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The idea that the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper’s leadership is more conservative than the Progressive Conservative Party of Brian Mulroney has been repeated so often that it has become accepted as gospel truth, even among conservatives themselves. The record, however, tells a different tale – one that calls into question some of the most cherished beliefs that both the PC and Canadian Alliance wings of the Conservative Party have about themselves, and about one another.
Consider the Progressive Conservative response under Mr. Mulroney’s leadership to two of the most controversial issues of his time: abortion and capital punishment.
When the Supreme Court struck down the Trudeau abortion laws in 1988, it invited Parliament to draft new abortion legislation to rectify the deficiencies that led to its decision. Not only did the Progressive Conservatives under Brian Mulroney take up the challenge by introducing a government bill in 1989, Mr. Mulroney forced his cabinet to support the bill, allowing a free vote for everyone else in his caucus.
Similarly with capital punishment, the Mulroney government facilitated a free vote in the House of Commons in 1987 on a motion to restore the measure – abolished in 1976 – to the Criminal Code. Unlike the abortion bill which passed the House of Commons before stalling in the Senate, the motion to restore capital punishment was voted down. At least it was voted on though.
In contrast to this, not only does the present Conservative government under Mr. Harper’s leadership refuse to engage on abortion, it actively discourages its backbench MPs from introducing Private Members’ Bills dealing with the subject. The PMO is so fearful of being branded “anti-abortion” that in 2008, it sabotaged a bill to protect unborn victims of crime rather than risk being accused – absurdly – of having a secret anti-abortion agenda.
Say what you will about Brian Mulroney, he would never have shown such disrespect for a hard-working member of his own caucus, especially on an issue of conscience.
And then there was the manner in which the marriage issue was disposed of in late 2006. After forging ahead with a motion that they could never – and in the end, didn’t – win, Mr. Harper himself declared in a post-division scrum that he considered the vote to have been decisive, and that the matter was now permanently settled as far as the Conservative Party was concerned.
To this day I remain perplexed by both the rashness of the statement and the manner in which it was delivered. The Prime Minister was certainly justified in asking conservatives in the caucus and party to adjust their expectations on the issue. Instead, he chose to tell them to buzz-off… publicly. As Dale Carnegie might have noted, this is not the way to make friends and influence people. It definitely is not the way to build a conservative coalition.
There are those who say that Mr. Harper had to take these stands in order to preserve his ability to deliver on his economic agenda. As a strong fiscal conservative myself, I’m sympathetic to this argument, but even in this area his government’s record leaves much to be desired when compared with that of Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives.
Here are the facts:
Under Mr. Mulroney, federal program spending climbed from approximately $84.2 billion in 1984-1985 to approximately $122.2 billion in 1992-1993, an average increase of 5 percent per year. Under Mr. Harper, program spending grew from approximately $175.2 billion in 2005-2006, to a projected $206.8 billion in 2008-2009, an average annual increase of 4.5 percent.
When it comes to spending, this seems to confirm that Mr. Harper’s government has been more restrained than Mr. Mulroney’s was, but consider that Mr. Mulroney’s government had to contend with an average annual rate of inflation of 4.1 percent and an average unemployment rate of 9.5 percent during it’s time in office. In contrast to this, the current government has been blessed with average annual rates of inflation and unemployment of 2.4 and 6.1 percent respectively.
And remember – these numbers do not include data for the 2009-2010 fiscal year. If they did, any comparative analysis would be much, much worse for the Harper Government.
The bottom line is this: taking all of the objective facts into account, one is forced to conclude that the federal Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney was, both fiscally and socially, far more conservative than the present Conservative government of Stephen Harper.
When Harper confidant Tom Flanagan argued for an incremental government agenda, I suspect he meant one that was incrementally conservative. The agenda of the government he helped elect has been decidedly, if incrementally, liberal. Call it the Harper Shuffle – 3 steps to the left followed by 2 steps to the right and just enough spin to keep the party faithful in line.
Party apologists explain away this behaviour by pointing to the government’s minority status in Parliament. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing this. Does anyone really believe, for instance, that including a modest reduction in spending in each of the government’s first three budgets would have triggered an election, especially when combined with reductions in both public debt and taxes?
Time and again since coming to office the Conservative Party under Mr. Harper has declined the opportunity to demonstrate that a modest conservative agenda – the sort of agenda that Tom Flanagan was advocating – is nothing to be feared. Instead, it has consistently given the opposite impression.
The point of all this is not to say that real conservatives should abandon the Conservative Party of Canada – it’s to remind conservatives that their party can and must do better. That will not happen, however, unless conservatives re-engage in the party they built in a meaningful way, demanding excellence from the party’s leaders and holding them accountable when they fail to provide it.
Is that really too much to expect?
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