Election 2011

I’ve held off commenting on the federal election for two reasons: (1) saying something other than what others have said is requires time and consideration. There really is no point in me repeating what someone else has said, likely in a better way. And, (2) I was pretty wide of the mark on my own election predictions. I didn’t post them to this blog but my family and friends are had a good laugh at my expense after the election. I think, however, there are several issues for people to consider as we move toward a new political environment.

First, I’ve been suggesting for some time that the liberal vision of Canada has run its course. It still has power and still appeals to large number of Canadians.  Multiculturalism, bilingualism, Charter Rights, etc., aren’t going anywhere. Whether or not the Liberal Party is a force for the further development of Canada, however, is now very much in question. This is what I mean by run its course: it is not that it is a bad vision, but that it can no longer animate progressive reform. In the face of that reality -- that the Liberal Party had become a party without a vision -- Canadians abandoned it for other alternatives.

Several people have asked me since the election whether or not the Liberal Party is done for. The answer is that we cannot know. This will depend on Liberals. Is there a reason for Liberalism to exist as a political force in Canada? Only Liberals can supply this answer. In some ways, the Liberal Party is a victim of its own success. Many of its key beliefs have become naturalized in Canada. The vast majority of Canadians (check any poll) support equality of opportunity, pluralism, freedom of religion, multiculturalism, Charter Rights, etc. The NDP does, the Green Party does; heck even the Conservatives more or less claim to support these things. So … why is a Liberal Party needed to carry this ball when there are a bunch of other people who can. Liberalism will need to find a new vision; it will need to be more than an opposition party trying to regain power for Canadians to trust it with government. It will need to present a vision of the country.

I say this because I am fully convinced that the Liberal front bench talent was deeper then that of any other party. In other words, if we were picking a government on straight abilities -- as if we had some neutral way to test this -- the Liberal Party had more talent then anyone else. Ignafieff’s crew did not do a lot to increase the talent pool of Liberals to be sure. But, Marc Garneau, Justin Trudeau, Bob Rae, Ralph Goodale, Martha Hall Findlay, Stefan Dion, etc., are a talented and generally experienced bunch. They outclass both the Tories and the NDP in terms of ability. Ability then alone is not a selling point. One needs something else and, right now, the Liberals don’t have that something else.

Speaking of visions … are the Conservatives really sold on Liberal values and institutions mixed with a more aggressive form of capitalism. The short answer, I think, is yes, no, and not really. Some are. Former PC types for sure. Harper and his crew … less so but they are also political realists. This is why they change the names of things. They know that they cannot oppose, for instance, gun control and win elections; so they talk about eliminating long-gun registries. Harper says that no government of his will touch women’s control over their bodies … and I don’t expect him to. I do, however, expect Harper and his crew to continue to snipe at the edges of Liberal Canada. They may not be able to eliminate women’s ability to control their own bodies but they can try to lure women out of the labour force through tax incentives and a failure to address day care needs. I doubt they can roll back same sex marriage and so will likely look to avoid it.

Some Conservatives are not at all sold, however, on the Liberal vision of Canada and do want to roll it back. I’ll leave silly Americanesque comments about scared “eastern elites” and stuff like that to the side because that has no basis in fact and is simply the product of political commentators who watch too much American TV. There are, however, conservatives in Canada who really are conservatives and who would like to roll back equal rights for gay people, women’s ability to control their bodies, Charter rights, diversity, etc. If past experience is any guide -- and it might not be -- these people will not say very much while Harper is in power. I think of what happened to the PC coalition as it went down in the early 1990s. It supporters tended to stay “on side” even when they clearly disagreed with Mulroney until it was evident that his party was headed to defeat. The same thing happened with Richard Hatfield’s long-running PC provincial government in NB and, to a lesser extent, the Buchanan Tories in NS. In all these cases, there was appreciable discord that was submerged by power. I expect that the same thing will happen with Harper’s crew. There might be the odd test here and there -- a back bench bill against abortion, say, or against gay marriage, but these will be handled with procedure, blamed on the opposition, and everyone will be more or less happy. In other words, if anyone is waiting for the Harper PCs to implode … they will have to wait a while.

