Canada: Politics: Xray analysis of Harper's Conservatives in lite of fading 'PanCanadian Consensus'

A newly-emergent group of analysts and politicians have recently come to the fore with the arrival of the Conservative Party to (at least temporary) power in Canada. Two of these leaders have produced a very salient document that will grow rapidly in significance over the next months, entitled "2006 Election Analysis: Replacing the Canadian Consensus."

First, the authors and the thinktank thru which they are making this full-dress political analysis, more a policy advisory for the Conservative Party itself, altho all politically-thawtful Canadians should consider its thesis and argumentation. The tank is the Work Research Foundation (WRF), located non-virtually in Ancaster, Ontario; and virtually at the WRF website (frontpage). Here's how WRF beckons us to its endeavours:

At best, the Canadian political scene can be called "comfortable"; at worst, "stale." Regardless of party affiliation, our leaders are concerned with the politics of image and strategic vagueness - being as many things to as many people as possible in order to gain or keep power.

Where, then, do genuine, creative policy ideas come from?

Canada's most influential, yet least-reported, group of influencers is the country's think-tank scene. Almost always non-profit and non-partisan, Canada hosts approximately fifty organizations which have taken on the role that universities and the civil service used to fill: actively studying public policy, increasing public awareness on a wide array of issues, and "wholesaling" ideas which governments may adopt at the "retail" level of legislation.

The Work Research Foundation has found an important foothold in this field. In an industry of making and marketing ideas, shaping the minds of young people, and moulding public opinion and policy preferences, we are illuminating a framework of values-based political leadership, refocused economic structures, and more reflective community design that truly sets us apart.

Beyond the necessary self-descriptions, two WRF political thinkers have, as mentioned, generated the policy paper, Replacing the Pan-Canadian Consensus, in which they dismantle each of the main time-worn clichés inherited from 30 years ago, once-vital ideas that never were subjected to reconsideration by the "natural governing party," today's now-defeated Liberal Party according to its self-misconception, of the basics of the contemporary Canadian polity.

More than this, however, authors Ray Pennings and Michael Van Pelt, subject the presentday Conservatives to an analysis of its discernible more-or-less organized streams, which the analysts find to be ruffly six in number. They then discuss how Stephen Harper rose to the challenge of these diverse orientations within the party, struggling thru the party's previous opposition status in the House of Commons and now again in the role of Prime Minister of the Canadian Federal government struggling to meet the challenge of these different motivating-emphasis sectors that make up the party. This analytic effort is necessary because it's not just the Liberals who are affected by the fading of the "PanCanadian Consensus" that was sufficient a while back.

Understand the division (and failure) of yesterday, and one might understand the unity (and success) of today. In explaining twenty years of division of the political right, it is too easy to call it simply a poorly-managed civil war, and too easy to attribute Harper's success today to his ability to simply put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Rather, it is more accurate to see these twenty years as the process by which the political right sorted out its response to the demise of the Pan-Canadian consensus.

I haven't found much that comes near the insightfulness of the work of Pennings and Van Pelt in the thoro document at hand, remarkably so soon after the election. I recommend it to all Canadians and, of course, especially to all Conservatives. NDPers, Libs, and Americans will also profit from a close examination of the text.

Who are the authors?

Ray Pennings has been involved in municipal, provincial and federal politics for twenty-five years. Additionally, he has been active in industry organizations, labour groups, and now serves as the Vice-President of Research for the Work Research Foundation

Pennings had run for a House of Commons seat under the auspices of one of the antecedant parties now merged into the federal Conservative Party of Canada.

Michael Van Pelt has been elected as a municipal councillor, and has also worked for both the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and as the General Manager of the Sarnia Chamber of Commerce. He now serves as the President of the Work Research Foundation.

Now, do the ideas put forward by these two political analysts have any legs to walk on in the new House of Commons where the Tories will constitute a minority government? Perhaps, yes, if the following thawt of Prof of Political Science at Redeemer University College and blogger, David Koyzis, has a finger on the pulse of a new development with real potential.

