The Same Old? The Morass of Canadian Conservatism

In the wake of the 2015 election and Andrew Sheer's inability to gain any traction with the Canadian public, Canadian conservatism has been in a tail spin. That spin has continued through Covid-19 as the federal Conservatives attempt to find some principled opposition to federal policy that also does not make them look completely insensitive to the desperate needs of ordinary Canadians. This problem has been complicated by the fact that their provincial allies have been working closely with the federal government and supporting (more-or-less) the same policies. Provincial conservatives in Canada (PCs, Sask Party, CAQ, UCPs) have also recognized that they cannot politicize the pandemic in a manner similar to what has happened in the US.  This means that the normal federal/provincial bickering has been shelved and given the federal Tories little ammunition to suggest that there is serious disagreement with the course on which the federal Liberals have set the country.

So ... where are federal Conservatives in Canada?  What is the state of Canadian conservatism? How have conservatives responded to Covid-19? Will they try to draw on a soft alt.right basis of support, the politics of discontented exaggeration that I noted in my last blog? What are the Conservative's options? 

In this blog I want to argue that the Conservatives (and their intellectual allies) have done things wrong. To be sure, they had a tough road to hoe. I will address that. But, they are also missing an opportunity to redefine conservatism in Canada and a potentially vital political program that offers an alternative to liberalism. The NDP is actually working hard on this from the left-wing of the political spectrum. They may succeed, or they may fail, but they are, at least, working to redefine what a progressive left-wing politics means as a political program that can be implemented. So far the Conservatives seem to have done little more than squander their opportunities. Let me start by asking why this matters and then turn to some first steps conservatives need to take. 

Why Conservatism Matters

I often feel compelled to note somewhere in blogs I write that I am not a liberal nor a member of the Liberal Party. I do that because conservatively minded people I know periodically say I am one and that, in their minds, provides a way to dismiss my comments. I think it is fairly evident that I'm not a conservative and I have little interest in nor support for the trajectory of the Conservative Party of Canada. I have also been deeply troubled by the New Brunswick PCs and their adoption of a soft anti-bilingualism as well as their support for hydro-fracking and I find some of the comments made, over the years, by Jason Kenney and Doug Ford, among others, odious. The decision of Kenney and Scott Moe, for instance, to double down on fossil fuel is, in my view, not just bad policy but shockingly short sighted. In even the short term, this approach -- and effort to force the feds to support a dying industry and coerce other provinces to do the same -- even hurts their own provinces. It looks to squeeze that last few dollars it can out of an industry that is past its best before date, as opposed to providing sound leadership to take their provinces into the future. Let me make this clear: I don't like these people and I don't like them -- much less Stephen Harper -- for a bunch of reasons that relates to what I will argue are clear and manifest policy failures. 

I still want to argue that conservatism matters both as an ideology and a political force and that is, I fully recognize, a tough argument to make. It is a tough argument to make because conservatives have not made it easy to argue that they should matter. I don't want to engage in nostalgia, but there was a time when politically and ideologically conservatism meant something in Canada and, most particularly, it meant a different way of seeing the country.  There were a lot of problems with that way. Canadian conservatism and the Conservative Party (which went by a number of names) was deeply implicated in colonialism. Its members were often xenophobic and it dragged its heals on a host of measure from LGBTQi+ equality, to women's right to control their bodies, to bilingualism. We cannot neglect these considerations because they are part of the history of Canadian conservatism and they part of the shadow from which Canadian conservatism needs to emerge. 

And, this is my key point. Conservatism cannot be simply the defense of the way things used to be. Whether it was a success or a failure, the kind of thinking that historically people like George Grant or Joe Clark did about conservatism and what it entails has been lacking. One might end up disagreeing with, say, Clark's "community of communities" or Grant's "public good" and rural organic society, but the important point is that they signified something other than opposition to the liberal policies of their day and a desire to freeze time. What does, for instance, social conservatism mean? It has come to mean opposition to LGBTQi+ equality and women's control over their bodies. Quite frankly, this is not social conservatism in the sense that it does not offer a vision of what a socially conservative society looks like other than rejecting the rights of different Canadians to control their lives, be equal in employment, make decisions about their own bodies, and not have to hide who they are. This type of perspective makes conservatism a small tent: it begins its entry into public discourse by rejecting the rights of others and this is a point on which it will not win ground because it is (a) wrong and intensely problematic from an ethical perspective and (b) stakes out a political and social space that the vast majority of Canadians cannot accept.  What it means is that to win election, conservatives have to convince Canadians that they, in fact, are not who they are claiming to me be or that other issues (say, the economy) outweigh the negative aspects of their politics. 

This matters not because I want conservatives to win or even agree with what they say. It matters for two reasons. First, on a simple level, because it shrinks the Canadian political spectrum.  There may be good reason for this and that can be a discussion for another day, but the failure of alternative political perspectives ultimately means that what we have as Canadians is a more limited choice of political futures. In effect, what the CPC offers Canadians is not a different vision of the future, but a less equal, less generous, less humane version of what the Liberals are putting on the table.  Second, and following from that, the morass into which Canadian conservatism has fallen legitimizes perspectives that never should have been legitimized. For instance, it tells people who oppose equality that they are not opposing equality (that is, being, quite frankly, bigoted) but guardians of an important ideology: social conservatism.  With regard to, say, opposition to Indigenous rights, it tells people that there is *no* conservative way to build positive relations between First Peoples and Canadians and that Canadians are legitimate in rejecting reconciliation as a meaningful goal for their country. Are these really messages we want to send? 

The Tough Road

Canadian conservatism entered this year in a mess. It was in a mess before Covid-19 and the pandemic has not been kind to it.  CPC leadership contender Peter MacKay called the 2019 election loss the equivalent of taking a shot on an empty net and missing. That is not 100% accurate but the metaphor captures some of the situation. In 2019, the CPC seemed to have the cards set in its favour. It had experienced candidates, they were facing a weak PM who had back-tracked on key issues, broad provincial discontent with the federal Liberals, disaffection among a significant section of the Canadian population, and what appeared to be little competition for Canadian votes form the NDP and BQ. Said in other words, the CPC could have done what opposition parties want to do: gain power by providing an alternative to the government that speaks to Canadians. 

This perception disguised a deeper level of malaise. Canadians never warmed to Sheer, the first past the post political system worked in the Liberals favour (and there is some irony in this in that CPC fought so hard to maintain it), and the CPC's association with some provincial conservatives became a liability.  Canadian conservatism appeared internally divided, hypocritical, and reactionary.  Sheer and his supporters seemed to have little direction and seemed to be trapped in their own base of support. They offered Canadians not a different future but a recycled version of a past that most Canadians had already rejected. 

For Canadian conservatives, there were other warning signs that they should have read and these are some of the things that conservatives will need to jettison if they want to provide a real alternative to the governing Liberals. First, disaffection with Trudeau was odd and gendered. The anti-Trudeau cohort and symbolism (particularly but not exclusively the gun lobby, big oil, and the carbon copy "yellow vests"), were the kind of votes the CPC felt they needed but also the kind of voices that sound good only in an echo chamber. The idea that the solution to Canada's problems lay in a dying carbon-based energy industry was simply difficult for Canadians outside Alberta and Saskatchewan to believe and should have been difficult for conservatives in those provinces to believe as well. 

Second, conservative parties have been colonized by the very industries that they have to regulate if they are in government. In particular, the Saskatchewan Party and the United Conservative Party often appear as little more than fanboys for the oil and gas industry. What if you have legitimate environmental concerns? The conservative answer is that the economy is more important and so you need to hold your nose and vote for them. When pressed on this issue on the news one day, I listened to a conservative commentator trot out Brian Mulroney era policies to explain since the feds had once done something for Quebec, they needed now to support oil and gas in Alberta and Saskatchewan come what may. Hard feelings die hard. It is true, but as I listened to him I wondered how many people in the audience actually knew about something that happened 25 or 30 years ago? What is more, this commentator missed a chance to do something profound. Instead of fanning regional discontent (which was what he did), he could have offered alternatives to address the economic problems of those provinces. For whatever reason, he chose not to. 