What about the NDP and the BQ? Let’s leave those for another time and take stock of some conclusions we might draw so far. First, that the Liberal Party has a choice about it. This choice is different, in my view, then the choice faced by the PC or CA or NDP in the past. These were parties for which there was a core of believers who could carry them forward, keeping the faith, as it were, in really tough times. Second, the Liberals cannot be saved by the implosion of conservatism. This NDP has absorbed -- and will continue to absorb -- the space of opposition to the current government. In 1993, 1997, 2000, the Liberals were able to unite federalist non-conservative Canadians more or less behind them.  This same act is much more difficult with a vibrant NDP, but even if it were true, it is not at all clear that Harper’s conservatives will implode the way Mulroney’s did. Harper has learnt the lessons of Mulroney and so as along as they have a reasonable chance of staying in power, don’t expect a similar type of collapse.

NDP Liberal Merger

An NDP/Liberal merger?

I'm sure everyone is blogging on this so ... why bother? Well, because I think talk of this merger tells us something about Canada and so I'll break from my promised next installment on censorship (which might be a relief to some) to address this.

This merger -- or, talk of or potential merger -- is important for two reasons:

First, note the way some journalists have addressed this issue: almost as if it were a scandal (I found The Globe's coverage particularly interesting in this regard). So and so denies ... sworn affidavits; so and so confirms .... Why address this issue in this way? It is no secret that the Liberals have "picked off" some NDPers over the years or that parties try to make allies in the case of a minority government. Indeed, I would be shocked if the left wing of the Liberal Party and the right wing of the NDP had not been in some level of communication over the years. Why present this story as an almost scandal? Perhaps a journalistic proclivity to see everything as misinformation and scandal in which the journalist becomes the hero of the story by uncovering the truth? If so, this type of presentation is a tad self serving, no? More darkly, one might see this mode of presenting this story as a continuity of leading media outlets anti-Liberal bias. I'm not certain of that and some analysis would need to be done, but I also would not discount the possibility out of hand.

Second, and I think more importantly, a Liberal-NDP merger would be something different then some sort of electoral alliance in which the parties looked for common ground that would allow them to form a reasonable governing bloc that could address matters of importance to themselves and a large section of the Canadian population (although certainly not all Canadians). This might include environmental issues, reversing some Conservative policies re funding for Status of Women or developing a realistic plan to address the economic morass that is federal finances.

A merger, however, would speak of something different. For a number of years I have been hypothesizing that the Liberal project for Canada, let's follow Ignatieff and call it civic nationalism, has reached its end. This end is not that it has been rejected by Canadians because we know that large parts of this project are now broadly supported. Canadians, by and large, accept the idea of equality of citizens, Charter rights, multiculturalism, and official bilingualism. Whether or not these things can be treated as part of an evolving project for Canada is, I think, an open question. Aside from the extreme edges of Canadian society, these things might almost be seen as status quo.

In this sense, the ending of the Liberal project for Canada might signal the development of a transition to something else. And, that transition might signal a political re-alignment. In this sense, an NDP-Liberal merger might be something more than a "get the Tories out" coalition. It might be part of a process through which a different type of Canada is evolving into being.

Janine Krieber's Liberalism

Janine Krieber does not like the "Toronto elites" or Michael Ignatieff ... who does? OK, that's too quick of a quip. The "Toronto elites" surely exist but they are also a convenient boogie man, dragged out of the metaphorical closet as a way of explaining X or Y, a sort of value elitist, economic group who secretly controls of the levers of power, at least, it seems, within the Liberal party. Focusing on unnamed Toronto elites is a good way to mobilize regional grievances. I live in NB. This kind of thing has been going on for years. Heck, my grandfather used to complain about "Upper Canadians."

The target of Ms. Krieber's vindictive, then, must be a bit less real and a bit less tangible then it first seams. The objective of her concern -- the supposed disintegration of the Liberal party -- is not. What I want to do in this blog is pick up on Ms. Krieber's concerns and suggest a different way of looking at them. What I want to suggest is that what is looking more and more like the slow death of the Liberal Party cannot be easily blamed on Paul Martin, the media, Toronto elites, Michael Ignatieff, or any other cause. Instead, what I want to suggest is that problems through which the Liberal Party is passing reflect a change in the dynamics of Canada. The Liberal Party "made hay," as it were, as the guardian of one particular vision of Canada. Because we don't often think in terms of visions beyond what are reported as feel-good, motherhood issues (everyone for world peace, put up your hand), the idea that vision is important is usually neglected in public commentary.

Perhaps the word "vision" is not the right word. Pick another one that you like better because understanding the idea behind what I say is more important than agreeing with my language. By vision I mean conception of Canada, a philosophy of nation, as it were: an ontology of the state or polity or civil society and state, an image of a different way of organizing public life.

