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Canadians are more ideological than you think
Mark Milke
National Post
January 6, 2004
Canadians are not ideological but middle-of-the road country doctor types; if political parties want to appeal to voters they need to tack to the centre. This bit of accepted wisdom is repeated ad nauseam by pollsters and pundits, most recently by Hugh Segal, who last Friday argued that Canadians are "unfailingly pragmatic." The former Tory backroom player advised potential candidates for the Conservative party's top job to avoid what Mr. Segal called "the siren calls of ideological smugness."
In essence the Segal argument, and I'm also drawing from his past writings here, is that if conservatives wish to be elected, they can't waddle, quack, and swim as conservatives but must instead pretend to be some other bird; in political terms, it usually means they must accept the status quo.
Tosh. The Canadian public does have deep ideological preferences, usually from the left, though not potentially unchangeable for that. I grant that in political debates the shorthand use of terms such as "liberal" or "conservative" or "socialist" has much less a swaying effect upon hearers here than perhaps in America or Britain. But that's rather the point: It's the language of ideology that most Canadians dislike, and no matter how many voters flatter themselves as being above ideological presumptions, scratch the surface and Canadians bleed ideological blood.
When Pierre Trudeau imposed wage-and-price controls in the 1970s or nationalized an oil company it was raw, uninformed ideology. When provincial governments attempted to control the commanding heights of the economy during much of the last century (including supposedly conservative ones, such as Peter Lougheed's that bought an airline) they did so with ideological presumptions in play.
And nor has such ideology disappeared from our body politic in the 21st century, in either practice or in assumptions. The best example of this is medicare, including both the misunderstanding about the difference between even mere private delivery under a government-insured system, and more comprehensive proposals for reform that involve the private sector in the realm of insurance and ownership. Reflexive opposition to private medicine in this country is the best evidence of hidebound, unworkable ideology that prevents pragmatic reform.
Predictably, when conservatives use the tools of the free market, free trade and privatization -- which I'd argue have their origins not in ideology but in real-world observations about what works -- those replacement policies are routinely labelled ideological in contrast to the original (and economically counter-productive) experiments of the last century. In short, conservatives allow the left to pretend that their policies are neutral or pragmatic and that somehow conservative responses to them are ideological, when the truth is most often the reverse.
As for where conservatives should go from here, contra the arguments from Red Tories, conservatives in Canada only win elections when they propose concrete ideas grounded in real experience, albeit in non-ideological language.
Ontario's experience in 1995 is instructive; Mike Harris gained power precisely because he embraced ideas -- ideas which some worry wart Tories at the time thought were "ideological" -- when in fact such proposals were exactly what the Conservatives advertised them to be: a common sense response to a decade of tax-happy, spendthrift Liberal and New Democrat governments, the last of which was particularly ideological.
When conservatives don't propose clear ideas based on common sense, they end up in the position of Ernie Eves, who lost the Ontario election last year precisely because he departed from reality; first by pretending that a budget was balanced when everyone knew it was not, and second, when he tried to repeal the law of supply and demand (see Ontario Hydro). Given the choice between a liberal in conservative clothing and a self-professed liberal, voters chose the honest version. Quelle surprise.
Policy reforms that led to eventual prosperity are what Harris offered to voters in 1995, what Ralph Klein did in Alberta in 1993 at an equally critical juncture, and even what Brian Mulroney did in 1988 with free trade. Solid, defensible, pragmatic ideas about debt, taxes and constitutional issues are also what allowed Preston Manning to take the Reform party from prairie dust to the benches of the official Opposition.
Conservatives might as well speak in non-ideological terms given that we happen to think our policies are superior, actually make sense, and can thus be explained without resorting to ideological language. Beyond that, such a rhetorical strategy does not also mean a new conservative leader should proclaim unilateral disarmament on the battlefield of ideas.
© National Post 2004
Copyright © 2003 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved.
Optimized for browser versions 4.0 and higher.
