ATTN: @pmharper + #CPC re: #FirstNations + #Aboriginals + #ReconciliationActionPlan = #cdnpoli #NurembergSolution

Before this gets outta hand it may be time to begin the act of reconciliation in Canada NOW, as opposed to delivering empty apologies. Here is what may be a simple initial solution that may, possible, potentially, maybe, kinda, sorta acceptable, if you are lucky. while that simmers a bit, we utilized a hashtagged tweetable title to remind ya when we share this article around the interwebs, so be sure to have Harper’s Kiddies lots o’ RedBull and other keep awake and alert remedies.

How the Jewish Vote Swung from Red to Blue

How the Jewish Vote Swung from Red to Blue
By Michelle Collins – embassymag.ca
February 11, 2009

Just days into the Gaza conflict, on Dec. 29, even before the Conservative government had spoken on the situation, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff delivered the most strongly-worded statement on Israel’s right of defence of any Liberal leader in recent history.

“The Liberal Party of Canada unequivocally condemns the rocket attacks launched by Hamas against Israeli civilians and calls for an immediate end to these attacks,” Mr. Ignatieff said. “We affirm Israel’s right to defend itself against such attacks, and also its right to exist in peace and security.”

Not only was it a jump from the Pearsonian middle-road taken by Liberal parties past when it comes to the Middle East, but it came from the same man who had just two years earlier accused Israel of war crimes in a similar military operation carried out against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The move garnered support from some corners. National Post columnist Jonathan Kay—a longtime critic of the Liberal’s “even-handed” approach on the Middle East and Israel—wrote that with this statement, Mr. Ignatieff had “taken a firm pro-Israel line in the Gaza conflict,” calling the move smart politics and a “stirring demonstration of moral clarity.”

Some observers pointed to the fact that Hamas is a listed terrorist organization that has recklessly launched rockets into a sovereign state for years as likely reasons for the apparent switch. But Hezbollah is also a listed terrorist organization and has launched similar attacks.

Others note that in the summer of 2006, Mr. Ignatieff was not the leader of the Liberal Party, nor at the time was there much evidence that traditional Jewish support for the party was slipping toward the Conservatives because of the latter’s strong pro-Israel policies.

But it has now become clear that with Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the helm, the Conservative Party’s pro-Israel politics have won the respect—and support—of a large segment of Canada’s organized Jewish community.

At the same time, a swing in Jewish votes toward the Conservatives in the last election cost the Liberals at least one affluent Toronto-area seat in Thornhill, where Peter Kent defeated Liberal Susan Kadis, despite the fact the latter is Jewish and had spoken out against Mr. Ignatieff’s comments in 2006. The election also saw Conservatives take marginal victories in a handful of other ridings where Jewish voters make up sizeable numbers, as reported by Canadian Jewish News on Oct. 23.

The message at the ballot box was loud and clear—the Liberals may have spent years listening to what the Jewish community had to say, but they hadn’t delivered.

“People were getting sick and tired of [the Liberal position],” says James Diamond, the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo. “I know Canada always wants to play a neutral role, but sometimes people feel there’s a right and a wrong on an issue, so why play a neutral role? And you know, the Conservatives were coming out and they have been true to their word.”

Mr. Diamond, who voted for the Conservatives in October’s federal election, says Mr. Harper had struck a chord with him, and many other Jewish voters.

Now, experts say Mr. Ignatieff’s surprise declaration highlights the extent to which the Liberals find themselves playing catch-up to the Conservative Party, which is reaping the benefits of the Jewish community’s fulsome support.

The extent to which that support matters at the ballot-box and in influencing Canada’s foreign policy remains a sensitive and hotly debated topic. But that hasn’t stopped the Conservatives from enjoying the fact they have taken one of the Liberal Party’s traditional bases, or the Liberals from fretting over how to win them back.

At the same time, however, Canada’s Arab community is growing, and experts say blatant efforts to win the Jewish community’s support at the Arab community’s expense could alienate an expanding bloc of voters.

Middle East James Diamond,Dominates

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact number of Jewish people living in Canada, in part because in the government’s Census survey, “Jewish” can be described as a religion or an ethnicity. Experts estimate Jewish-Canadians represent about one per cent of the population, or upward of an estimated 350,000.

While they may have been important in deciding the winner in a number of important urban ridings during the last election, they represent only a small voting segment. Nonetheless, Jewish-Canadians are said to be more politically engaged than many other groups and are consistent voters.

“The Jewish community is a longstanding community,” says Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress. “They are quite sophisticated in terms of their voting patterns. Certainly in the last four or five elections that has been shown.”