Finally, the conservatives need to get recognize that they need more than an election issue to win. In the absence of doing the hard work of figuring out what conservatism means in 21st-century Canada, conservative commentators and political figures have moved through Covid-19 as if they were ready to form a government. They might be, but it won't be a good government. They have desperately searched for an issue and settled on the idea that their route to electoral victory rests in trying to portray Justin Trudeau as "unaccountable." I expect this line of attack will continue and perhaps even accelerate with some comments built in about the need to control budget deficits. Why do conservatives need to ditch this line of attack? Because it is sound bite politics that cannot provide the basis for reasoned public discourse. 

The Bad News

The bad news for conservatives is that their intense dislike of Justin Trudeau keeps them focused on slagging him. Trudeau symbolizes everything conservatives hate, much in the manner that Hillary Clinton symbolized everything the American alt.right despised. But they need to get their attention off him. Will they? I honestly don't know but if I were advising CPC leadership contenders, this is what I would be telling them. 

The Electoral Dilemmas of Conservatism

A quick follow up to my last blog. You can find Eric Grenier's interesting analysis of the electoral problems (and successes) of the Conservative Party here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-conservatives-centre-1.3388778

We are coming at the same issue from different directions, but the points are about the same. Exactly how the Conservatives expand their vote with their base is not clear.

Let That Be Your Last Battlefield: Bigotry and Conservatism

As the CPC and its intellectual allies grapple with their defeat, they have a number of options, two of which I have already highlighted. It appears that the Parliamentary caucus is ambiguously settling on a Tea Party like opposition mode, which is  both their right and their job ... in some ways. I'd advice them against it because even though it will play well with their base, I'm skeptical that it will play well with the rest of the country. I'm sure, of course, that this is not their only plan. I'm sure they have already worked out the details of a multi-pronged oppositional strategy that includes their own efforts to re-brand progressive policies in a negative way that casts them as political manipulation or corruption, in the same way that Republicans in the US seem to have convinced a large section of the US population that health care is actually not good for you and the US Government is evil for providing it.

Where the Conservatives run into problems, however, is in the loose mishmash that makes up their party. All political parties have core supporters. One becomes concerned about a party and its future only when -- or, well, seriously concerned -- you start to lose your core supporters. That is: the people who have hung in there, voted for you, put signs on their lawns, donated, come to meetings (or, perhaps protests), encouraged friends and family to turn out, etc. This core group is what carries a party through opposition or a minority position in Parliament or the legislature. One's core group is, by definition, not amenable to much change (hence, the term "core").  They are not easily swayed by the shifting winds of politics. They may or may not be a party members (my grandfather, for instance, was an on-again-off-again member of the PCs here in NB but whether or not he was officially a member, he always voted Tory) but that is less important than their votes and support.

When there is a shift in core supporters, that signals a wide change in what political scientists call "the party system." For instance, the demise of Social Credit in Alberta and the rise of the PC dynasty was such a shift ... of sorts. Likewise, the collapse of the Conservatives and, for a while, Liberals in BC (replaced by SoCred and CCF-NDP) is another example. And, a third might be the demise of the old PC party federally which, for a while, left the Liberals without any serious challenger as a national political party. Instead, the Liberals fought a series of regionalized battles against other parties (NDP and PC in the Atlantic, BQ in QC, Reform and then CA in the west).  Reform and the Bloc sucked away core PC supporters in their regions of the country, forcing the demise of the PCs as a viable political alternative.

Viability, as you can tell, is a key issue. Parties and independents periodically win local elections for a variety of reasons that can include the popularity of local candidates, the temporary demise of another political party (say, CoR's brief foray into NB politics), or isolated and localized support among a relatively small core group (Quebec solidaire in QC and the Greens in PEI, NB, and BC might be examples). But, viability means something other than winning a seat or a few seats. Joe Clark and Jean Charest no doubt helped win a few seats here and their for the old PCs as they struggled on after the 1993 debacle. But, that did not make the party viable as a national alternative to the Liberals because they had lost core support in QC and the west. To be a viable political party, you need to have people who you can count on to turn out and vote for you, sign your petitions, donate money, come to events, etc., time after time after time. This is what differentiates parties that have a brief moment in the sun (Bloc populaire, Cape Breton Labour, PANB ... well, almost) from even smaller parties with a core group of supporters.  Without this group, the party will disappear.

What does this have to do with the Conservatives and with bigotry? Or, even with my oblique Star Trek reference in the title of this blog? Bigotry is a dilemma for the conservatives and highlights, in fact, the problems of that party (all parties, of course, have problems). The CPC wants and needs the support of people who call themselves "social conservatives," or "traditionalists" or even "real Canadians." If it is going to win, it needs those votes. It needs the votes of people who want to ban the niquab, who want to restrict immigration, who would -- if they could -- turn back the clock on gay and lesbian equality, who want to find ways to limit women's control of their bodies, and who want to ignore environmental problems because deep down they don't really believe that there are environmental problems (its all exaggerated, etc.). Now, I hasten to add that I am not accusing anyone in the CPC or its Parliamentary caucus of holding such views. Truth is, I've not looked up all these people and likely will not since its not on point to the point I am making (and, would be incredibly time consuming).  What is on point is that these people (a) don't vote Liberal or NDP or Green and (b) have found a home over the years in various conservatives parties. The old Reform Party, you will remember, had a serious problem with bigotry when it started out (Preston Manning used the metaphor of finding bugs when you  turn over rocks to explain this away). They find their home there because (a) the conservatives recognize that they need these votes, (b) seem to share *some* of these views (Harper, as well know, encouraged Islamophobia through his bizarre campaign against the niquab, or at least what The Globe found bizarre -- see previous blog), and (c) other parties clearly will not have them (racists, I am guessing, would be quickly forced out of the NDP and Green Parties and I assume would be told to go away in the Liberal Party as well).

The problem with this group of people and their views is not that they have them or that they vote Conservative but that having them and having them in the CPC creates problems for other voters. More exactly, it creates problems attracting other voters. I met Reformers -- and CoR members! -- who just could not understand why their anti-Francophone rhetoric stopped French Canadians from voting for them. Just another sign, I recall one person say, of the problems with French Canadians. But, more astute conservative politicians understand the problem right away. I'll go out on a limb and state this bluntly: most Canadians don't agree with bigotry, most believe in equality, and most think that the state should not tell individuals what to do with their bodies (that is, that the regulation of the body should be as limited as possible). Most, it appears, want to help Syrian refugees; most believe that climate change is a problem, and most embrace diversity. What "most" means is fluid, but you get my drift. By themselves, the core group of CPC voters is a minority (larger than we might like but smaller than that core believes), not large enough to win elections -- except in unusual circumstances -- and the views of their core supporters drive away other potential voters who just cannot accept the views of core Tories.

One lesson of the 2015 election for Tories (whether they want to learn it or not) is precisely the above: core voters can stand behind you and be energized by your campaign, say the anti-niquab, but ... well ... its not a winning formula. In fact, its a recipe for defeat.

Over the years, conservative parties have tried a range of approaches to address this problem. The old Red Tories, for instance, in Canada simply exiled the bigots (this was Stanfield's approach, at least): you might have support but you are no longer welcome in our party. This is a principled and ethical stand. Others have simply accepted the fact of their eventual demise (CoR), perhaps railing against it but not really contesting elections. Some have accepted their place on the fringe (say, Christian Heritage), because they believe a bigger principle is at stake. The approach of Reform, the CA, and then CPC, however, was different. It tried to keep these votes but silence the voters.

Now, I've overstated that point. I don't think -- to give him his due -- Preston Manning  tried to silence anyone and Stockwell Day was incapable of silencing dissidents in his own party. The issue was not censorship but an effort to keep people who hold particular views quiet while disavowing their statements or chocking it up to internal debate, free speech, a "lone wolf," etc. Harper, for instance, did not impede discussion of anti-abortion laws but he simply said that the CPC under his watch would not bring forward such legislation (even if members of his party might support a private members bill ... that was their business).