Until January 24th, the complete content of nationalpost.com is available for free. Read stories on this website, or view the exciting new Electronic Edition which is an exact replica of the print edition of the newspaperr! After January 24th, stories marked with an will be available to registered subscribers.
Canadians are more ideological than you think
Mark Milke
National Post
January 6, 2004
Canadians are not ideological but middle-of-the road country doctor types; if political parties want to appeal to voters they need to tack to the centre. This bit of accepted wisdom is repeated ad nauseam by pollsters and pundits, most recently by Hugh Segal, who last Friday argued that Canadians are "unfailingly pragmatic." The former Tory backroom player advised potential candidates for the Conservative party's top job to avoid what Mr. Segal called "the siren calls of ideological smugness."
In essence the Segal argument, and I'm also drawing from his past writings here, is that if conservatives wish to be elected, they can't waddle, quack, and swim as conservatives but must instead pretend to be some other bird; in political terms, it usually means they must accept the status quo.
Tosh. The Canadian public does have deep ideological preferences, usually from the left, though not potentially unchangeable for that. I grant that in political debates the shorthand use of terms such as "liberal" or "conservative" or "socialist" has much less a swaying effect upon hearers here than perhaps in America or Britain. But that's rather the point: It's the language of ideology that most Canadians dislike, and no matter how many voters flatter themselves as being above ideological presumptions, scratch the surface and Canadians bleed ideological blood.
When Pierre Trudeau imposed wage-and-price controls in the 1970s or nationalized an oil company it was raw, uninformed ideology. When provincial governments attempted to control the commanding heights of the economy during much of the last century (including supposedly conservative ones, such as Peter Lougheed's that bought an airline) they did so with ideological presumptions in play.
And nor has such ideology disappeared from our body politic in the 21st century, in either practice or in assumptions. The best example of this is medicare, including both the misunderstanding about the difference between even mere private delivery under a government-insured system, and more comprehensive proposals for reform that involve the private sector in the realm of insurance and ownership. Reflexive opposition to private medicine in this country is the best evidence of hidebound, unworkable ideology that prevents pragmatic reform.
Predictably, when conservatives use the tools of the free market, free trade and privatization -- which I'd argue have their origins not in ideology but in real-world observations about what works -- those replacement policies are routinely labelled ideological in contrast to the original (and economically counter-productive) experiments of the last century. In short, conservatives allow the left to pretend that their policies are neutral or pragmatic and that somehow conservative responses to them are ideological, when the truth is most often the reverse.
As for where conservatives should go from here, contra the arguments from Red Tories, conservatives in Canada only win elections when they propose concrete ideas grounded in real experience, albeit in non-ideological language.
Ontario's experience in 1995 is instructive; Mike Harris gained power precisely because he embraced ideas -- ideas which some worry wart Tories at the time thought were "ideological" -- when in fact such proposals were exactly what the Conservatives advertised them to be: a common sense response to a decade of tax-happy, spendthrift Liberal and New Democrat governments, the last of which was particularly ideological.
When conservatives don't propose clear ideas based on common sense, they end up in the position of Ernie Eves, who lost the Ontario election last year precisely because he departed from reality; first by pretending that a budget was balanced when everyone knew it was not, and second, when he tried to repeal the law of supply and demand (see Ontario Hydro). Given the choice between a liberal in conservative clothing and a self-professed liberal, voters chose the honest version. Quelle surprise.
Policy reforms that led to eventual prosperity are what Harris offered to voters in 1995, what Ralph Klein did in Alberta in 1993 at an equally critical juncture, and even what Brian Mulroney did in 1988 with free trade. Solid, defensible, pragmatic ideas about debt, taxes and constitutional issues are also what allowed Preston Manning to take the Reform party from prairie dust to the benches of the official Opposition.
Conservatives might as well speak in non-ideological terms given that we happen to think our policies are superior, actually make sense, and can thus be explained without resorting to ideological language. Beyond that, such a rhetorical strategy does not also mean a new conservative leader should proclaim unilateral disarmament on the battlefield of ideas.
© National Post 2004
Copyright © 2003 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved.
Optimized for browser versions 4.0 and higher.