Yet Mr. Farber and many experts insist there is no monolithic Jewish voting bloc in Canada.

“I don’t think today any particular party can count on a ‘Jewish vote,'” he says.

There is also sharp debate over just how much power and clout the Jewish community holds. However, what is clear is that the Jewish community is well-organized, extremely politically active, and that they get their message out to top politicians and bureaucrats in ways many other cultural, ethnic and religious groups just can’t hope to match.

“I think it’s not so much the vote that matters,” says David Bercuson, a historian and director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. “There are a lot of Jews who are active in Canadian society through just about every field or endeavour today, which was not true 50 years ago. And I guess politicians think that those are ‘more influential’, let’s say, than other groups. [They] are more to be listened to.”

Morton Weinfeld, director of Canadian ethnic studies at McGill University, says there are many issues on the “Jewish communal agenda” that voters look for, but the Middle East dominates.

A number of senior politicians, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they are often perplexed at how much political attention is directed at the Arab-Israeli conflict, suggesting that it diverts resources away from other conflicts and humanitarian crises Canada could help around the world.

Part of the reason, it is acknowledged, is the outspoken and active lobbying undertaken by the organized Jewish community as well as, though to a lesser extent, that of the organized Arab community, whose groups are less established or organized.

One of the leading Jewish organizations is the Canada-Israel Committee, which was formed in the late 1960s to promote “increased understanding” between the peoples of Canada and Israel. CIC’s operations really expanded in 1973, in response to the Yom Kippur war. It has since become one of the largest foreign policy lobby groups in the country and has a permanent staff in Ottawa.

“Certainly I would say that the stands of the [Canada-Israel Committee] and B’nai Brith represent the large majority of Canadians in the Canadian Jewish community,” says Ira Robinson, a professor of Judaic studies at Concordia University in Montreal.

Also very active on Canada-Israeli relations, B’nai Brith Canada, a membership-based organization that is known to lean toward the right of Canada’s political spectrum, describes itself as the voice of grassroots Canadian Jewry and the country’s foremost Jewish human rights organization.

Jewish groups such as the CIC really began building up their clout and contacts with all political parties in the early 1970s. They have maintained close contact since and, as a result, are perceived to garner a fair amount of political traction.

Senior politicians and Middle East policy advisers say these Jewish organizations are perceived as being influential, and past surveys of Foreign Affairs staff confirm such a perception.

“In Canada it’s harder to lobby, yet the pro-Israeli lobby is still very effective. And they do a good job, they’re very skilled, they’re very on-message,” says a Middle East policy adviser who didn’t want to be named. “They’re constantly in contact with MPs, with the Department of Foreign Affairs. Whenever Foreign Affairs does something [on the Middle East] it’s going to get sort of positive or negative signals from the [Canada-Israel Committee].”

CIC has traditionally been the most active group in federal politics with the goal of influencing Canada’s policies on the Middle East. Last year, according to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying, CIC representatives met with, among others, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Mark Cameron, a director in the prime minister’s office. A search for meetings with Arab, Muslim and Palestinian groups elicited no results.

Of all the free trips MPs accepted last year, Israel outnumbered other destinations by nearly two to one—even outpacing Taiwan, which was the top destination for freebies in 2007. According to Canada’s ethics commissioner, the Canada-Israel Committee spent more than $200,000 to send 23 federal politicians and their spouses to the Middle East.

Despite some of their best efforts to influence policy, however, Jewish organizations’ degree of success is apparently immeasurable, and experts generally say it has been low. In fact, in what little academic work has been devoted to exploring the role of Canada’s well-established Jewish organizations, all have concluded that they have had little effect.

“It’s not clear that the CIC has had major impact on government policy,” Mr. Weinfeld says. “They’ll probably say they’ve had a significant impact…certainly on the margins it has had some impact. It’s provided information and gone with MPs on tours to Israel…[but] I don’t think they have an enormous amount of power.”

Akaash Maharaj, who was national policy chair of the Liberal Party from 1998 until 2003, says Jewish and Arab groups have been “extremely successful” at raising their issues, noting that for a country geographically located far from Israel, their lobbying efforts ensure Middle East affairs remain a prominent political topic.

“The issue of peace in the Middle East, as important as it is, occupied vastly more political oxygen in Ottawa than it does in many capitals around the world because of the activism of Muslim and Jewish organizations than it would otherwise,” Mr. Maharaj says. “But having raised the profile of that question, I don’t believe either group of groups has been disproportionately successful in having its answers to those questions being embraced by government.”

In 2004, this lack of tangible success by the major groups led to the creation of the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy, or CIJA, a pro-Israel advocacy group to act as an umbrella organization that would streamline their combined lobbying efforts.