Another strategy has been to try to recast particular views as good and noble and consistent with the best conceptions of freedom and democracy. Thus, Harper avoided actually talking about the fact that his campaign against the niquab was an instance of him -- as PM -- telling women what they could and could not wear. In this way, a policy aimed at limiting the rights of an incredibly small minority group was transformed into a campaign for women's freedom, an anti-Islamic stance was made to sound like "freedom of religion." Harper said that no women should be made to cover her face but the irony -- that he was involved in precisely the same activity (telling women how they should dress and threatening to make it a matter of law) -- seemed to be lost in the shuffle. Likewise, the opponents of gay marriage went to incredibly length to explain that they were not bigoted but merely "defending the family" (even though equality was not a threat and that there other important concerns -- say, daycare -- that should have been addressed if one really was concerned about the family).

The final strategy is trans-formative as well, but in a different way. It involves arguing that the issue that is being discussed is not actually the issue that is important. For example, conservative apologists tell us that they are not defending bigotry which, they assure us, they themselves oppose. But, they also reject "censorship" because it is a greater problem and so must, reluctantly they assure us, support the "rights" of bigots to campaign publicly to subvert the very rights they claim to uphold. (In fact, a few years ago we saw an odd group called "Journalists for Free Speech," or something like that, argue that if they were not allowed to stage offensive and racist public lectures on someone else's private property -- that is, on the property of a private institution, meaning that they were arguing that even private institutions should be forced to accept racist lectures; they have no free choice or ability to control themselves -- censorship was occurring!) It is an odd circular reasoning, to be sure, but the key problem is that it creates a stalking horse. It makes it seem like free speech is somehow under threat in Canada when the only threat that has really reared its head in recent years is the Conservative federal government itself.

There is a real problem, of course, with this reconstruction of bigoted views as somehow about democracy, freedom, etc. Well, likely more than one but one on which I will comment right now: what happens is that bigotry is given the veneer of respectability. Indeed, the CPC helps to create arguments that seem to make some level of intellectual sense (see my blog on the idea of a referendum) or which seem to be about higher principles, as opposed to the crass views they dress up. In this way, the CPC, may, in fact, be helping to perpetuate views that otherwise would be consigned to the margins as inconsistent with freedom and democracy. For instance, if the government came out and said "we are prejudiced against Mexicans and so are going to introduce new rules that make their entry into the country more difficult" ... well ... most Canadians would have pause. But, if we dress this up as "illegal immigration" or a "security threat" ... well, we have something else (because we all know that there is no way a Mexican got to Canada, legally, right?). After Harper began his anti-niquab campaign I heard more people who had never given a fig about women's rights -- and, to the best of my knowledge still don't -- talk as if they were defending women's rights. Ideally, of course, women's rights could be best defended by keeping "them" (aka niquab-wearing women) out, too.

To say this in different words: the CPC tries to walk a thin line. It does not want to lose votes it know it needs but it does not want the views of those voters to dominate party policy or scare off other potential voters that it also needs. This is the dilemma and the electoral implications of it. To avoid this dilemma, the party adopts a number of strategies that includes asking party members to stay silent (with, one presumes, the promise that something will be done in the future), transforming the issue from what it is into a point of principles (this is not about Islam, its about ... women's rights!), or distracting attention from the matter at hand by claiming that a greater issue is at stake (I'm not a bigot but I won't stand for censorship). The effect is twofold. First, the CPC has to deal with views that, sooner or later, come home to roost. Sooner or later, someone in the party will make manifest what it has been trying to keep silent, as Harper himself did in the last federal election. Second, the CPC becomes complicit in the perpetuation of bigotry. Its dilemma, in this way, feeds into and becomes another dilemma, but for all of Canada, and not just it.

Shattered Mirror: Conservative Economics and Counterfactual History

The mirror universe alternative history of the 2015 election, then, runs something like this: the Harper Tories had a justly and accurately winning record if they had just stuck to the economy and ditched all the other stuff for which they became know (culture wars, anti-rights, Islamophobia, opposition to democracy, etc.). Here is how The Globe (in the piece I cited in a previous blog) puts it:

The key issue of the election should have been the economy and the financial health of Canadians. On that score, the Conservative Party has a solid record. Hardly perfect but, relatively speaking, better than most. However, the election turned into a contest over something else: a referendum on the government’s meanness, its secretiveness, its centralization of power in the most centralized Prime Minister’s Office in history, its endless quest for ever more obscure wedge issues, and its proclivity for starting culture wars rather than sticking to the knitting of sound economic and fiscal stewardship. It turned this election into a referendum on the one-man show that has become the Harper government.

In an election about the economy, the Conservatives might have won, and would have deserved to. But thanks to the Harper government’s own choices, this election has mostly not been fought on the Conservative Party’s strong suit. Attention has instead been turned to the rotten culture of Mr. Harper’s government.

The same op-ed suggests that the Liberals and NDP had simply absorbed the Conservatives economic policies (which, if true, really begs the question of why one needs the CPC to win if one is, like The Globe, only interested in economic issues, but I'll leave that to your imagination). It then goes on to slag Trudeau as a pretty boy, the Liberals as a party without policy other than what they stole from the Tories, and to reiterate its point: Harper had to go because his neo-con sideshow had become the problem. So, ipso facto, on two counts, Canada still has a Tory government, either (a) through Liberal cribbed policies or (b) because good sense Canadians would have embraced the good Tory record if they had just ... well ... not been Tories.

My intention, as I explained in a previous blog, is not to slag conservatives or support anyone else. It is to look at how conservatives are responding to electoral defeat. My argument is that they are responding in no one way because the party itself is a mishmash of different perspectives, but all the ways involve some measure of distortion that goes beyond "putting a good face on a bad situation." It involves, as I intimated in a previous blog, living in the equivalent of a Star Trek Mirror Universe.  I'm not certain what perspective Rex Murphy represents, but The Globe is clearly neoliberalism looking to assure us that neoliberalism is (a) good, (b) has a good track record, and (c) what good ordinary Canadians want (and, thus has both a good sense and a democratic sanction, in case you missed the "finer" points).

There are, of course, a host of problems with this alternative history. The Conservative economic record is, in fact, not particularly good. They made bad decisions at the beginning of the recession and reversed them only when they thought they would lose power (suggesting that they were making those decisions for a reason other than a commitment to the national economy ... but, again, I'll leave that off). They wasted resources needlessly on partisan spending, engaged in a costly aggressive foreign policy that accomplished next to nothing, and put all the national economic eggs in the Tar Sands basket ... the results of which are now evident to anyone who has tried to buy something online from the US. In short, Tory economic policy was shaky at best, produced needless -- as in it served no useful economic purpose -- debt, and created an intensely problematic (both economically and ethically) resource dependency (I noted before that this was the message of the Alberta provincial election that the Tories did not get: Albertans recognized the problems of economic resource dependency and voted NDP not because they suddenly turned lefty but because the NDP was the only party that was talking seriously about diversification).

What you will notice about The Globe's narrative, however, is the way it avoids all these issues by simply ignoring history. The past is, in effect, addressed simply in a single sentence that runs like this Conservative = good economics. What you will notice is that this point is taken for granted and never explained. There is no significant analysis; no facts; no discussion of national debt, no discussion of Canada's relative HDI, no discussion of standards of living. I wrote a blog on this point years ago, but I'll say it again: the historical record simply does not back up the position that Conservatives are better managers of the economy than moderate centrists (Liberals) or even lefties. (If you are interested in more discussion of this issue from someone other than me: look here and here and here.) The point, of course, is not to refute The Globe point-by-point, but to suggest that Conservative economic policy is not a black and white, good v everyone else bad, issue. Its complicated and requires some degree of nuance that looks at things like mismanagement, standards of living, spending patterns, etc., the future it laid out. In fact, from this op-ed, we don't even know what The Globe means by a good economic record since they never explained it. They simply asserted it was good. Was it good in terms of employment? working hours? diversification? skill development?

