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COMMENTARY
April 8, 2006
Fresh air
The throne speech this week was exemplary, short and sharp and targeted, and free of the tawdry rhetoric and posturing to which we’ve been accustomed for so many years. The Conservatives intend to deliver what they promised in the election. At the centre of their agenda, an Accountability Act, to clean up the federal government’s ways of doing business. For this, they can expect cooperation from the NDP and Bloc, who can have no objection to using a legislative crowbar to pry the Liberal Party away from the national trough.From what I hear, the Harper government will also find considerable enthusiasm in the bureaucracy. As one quite senior civil servant told me, many felt outraged and humiliated by the sordid demands the Liberals were accustomed to making of them. There’s a feeling of relief that the party is finally out of power. To paraphrase: Civil servants would like to be able to do their jobs transparently and impartially, without party goons breathing down their necks, and the public thinking they’re either crooks or stooges. That the Liberals themselves have begun to appreciate the degree to which they are detested, was indicated by their response to the throne speech. Their temporary leader, Bill Graham, forgot about the confidence vote he’d been threatening, and his proposed amendments were restricted to pious wishes. Indeed, after a quick glance at trends in the polls, all three opposition parties were non-confrontational -- the Bloc limiting itself to passing the hat for the elderly unemployed. And the NDP leader, Jack Layton, sounded conciliatory to the point of supportive. To my mind, the NDP has an unprecedented opportunity to replace the Liberals in opposition. They will probably fluff it -- they always do -- but their strategy should be to let the Liberals slide to the left of them, and themselves sound constructive and sober. But even if they do, we can’t expect a quiet Parliament. The coming battle over daycare was faced squarely in the throne speech. This is an issue on which both “libertarian” and “socially conservative” wings of the Tories can coalesce: letting parents and not the state make vital decisions about children. It is thus a fruitful constituency-builder for the party. With the tactical and political skill he already showed during the election campaign, Mr Harper can seize the opportunity presented by the coming debate, to show the public what the other parties have in common -- instinctive opposition to the autonomy of the family; instinctive belief that “big brother knows best”. Since the matter belongs so unambiguously under provincial jurisdiction, I can’t hope he goes beyond that; but we do need a general debate in this country on the failure of our existing state daycare systems, to serve the needs of children between the ages of six and twenty. Mr Harper also set the proper context in the debate over the throne speech. There was nothing defensive or neurotic in his tone. He went straight to the attack on the Liberals’ "thirteen years of waste, mismanagement, dithering, and corruption," the "tens of millions of dollars that were misappropriated," the "campaign of fear" it waged in the last election. The Liberals, and their lapdogs in the media, will try hard to make people forget. They already speak as if Harper sent troops into Afghanistan over Liberal opposition. But they no longer hold the bully pulpit. Beyond this, the new government’s determination to stick to its knitting -- to keep its hands out of provincial affairs, and apply itself instead to such long-neglected federal responsibilities as the military, bodes well for national unity. I was immensely impressed by their policy on health care. This was, to tell the provinces that everyone wants shorter hospital waiting times, so they should get on with it. For more than a generation, the Liberal divide-and-conquer trick has been to create imaginary needs for imaginary national agendas, while demonizing imaginary opponents. Brian Mulroney tried the same trick himself, but couldn’t do it. (He was no good at demonizing.) Mr Harper is trying something new: calling the bluff. He is in a position to look brilliant simply by not doing anything stupid. The existing Canadian constitution provides ample scope for Quebec, Alberta, and each other province to go its own direction, and try its own experiments, across the wide field of social policy. They could then copy each other’s successes and avoid each other’s failures. In Stephen Harper we have a prime minister who will allow this to happen. And the dividend is, we get Canada back. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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