On its website, CIJA posts politicians’ comments about Israel dating back to 1998 and encourages its members to contact politicians, to call in to radio shows, and to blog their support for Israel online.

But Mira Sucharov, associate professor of political science at Carleton University, says it’s hard to know whether Canadian foreign policy towards the Middle East has been changed as a result of such activities.

“It’s difficult to analyze, in the case of particularly the Conservative government, whether they cause a policy tilt that is more sympathetic toward Israel or whether that is the Harper world view to start with.

“And I think there’s a lot to be said for the latter, and I think it’s a natural convergence of interests,” Ms. Sucharov says.

Mr. Robinson, too, says it is unlikely that the advocacy of Jewish organizations would cause a government to reverse a position.

“If you have a conviction that is less supportive of Israel, the fact that you have contacts from the Jewish community making representation is not going to change your mind all that much, this is what the historical record shows,” Mr. Robinson says.

“Stephen Harper is supportive of Israel not because the Jews sent a lobbying group and said: ‘Please Stephen Harper, support Israel.’ If he did not want to, he would cordially talk to all kinds of groups and do what he feels is right and proper.”

Harper and the Middle East

Mr. Harper is not the first prime minister to be accused of taking a pro-Israel stance to the Middle East—both Conservative prime ministers Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney first entered office with pro-Israel policy ideas—but it seems Mr. Harper is the first who has not been forced to back down.

So pivotal has the Middle East been considered within Canada that academics widely agree the measure of a prime minister’s approach to the Middle East inevitably becomes a matter of historical record.

“The Middle East frustrated Lester Pearson, preoccupied Joe Clark, angered Pierre Trudeau, and remains a minefield which Brian Mulroney has attempted to avoid, not always with success,” authors David Taras and David H. Goldberg wrote in the 1989 book The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

Mr. Harper is known to have strong ideological views on the Middle East, which he has repeatedly tried to contrast with those of the opposition. This stance is believed to be borne of his own convictions, rather than of any outside influence or political agenda. As a result, he keeps a tight grip over all statements on Israel and is heavy-handed about which MPs can speak on the issue.

“Obviously Stephen Harper as prime minister, and the Conservative Party in general, have adopted a very pro-Israel stance. I think they’re doing that out of conviction,” says Harold Waller, a political science professor at McGill University.

Since the Conservatives came to power in January 2006, many analysts and former foreign affairs officials say, there has been a marked shift in Canada’s approach toward the Middle East. While welcomed by many as a principled stance in support of Israel and against terrorism, others say the policy doesn’t hold Israel to the same standards as other countries.

Critics of the Conservative’s foreign policy have also accused Mr. Harper of modelling his positions after former U.S. president George W. Bush, who is considered to have presided over the most pro-Israel administration in history.

Two months into governing, in March 2006, Mr. Harper cut aid to the Palestinian Authority after Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. Canada was the first country to do so, apart from Israel.

His pro-Israel position has been underscored by public statements, speeches, and a changed voting pattern at the United Nations, though this realigning of diplomacy against “unbalanced” UN resolutions, in fact, started under Liberal prime minister Paul Martin.

In 2005, Mr. Martin explained this shift as an attempt to depoliticize the United Nations, including the new UN Human Rights Council, rather than a move to appease Israel.

“We will continue to press for the kinds of reform that will eliminate the politicization of the United Nations and its agencies, and in particular the annual ritual of politicized, anti-Israel resolutions,” he said.

But the Conservatives, led by Mr. Harper, have repeatedly stated that Canada and Israel share the same values, namely respect for human rights, the rule of law, freedom and democracy, which makes the two mutual partners. At the same time, the Conservative view is Israel is a fellow democracy that is under siege, and it is imperative Canada stand with its ally.

“Unfortunately, Israel at 60 remains a country under threat, threatened by groups and regimes who deny, to this very day, its right to exist,” he said on May 8, 2008 at an event in Toronto. “And why? Make no mistake. Look beyond the thinly veiled rationalizations—because they hate Israel, just as much as they hate the Jewish people. Our government believes that those who threaten Israel also threaten Canada.”

Reaching Out to Jewish Voters

Whether the Conservative Party’s policies have simply happened to coalesce with the greater Jewish community’s views or not, it isn’t skimping from taking full advantage of the appeal its policies have for many Jewish voters.

“I think it is clear that, without question, this particular government has been very supportive of some of the causes that have been of concern to this community specifically, like the issue of security around our buildings and schools, the issue of anti-Semitism and racism, the issue of human rights, and Israel,” says Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress. “Of course these are all matters of concern to our community and this particular government has been very supportive.”