I am not trying to suggest that a single op-ed changes the world because it doesn't. I am trying to use it as an example that illustrates a core point.  The narrative of sound Conservative economic management is asserted and taken for granted in the complete absence of any serious discussion of the economy. Look at the piece again, if you doubt me. Hence, what we have is an assertion that the Conservatives are good at something and that something is important -- perhaps vitally important -- for the nation. In fact, it is so important others copy it but we won't actually tell you what it is or give any evidence to support what we are saying. Now, if we were talking about just about anything other than Conservative economic management ... would you accept this point on the basis of what you've been given?

What is equally disconcerting is the fact that The Globe seems to think that one can easily separate out CPC economic and cultural policies. The Globe holds out hope that the CPC will again become a progressive political party that manages the economy well while adopting liberal values that embrace social progressivism. If that is what you want ... why would anyone vote CPC? In fact, that is a distortion of the CPC.  Think about this ... if the Conservatives embraced liberal reform, dropped their opposition to Islam, embraced diversity, side up with gay and lesbian equality, agree that women should control their own bodies, remove restriction on scientists, stopped mobility discrimination against Mexicans, and encouraged democracy ... would they be Conservatives any longer? I know a number of people who voted Conservative. None of them voted that way because of Harper's sterling economic record. To a one they think the Liberals (or, more exactly "Justin") will be bad for the economy but that did not colour their vote. Opposition to Islam, the perceived need for an aggressive foreign policy, concern about diversity, worries about feminism, etc. did. To a one, everyone I know who voted Conservative did so for cultural -- and not economic -- reasons.

The Globe's discourse -- as an example of Conservative discourse -- enters into something that is more than a bit of a fantasy land. It reconstructs the Conservative Party at the same time that it reconstructs (by ignoring) history. It would have us believe that the CPC (a) would have won but for Harper's misguided policies that were (b) not necessary to conservatism. In other words, Harper alone bears the burden of the electoral defeat: an odd man who refused, according to this op-ed, to stop engaging in problematic behaviour and policies. This, of course, simply ignores the fact that Harper's oddities reflect conservative views in Canadian society (not of all Canadians, but of a good chunk of them). We can dislike these policies. I do. But, 30%+ of Canadians voted for him and that says something. (For a fuller discussion of the electoral ramifications of this ... see my next blog.)

What is equally confusing about this op-ed is its odd disregard for Canadians. The fact that Canadians stated that they did not want the Tories back in office in overwhelming numbers is not ignored but it is downplayed. The almost seven of ten Canadians who elected a progressive alternative are not discussed nor is their reason for their voting this way discussed. It is, instead, assumed that they voted this way -- for "progressive" alternatives -- purely out of a dislike of Harper.

Is that true? I suspect not. A lot of people disliked Harper (and, according to The Globe, with good reason) but why? I'd argue that it was, in some measure, a rejection not just of Harper but of what Harper symbolized: a political project in which the majority of Canadians could not see themselves and which did not represent their vision of the future or the country. Said differently, I think we should allow some value to the stated wishes of the about 70% of Canadians who thought they were voting for a progressive political option. That thought -- whether or not the Liberal Party meets those expectations -- means something too, and that is what is also eclipsed in this editorial.

Where does this leave us? It shows a different type of discourse than that articulated by Murphy, a point I made earlier. Instead of attempting to brand progressive democratic reform as somehow illegitimate, The Globe takes a different approach to reassure the neoliberal faithful.  The Conservatives did not lose; Harper's silliness cost them a good thing. Judged on their merits, the CPC should have won and the fact that it did not says nothing about the wishes or desire of Canadians, whose desire for a progressive alternative to the CPC is, similarly, ignored. It says only that the CPC should ditch cultural issues for economic ones. The fact that they did not shattered the mirror in this alternative universe and allowed another party to gain power.

Through the Mirror Darkly: Counterfactual History and Conservative Election Victories (Part I)

Among my favourite Star Trek episodes are those that focus on the Mirror Universe, a dark alternative reality where history has played out differently. First introduced on the Original Series, the mirror universe was picked up on DS 9 and then used again on Enterprise.  Rather than developing a peaceful democratic and humane (!) federation of planets, humans created an evil empire that subjugated other races, practiced slavery and torture, used assassination for career advancement, condoned corruption and graft, etc. Eventually, the human empire is overthrown and humans themselves are subjected to slavery. The point being, of course, a take on "what comes around goes around": the empire built on oppression and corruption and hedonism collapses only to enslave its former masters; the democratic and ideal-driven society committed to the public good survives.

I mention this because some conservative commentators seem to live in this mirror universe. They live a world where the Tories won the 2015 election ... or, rather, should have ... were it not for some simple twists of fate or mistakes on the part of the CPC. An example of this kind of reasoning can be found in this Globe editorial.  It is, in my view, interesting because it illustrates a different type of counter-Liberal discourse than that articulated by Rex Murphy and on which I commented in a recent blog. Instead, in this discourse, the Liberals did not so much win the election as the Conservatives lost it by failing to play to their strengths. Instead of fighting the election on economic grounds -- a supposed sure winner for the Tories -- they elected to fight it on cultural issues, guaranteeing their own loss. The upshot, if you've missed it, is this: Canadians did not really elect a progressive alternative to the Tories, marginalizing them with something like 30% of the popular vote. Indeed, Canadians, in this mirror universe, are still committed to conservative economic ideas and would have kept the conservatives in power *if* the conservatives had just not made a mistake or two.

Like Rex Murphy's extremist anti-Liberalism on which I commented in a previous blog (in which the Liberal Party is preemptively accused of subverting democracy and individual rights and promoting government sanctioned theft ... they haven't yet but just in case they do, best to get that accusation out of the way in advance and, if they don't, well heck, they surely will do something nefarious anyway so why not slag them with this?), The Globe's post-hoc rationalization of the Liberal victory serves to construct a pro-Conservative discourse, albeit in different ways. It is those different ways that interest me and that is what I am addressing in this series of blogs.

Before I do so, however, I should explain what I am trying to do. I am trying to understand, assess, analyse, how conservatives are responding to 2015 and what their project of nation -- their vision of Canada -- entails. How do they approach the issue of constructing an alternative government (one job of an opposition party)? What discourses do they enable that will enhance their position in the public sphere? How do conservatively-minded Canadians respond to progressive Canadians? What do they think is wrong with the country and with public life? In other words, my aim is to do something I might not be good at but this is a blog, after all: assess the discourses of Canadian conservatism using its response to the 2015 election defeat as a case study. In this blog I will back up and look a bit at the nature of conservatism in Canada today before shifting ground in the next blog to look more directly at the Mirror Universe of Conservatism.

Proviso: I am not trying to apologize for anything that the Liberal Party has or might do. I've offered, elsewhere, a critique of Canadian liberalism and I might offer more in the future. What I am interested in is how conservative Canadians -- supporters of the CPC, partisans, contrarians, anti-Liberals, traditionalists, neo-liberals, etc., are responding to the Liberal victory, and responding to something that looks a lot like a victory for a "progressive" vision of Canada. This is important, of course, because it is not just a Liberal victory to which The Globe and Murphy are responding. It was the overwhelming rejection of conservatism ... an ideology that has long had shaky foundations in Canadian public life and which fashioned a government out of the sponsorship scandal, twists of fate, moderated policies, and a particular cultural context.  Canadian conservatism, as I've also noted elsewhere in this blog, has become an odd duck.  At one point in time, it carried forward a fairly solid and cohesive ideology epitomized by the work of George Grant, among others.

This is not really the case anymore. Instead, the party and its supporters are an odd informal coalition of sorts that is guided by a mishmash of ideas that make for something much less than ideological cohesion. Part of this mishmash is the simple fact that even Tories recognize that they will never win election with a straight forward conservative platform. They cannot, for instance, oppose equality for gays and lesbians, consign women to the kitchen, and reverse immigration flows in a Quixotic effort to whiten Canada. They can't really limit women's control over their own bodies (at least they can't in much of the country) and they can't turn back the clock on a range of other reforms -- limiting prayer in schools, for instance -- that they might like. Thus, their policies lack cohesion, on one level, because they can't really speak their policies out loud. Every once in a while a so-called "social conservative" will express disappointment with the CPC and suggest that grave things might happen if the Tories don't respond to conservative evangelical demands, but most of the time even these people realize that they are on the losing side of history (a generous perspective, and one that I'd be inclined to take, might use a different language here and refer to the inherent difficult of fashioning ideologically consistent policies in brokerage parties. Thus, Reform, the old post-1993 PCs, and then the Canadian Alliance might have been more ideologically consistent but ... they had no chance of winning. A 'big tent" politics necessarily means some inconsistency as a party strives to unite disparate electoral communities into a winning party.)

