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PAT BARCLAY per jfh
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Date Posted: 14:38:12 04/15/03 Tue
Author Host/IP: d150-99-156.home.cgocable.net/24.150.99.156
SUNDAY HERALD COLUMN - April 9, 2003 [HH0315]
DAVID ORCHARD AND GEORGE W. GOLIATH
by Silver Donald Cameron
While the guns thunder in Iraq, small rancorous sounds perturb the
air in Canada - a contest for control of the fringe assembly known as
the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, once the Alternative
Governing Party. Oddly enough, the two facts are connected.
You do remember the Tories, right? Two decades back, Brian Mulroney
cobbled together a government dominated by hot-blooded Western
evangelists, cold-eyed Bay Street money-jugglers and wandering Quebec
nationalists. What the Mulroneyites shared was disdain for the
institutions that defined Canada, like medicare, unemployment
insurance, family allowances, ground rules for foreign investment,
Canadian content rules, and crown corporations operating broadcast
networks, airlines, railways and oil-fields.
In office, the Mulroneyites dismantled much of the distinctive
apparatus of Canadian nationhood, striving to weld us indissolubly to
the United States. Canadians, in turn, dismantled the Tories,
reducing them from 211 seats in 1984 to just two in the anti-Mulroney
firestorm of 1993. The Western evangelists went off to the
Reform/Alliance party. The Quebecers departed en Bloc. And we are
still not finished detesting Brian Mulroney.
Here is the first irony. The institutions the Mulroneyites scorned -
the national railroads, the CBC, the Canadian Wheat Board, the Bank
of Canada, protective tariffs, regional development agencies, even
Confederation - were often Tory achievements in the first place.
Liberals have always seen Canadians as individuals and North
Americans; they wanted to make us independent of the British Empire.
The Tories perceived us as a unique community in need of unique
institutions; they wanted to keep us independent of the American
empire.
All of which made Mulroney a startling mutation in the party of
Macdonald, Borden, Bennett, Diefenbaker, Stanfield, even Clark. But
the boy from Baie Comeau had one golden virtue: his rickety coalition
won elections.
Here is the second irony. Five of the six current Tory leadership
candidates represent the malodorous Mulroney inheritance. The lesson
of 1993 - that Canadians want to be Canadian, and that 57% of us
currently want to be more independent of the US - is lost on them.
Like the Alliance, they sound like US Republicans in parkas.
The Tory brass regard David Orchard, the sixth candidate - who
finished second to Joe Clark in 1998 - as a devious, mock-Tory
infiltrator, a "hitch-hiker," a "special-interest pleader." But
Orchard, a bilingual organic farmer from small-town Saskatchewan, is
the only purebred Tory in the race - and also the only candidate
whose philosophy seems sufficiently broad, inclusive and rooted in
Canadian values to revive the Tories as a "big-tent" party capable of
forming a government.
"Over a century ago, Disraeli set out his guiding principles for
Toryism quite simply," says Orchard. "First, to elevate the condition
of the people, and second, to maintain the institutions of the
country.
"The choice before us is either permanent Liberal rule or a
rejuvenated mainstream Progressive Conservative party which steers
well clear of the Canadian Alliance. In the last election, far more
eligible Canadians didn't vote at all than voted for the Canadian
Alliance. Does anyone believe merging with the Alliance will attract
disillusioned youth? Aboriginals? New Canadians? Francophones?"
Orchard's supporters include novelist Margaret Atwood, artist Robert
Bateman, musicians Stompin' Tom Connors and Anton Kuerti, and former
corporate barons Adam Zimmerman and Bob Blair. And the heart of his
campaign is our foolishly sentimental attitude to the US.
We need to be good friends and trading partners, certainly - but we
also need to put our own interests first. NAFTA - a Mulroney project
- was supposed to give us guaranteed, regulated access to US markets.
Yet softwood lumber, steel and agricultural products face worse
harassment than ever. Nova Scotia natural gas fuels industries in New
England, not the Maritimes.
Meanwhile NAFTA has given US corporations rights superior to those of
Canadian corporations. Their corporations can sue our government for
wholly imaginary losses, for instance, and their right to profit
trumps our own health and safety regulations. Our surviving
corporations have reciprocal rights, of course. Marvellous. A level
playing field on which the Truro Tadpoles can challenge the New York
Yankees.
Can Canada survive such prolonged erosion of its sovereignty - let
alone the "deep integration" now being bruited about by the advocates
of national self-mutilation? Their next Big Bright Ideas include a
common currency, a shared immigration regime, joint border security,
integrated labour markets, harmonized social policy, and unified
environmental, health, law enforcement, and foreign policies. Welcome
to Puerto Rico North. Subjugation without statehood. And not a shot
fired.
The central geopolitical issue for all countries today is their
relationship with Rambo America, and only Orchard seems to remember
the long tradition of hard-nosed, realistic Tory thought on that
topic. On April 9 he was running a strong second, with 454 delegates
versus front-runner Peter Mackay's 714.
Can he win? Not likely. But he's still the one potential leader who
just might inspire enough Canadians to put the old Tory party back in
the running.
- 30 -
Silver Donald Cameron Box 555, D'Escousse, NS B0E 1K0 (902)226-3165
fax (902)226-1904 OUR NEW BOAT: www.islemadame.com/sdc/pumpkin
Home page: http://www.islemadame.com/sdc/ Weekly newspaper columns:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sdcns/join Public speaking:
http://www.atlanticspeakersbureau.com
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Paper Tiger Enterprises Ltd. 2001. Any reproduction of this work, in
whole or in part, is prohibited unless expressly granted by the
author.
<><><><><><><><>
http://www.jameslaxer.com/tories.htm
WHERE HAVE ALL THE TORIES GONE?
2002
By James Laxer
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, idiosyncracy 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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