At the same time, the Conservatives have been actively using their outright support for Israel to reach out to the Jewish community and recruit what were traditionally Liberal Party loyalists over to their political party.

“At the heart of relations between Canada and Israel is the dynamism of our shared communities,” the prime minister said in a statement released on May 14, 2008 to mark the 60th anniversary of Israel’s founding.

Over the last two years, Mr. Harper has made a habit of sending New Year’s cards to Jewish-Canadians, many of whom were surprised—and some angered—to be on the prime minister’s mailing list.

In the Globe and Mail last September, Jewish broadcaster and producer Ralph Benmergui wrote an opinion piece about the Tory government’s robust support for Israel and the tactic of sending Rosh Hashanah cards, calling it an “unctuous political strategy.”

The Conservatives have been anything but shy about promoting their pro-Israel stance while painting the Liberals the exact opposite. After the October 2008 election, Canadian Jewish News reported the Tories had succeeded in gaining more Jewish voters, in part because they “touted themselves throughout the campaign as the only party with a staunchly pro-Israel record.”

It was clear, however that the Liberals were already floundering among Jewish voters.

When business-magnates and couple Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz—CEOs of Indigo Books and Onex Corporation—announced they were throwing their support behind Mr. Harper in August 2006 because of his support for Israel, their partisan switch was headline news. Both had previously played leading roles in the Liberal Party; Ms. Reisman is a past national policy chair and Mr. Schwartz a former Liberal Party president. “Liberal power couple back Harper on Mideast,” the Globe and Mail reported; “Canada’s pro-Israel premier lures Jews to Tories,” reported The Jerusalem Post.

Around the same time, noted filmmaker Robert Lantos also spoke publicly of his switch to the Conservatives, telling a pro-Israel rally in Toronto in August 2006 that he thanked Mr. Harper for his “principled support” of Israel.

“I hereby take off my lifelong federal Liberal hat to you. Symbolically, I toss it away, if there were anyone willing to catch it,” Mr. Lantos said.

The most blatant example of the emerging partisan divide came in Mr. Harper’s response to Mr. Ignatieff’s comments accusing Israel of war crimes in the Lebanon conflict. In October 2006, Mr. Harper told reporters this was “consistent with the anti-Israeli position that has been taken by virtually all of the candidates for the Liberal leadership. I don’t think it’s helpful or useful.”

The accusation outraged Liberals and triggered drastic action within the party. An open letter calling on the prime minister to make a public apology, signed by 172 MPs and supporters, was released on Oct. 19, 2006.

Liberal Party officials are frank about the drop they’ve witnessed in Jewish support, and reporters and media pundits have been scratching at the issue for the past three years.

As Liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein put it, “I think what happened is that the Liberals have always taken a position of balance, and the Jewish community had felt that balance was unfair.”

Akaash Maharaj, former national policy chair for the Liberals, says mixed reactions among Jewish voters to the party’s Middle East politics started to emerge even before the Tories took over government.

“I would say there was a criticism of the Liberal Party’s foreign policy during that period, that it tried to walk this middle path when people would argue that the truth does not necessarily lie midway between two extremes,” Mr. Maharaj says.

In November 2006, Steven Pinkus, vice-president of the Liberal’s Quebec wing, told The Jewish Tribune the party had “lost significant support from one of its traditional strong bases” as a result of the fallout to Mr. Ignatieff’s reaction to the conflict in Lebanon. Mr. Ignatieff was the presumptive frontrunner for the Liberal leadership at the time, which eventually went to Stéphane Dion.

Ariela Cotler, former justice minister and Liberal MP Irwin Cotler’s wife, went so far as to publicly quit the Liberal party over Mr. Ignatieff’s comments, and in a letter to the National Post said Mr. Ignatieff lacked “moral integrity.”

At the same time, interim Liberal leader Bill Graham refused to take a position on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict while the party was busy choosing a new leader—though he did accuse Mr. Harper of abandoning Canada’s traditional role as an “interlocutor” in the Middle East.

While Mr. Ignatieff was levelling strong criticisms at Israel over its actions in Lebanon and the rest of the Liberal Party, led by Bill Graham, refused to take a side, Mr. Harper was taking a strong stand. He voiced outright support for Israel—describing its actions as a “measured” response at a time when the rest of the world was aghast—and he was one of a tiny group of world leaders who openly resisted international calls for a ceasefire.

The Tories’ aggressive efforts to paint the Liberals as anti-Israeli prompted the creation of a group called Liberal Friends of Israel within the party. The group’s co-chairs, Meredith Caplan, Michael Levitt and Jason Cherniak, have been outspoken of their party’s pro-Israel views and organized several rallies across Canada.