But, another reason that this CPC lacks ideological cohesion is that ... well ... it simply lacks ideological cohesion. The people it attracts often have little in common with each other, a point made by people more in the know than I (I think here of Michael Beheils' review essay in the American Review of Canadian Studies published a number of years ago). The social conservatives who rail against changes in Canadian demographics or gender relations don't have a lot in common with the neoliberal anti-welfare state resource capitalist looking to get Keystone XL up and running. Small town Maritime traditionalists (of which there are fewer than one might think) don't have a great deal in common with free market advocates in the Fraser Institute or Quebec "soft nationalists" concerned about Islam (a minority position in Quebec, I hasten to add!).

What unites these different groups of people is that they all self-identity with a particular part of the political spectrum (the right) and all reject another part of the political spectrum, which they associate with the left, but which actually includes most of the centrist civic nationalism that formed the field of force in Canadian politics from the 1960s through the early years of the 2000s. Exactly what they dislike about it varies. Some don't like its commitment to individualism (which they see as introducing a wimpy "rights talk" and subverting the old fashion "stand on your own two feet" approach to life or which is associated with equality for gays and women and minorities). Some feel that the welfare state makes for bad economics. Some dislike the supposed secularization of Canadian society and what they see as the abrogation of tradition. What these different groups share, then, is not an affinity with each other but an antipathy to liberalism and the Liberal Party.

I'll give you an example: many evangelical social conservatives -- no matter what they might say -- actually have little problem with state involvement in society and the economy. As we've seen, for instance, evangelical universities in Canada (of which there are a few) can make just as much use of state money (not in volume but in the fact that they get it) as secular institutions. Evangelicals, in fact, often call *for* state intervention to limit access to abortion, as one example. Other  conservatives support such matters as income splitting, using the state to lobby foreign governments to import Canadian oil, aggressive foreign policy that includes the use of the military, restrictions on immigration, building new prisons (despite a lowering crime rate), and other like matters. In other words, the issue is *not* opposition to the state, but opposition to what they believe the state does. If it does different things, its OK. But, and this is my point, economic conservatives (neoliberals) might look at some of these things in a very different way and oppose the state on principle. I recall listening to an friend of mine (an economics prof) respond to a business person at a conference we host years ago. The business person was complaining about the limited market in the Maritimes and suggested the government needed to do something about this. My friend said "its not the government's job to find you customers." That is opposition to the state.

The other thing that these groups share is a belief not simply that they are right but that they represent "the people." What do I mean by this? Well, think about it this way: as I noted in my previous blog on Rex Murphy, Murphy distorts Canadian constitutional law, ignores the election act, seems oblivious to history, and seems unaware of how Responsible Government functions let alone Parliament but he does all this in the name defending "the people." The idea that the current government could somehow represent "the people" is rejected by Murphy out of hand. I don't have space to engage Murphy's odd argument but what is interesting is that in his calculus, everyone who did not vote Liberal somehow becomes an opponent of progressive policies, that is: a conservative. (Remember, the issue Murphy is opposing is making the Canadian political system more responsive to the electorate ... that was what he was taking his stand *against* and suggesting that it is a particularly nefarious theft of popular rights.)  It does not matter if you voted Green, NDP, BQ, or Conservative, a vote for any of these parties makes one, ipso facto, on the Conservative side of the ledger, thus Murphy can claim that 60% of Canadians do not support progressive changes designed to enhance democracy.

This is a very odd math, but it makes sense if someone thinks that their own personal views are broadly representative of majority views. (I will confess, as a Green Party supporter, I have never been able to harbour this particular illusion). I've told this story before but I'll give you a personal example. I once found myself at a party in a small Maritime town where I was the only person who believed in gun control. The 20 or so other people at the party (who were all nice enough) found it impossible to believe that a majority of Canadians favoured gun control because everyone they knew did not. They thus ascribed gun control to some soft of elitist lefty plot to rid ordinary folks of their cherished guns. You might have heard similar things from opponents of Syrian refugee ("no one wants them"), of opponents of women's control over their bodies ("no one believes in this"), of equality for gay and lesbian equality, etc.

Such ideological positions are difficult to disentangle, I will confess, and sometimes there is, in fact, a recognition that the views being held are not majority positions. But, at that point, the discourse shifts. I'll simplify to illustrate a point: real Canadians think X. This discourse is disturbing because it draws the type of cultural distinction that made many of us distrust the more radical separatists in Quebec. It seems to work through a discourse that creates perpetual marginalization for some people and rationalizes inequality. There are those of us who are *real* Canadians whose voices should count more than those people who are *not* real Canadians. These unreal Canadians could be ethno-cultural minorities, people of particular political stripe (feminists, for instance), people who speak a particular language other than English at home. The point, of course, is political. This discourse recognizes that conservative views are a minority perspective but explains this away by demoting other views and making them not count.

Why is this important? Am I involved in something other than a rant? I'll answer yes to both questions, I hope. It is important because, for conservative people, it creates a problem. If *real* Canadians are those that share particular views -- say who see refugees as a threat and want to exclude them or who feel women should be the primary cooks in a family or who oppose celebrations of holidays other than Christian -- then the 2015 election creates a particular problem, doesn't it? The vote did not go the way it was supposed to go. There is no way to disguise the fact that only about 30% of  Canadians voted  the way they should. That means that real Canadians are outnumbered 2:1 by unreal Canadians or ... it mean something else.

Likewise, economic conservatives -- people at The Globe, for example (neoliberals) -- need to explain why their ideas did not carry the day. I won't go through this thought exercise again because the point is obvious, but you can see where I would go. The punchline: if all good and real Canadians (perhaps those knowledgeable about the economy) support a neoliberal economic order ... how do we explain 2015?

The Mirror Universe -- to which I will turn more fully in my next blog -- is one answer.

Anger and Public Life: Or, Attack Ads as Cultural Artifact

I recently tried to argue that one thing that had changed in the recent Canadian federal election was the tone of public discourse. The Conservatives who -- for right or wrong -- had mastered Bush II era negative advertising techniques in Canada took a hit by not recognizing that times had changed. Even before the election had officially been called, the CPC rolled out their usual panoply of negativity -- which had been used to effect in previous elections -- but ... nothing happened. The Tories could not gain any traction and, for one reason or another, voters shifted over the Liberals -- whose leader was under near continual Conservative attack.

There could be a number of reasons why negative attack adverts did not work this time. It could be that people simply did not believe them because they held a different view of Trudeau. It could be that a significant chunk of voters were simply so interested in getting rid of Harper that they were willing to vote for whomever, regardless of public discourse, under a "lesser evil"-type of approach to public life. It could be that the adverts backfired and actually drew attention to the Liberals and their leaders. All of  these things likely played some role in the process of Conservative defeat, but in a previous blog I argued that Canadians were moving beyond negative advertising and hence, the adverts missed their market.  Should I re-think my assessment? Have I spoken too quickly? I tried to argue that Canadians moving beyond negative advertising was a "good news story" that gave us -- along with some other things -- more reasons for optimism in Canadian public life than we have had in some time. But, am I right or ... might not such an assertion require more explanation?

One thing to look at might be the character of public discourse.  "Back in the day" -- that is, when I was an undergrad, one of my profs introduced the concept of the "spirit of the age" (zeitgeist) and argued that it just was. One could recognize that culture had shifted (one way or the other) but it was impossible to explain. One could just detail that it happened but historians -- he was a history prof -- should remain silent on cause because they would not be able to find it.

