Is Stephen Harper defining a new political centre in Canada?
By January, Stephen Harper will have been prime minister for six years. By the time the next general election is called in 2015, Harper and his Conservatives will have been in power for almost a decade.
Now, past the half-year mark since they finally won a majority government, the Conservatives are doing what they had promised to do, from their tough-on-crime agenda to the abolition of the long-gun registry and the Canadian Wheat Board.
But are they also defining a new political centre in Canada?
“Moving the needle on political culture is a big task and a long-term task,” political scientist Hamish Telford told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview.
It’s not yet clear to the head of the University of the Fraser Valley’s political-science department if Harper’s Conservatives can accomplish that. “Even though the Conservatives got a majority in the last election, they only bumped up their popular vote one or two percent to about 38, 39 percent, meaning that 60 percent…as before is voting for more centrist or even left-leaning parties,” he said.
What’s obvious to Telford is the emphasis on certain themes. These include Canada’s ties to the British monarchy rather than “Trudeau Liberal–type themes of perhaps the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and multiculturalism”.
Telford also sees significance in the martial welcome laid out on Parliament Hill last month for Canadian soldiers returning from their Libya mission, a greeting that had fighter jets flying overhead.
According to the political scientist, that event was a manifestation of an outlook whose elements include: a “more muscular foreign policy and a greater emphasis on the fighting capacity of the military in foreign policy rather than its more defensive, peacekeeping orientation; a willingness to not necessarily engage in international multilateralism through the U.N.…a more pronounced policy tilting towards Israel; [and] a much more realist, if you will, political stance with respect to climate change”.
Author Michael Byers explained that the common thinking is that the political centre is a “small ‘c’ conservative” on economic matters but “socially progressive” in terms of supporting things like universal health care, a multilateralist approach to foreign policy, and a certain concern for the environment.
“The traditional wisdom would be that we are somewhat fiscally conservative but socially progressive,” Byers, a former federal NDP candidate, told the Straight in a phone interview.
The UBC political science professor doesn’t believe that this centre has been reconfigured, if not repositioned to the right with the return to power of the Harper-led Conservatives in 2006.
He said he cannot imagine a centre being occupied by a party voted for by only 39 percent of the 61 percent of Canadians who filled in a ballot in May this year. “Can you have a centre with only 25 percent of the population choosing it?” Byers asked rhetorically.
According to him, they are “implementing the agenda of a small but powerful component of our society”.
“Once someone like Mr. Harper has been in power for six years, it normalizes him as a prime minister and normalizes his views as views which are mainstream within Canada,” Byers said. “They might not be shared by the majority of Canadians, but they are legitimized to some degree by the fact that he has held power and continues to hold power. When Mr. Harper started in politics as a Reform Party candidate, he would have been very much seen as part of a fringe. But he’s now seen as a normal part of the political landscape.”
Bob Ransford cochaired the B.C. campaign of the Conservatives in 2004 but hasn’t been active with the party since then. The former Conservative strategist views the discussion about Canada’s political centre from the direction Harper came from.
“I don’t think that Stephen Harper’s government represents very much of what he came from,” Ransford told the Straight in a phone interview. “I would say that he abandoned many of the things that the Reform movement campaigned on and that were elected on and began to transform politics in Canada.”
For Ransford, Harper has probably embraced some sort of “small ‘c’ conservative agenda”, but as far as the hard-right agenda espoused before by Reform, “that movement is dead”.
Comments
12 Comments
Doctor
Dec 15, 2011 at 12:14pm
"Centrist"? If "political centre" is the new far-right former-reformer now occupied as the main PR shill for Big Oil who cares not for democracy, then I guess so... Sort of like 80 is the new 60?
glen p robbins
Dec 15, 2011 at 3:31pm
Mr. Harper in my opinion is not re-defining the center of politics in the country, but rather temporarily holding the splinter personality of some center right market liberal voters particularly in the province of Ontario.
His policies for Canadian culture and such are very dry - and eventually over time, I suspect many Canadians may consider the government uninteresting. Mr. Harper has failed or completely neglected policy like Senate Reform. Canadians are a little Johnny Cash on crime - they despise repugnant criminals - murderers, rapists, robbers and sexual predators - but have a sense of compassion for people who want to reform themselves. Mr. Harper's crime initiatives seem to be the overarching effort of his government - trying to get it done while in minority and finally getting it done while in majority - without any consideration for failed efforts in places like Texas and not enough funding for court resources to accommodate the policy. With wars ending in Afghanistan this rationale for Harper's steady hand is needed less - and he will need to find something else to talk about.