“Those who seek to characterize the Liberal Party as anti-Israel should take note of what we’re doing and of our leader’s support for what we’re doing,” Ms. Caplan said at a Walk with Israel event in Winnipeg in May 2007, which then-leader Stéphane Dion attended, along with many Liberal MPs, among them Mr. Ignatieff, Anita Neville, Ken Dryden, Irwin Cotler, Bob Rae, Carolyn Bennett and Senator Art Eggleton.

Liberals say the party is making a concerted effort to re-earn the support of voters, from all cultural and religious groups, who have either voted for other parties or stayed away from the polls in recent elections.

“I don’t think this is likely to translate into a dramatic shift in policy positions, but it certainly has manifested itself in terms of willingness to forcefully articulate existing positions; support for the state of Israel, for example,” Mr. Maharaj says of the Liberals outreach to Jewish voters. “I would say it’s more an understanding that it must articulate its positions rather than mumble quietly when asked difficult questions.”

The Growing Arab Community

According to Statistics Canada, the number of people in Canada of Arab origin is growing considerably faster than the overall population, and Canadians of Arab origin make up one of the largest non-European ethnic groups in Canada.

In 2001, an estimated 350,000 Arabs lived in Canada. By 2006, Montreal’s Arab population had grown by nearly 50 per cent to number an approximate 109,000 in that city alone.

While experts agree Jewish organizations have been extremely effective at reaching out to politicians, there is an awareness that Canada’s Arab community is getting stronger and more politically active.

McGill professor Harold Waller says Arab and Muslim groups carry out similar activities as Jewish organizations, contacting members of Parliament and the bureaucracy, but that Arab groups aren’t as well established at this point.

“I don’t think their influence is as great as the pro-Israel groups,” Mr. Waller says. “On the other hand, I think that the political parties are very much aware of the growing number of Arab and Muslim voters in the country, so some of the MPs in particular are beginning to respond to constituents and espouse that cause.”

Noting Mr. Ignatieff’s strong support for Israel during the Gaza conflict, Mr. Waller says it will be tricky for the Liberal Party to try to sway Jewish voters back to them while also trying to attract new immigrant voters.

“They will have to be very careful if they want to try to hold both Jewish and Arab voters. And, of course, one way to do that is to avoid taking critical positions on these issues, which I think was what some of the more recent Liberal governments tried to do,” Mr. Waller says.

Senator Grafstein says he finds that Arabs and Muslims are extremely active and are constantly sending emails to him.

“I would think that when it comes to working at the party level that they’re much visible and much more pro-active, certainly within the parties, certainly more than any Jewish organizations are,” Mr. Grafstein says.

However, he says much of the correspondence is “heated and unbalanced,” adding that he is influenced by facts, not vitriol.

He says that parliamentarians are very much affected by such communications, particularly when it comes in such high numbers.

Some of the more prominent groups include the Canadian Arab Federation, Palestine House, the Muslim Canadian Congress and the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations.

Samah Sabawi, a Palestinian-Canadian and an advocate for increasing dialogue on issues of the Middle East, says it is true that Arab and Muslim groups are younger and less organized. She says they continue to struggle to establish strong political connections.

Despite repeated requests for a meeting with Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon in response to the Gaza crisis, groups such as the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations were told the minister was unavailable.

Another challenge, she says, is that Arab-Canadians are hesitant to join advocacy organizations because they are a newer ethnic community in Canada and they don’t fully understand the political system.

“Most of the Arab-Canadians come from countries where they don’t trust institutions, and they don’t trust the system and so they’re not as willing to donate to advocacy groups. It’s really hard to get them behind an advocacy organization because of that lack of trust,” Ms. Sabawi says.

Some events in the last 10 years, however, have prompted many in the Arab community to become more involved, she says, beginning with the period following 9/11, the Lebanon war in 2006, and now the Gaza conflict.

However, Ms. Sabawi says there is still much work to be done in making their concerns heard among politicians.

“Different parties are more open to exploring the Arab community and to listening to members of the Arab community, for sure with the Conservative Party of Canada we still have a lot of work to do.

“And more recently with the Liberals as well as they try to figure out their direction and to re-establish themselves.”

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A Very Scary Harper Story

By Jodie Giesz-Ramsay – Tuesday, January 17 2006

What the Conservatives plan to do to change Canada – for worse.

The following is an essay written by Stephen Harper in June, 2003 and posted on the Christian Coalition International (Canada) site. It’s a frightening look into Harper’s views on Conservative policies, including references to George W. Bush and the Iraq War, and how Canada should be like America.