Even then I did not like that explanation, the way we might say it now is like this: Canadians in the recent past responded to negative advertising because they were angry. They didn't, in 2015, because the "sunny ways" promised by the Liberals captured a more optimistic, upbeat Canada. In other words, the spirit of the age had changed and the Liberals benefit from it, in the same way that the Tories had previously benefitted from people's anger. One might not agree with this type of explanation but we have all heard explanations like this. For instance, after 9/11 "people were scared." Or, "people don't like change." Or, "people think it is time for a change." Etc.

There is, of course, a serious problem with this way of thinking, likely more than one but let's focus on one right now. There is no "spirit of the age," as it were, because culture is not a seamless whole. Instead, it is a fractured, fragmented, self-contradictory, and contested. We have, for instance, lived through a time  of remarkable technological achievement but that achievement has spawned both advocates and opponents.  In the past, the Industrial Revolution spawned Romanticism and, in Canada, the Group of Seven and back-to-the-land movements.  Equality between different ethnic groups in the US has spawned both amazing developments in mass media, athletics, the arts, etc., but also indignant disregard of Black lives. In Canada, today, respect for Original Peoples sits side-by-side with indifferent to MMIW; respect for the environment (something some might see as built into Canadian culture) is an odd bedfellow with the Tar Sands.

Thus, there is no singular spirit of the age. Canadians have not passed through an "angry age" to "sunny ways." Instead, some Canadians have been angry (and, some political figures played to this anger and perhaps inflamed it); while other Canadians are more optimistic or believe that optimism is warranted with the right approach to public life: negotiation, common cause, mutual support can replaced confrontation and antagonism if we ditch the needless confrontation and antagonism (this is, after all, 2015!).

The question, then, is -- or, was --  not an angry culture but who is angry and why? Or, to draw this back to my theme:  to whom did attack adverts appeal and why? Why did they stop appealing or to whom did they stop appealing and why?

I suspect that the number of people to whom attack adverts appealed is actually pretty low. I think those people are there, but I think their numbers were made to seem artificially inflated by the odd electoral circumstances in which Canada found itself in the federal elections of 2006, 2008 and 2011, where a significant number of middle-class suburbanites -- people who had spent most of their lives voting Liberal (or, occasionally, NDP, or very occasionally PC with an emphasis on the P) -- voted CPC. Said differently, they were disaffected Liberals who could not vote Liberal (for whatever reason) but had not dramatically shifted away from their personal or class views.  Negative advertising may have cemented their support in those elections for the Tories but it did not cement their attachment to the party or to conservatism, as an ideology.  They were swayed by negative advertising but their views had not been changed.

I also suspect that there were others, however, for whom negative advertising -- or the negative adverts that they saw -- were something other (and, more) than a political strategy.  I suspect that the views they articulated really represented deep-seated views and it is to these people, I think, that we need to turn our attention if we want to understand the negative anger of that time because these people really were, it seems to me, angry and negatively so. Who were these people? There seems to have been several distinct groups:

1. Alienated westerners: supporters of the old Social Credit, some former PCs, Reformers and member of the Canadian Alliance (or, perhaps, if we were to back far enough we might find routes in the Western Canada Concept). Western alienation is still discussed in the news  but its changed and the news, in fact, has a very poor handle on it. The  character and nature of the anger, the sense of being pillaged by the "rest of Canada," the sense of being disrespected and being outsiders in their own home, as it were, was a very real feeling that we cannot just chock up to some sort of zeitgeist. It had real roots and real causes.

2. Oddly ... self-identifying evangelical Christians. Not all, but there were an oddly large number (of a much smaller group in Canada than in the US) who were angry. The character and nature of this anger, I suspect, has little to do with Christianity. But, there are Christians who clearly have felt outside the loop, a sense that the world is not unfolding the way they think it should, and that if not their position than that of their religion is in trouble. They are angry at women's rights, equality for gays and lesbians, Sunday shopping, increased respect for non-Christian religions combined with decreased respect for Christianity, and any number of other things.

3. Professional anger mongers. These are far more common in the US, where there is -- apparently -- a lot of money to be made by being angry. The Fox-News continually angry talk-show hosts cum semi-sort-of-journalist crew ... does not really exist in Canada. In fact, those right wing Canadians who want to be this kind of person might be better off heading south of the border after the failure of Sun TV, or whatever it was called, last year (I think). Professional anger mongers sell a product: righteous indignation. They also sell a political messages: moderates, liberals, leftists ... heck, anyone but conservatives, are rotten hypocrites who irrationally hate the nation. Said differently, this is anger directed to political purpose. It is designed to discredit particular political perspectives and serves to reinforce that discrediting by increasing the level of emotion. I'm not certain if professional anger mongers are really angry or they are putting on an act. I suspect, its 50/50; some are and some are not. The key, however, is that these are people who are already angry. Anger is their "go to" position.

4. But ... this is a small group. To whom are they speaking? And, this is where I start to run into trouble because, it turns out, that group number 3 does have a bit an audience and that audience are also people who seem to be ready to be angry. What are they angry at? Well, all matter of things. If western alienation could be mobilized against Stefan Dion's carbon tax; anger at Muslims -- and, particularly women who wear Niqabs -- is another question. This is anger that is not regionalized. Indeed, this is one of the things that we might note as a "take away" from the last election, the "Harper Government's" war on those who oppose the Tar Sands failed. It might have, ultimately, secured a few votes in AB and SK, but even here the CPC fortress was shaking. The message -- mobilize anger against premiers who oppose Keystone -- fell flat except with those who were already pre-disposed to it. There were no new votes to be won here.

Likewise, I don't think the Tories scooped up any new votes with their attacks on Muslim women. It possible it got them a few extra votes here and there but the polls don't suggest that because most people who were pre-disposed to this message were already voting Tory. Same too with the anti-terrorism thing.

This does not, of course, answer the question. But, it helps a bit. The anger that the Tories mobilized seemed to be hit its mark (even though that mark was far more limited than they thought) when they went after visible signs of diversity. My guess is that this anger was primarily working class, overwhelmingly white, and largely -- but not exclusively -- male. When I did have the opportunity to talk to some of these people, I asked them directly "why are you angry?" Their answers were pretty consistent: person X (Muslim woman) is trying to get something for nothing, disrespecting "our" traditions, illustrating that they are not "loyal" to Canada, etc. In other words, their anger was animated by a sense that the world they knew was being undone and that someone else -- someone who they identified as an outsider -- was getting preferential treatment.

Now, I hasten to add that I am not agreeing with any of this. There is clearly much more than an implicit racism in these contentions. They lack historical perspective, claim the right to define the nation, are empirically problematic, fail to reflect on white privilege, among other things.

I will also confess that I still find this anger -- this vindictive -- odd. It can be so harsh, so powerful, so immune to reason that it becomes the antithesis of reason and discussion. It is about reinforcing views that were already held; not defending or explaining those views.  It struck me in talking to people who held these views that their minds were made up. They did not want to discuss. If I disagreed with them -- if I said a good word about Niqab or spoke of women's right to determine their own dress -- I was almost instantly subjected to the same anger. How could I say such things ... ? Didn't I know that ... ?   I must be a ... (liberal was the usual word that was used here)! It struck me in these not-conversations that these people -- at least the ones to whom I spoke -- had been angry for some time. They were rehearsing statements they had made many times, heard others make, and that had received support from their friends and family.  Anger -- at least at diversity -- had become a "go to" position for them that was unquestioned.

There is more to this, but I'll leave off this discussion now because it is already too long. I might return to it because there are unaddressed issues but I still maintain my optimism. Yes, there is a lot of anger "out there" but ... it did not rule the day and, right now at least, likely cannot. Some of that anger in the past reflected real processes -- regional marginalization -- and should be treated seriously. Others, well ... they represent the odd conjuncture of political opportunism, the consumerism of anger (its transformation into a commodity), and race-based class politics.

The Power of Ideology or ... What Actually Are Conservatives These Days?

