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Last week, at the behest of a group of federal Conservative backbenchers, I published a column comparing the record of the Progressive Conservative Party under Brian Mulroney’s leadership when in government with that of the current Conservative Party. My conclusion – that from a small-c conservative perspective Mr. Mulroney’s record is better than Mr. Harper’s has thus far been – provoked so much criticism that I felt a second column was in order.
Before going on, let me try once again to make a couple of things clear.
First, I am not suggesting (as several readers complained and others recommended) that genuine conservatives should hold back their support from Mr. Harper or the Conservative Party. On the contrary, if conservatives abandon the party they helped create now, they will be rendering themselves irrelevant at the very moment when their ideas and strength are most needed to counter the influence of those who would use the party to implement a liberal-progressive agenda.
The second thing that I would like to make clear is that I do not believe that Canada would be better governed by a resurgent Liberal Party under the leadership of Michael Ignatieff or any other plausible candidate for that position, although I will say that I am intrigued, from a strategic point of view, by their recent focus on the federal deficit.
I have to confess that I was both surprised and troubled that so many readers would accuse me of taking these positions since I addressed them in the original column. Given that a large percentage of my respondents are, or at least fancy themselves to be, influential public figures, I have to wonder what such manifest inattention to detail means for the future of the party and the country.
But that’s a topic for another day.
One point that was made repeatedly that I think does deserve further discussion is the fact Mr. Mulroney enjoyed the benefit of two consecutive parliamentary majorities in contrast to Mr. Harper who has had none. Most of my correspondents felt obliged to remind me that this has forced Mr. Harper to be less conservative in practice than he probably would have preferred to be.
I’ve said and written here and elsewhere on many occasions that I’m sympathetic to this argument – certainly the present government’s minority status has imposed limitations on what it can do. I can’t help but think, however, that too many conservatives are perhaps too quick to excuse their leaders’ mediocre performances on this basis.
The plain fact of the matter is that although the government has had to make difficult compromises due to its vulnerable position, it has also adopted some practices and policies that cannot be explained away in this manner. The mammoth increases in program spending in its first two years are a case in point. Nobody at the time was clamouring for these increases at the time, and there was no possibility that the Liberals would have forced an election if Mr. Flaherty had failed to provide them.
Another, more recent example that I have written about is the decision to resurrect the former Court Challenges Program under a new name – the Language Rights Support Program. Government apologists continue to insist that this new initiative is fundamentally different from the Court Challenges Program that was cancelled in 2006. Do these apologists not know that their talking points were written by bureaucrats who opposed the government’s decision to shut down the CCP in the first place?
I said it before and will say it again: the new Language Rights Support Program is identical to the old Court Challenges Program as it was first conceived with the one innovation that it includes a mediation component the original program did not have. Those who say different are either being disingenuous or, more likely, they simply don’t know the history of the original program and how easy it was (and will be once again) to manipulate.
But even if I’m wrong about the new program – what of it? If every voter in Toronto was asked to list five things that Mr. Harper’s government might undertake that would convince them to support the Conservatives in the next election, it’s entirely possible that nobody – I repeat, nobody – would suggest creating a Language Rights Support Program. So why set it up? How does this program advance a conservative agenda?
These are only two examples of the sort of left-leaning behaviour this government exhibits from time to time that has conservatives scratching their heads and that just cannot be justified by its minority status. There are many more. (Remember the bizarre – and thankfully short-lived – plan to ban incandescent light bulbs?)
If the latest opinion polls are to be believed the time is quickly approaching when Mr. Harper and his colleagues will no longer have the minority fig leaf to hide behind. They will have to decide once and for all if they are true conservatives, or mere pretenders who have convinced themselves that they are conservatives simply because they don’t belong to the Liberal Party.
Judging from past performance, that decision could go either way.
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