Grapevine: Comment—Political
Oakley Rankin
In better times the Progressive Conservative party of Canada encouraged responsible, democratic members such as Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark, Ellen Fairclough, John Diefenbaker, and Pat Carney who respected all parliamentary members as representatives of citizens. Preston Manning weaponized long-standing Western grievances to create the Reform Party. He then asked those members to be directly responsible to all their constituency citizens in conflict with party loyalty. This experiment to eliminate party responsibility was untenable and many conservatives defected to the Progressive Conservatives where they could ignore many of their constituency citizens. Steeped in their grievance they dropped the term ‘Progressive’ with its connotations of responsibility to all Canadian citizens and looked to ideological motivation for policy. They succeeded in forming a government with Stephen Harper. He mixed ideology and pragmatism to maintain an elective edge; he decimated the Federal civil service, he gagged Federal scientists and employees and destroyed much of their data, he eradicated the gun registry, he put stricter controls on what Federal Committees could say publicly, and he weakened the powers of Elections Canada to investigate election irregularities. He did this without a lot of fanfare and managed to win three elections. And he authoritatively silenced the social conservatives in his party who called for even more control over some groups of citizens: criminalization of abortion, prim and proper school curriculums excluding all mention of LGBT persons, and unrestricted gun ownership.
Ideology combined with social media led to increased Conservative incivility towards politicians of other parties; this has now reached its Canadian zenith with Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre espouses vituperation to suggest that the Liberals and the NDP are enemies not representative parliamentarians. He sets forth no distinct long-term policies but chooses to run on slogans which he determines will resonate with many citizens. He never speaks publicly about how he would use the notwithstanding clause in the Constitution to block the Supreme Court from overturning his legislation as Trump’s packed Supreme Court is doing in the U.S. If you are a fan of the CBC with current per capita funding one-quarter of the BBC and one-eighth that of Deutsche Welle you might think about Italy’s RAI; since Meloni replaced management with toadies and responsible journalists left, RAI is now derided as ‘TeleMeloni’. Or if you have any fondness for national arts think of Trump and the Kennedy centre. Poilievre’s only real policy is one of tax cuts to favour the wealthy and deliberately cripple government social programs to increase animosity towards any government which improves life for citizens; Poilievre’s proposed increase in TFSA contribution limits only benefits those who have enough in the first place to open a TFSA—not those who really need help. Poilievre looks to the inanity of the U.S. and believes that winning has nothing to do with policy but is all about defining enemies and impugning your opponent. Such a position is dismissive of even his own voters’ intelligence casting them as citizens uninterested in asking what his government would do if elected. Read through the 58 page, online Conservative Policy Statement to check out what they propose to do if elected; it contains no long term projects whatsoever but is a perfect example of meaningless political ‘motherhood’ jargon. ‘Climate change’ is mentioned only once in the Statement as something the Federal government must stay out of; legislation must be left to provincial and global agents. But possible tax deductions for resource businesses are promised in the Statement.
If you will be voting Conservative next year but are one of the majority of Canadians who believe that climate change is an existential problem you will be voting for a party, many of whose members don’t even believe in climate change, which not only offers no policies for dealing with it but states it never will.
If you will be voting Conservative because you feel their vituperative language ‘speaks truth’ and tells us things that no one else will, then you have a tenuous grasp on what truth is and the multitude of forces that create a culture. You are simply not informed on what a government in a democracy really is and how it is supposed to govern—warts and all—and you do not wish to improve it.
If, after 40 years of largely economically conservative governments in the West, you will be voting Conservative because you actually believe in their trickle-down fantasy that enriching a few beyond measure will raise the standards of the majority, you will be ensuring all but the wealthy a much poorer future.
If you will be voting Conservative simply to kick the rascals out you should probably stay at home because you will have to join the rest of us in living with the consequences of actions you never took the time to figure out.
If you will be voting Conservative because you believe democracy is broken and must be replaced by a strong authority, you have given up hope in humanity as have the techno-political types in Silicon Valley; the acquisitive Japanese-Korean billionaire Masayoshi Son sums up the world you desire:
‘Bill Gates just started Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook. I am involved in a hundred businesses, and I control the entire ecosystem. These are not my peers. The right comparison for me is Napoleon or Genghis Khan or Emperor Qin. I am not a CEO. I am building an empire.’
And if you plan not to vote, don’t complain about what you get!
Further Reading:
Gambling Man: the Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son / Lionel Barber
The Age of the Strongman / Gideon Rachman