As I was driving home on Monday from a meeting in Fredericton, a friend and I spent a great deal of time talking about contemporary Canadian politics and its problems. We spent a bit of time thinking about each of the major federal parties and were, in some ways, stumped by the Conservatives. A recent CBC story about the increased possibility of an NDP federal government (which you can find here) echoes some of our thinking. What struck both of us about the Conservatives was how hard it was to place them, ideologically, within a tradition of Canadian conservatism. In short, neither of us felt that the Conservative Party of Canada, despite its name, was actually particularly conservative. They were right wing, but what that meant, to us at least, was not all that clear. It meant a general opposition to some things but this general opposition was also tempered by the need to conform to more moderate strains in Canadian political culture and by a complicated semi-worshiping relationship with American Republicanism.  So ... as we head into a federal election this fall ... what are Canadian Conservatives in this day and age?

This is not an idle question. For good or ill, I suspect that 30%+ of voters will cast their ballots for the Conservative Party this fall. For what are they voting? The fact that I am asking this question might lead some to say "OK, it is pretty clear that this guy is not a Conservative, if he has to ask what Conservatism is all about." And, that would be a fair statement. But, what I want to capture is what I see as a shift, drift, reformation of political ideologies in Canada. In my last two blog entries, I tried to grapple with the state of the independence movement in Quebec today. I tried to argue that the broad social-democratic movement that could see itself as a legitimate heir to the Quiet Revolution (although certainly not the only heir) and that linked independence with modernity and social democracy has fragmented. The PQ tries to discursively maintain this interconnection but it is increasingly at odds with its realities that have, in important ways, sought to make peace with a neoliberal Quebec, Inc., while broadening the popular base of nationalism cum independence in disturbing and prejudiced ways that are disavowed by the leftist Quebec solidaire and other progressive Quebecois thinkers.

Conservatism is linked to this history because it was the failure of the 1980s conservative project a generation ago that helped to fracture a resurgent Canadian conservatism that was already moving rapidly away from its roots to also embrace a  neoliberal agenda that dramatically scaled back on the state, embraced continentalism (described as globalization) and looked to connect Canada more directly to the project of American international hegemony under Reagan. In effect, conservatives were interested in demonstrating to the US that Canada was a faithful ally on whom they could count. This project bears strong similarities to Harperite conservatism today but it differs in key respects. The first is that 1980s conservatism in Canada still carried with it enough of an older collectivist tradition that there were principles at stake. While the liberals who had ruled the Canadian roost for much of the twentieth century embraced individualism, conservatives stood back from this idea, continued to talk about public and collective goods, and saw society as some sort of organic composite. Much of the weight of conservative opposition to liberalism, in fact, built, for right or wrong, on this ground. They saw liberal commitments to individualism, the free market, economic growth, as disorienting and potentially destructive of the institutional framework that maintained an organic community wedded to concepts of morality, moral and self-sacrificing leadership, social harmony through elite commitment to public good, the naturalness of nationalism, and other such things.

Brian Mulroney's 1980s conservatism was always a mishmash. It brought together various and sundry political and ideological perspectives that rejected liberalism -- particularly the Trudeauvian liberal project -- but that had little in common with each other. It attempted to embrace but redirect the progressive nationalism of post-Quiet Revolutionary Quebec, neoliberalism (that looked askance at the welfare state), the old "Red Tory" tradition I just detailed, and variants of western populism drawn into the Progressive Conservative party through Diefenbaker and his followers. This mix of perspectives did not work well. The movement both failed to refashion that Canadian constitution to remake Canada in its image, and lack staying power. Parts of its fell by the wayside and in 1993 voters deserted it in large numbers.  What was brought back together by Harper and Co. in the early 2000s was something different. It was a coalition but one in which Harperite "Tories", if they can even be called that, were ascendant.  There was, at the time, much concern about how well
Western Canadian populists and PC "Red Tories" could coexist again in party in which their only raison d'etre was opposition to liberalism. It turns out, this was the wrong question. The right question was: what shape would Canadian conservatism take.

On the surface, the answer to this question is seems to run something like this: it is not clear because the Conservatives have banded together a bunch of policies that are (a) out of date, (b) prisoners of their own ideology, (c) silly, (d) lack coherence. Few old time Red Tories seem at all operative in today's conservative party and I think it is safe to say that that perspective is dead as a political movement. But, equally importantly, few western populists seem to have any sway. Harper's government has moved painfully slowly, for example, to address key populists concerns about democratization. In fact, one could argue that the country is less democratic now than it was when Harper took power. So, what do today's conservatives stand for? Here is a short list:

• law and order 
• demonstrating that we are a faithful ally to the US
• hard power foreign policy 
• tax cuts
• opposition to legalized pot
• opposition to  environmentalism
• natural resources-based economic development
• "balanced books"

There are no doubts that some of these policy objectives strike at the heart of what a significant section of the Canadian population thinks, but nor are they particularly controversial in many instances and there is nothing inherently conservative in them. For instance, I don't know any leftist or centrist or environmentalist or feminist who thinks we should not have a justice system. And, I know all kinds of people who think one needs to balance economic and environmental issues. Heck, even the Green Party thinks this. And ... on down the line. What makes these conservative policies, it seems to me, is not the policy in-and-of-itself but the way in which they are presented, the chain of logic that accompanies them, and the extremism of  the degree to which Conservatives will go to maintain them. In other words, when we look at the way conservatives think about particular issues we can begin to isolate the central characteristics of contemporary Canadian conservatism. 

For instance, I know many people who think we should get tough on crime. The problem with this perspective, I keep telling them, is that the Conservatives have been in power for a long time and have been tough on crime. The crime rate, of course, was falling long long before the tough on crime approach, but if further toughness was needed ... why did the Tories not introduce it ages ago when they first came into power? As for, say, hard power ... how is that working? Is the world safer today than it was, say, ten years ago now that Canada is standing up and demonstrating to people that we are tough and willing to bomb others? 

I don't want to refute CPC policies, I want to point something out. They seem to function without recourse to what is actually going on. They involve things that people think "should" work. Getting tough on crime should lower the crime rate. Is that true? ... my point is that it does not matter because people think it "should". Likewise, getting tough with the rest of the world is supposed to make the world safer. What evidence do we have that that is the case? Pot is a plague that will destroy society. Hmmm ... I don't doubt the sincerity of different people's beliefs. What I am saying is that Conservatism operates through what we could call a politics of confirmation. Rather than proposing new ideas, it works with ideas that people have and confirms these and, in this way, serves to reaffirm itself to its supporters. 

It is possible that all political movements do this is in some way, but I am not so sure.  In fact, Conservative efforts to get "tough on crime," for example, seem to suggest that somewhere, deep down, Conservatives know that there is something wrong with what they are saying. They have, for instance, and as I just said, been getting tough on crime for a long time. Yet, the fact that they still feel that they have to get tough on crime suggests that, for them at least, their original get tough policies have not worked. Yet, they seem to avoid the logic of their own perspectives. For example, most people, at some point, might pause. They might say to themselves "gee, I said X. I did X but it did not improve things. Perhaps I should rethink whether or not X is actually a good thing to do." Instead, the Conservatives have done this: "I said X. Things have not improved, so what we need is XX." This is an odd perspective because it assumes that the original proposition is right in the absence of evidence. Tougher sanctions will get rid of crime. If we introduce tougher legal sanctions and crime still exists ... what this means is that we need to get even tougher. 

There is, too, a point at which toughness comes to be seen as a virtue in and of itself. There is an odd sort of masculinist politics to contemporary Conservatives that worships toughness in and of itself. We need to stand up and be tough in our defense of industry (come what may), we need to be tough in international affairs, we need to be tough against crime. What this perspective lacks -- and I think Conservatives see this as a virtue -- is sympathy. 

Consider an alternative to toughness. "Gee, I said let's get tough on crime. That has not eliminated crime and the longer term trends with regard to crime were going down anyway. I wonder if we might think about why people commit crimes in the first place and find out if that is a way to lower the crime rate?" Friends of mine dismiss this idea as weakness. You need to be tough. People will take advantage of you. You need to think about the victim and don't treat the criminal as if they were the victim. In fact, or so this argument runs, we should have no sympathy for the criminal at all. 

