What is the Conservative Agenda?

A Political Perspective

Since the retirement of our twentieth Prime Minister, politics in Canada has changed dramatically. We are living in a time where historical political events are happening in a drastically quicker manner. We have had the demise of one of Canada's oldest parties, a political scandal not seen since the middle of the last century, a minority government not existing since the early 1980s (Joe Clark's), a confidence bill that passed by one vote where an independent MP and the Speaker of the house were instrumental in saving the government (never seen in the history of Canadian politics), and a defection of a Conservative MP (Belinda Stronach) who entered the government's cabinet.

With all this turmoil, and a House of Commons at each other's throats, one question has been asked more than any other. What is the Conservative agenda? It is not a stretch of the imagination to wonder why the Conservatives ever tried to bring down the government without having a defined platform going into a possible election. What were they trying to do? Although polls change almost daily, all of the major ones, during the weeks leading up to the budget, put the Conservatives behind. With the Gomery Commission revealing Liberal wrong doing on almost a daily basis, you would figure that the Conservatives would be well ahead in voter's opinion polls but they weren't. Would that have changed if Harper and his caucus, rather than spout Liberal corruption, put forth an alternative to Martin's vision of Canada's future?

Never short of an opinion, I will answer this and a few other questions on why the Conservatives are having such difficulty. In order to do this I must first put forth some background and context to Canada's version of a liberal democracy.

First, everyone must realize the most important tenet in Canadian politics, namely, that Canada is a liberal country. Canadians vote Liberal by default; even when voters vote Conservative it is usually because of wanting a "change for change's sake" or because they are so angry with the arrogance of the Liberal party they just can't force themselves to vote for Canada's natural party. The Conservatives rarely are voted in because of their merits or party platform, it is usually a protest or boredom vote.

History bears this out. Canada, since its creation as a country in 1867, has been governed by the Liberal party 60 percent of the time. If we use the end of World War One as a starting point (when most historians state Canada stopped being a British colony and achieved true nationhood) the percentage jumps to 75 (excluding the years where a union of the Liberal and Conservatives governed). You can take as a rule of thumb that every twenty years the Conservatives will form a government for an average of 6 years. In other words, every couple of decades the Canadian voter gets pissed off or bored enough with the Liberal party to oust them from government only to bring them back after long single or short double term by the Conservatives.

So in all actuality, it probably didn't matter that Harper had no platform or stated vision of what he considered would be good for the country as it seems the average voter doesn't think that the Gomery Commission (or the HRDC debacle, the Gun Registry over run, the Somali Inquiry halt, and the helicopter purchase law suit) are enough to reduce the Liberal party to anything less than a minority government.

So what is the real problem with the Conservative party? Can they be elected to government? If history bears any importance, they will have to wait another eight years before they will form a majority government. But what is even more important is the position they are in at the present time. What is interesting is that no one in any of the major news media (print or television) has pointed this out. By reading what comes next you will have an analysis that is exclusive to this magazine.

Let's take the point of view of one Liberal supporter who has, on occasion, voted Conservative in the past, namely myself.

The major reason, put forth by the conservative camp and backed as legitimate by the major press, for why the Liberals have been in power for so many years is because of their being no legitimate opposition. The vote on the right has been split (until the new Conservative party was formed) by two parties, namely, The Progressive Conservative party and the Reform/Alliance party. The NDP has never had a chance to form the government and the Bloc is a regional party only in Quebec. Therefore opposition to the Liberals has been spread out thin enough to let the "first past the post" election format favour the Liberals.

I can't count the number of times it was brought up in the two elections previous to the forming of the new Conservative party (both Chrétien-led Liberal majorities) that if you were to take the votes for the PC and Reform/Alliance parties and combine them, you would have a majority government formed on the right. This argument and the lack of any legitimate opposition put forth as fact is flawed. The last election combined both parties on the right and no majority Conservative government was formed. With Adscam in full motion a minority Conservative government was not even achieved. The fact is that Harper, and those before him in the Reform/Alliance party, couldn't understand that Canada had always had an alternative to the Liberals. They had it all the way up to the last election. It was called the Progressive Conservative party and Harper et al. killed it.

The Progressive Conservative party was always a Liberal voter's out card. If they wanted the Liberal party out of government, the PC party was always there waiting in the wings to help them out. The PC party, like the Liberal party, was a centered party (leaning a bit to the right but still in the middle) and just because they were decimated when Chrétien came to power did not mean that they were finished as a party. Liberal voters were just not ready to forgive them for Mulroney yet (as you know 20 years hasn't passed).

The reason why the new Conservative party did not form the present government had nothing to do with votes on the right at all. When the party formed, those like myself who are liberal at heart, were not willing to vote conservative if it wasn't for the PC party. So the new Conservative party got the conservative vote (both the right leaning voter who would vote PC or Reform/Alliance) but it did not retain the liberal vote looking for an alternative to an arrogant Liberal government.

Another point was continually raised when speaking about how Canada had no legitimate opposition ("no government in waiting" was the catch phrase) and democracy was suffering because of it. The argument went that if you had no opposition to the Liberals that could form a government then you lived in a one party system equal to a dictatorship. This is another flawed argument and an answer to it in the form of a few questions will easily dispel the fallacy.

What is more democratic, a country with more or less choices on who to vote for? Is a two party system more democratic than a three party system, or a four, how about a five party system? What is more democratic, a country that has representation in its houses of government of all its different regions, or just one, or two, or maybe three?

If you are to think back to Chrétien's second majority, there were five parties representing all four regions of Canada. There were five official parties all with members able to put forth bills, sit on committees, and stand up in question period and point out various views on proposed legislation. The Reform/Alliance represented the West who has always complained about being outside the corridors of power. They influenced the Liberal government enough to move it to the right of the political spectrum and get the country's fiscal house in order. The Bloc Quebecois represented Quebec, the NDP swept the Maritimes. The PC party gave Ontario voters a different voice in the Commons when the Liberals weren't paying enough attention, not to mention surviving to take their rightful place as the alternative government when Mulroney would be the concern of a previous generation.

If you think about it, the forming of the new Conservative party was a pointless political ploy that not only robbed Canada of its legitimate alternative to the Liberals but also will rob the West of its voice in Parliament when Harper realizes he must adopt the PC party philosophy if he ever wants to form a government in the future. Plainly speaking, no liberal voter will ever vote for Harper (he must leave for the good of his party) nor will they vote in his party until it can prove that it has moved permanently in to the center of the political spectrum. If it does so, the question in my mind is then, "Why eliminate Canada's oldest party in the first place?" They can have no legitimate answer to that question and for that I will never forgive them. They robbed me of one of my choices as a voter and to me that is far from democratic.