeply misguided policies that favoured the moneyed few, and that sold out civil liberties amid hyped fears of terror.

What Canadians rejected could fill dozens of blog pages, and they have already been well-chronicled in the blogosphere this past decade. But they still don't get it, as Owen observes this morning at Northern Reflections. They still insist that theirs was a failure of tone. But Andrew Coyne points out that the problem runs much deeper:

...in the main what characterized the Tories’ 10 years in power was timidity, mixed with inconsistency. They took few risks, invested almost no political capital, articulated no broad vision. Where they did act, it was as often as not by stealth: important measures would be found buried four hundred pages deep in an omnibus bill, or parsed from some throwaway remark by the prime minister at a conference in Switzerland.

Theirs was a failure, not only of vision, but of moral fiber, and no matter what kind of 'face' they try to put on a revived Conservative party, that persona, while the usual suspects still control the levers of power, will serve only to mask the underlying rot that corrupted the party under the leadership of Stephen Harper.

Until that rot is wiped away, merely adopting a new tone in emulation of the victorious Liberals will serve only to reinforce its incapacity to truly renew itself.

Undoing The Damage

During this 'interregnum' period, I have felt less inclined to write my blog; with the incoming government yet to make its mark, and the outgoing one something I prefer to think about as little as possible, I don't have as much to say as usual. Nonetheless, things are undoubtely happening beneath the public radar, and it seems that one of the first orders of business facing Mr. Trudeau and his cabinet will be repairing some of the extensive damage done by the Harper regime.

In the following excerpt from Power Play, law professor Carrisima Mathen discusses some of those issues:



Over at The Star, Bruce Camion Smith writes about restoring the mandatory long-form census, which will surely be a triumph of knowledge over the ignorance and ideology so firmly embraced by the out-going regime:

...the Liberal platform outlined a commitment to “immediately restore” the mandatory long-form census “to give communities the information they need to best serve Canadians.

“Without accurate and reliable data, Canada’s communities cannot plan ahead,” vowed the Liberal platform, which also committed to make Statistics Canada “fully independent.’

According to a Liberal source, the new government intends to act on its long-form census pledge soon after taking office Wednesday.

The mandatory long-form census, replaced by a voluntary one included in the 2011 National household Survey, is crucial both for government and business planning:

The 61-question long-form census — sent to one in five households –— included questions on language, aboriginal heritage, ethnicity, education, employment and commuting habits and was meant to provide greater insight into the country and its citizens.

The responses to those questions — and the trends revealed from one census to the next — helped public officials plan infrastructure and urban services and give private businesses insight into their customers.

While the Trudeau government will undoubtedly face many challenges in the weeks, months and years ahead, quickly undoing some of the damage done by Harper and his acolytes will send a powerful message to all Canadians that there is indeed a new sheriff in town.