The Liberal Party was the vehicle through which a specific conception of Canada naturalized itself as "the" Canada, except among those people who disagreed in some fundamental sense it. I don't have space to go into this here, but the Liberal party defended a conception of Canada that Michael Ignatieff called "civic nationalism": the ideal of a small l liberal polity. The logic of this ideal of Canada leads -- more or less directly -- to a series of policy reforms designed to transform Canada from the country that it was into ... well ... the country we have now. Multiculturalism, official bilingualism, regional economic development, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, universal health care, and other such reforms follow logically from basic "civic nationalist" ideal: individualism, equality of opportunity, etc.

For right or for wrong, for good or for ill, the Liberal Party defended this conception of Canada against alternatives to it: ethno-linguistically based nationalism in Quebec, socialism, conservative traditionalism, etc., and did so mainly with the support of middle-class suburbanites, whether they spoke French or English at home. This Canada had much to recommend it. It had serious weakness and I don't have space to get into these either (suffice it to say, I've never been a supporter of this particular vision). But, it did appeal to a wide number of Canadians because it was committed to justice, equality, capitalism, and those are things that middle class Canadians like. They have some reason to. The point system for immigration - -whatever its appreciable weaknesses -- was better than the racialized system that preceded it. Canada remains deeply mired in sexism but at least there is strong protection for gender equity in the Charter, and on the down the line. The civic nationalist Canada of today is, in marked ways, a more equal and just place than was the pre-civic nationalist Canada of the century before the 1960s.

What is going on, I think, and the reason I offer this admittedly rushed history lesson, is that the liberal or civic nationalist order appears to be running into its first serious challenge in some time. Civic nationalists -- in an admittedly odd coalition -- were able to defeat the Mulroney mega-constitutional reforms that would have changed the character of Canada (or, at least maybe). They were able to rule Canada with only that one exception, virtually without stop from the mid 1960s to the first decade of the new century. Why? Two reasons: (1) on some level middle-class Canadians shared the Liberal's philosophy of nation are were willing to turn out and vote for it, and (2) the opposition was divided. Those who rejected the ideal of the civic nation could not agree among themselves on an alternative and so were willing, for the sake of power, to make some form of peace with liberalism. The promoters of Quebec independence abandoned Marcel Chaput's discourse of "separatism" and instead adopted referenda, talked of "interculturalism," and "associations" with Canada, and promised to wait for "winning conditions" and be a good government in the meantime. Canadian socialists ditched the "waffle" and "industrial democracy" and talked vaguely about the "ordinary" Canada and slowly shift their economic policies to the centre (indeed, it appears a third of the NDP's federal caucus now feels so comfortable with the abrogation of socialism that they can openly reject gun control).

As to the Tories ... well ... they just stopped being Tories. No one really knew what a "community of communities" was anyway and, as George Grant noted forty years ago, most conservatives no longer subscribed to anything that could actually be called conservatism, at least of anyone had the faintest idea what the term meant in a philosophical sense. Mulroney tried, to be sure, but he either failed (Meech Lake), backed away (de-indexing pensions), or promoted reforms that were consistent with liberal political-economy (free trade). In other words, by the time he was done, Mulroney's government ended up representing -- perhaps against its will -- a variant of liberalism as opposed to an alternative to it.

What is going on in the Liberal Party today is something other than bad political management or bad leadership politics. What is going on is that the Liberals are losing their base of support. Is this because the Liberal ideal of Canada has become so naturalized that Canadians no longer feel it necessary to vote Liberal? In other words, are liberal ideals -- equality, multiculturalism, bilingualism, a role for the state in the economy -- so common place that Canadians feel that what we can do is debate the merits of this or that policy by voting for parties that represent one or another trend of civic nationalism?

This is an interesting idea. But, I don't think that this is the case. I think the massive self-disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of Canadians -- those Canadians who chose not to vote -- is the thing we should look at to explain the demise of Canadian liberalism. After all, the Liberals have not changed much. Michael Ignatieff may be beholden to the Toronto elites but he's really just an anglophone Pierre Trudeau in terms of his ideology. I'd argue, instead, that the civic polity in Canada has been affected by two forces: (1) it has reached its outer limits in terms of improving Canada. The Party itself, in this sense, has succeeded in its mission but that mission cannot accomplish all its goals (or, at least the goals Canadians would set for it). And, (2), the balance of class power has shifted. In this sense, Ms. Krieber has isolated something important. She's just not explained very well why this important thing is occurring.