There is in this perspective a politics of othering in which criminals are cast as irredeemably other and also a case study that speaks to how conservatives conceptualize relationships. Othering:  the logic runs something like this: criminals are, once and forever, once they have been identified as criminals, something very different. How else can one reasonably explain the Conservatives efforts to keep Khadr behind bars. How else can one explain the degree to which the Canadian government pursued an individual who was a brainwashed teenager who found himself at 15 in a war zone and did things, as a result, that he clearly deeply regrets? How else can one explain the way in which the Canadian government called Khadr a terrorist over and over and over again. Consider an analogy. If, when you were 15, you once got drunk ... should you be considered a drunk (with all that that entails) for the rest of your life? 

Relationships is the other point that comes out of this example and it is something about which we don't think often or discuss often in our society. The question is this: how should we relate to each other. Different political movements have different answers. Separatists in Quebec, for instance, were fond of saying over and over and over again "you do not understand us; you will never understand us" when they spoke to Anglo Canadians. They saw culture as a barrier that did not simply impede relationships but, in fact, made them impossible. Conservatives have a particular take on relationships as well that is difficult to specify. They see the world as tough, relationships as fraught, tough masculinist self assertion as a good and necessary thing that allows you to accomplish your goals in the face of people who will take advantage of you ... if you let them. Culture, too, is an odd thing to conservatives that impedes bonds of common allegiance or even self respect. How else, for instance, can one explain conservative efforts to refashion citizenship tests and prevent Mexicans and Romi from coming to Canada? 

In this regard, and perhaps only in this regard, are Canadian conservatives really conservatives. Their answers are behind the times. The policies that they offer -- natural-resource based economic development, opposition to the medical use of pot, a lack of sympathy, othering and the sense that reform is not possible (people don't change) -- are underscored by a worldview that seems out of place today. When they first came to power, the Conservatives promised many things, democratic reform and accountability are the two big examples. They have not delivered on either count but I doubt that matters to their core voters because their core voters are not about accountability or democracy. They are about a masculinist worldview that sees toughness as an answer,  that sees human character as fixed, that sees sympathy as a problem, and that confirms its own perspectives  (and, hence, does not change ... at least easily). There is little place for democratic reform or government accountability in this worldview. In fact, it is irrelevant to it. 

Liberals, NDP and the Polls

Would joint Liberal/NDP candidates defeat the federal Conservatives if an election were held today? Or, more pointedly and more importantly, in three or four years time? This is the question pundits are now asking. The long and the short of it is that we don't know. Comparisons with the earlier CA/PC merger suggest not while raw numbers suggest that, in fact, they would. According to the Globe's reporting of an Angus Reid poll close to 50% of Canadians who are decided voters and likely to vote, would vote for an NDP/Liberal joint candidate if they had the option while the Globe is right to point out that the PC/CA merger into the Conservatives Party of Canada did not bring with it everyone who had voted PC or CA. In other words, the total CPC vote was less than the two parties received separately in the previous election. Two plus two, in other words, ended up not equally four.

This is an interesting academic puzzle and makes some fun as a discussion point. It is likely, however, no more than that because it treats political parties and ideologies in too broad and vague a way. I've complained about this before but I'll say it again: political parties are not like clothes that one puts on because on happens to like their look. There were significant ideological differences between the PCs and the CA; that is why they were two separate parties. They were not distinct political entities because their leaders disliked each other or because one or the other set of insiders clung to the nattered belief that they could win without the other. They were different and distinct from each other because they were different from each other. Their hard core supporters believed different things, thought about Canada in different ways, self-identified differently, and had different political heritages.

This is the problem with reporting political ideologies in broad strokes "centre-left" or "centre-right." It fails to capture the nuances of different ideological perspectives and different conceptions of the future of Canada, indeed, even different conceptions of Canada's past. To those who are outside of a particular ideology (or, political perspective), the views of others look like variations on a theme. If one is not particularly well informed about politics, then they differences can look very much less like differences. After all … right wing parties believe right wing party like things … do they not? If you want to understand the difference between the CA and the PCs read Bercusson and Cooper, Deconfederation and compare it to Grant's Lament for a Nation.  

These are dramatically different ways of thinking about Canada and its future, the nature of the economy, the place of morality in politics, the role of the state. This is what makes Harper's ability to forge an alliance between the PCs and the CA an event of historic importance. He did not bring together like minded people. Any dimwit can do that. He brought together people who saw eye-to-eye on some things but not on others. He built, in other words, a new historic bloc that was neither CA nor PC. He drew on provincial conservative parties and ideologues. In the process, he lost some PCs (Danny Williams anyone) but attracted others (Bernard Lord). He marginalized some old Reformers but drew in others and brought in new people who were neither Reform, CA, or PC. He did not just simply ask for compromise (in the manner of Mulroney) but -- along with many others -- forged a new political movement whose goal was to do more than win an election, whose goal was to refashion Canada (drawing heavily on the Republican election handbook in the process).

The NDP/Lliberals face the same types of issues. The truth of the matter is that the NDP and the Liberals are not and should not be the same political party. They are different because one (the NDP) is a socialist political party that, theoretically at least, aims -- like the CPC -- to build a different type of country. The other (Liberals) are civic nationalists who, in fact, built the country Harper and his crew are trying to dismantle. Civic nationalists have had a significant influence on Canadian socialists (and, oddly, on Conservatives as well) but they hold different views (civic nationalists are, for instance, capitalists who look askance at ethno-linguistic nationalists). Socialists, theoretically at least, want to replace capitalism with something else and are willing to discuss the merits of ethno-linguistic nationalism if it represents an oppressed people.

What pushed the CA and PCs together was like mindedness. Indeed, as the numbers show, a lot of PCs stayed away from the new CPC (a number joining the Liberals and some dropping out of politics all together). Instead, what contributed to the merger and its eventual success were two things. First, the spectre of electoral destruction. It is hard to remember this but the pre-sponsorship scandal Liberals looked like they were poised (under Martin) for a victory of historic (Mulroneyesque) proportions. the PCs, in particular, were faced the possibility of being finally wiped out. The CA was going to be rolled back to a rural rump with extremist views. It was only in the face of this type of massive defeat that merger was seriously considered, that the PCs and the CA were willing to put some water with their wine and modify their ideological positions. Second, times changed. The PCs no longer represented what we can think of as a broad ideology. Toryism had long been in opposition in Canada but it represented the views of a significant minority of Canadians, perhaps 25% perhaps 30%. By the early 2000s, this was no longer the case. The number of committed Tories -- people committed to Toryism as a way of seeing the country -- had shrunk to perhaps 10-15%. And, new ideological perspectives (neo-conservatism) that had only a loose connection to Toryism had popped up.

For the Liberals and the NDP, the question is do these same circumstances apply. One reason that I'd suggest that a Liberal/NDP merger might be successful is that the ideological perspectives represented by each of these parties have changed. Their opposition to Harperesque neo-conservatism does not make them mirror reflections of each other (the centre-left is a big, big, big political space occupied by the Greens and the Bloc as well). But, the old battles of Trudeauvian liberalism are no longer battles and Canadian socialism, as I've pointed out before, is not really socialism. It's sort of a vague progressive reformism. What this means is that there is an opening for some type of electoral cooperation in the sense that what divided the parties in the past has been, in part, overcome by history. We have, right now, a civic nationalist Liberal Party led (comfortably it seems) by a former socialist and socialist NDP led (perhaps slightly less comfortably) by a former Liberal civic nationalist. Both are pragmatists (unlike, say, Trudeau and Broadbent or Pearson and Douglas) who are committed to the Canada that Trudeau and company built (multiculturalism, bilingualism, charter rights, regional equalization, autonomy in foreign affairs) with some twists and turns. Moreover, the Liberals face the same question the PCs faced a decade ago: is our ideological perspective relevant any longer in the sense that Canadians are willing to commit themselves to it. I don't know for sure, but my guess is that the number of true believers is considerably less than it was. For most people civic nationalism is the background of Canada; the goal. Hence … a merger of some sort just might work.