If you had no reason to vote before, you have an obligation as a true Canadian citizen to vote against the Conservative Party, do what you can to elect whomever is in second running to your local right-wing candidate.

Despite the sometimes-dull points in the following essay, you will surely be absorbed as you read, in shock, the twisted words from Stephen Harper’s mind.

Save Canada ? Stop the Conservatives!

Rediscovering The Right Agenda

June 2003
By Stephen Harper – Report Magazine

The Canadian Alliance leader outlines how social and economic conservatism must unite

After years of strategic drift, Harper positions the Alliance as an equal partnership of social and economic conservatism. This article is based on his remarks at the Civitas meeting in Toronto on April 25, 2003

The Canadian Alliance wrapped up its leadership race a little over one year ago. At the time, the chattering classes told us the race was about the so-called “unity” issue – the question of whether we should have one “conservative” party or two. But I asked the 100,000-plus members of our party a different question: do we actually stand for something, or don’t we?

I posed this question because what Alliance members feared most was seeing our agenda slipping away. Simply put, our members worried less about having two so-called “conservative parties” than about having no conservative party at all.

I believe the majority of members supported my leadership bid for approaching the debate in these terms. My mandate as leader is therefore to ensure that the Alliance remains a strong and principled voice for conservatism in national politics.

OUR HISTORY AND THE OPTIONS TODAY

There are two ways conservatives can respond to the challenges faced at the national level. Our party has explored both over the years, in two important phases. These two phases were not “Reform” and “Alliance”: they were not about name or organizational changes.

Rather, our party underwent one period in which it was policy-driven, and another period in which it was process-driven. In the policy-driven phase, the party emphasized what it stood for. It took stands on a litany of issues, from its fight against he Meech Lake/Charlottetown constitutional agenda, to the battle for deficit reduction, lower taxes and fiscal responsibility. This was the period in which the party grew from nothing to become an important electoral and parliamentary force.

However, for the past half-decade or so, the party moved into a phase in which it emphasized process. Specifically, the party focused its energies on a process by which it could garner greater electoral success. This was called “coalition building.” In practice, it involved disassembling the party’s institutional structures in order to bring in new supporters from other entities. In terms of policy, conferences were held to create and sell a new “vision.” In practice, this amounted largely to making existing policy stands vague or simply invisible. Whatever the electoral potential of this approach promised by the polls, the results were clearly going in the opposite direction.

Those two options still confront us today. One option is to work within an existing political party to create a conservative “coalition.” In my judgement this option is the way to go, and the best vehicle to do it is the Canadian Alliance.

I also believe that a combination of existing political parties, such as the Alliance and the PCs, could potentially be an ever better vehicle. But that is not Joe Clark’s opinion. It appears not to be Peter MacKay’s. In fact, there is no guarantee or likelihood it will ever be the opinion of a federal PC leader. They seem to prefer to use the PC Party to build their own coalition.

While I may disagree with the Tories choice, it certainly makes more sense than the other option – to work outside both entities and, in the name of “uniting the right,” to promote their mutual failure. To use George W. Bush’s phrase, whatever your political objective or party, electoral success requires a “coalition of the willing” and nothing less.

THE CONSERVATIVE COALITION

Whatever attraction a coalition of parties may have, we need to concentrate on what is actually doable. That is, we need to form a coalition of voters and, to attract them, a coalition of ideas.

What is the “conservative coalition” of ideas? Actually, conservatism and conservative parties, as we’ve known them over the decades, have always been coalitions. Though these coalitions are complex and continually shifting, two distinctive elements have long been identifiable.

Ted Byfield labelled these factions “neo-con” and “theo-con.” More commonly, they are known simply as economic conservatives and social conservatives. Properly speaking, they are called classical or enlightenment liberalism and classical or Burkean conservatism.

The one called “economic conservatism” does indeed come from classical liberalism. Its primary value is individual freedom, and to that end it stresses private enterprise, free trade, religious toleration, limited government and the rule of law.

The other philosophy is Burkean conservatism. Its primary value is social order. It stresses respect for customs and traditions (religious traditions above all), voluntary association, and personal self-restraint reinforced by moral and legal sanctions on behaviour.

The essence of this conservatism is, according to Russell Kirk, “the preservation of the ancient moral traditions of humanity. Conservatives respect the wisdom of their ancestors: they are dubious of wholesale alteration. They think society is a spiritual reality, possessing an eternal life but a delicate constitution: it cannot be scrapped and recast as if it were a machine.”

In the 19th century, these two political philosophies, classical liberalism and Burkean conservatism, formed the basis for distinct political parties that opposed one another. On the one side was a liberal party in the classical sense – rationalist, anticlerical but not anti-religious, free-trading, often republican and usually internationalist. On the other side was an older conservative party – traditionalist, explicitly or implicitly denominational, economically protectionist, usually monarchist, and nationalistic.