Where Did Paul Martin Go Wrong? Or, Lessons for a Progressive Politics

By any measure I can figure out, Paul Martin talked the right talk. He made a serious commitment to address corruption in government (OK, it was his government, more-or-less with whose corruption he was dealing), worked out the best framework Canada has ever had for a national childcare programme, and engineered a conference that reversed the previous administration’s (OK, one in which he played a key role) ridiculous approach to First Peoples and signed an accord which marked a clear and direct step in the right direction in terms of addressing the problems of First Peoples. His government was committed to the Kyoto Accord and established a new framework to re-energize Canada/US relations. By any stretch of the imagination, it is difficult to create a more impressive list of would-be accomplishments for a government that did not last very long at all. And, we could note, this was all done with every forecast possible projecting not just a balanced budget but a reduced national debt as well. So … why didn’t Paul Martin catch on?

The general consensus, in my view, is pretty good on this point. In effect, the general interpretation suggests that the failure of the Martin government was the result of a series of factor that, in effect, over-determined its defeat. Martin got caught in the Sponsorship Scandal and Canadians simply did not believe that he had no idea what was going on. The Liberal Party itself had been in office since 1993 and Canadians were interested in a change anyway, Martin actually offered few particularly new ideas that could light a fire under his supporters who were, at any rate, curiously bad running actual election campaigns. The Liberal Party itself was divided with supporters of former PM Chretien and other Liberal notables (like Sheila Copps) choosing to “sit on their hands” rather than supporting Martin. And, the opposition presented -- for the first time since who knows when truly credible alternatives via a newly united moderate Conservative Party and a re-energized NDP. I’ve also suggested that the NDP unwittingly helped the Conservatives defeat the Liberals (and, in the process, cost the country some pretty good ideas like Kyoto and the Kelowna Accord) through its own campaign against the Liberals and its own efforts to displace the party as the official opposition and that the National media, for its own reasons, decided that it would publish story after story painting the Liberals as buffoons (a process that continued well after the Conservatives had won election).

In retrospect, however, I wonder if there might be other lessons here that are worth considering, particularly for people who like to think of themselves (as I do) as a "progressive" type of person. One lesson that might be taken away from the defeat of the Martin Liberals is this: Canadians simply did not believe Martin, nor did they understand the rationale lying behind the series of centre-left reform measures his government introduced in short order. I am, of course, not trying to provide a rationale for "well, the Liberals didn't do anything when they were in power" Conservative retort for their own lack of action on key issues. What I am trying to say is that the Martin had been part of an administration that had stacked out very clear political ground a wide range of issues. For instance, Martin's supposedly "more friendly" approach to Quebec was nowhere evident government of which he was a part from 1993 to 2003. Indeed, for right or wrong, Chretien's Liberal party stacked out a principled oppositional stance to Quebec independence and via a re-assertion of traditional liberal values: rule of law, individual rights, workable federalism, etc. Martin's implicit "I'll be nicer to Quebec then Chretien was" approach seemed to appear out of nowhere. Nor did there appear to be any serious thinking behind it. What did it entail in terms of a revision of Liberal thought? In terms of the traditional Liberal approach to federalism? In terms of fiscal federalism and the social union?

The same point might be made about the Martin government's commitment to the Kyoto Accord or Aboriginal Rights. What did these actually entail? The Chretien government defined aboriginal rights within the traditional framework of Canadian liberal civic nationalism? I don't actually share the assumptions that underlie this political-philosophical perspective so I won't do a good job defending but ... again, for right or wrong, the Liberal party under Chretien followed a pretty consistent line that dated back, in fact, to the 1970s. You can disagree with this line (I do) but it had a long, established pedigree and Canadians knew basically what to expect from it.

The problem with Martin's conversion to progressive, left-wing policies (support for a national day-care programme, support for the environment, support for First Peoples rights, etc.) was that it appeared to come out of nowhere and so was suspect. It appeared forced, a political manouevre bent on maintaining power as opposed to a sincere and grounded commitment. What is more, exactly what these series of reformist policies were intended to accomplish is not entirely clear. "Help people", "address the problems of First Nations", "deal with environmental degradation." All these things sound good by themselves but put together (along with other issues like support for gay rights and easing off on the federalist offensive against nationalism in Quebec), seem more like a salad with different ingredients thrown together in a haphazard attempt to please a range of different constituencies, as opposed to a recipe for the national future.

