(This article was originally written in 2002)
With Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper and Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark poised for talks, the struggle to reshape the Canadian right reaches a new stage. All Canadians, not just conservatives, have an interest in the outcome. The Liberals are not going to stay in power forever. Someday, the reconfigured right will form a government. When that day comes, what manner of conservatives will take the helm?
In the past, conservatism in Canada was associated with the quest for order and stability, respect for tradition and love of country. While conservatives were pragmatic, they were suspicious of innovation for the sake of novelty. Above all, they shunned blind adherence to systems of thought, which might be attractive in theory, but were unproved in practice.
Tories of this ilk were the prime builders of Canada. Read the British North America Act, our constitution before Pierre Trudeau got his hands on it, and you will see what I mean. The first line of the BNA Act reads: "An Act for the Union of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and the Government thereof: and for Purposes connected therewith." Our Tories shunned all that 18th century American rhetoric about "We the people" and forming "a more perfect union".
Likewise our Tories did not get into a lather about whether to rely on the state or the private sector to build the country. Whichever worked was fine with them. Tories heavily subsidized the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, created a publicly owned Hydro system in Ontario, nationalized the Canadian National Railway, took the first step toward establishing the CBC, and set up both the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and TV Ontario. None of this signaled a secret predilection for socialism. Every step was taken to build the nation, and to strengthen Canadian business, which profited immensely from the transcontinental railway and the cheap electric power.
John A. Macdonald, the greatest of our prime ministers, built a party that brought together Ontario Orangemen and Quebec ultramontane Catholics, presided over the shaping of our constitution and fashioned an economic strategy to make a single country of our disparate regions. He used tariffs, subsidies, tax breaks and climbed into bed with business---for which he lost office in the Pacific scandal of the 1870s---to get the job done. Macdonald cared little for theory. Had he been an American laissez-faire liberal, imbued with a principled opposition to using the state to build the country, Canada would have disappeared long ago.
And that’s where the problem arises about the kind of political right the country is to have. The one thing Macdonald was unswervingly passionate about was the preservation of Canada. In his final address to Canadians in 1891, he attacked Liberal free traders, throwing down the gauntlet against "this veiled treason, which seeks with sordid means and mercenary proffers to lure our people from their allegiance."
Today, what passes for the political right displays little passion for the preservation of Canada. Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper saves his enthusiasm for extending the market and limiting government. His vision of Canada is so decentralist that it is not unfair to compare his ideas to those of the Bloc Quebecois. While serving as president of the National Citizens’ Coalition, Harper wrote an article advising Albertans to build "a much more autonomous Alberta" "It is time to look at Quebec," he continued, "and to learn. What Albertans should take from this example is to become ‘maitres chez nous’." He concluded: "Such a strategy across a range of policy areas will quickly put Alberta on the cutting edge of a world where the region, the continent and the globe are becoming more important than the nation-state."
Those who value the Tory nation building tradition can only be extremely alarmed at the prospect of Stephen Harper becoming Prime Minister of Canada. Both Harper and Stockwell Day, his predecessor as Alliance leader, are far more comfortable with American ideas about the state and the economy than they are with Tory ideas. Harper and Day, are old fashioned American style liberals, not Tories.
What made our Tories true conservatives is that they came out the stream that rejected the American Revolution and its 18th century liberal notions of government and society. Having avoided atomistic individualism, they preserved a conception of the importance of community, above all the national community.
Having escaped the revolution, Canada is a quirky place, where the past and the future cohabit. America, the land of perpetual bourgeois liberalism, is, paradoxically, also a land of stultifying conformity. A fugitive in the United States, idiosyncrasy has found a refuge in Canada. Americans are believers, Canadians skeptics. In the absence of a creed that is a national religion, liberty and personal privacy thrive in Canada. In the United States, freedom is boasted of most when it is practiced least. In North America, the smaller nation occupies the larger cultural space. The United States espouses equality. But Canada, which has espoused equality less, has been more successful in its attainment.
Joe Clark is something of an enigma. Although the PC leader has leaned far in the direction of the Alliance, he is etched with a streak of the old Canadian Toryism. Reminiscent of John Diefenbaker, he retains a passion for a sovereign Canada. He is much less inclined than Harper to press Canada on the procrustean bed of a sterile ideology.
In a country in which Tory sensibilities are deeply rooted, Clark should not make deals with ideologues whose ideas would shut out the essence of Canadian conservatism.
With Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper and Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark poised for talks, the struggle to reshape the Canadian right reaches a new stage. All Canadians, not just conservatives, have an interest in the outcome. The Liberals are not going to stay in power forever. Someday, the reconfigured right will form a government. When that day comes, what manner of conservatives will take the helm?
In the past, conservatism in Canada was associated with the quest for order and stability, respect for tradition and love of country. While conservatives were pragmatic, they were suspicious of innovation for the sake of novelty. Above all, they shunned blind adherence to systems of thought, which might be attractive in theory, but were unproved in practice.
Tories of this ilk were the prime builders of Canada. Read the British North America Act, our constitution before Pierre Trudeau got his hands on it, and you will see what I mean. The first line of the BNA Act reads: "An Act for the Union of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and the Government thereof: and for Purposes connected therewith." Our Tories shunned all that 18th century American rhetoric about "We the people" and forming "a more perfect union".
Likewise our Tories did not get into a lather about whether to rely on the state or the private sector to build the country. Whichever worked was fine with them. Tories heavily subsidized the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, created a publicly owned Hydro system in Ontario, nationalized the Canadian National Railway, took the first step toward establishing the CBC, and set up both the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and TV Ontario. None of this signaled a secret predilection for socialism. Every step was taken to build the nation, and to strengthen Canadian business, which profited immensely from the transcontinental railway and the cheap electric power.
John A. Macdonald, the greatest of our prime ministers, built a party that brought together Ontario Orangemen and Quebec ultramontane Catholics, presided over the shaping of our constitution and fashioned an economic strategy to make a single country of our disparate regions. He used tariffs, subsidies, tax breaks and climbed into bed with business---for which he lost office in the Pacific scandal of the 1870s---to get the job done. Macdonald cared little for theory. Had he been an American laissez-faire liberal, imbued with a principled opposition to using the state to build the country, Canada would have disappeared long ago.
And that’s where the problem arises about the kind of political right the country is to have. The one thing Macdonald was unswervingly passionate about was the preservation of Canada. In his final address to Canadians in 1891, he attacked Liberal free traders, throwing down the gauntlet against "this veiled treason, which seeks with sordid means and mercenary proffers to lure our people from their allegiance."
Today, what passes for the political right displays little passion for the preservation of Canada. Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper saves his enthusiasm for extending the market and limiting government. His vision of Canada is so decentralist that it is not unfair to compare his ideas to those of the Bloc Quebecois. While serving as president of the National Citizens’ Coalition, Harper wrote an article advising Albertans to build "a much more autonomous Alberta" "It is time to look at Quebec," he continued, "and to learn. What Albertans should take from this example is to become ‘maitres chez nous’." He concluded: "Such a strategy across a range of policy areas will quickly put Alberta on the cutting edge of a world where the region, the continent and the globe are becoming more important than the nation-state."
Those who value the Tory nation building tradition can only be extremely alarmed at the prospect of Stephen Harper becoming Prime Minister of Canada. Both Harper and Stockwell Day, his predecessor as Alliance leader, are far more comfortable with American ideas about the state and the economy than they are with Tory ideas. Harper and Day, are old fashioned American style liberals, not Tories.
What made our Tories true conservatives is that they came out the stream that rejected the American Revolution and its 18th century liberal notions of government and society. Having avoided atomistic individualism, they preserved a conception of the importance of community, above all the national community.
Having escaped the revolution, Canada is a quirky place, where the past and the future cohabit. America, the land of perpetual bourgeois liberalism, is, paradoxically, also a land of stultifying conformity. A fugitive in the United States, idiosyncrasy has found a refuge in Canada. Americans are believers, Canadians skeptics. In the absence of a creed that is a national religion, liberty and personal privacy thrive in Canada. In the United States, freedom is boasted of most when it is practiced least. In North America, the smaller nation occupies the larger cultural space. The United States espouses equality. But Canada, which has espoused equality less, has been more successful in its attainment.
Joe Clark is something of an enigma. Although the PC leader has leaned far in the direction of the Alliance, he is etched with a streak of the old Canadian Toryism. Reminiscent of John Diefenbaker, he retains a passion for a sovereign Canada. He is much less inclined than Harper to press Canada on the procrustean bed of a sterile ideology.
In a country in which Tory sensibilities are deeply rooted, Clark should not make deals with ideologues whose ideas would shut out the essence of Canadian conservatism.
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