In the 20th century, these opposing forces came together as a result of two different forces: resistance to a common enemy, and commitment to ideas widely shared.

The common enemy was the rise of radical socialism in its various forms. In this context, Burkean conservatives and classical liberals discovered a commitment to a core of common ideas. Both groups favoured private property, small government and reliance on civil society rather than the state to resolve social dilemmas and to create social process. Domestically, both groups resisted those who stood for public ownership, government interventionism, egalitarian redistribution and state sponsorship of secular humanist values. Internationally, they stood unequivocally against external enemies – fascism, communism and socialist totalitarianism in all its forms.

THE VICTORY AND DECLINE OF CONSERVATISM

For decades, conservative parties were successful, often dominant, coalitions in western democracies. But conservatism has been in trouble in recent years. Partisan success has been much less common. In some countries, the traditional conservative coalition even appears to have broken down.

The irony is that these hard times have fallen on the heels of perhaps the most successful period in democratic conservatism’s history – the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions. I believe that it is this very success that is at the heart of the current difficulties.

The Reagan-Thatcher revolution was so successful that it permanently undermined the traditional social-democratic/left-liberal consensus in a number of democratic countries. It worked domestically to undermine the left-liberal or social-democratic consensus, causing those parties to simply stop fighting and adopt much of the winning conservative agenda. Socialists and liberals began to stand for balanced budgeting, the superiority of markets, welfare reversal, free trade and some privatization. At the same time, the fall of the Berlin Wall signalled the collapse of Soviet Communism as a driving world force, depriving conservatives of all shares of a common external enemy.

It is critical we realize that this breakdown is not a fundamental incompatibility between “neo-cons” and “theo-cons,” between economic and social conservatism. Even in the worst-case example, Canada’s Mulroney coalition did not break up because of divisions between these groups. Rather, it broke up over regional and constitutional questions, and the abandonment of both forms of conservatism. In fact, the strongest economic and social conservatives both found homes within the Reform and Canadian Alliance parties.

The truth is that strong economic and social conservatives are more often than not the same people, and not without reason. Except at the extremes of libertarianism and theocracy, the philosophical fusion has become deep and wide-spread. Social conservatives more often than not demand the government stop intervening in individual decisions, just as classical liberals often point to the religious roots of their focus on the individual. As the American humourist P.J. O’Rourke observed, “the great religions teach salvation as an individual matter. There are no group discounts in the ten commandments, Christ was not a committee, and Allah does not welcome believers into paradise saying, ‘you weren’t much good yourself, but you were standing near some good people.'”

O’Rourke also summarized the moral and civilizing importance of markets by reminding us that “the rise of private enterprise and trade provided a means of achieving wealth and autonomy other than by killing people with broadswords.” Private enterprise and trade, as Adam Smith pointed out, can turn individual selfishness into useful social outcomes. In fact, the founder of classical liberal economics came to his theories as much by his study of moral philosophy as anything else.

A NEW CHALLENGE AND A NEW RESPONSE

What this means for conservatives today is that we must rediscover the common cause and orient our coalition to the nature of the post-Cold-War world.

The real enemy is no longer socialism. Socialism as a true economic program and motivating faith is dead. Yes, there are still lots of statist economic policies and people dependent on big government. But the modern left-liberal economic philosophy has become corporatism. Corporatism is the use of private ownership and markets for state-directed objectives. Its tools are subsidization, public/private partnerships and state investment funds. It is often bad policy, but it is less clearly different from conventional conservative economics than any genuine socialism.

The real challenge is therefore not economic, but the social agenda of the modern Left. Its system of moral relativism, moral neutrality and moral equivalency is beginning to dominate its intellectual debate and public-policy objectives.

The clearest recent evidence of this phenomenon is seen in international affairs in the emerging post-Cold-War world – most obviously in the response of modern liberals to the war on terrorism. There is no doubt about the technical capacity of our society to fight this war. What is evident is the lack of desire of the modern liberals to fight, and even more, the striking hope on the Left that we actually lose.

You can see this if you pay close attention to the response to the war in Iraq from our own federal Liberals and their cheerleaders in the media and the universities. They argue one day that there are no weapons of mass destruction, yet warn that such weapons might be used. They tell us the war was immoral, then moral but impractical, then practical but unjustified. They argue simultaneously that the war can’t be won, that it is too easy for the coalition to win and that victory cannot be sustained anyway. Most striking was their obvious glumness at the fall of Baghdad. But even previous to that were the dark suggestions on the anniversary of September 11 (hinted at even by our own prime minister) that “we deserved it.”