This is one of the things that separated Paul Martin's reformist agenda from previous reform-minded governments. To be clear: pragmatic power-oriented concerns intrude on all governments. All political parties compromise with their ideological objectives in order to increase their chances of electoral success. Sometimes those compromises signal shifts in party policy and philosophy; other times they are just compromises accepted for the sake of power. Effective reforming governments, however, build their reform agenda around a coherent vision of the future. One can agree or disagree with this vision but it is coherent with different planks in a reformist agenda tied together into a wider policy objective that is designed to transform the society.

A couple of examples to illustrate my point. Centrist liberal-reform governments (such as those of Mackenzie King and Trudeau) organized their reforming agenda in a broader philosophic imperative: the corporatist, welfare state grounded in a North American context in the case of King; the civic nation in the case of Trudeau. To be sure, these political leaders made ideological compromises, they could be inconsistent, and they certainly were willing to contradict themselves. Canadians, however, were willing to forgive these theoretical disjunctures and aporia because of the relatively coherent national project each administration articulated. To continue just one example: King looked to move Canada away from its connection to British-ness as a defining raison d'etre and to institute a form of corporatist welfare state politics as a form of political-economic democracy. Examples of relatively coherent right-wing governments at the provincial level include Mike Harris' "common sense revolution" in Ontario. The Ontario electorate was able to forgive Harris a great deal because his government seemed to stake out a clear direct and vision of a future society grounded in a coherent ideological framework (neo-conservatism).

The Martin government never managed to stake out a clear ideological vision, a sense of the type of future it was trying to engineer. Martin had spent most of the 1990s staking out what might be viewed as a right-wing liberal ground: pro-business, efficient non-ideological economic management, tacit (if not explicit) support for a federalist hard-line in Quebec, a retrenched welfare state that preserved the rudiments of equality of opportunity. His dramatic shift in 2004-6 was out of character. And, it was justified with a series of slogans (Liberals always support progressive issues, liberals are always reformist, etc.) that did not point to a theoretically-stable political position. Instead, the grab-bag approach to social reform appeared more like the Martin administration trying to be all things to all people. For instance, how did their commitment to the Kyoto Accord mesh with their commitment to improve relations with the US? How did the supposed easier line on Quebec nationalism fit with a commitment to address day care? To be clear about my own point: there may be answers to these questions. Martin and his government just did not make them.

What is the lesson here? The lesson here is reformist politics rarely succeed unless linked to a wider vision of social change. One can like or dislike a particular vision of social change, or how the political community of the nation (or, "society") is imagined by different movements for change. Indeed, the fact that one likes or dislikes particular movements for change is often the fulcrum around which politics actually takes place. The key point, however, is that without this vision animating a series of policies reforms, the reforms themselves appear more like a disconnected political "salad" then a recipe for change or for the future. Canadians, I would suggest, don't respond particular well to the salad approach. Paul Martin's administration had a bunch of problems but they also had an amazing opportunity. With government coffers overflowing, they could have established a re-new liberal politics for Canada. Instead, they tried to be all things to all people, appealing to all matter of different people on all matters of different issues from the character of federalism to relations with the US to social justice issues to the environment to the character of democracy.

What did the Conservatives offer in its place? Well ... remarkably little. There were the standard "family" (read, anti-gay and lesbian) protestations with an implicit promise that nothing would really be done to role back the steps that had been made toward equality in Canada. There were promises of increased military spend, modest tax cuts, and the like. Really, however, the Conservatives went out of their way to say that the last elections were not about ideological issues or divisions. They were about good government. Harper's Conservatives may engineer some sort of conservative revolution in Canada, but that was not what they campaigned on. They campaigned on standard non-conservative issues: solid economic management and anti-corruption. Against this mild campaign, Harper and his team claimed to be fighting for the soul of the nation. It was not Harper's defense ("I'm not interested in the nation's soul") but his own inability to actually explain what that soul meant to him in clear and concise terms. In that absence, reformist policies spewed everywhere and convinced no one because they had not underlying principles (at least that were articulated).

This is an important lesson, I think, for any political movement to learn. You don't need to be an advocate for change to win elections. You don't need to defend the soul of the nation to win elections. Indeed, Canadians will accept a great deal less from there governments. They will accept honesty and good economic management as the basis of good government. (And, there may not be anything wrong with that.) If you are going to turn your politics into the promotion of social change, however, you need to articulate what that change actually means and what your vision of the future actually is ... at least if you want Canadians to take you seriously.