My position is I don't really know what his government is doing frankly. It could be that Harper isn't noisy or if maybe his government stays out of the way - or maybe they just aren't doing very much.
With the world in a state of serious flux its hard to know if over the short term the Harper government is the right one in place - or we will wake up in five years behind more progressive western democracies in the world.
Bill Phillips
Dec 15, 2011 at 3:56pm
Dr. Byers is right. Most of us are fiscal conservatives and social progressives. Is that the definition of a Red Tory?
King Hughes
Dec 15, 2011 at 5:16pm
Trudeau pulled the "goal post" to the left and the other parties including the Progressive Conservatives went along with them establishing a new socialist centre. All Harper is doing is bringing the goal post back to the original centre; the centre that created this great nation. A nation where its citizens stood on their own two feet without the reliance of mother government.
Karen Hertz
Dec 15, 2011 at 8:18pm
OMG! Harper is using the BushCheney pro-mining, anti-environment, anti-middle-class play book to a TEE. He said he wants to make Canada a country that no one will recognize. Yes, I think he is busy doing that right now. Making it into the USA about 10 years ago. And we ALL know where THAT path leads. Environmental and economic destruction and a tarnished reputation and relationship with the International Community. Stephen Harper is pushing Canada FAR right and fast while he has his whopping 39% "majority" vote. Heaven help us.
Xtina
Dec 15, 2011 at 10:55pm
Eeee-uuuuwww! Please no more photos of our cold eyed shark PM.
Remember Steve giving a speech to the Canada Club in New York saying "Canada is a failed socialist state..."? So why would he want to be our leader then?
ChinaBoy
Dec 16, 2011 at 7:14am
China catches a whiff of arrogance within Harper's government. They continue to talk human right problems instead of trades. We snubbed them good when Harper visit China this year, it shown on National TV here, but in China we don't care about this small country called Canada who is self-righteous about human right problems.
Arthur Vandelay
Dec 16, 2011 at 1:24pm
Yes, Canada is fiscally conservative and socially progressive. Always has been, always will be. That being said, the Conservatives have prospered for several reasons:
• The Liberals imploded with the Sponsorship scandal. Nothing will get politicians reduced to lint like blatant corruption. This, combined with uninspiring leaders has bled enough votes from the Liberals on the right (to CPC) and the left (to the NDP) to effectively splinter the Conservatives opposition and up the middle they come.
• The world economic crisis has played well into the party’s image as being the most able keeper of the purse strings in difficult times.
• Harper had no major blunders while in the minority and kept the social retards in his party in check and on message. Imagine what it takes to keep John Cummins et al out of the headlines.
If the Canadian economy continues to out perform the bulk of the industrialized world and the Liberals continue to have weak leaders and be despised in Quebec, our foosball-man prime minister could be around for quite a while. A perfect storm if you will.
Harper's Canada
Dec 16, 2011 at 11:35pm
Is a financial dud when its comes to payday for working Canadians. The economy, the economy, is falling so empty your pockets but the money has run out so how does Canada out perform now that Canadians have taken out a third mortgage to help pay for home renovations?
So that was it? The financial windfall was a bunch of immigrants coming into the country and driving up the price of homes all the while limiting services Canadians were used to receiving.
Low wages, high unemployment, drastic service cuts, bankruptcies and foreclosures will reach an all time while Harper's popularity will reach a new low for the Conservatives.
Now that Canadians are strapped out government and business will take advantage and do what it takes to help companies that poise a hazard to the environment do what ever they want to do.
A financial storm is brewing and Canadians are going to be crying the Harper blues.
The Conservatives didn't get in because of the crime bill or their list of things to do but because of the fear the economy would be hurting if Harper was let go. The media sold seniors on the idea the economy was booming under the Conservatives but there is no fool like an old fool as the big hurt is coming Canadians way.
GZLFB
Dec 20, 2011 at 6:28pm
Reform was more libertarian than the Tories are then and now. Although the weat board, gun registry and some other things have been almost converting to me. Centre, isn't quite a minarchist classic liberal in general mainstream terms. For the centre you'd likely have to elect a Libertarian Party Government. That is to assume the Objectivist top/north isn't in place (Danforth can move in this direction). But in political bullshit terms, centrist would be let say what you have look like if in a minority Government, not what you are. I tilting left or right with no marginal constituency fear or not too many.