A realistic possibility?

[Koyzis asks, m]ight David Sweet, Jim Flaherty, Rob Merrifield, Rick Dykstra and others form a christian democratic coalition within the larger Conservative caucus? Might sympathetic Liberals and New Democrats be persuaded to come on side of such a project? Or is this a pipe dream?

That there may well be an affinity between the thinktankers, the newly-elected Members of Parliament, Prof Koyzis, and one of his students was crystallized for me when I visited yet another blogger's post-election entry. Rob Joustra points us to the campaign websites of both candidates (now Members of Parliament)David Sweet and Pierre Poilievre (who does not appear on the Koyzis list). A Koyzis star-student, Joustra exclaims about both Sweet and Poilievre, "Holy Moses! The Boys are In!" Another name that does not appear in either Koyzis or Joustra is that of Cheryl Gallant, who was re-elected and who is the leader of the all-party Pro-Life caucus in the Commons.

I don't know much about either of those named by Joustra, but according to the policy wonks Pennings and Van Pelt, they could belong to any of the six streams of Conservatism that Harper must shepherd into a coherent political force. I do know something about another new Federal MP to whom Koyzis refers - namely, Jim Flaherty who is a hyper-individualist, fiscal con, and anti-poor who wanted to put people in jail rather than let them live homeless. They cluttered the downtown business streets of Toronto. I can't see this stance as "Christian democratic" in any sense, altho I know Flaherty is strong for two things important to me politically: family, and equal funding for school systems other than the atheist-secularist govt-run schools and the govt-funded Catholic separate system, only.

The tite-fisted Flaherty served as Finance Minister in the Ontario Archconservative govt of the recent past and did indeed find money to begin school-funding for parents who send their kids to philosophically- and religiously-based schools other than those of the two established religions just mentioned - atheist-secularist and Roman Catholic. Of course, it so happens that the Fed Canadian govt does not have jurisdiction over schools, whereas the provinces do. At the same time, the Fed govt has a responsiblity to prevent provinces from practicing discrimination in favour of thus-established religions (atheism-secularism and Roman Catholic) in the matter of schools-support. As a matter of fact, the UN Commission on Human Rights years back had a panel which examined the school-support rights issue here, in which UNCHR made a negative judgment on Ontario's present arrangement. The provinicial Tories, including its Libertarian component (see Pennings and Van Pelt), for all their faults, did try to rectify this situation, belatedly, just before an election which voted them out of office and left the next govt to dispose of the legislation for equality in schooling support.

However, Ontario teachers unions bawt their way in the interim election and helped put into office a Roman Catholic Liberal who, with his children subsequently, benefited from the previous grossly-unfair and inequitable distribution of schooling funds. The belated Tory initiative was undone by the religious bigotry of the provincial Liberals. The fed Libs under Prime Minister Paul Martin did not act against this iniquitous inequity. Maybe the Koyzis proposal for a Christian democratic coalition in the new House of Commons will take up this issue, so that kids of Christian families in poverty and in the lower reaches of the middle-class (the two income demographics where most immigrants begin) can have a Christian elementary and high school education, if the parents (and late-teens students) so choose. And, of course, not just Christians, but all religions and philosophies formally committed to non-violent societal participation. I cite the Christians because again, they are the largest demographic of the non-govt-run schooling constitutencies. Support for all schools agreeable to Canada's democratic polity - full, honest, unbigotted govt support. The fed govt has the duty to call the province of Ontario to account in this regard in the name of the Charter of Rights. The Supreme Court of Ontario refuses to correct this wrong, and one of its former Judges is now High Commissioner of the UNCHR; recently, she visited the Roman Catholic school system in Ontario without saying a word in her public appearances in regard to the religious discrimination in Ontario against other kinds of schooling devoted to Canada's democratic arrangements.

I think a Christian democratic coalition in Parliament would have its work cut out for it on this one issue alone. But there are others which beg for redress as well. - Owlb

Rob Merrifield
Rick Dykstra