This is particularly striking given the nature of the enemy here, the bin Ladens and the Husseins, individuals who embody in the extreme everything the Left purports to oppose – fundamentalism, fascistic nationalism, misogyny, bigotry.

Conservatives need to reassess our understanding of the modern Left. It has moved beyond old socialistic morality or even moral relativism to something much darker. It has become a moral nihilism – the rejection of any tradition or convention of morality, a post-Marxism with deep resentments, even hatreds of the norms of free and democratic western civilization.

This descent into nihilism should not be surprising because moral relativism simply cannot be sustained as a guiding philosophy. It leads to silliness such as moral neutrality on the use of marijuana or harder drugs mixed with its random moral crusades on tobacco. It explains the lack of moral censure on personal foibles of all kinds, extenuating even criminal behaviour with moral outrage at bourgeois society, which is then tangentially blamed for deviant behaviour. On the moral standing of the person, it leads to views ranging from radical responsibility-free individualism, to tribalism in the form of group rights.

Conservatives have focused on the inconsistency in all of this. Yet it is actually disturbingly consistent. It is a rebellion against all forms of social norm and moral tradition in every aspect of life. The logical end of this thinking is the actual banning of conservative views, which some legislators and “rights” commissions openly contemplate.

In this environment, serious conservative parties simply cannot shy away from values questions. On a wide range of public-policy questions, including foreign affairs and defence, criminal justice and corrections, family and child care, and healthcare and social services, social values are increasingly the really big issues.

Take taxation, for example. There are real limits to tax-cutting if conservatives cannot dispute anything about how or why a government actually does what it does. If conservatives accept all legislated social liberalism with balanced budgets and corporate grants – as do some in the business community – then there really are no differences between a conservative and a Paul Martin.

There is, of course, much more to be done in economic policy. We do need deeper and broader tax cuts, further reductions in debt, further deregulation and privatization, and especially the elimination of corporate subsidies and industrial-development schemes. In large measure, however, the public arguments for doing so have already been won. Conservatives have to more than modern liberals in a hurry.

The truth of the matter is that the real agenda and the defining issues have shifted from economic issues to social values, so conservatives must do the same.

REVISING THE AGENDA

This is not as difficult as it sounds. It does not require a radical redefinition of conservatism, but rather a shifting of the balance between the economic and social conservative sides that have always been there.

In particular, Canadian conservatives need to rediscover the virtues of Burkean conservatism as a key component of that balance. Rediscovering this agenda, to paraphrase Ted Byfield, means not just worrying about what the state costs, but also worrying about what the state values.

For example, we need to rediscover Burkean or social conservatism because a growing body of evidence points to the damage the welfare state is having on our most important institutions, particularly the family. Conservatives have to give much higher place to confronting threats posed by modern liberals to this building block of our society.

Take, for example, the debate over the rights of parents to discipline their children – the so-called spanking debate. Of course, there are legitimate limits to the use of force by parents – limits outlined in the Criminal Code. Yet the most recent Liberal Throne Speech, as part of its “children’s agenda,” hinted at more government interference in the family. We saw the capacity for this abuse of power in the events that took place in Aylmer, Ont. Children there were seized for no reason other than the state disagreed with the religious views of their parents. No conservative can support this kind of intrusion, and conservatives have an obligation to speak forcefully against such acts.

This same argument applies equally to a range of issues involving the family (all omitted from the Throne Speech), such as banning child pornography, raising the age of sexual consent, providing choice in education and strengthening the institution of marriage. All of these items are key to a conservative agenda.

We also need to rediscover Burkean conservatism because the emerging debates on foreign affairs should be fought on moral grounds. Current challenges in dealing with terrorism and its sponsors, as well as the emerging debate on the goals of the U.S. as the sole superpower, will be well served by conservative insights on preserving historic values and moral insights on right and wrong. As we have seen in recent months, these are debates where modern liberals (with the exception of Tony Blair) have no answers: they are trapped in their framework of moral neutrality, moral relativism and moral equivalence.

But conservatives should have answers. We understand, however imperfectly, the concept of morality, the notion that moral rules form a chain of right and duty, and that politics is a moral affair. We understand that the great geopolitical battles against modern tyrants and threats are battles over values. We can disagree vehemently with the values of our civilization’s opponents, but that does not deny the validity of the cause in their eyes. Without clear values ourselves, our side has no purpose, no meaning, no chance of success.

Conservatives must take the moral stand, with our allies, in favour of the fundamental values of our society, including democracy, free enterprise and individual freedom. This moral stand should not just give us the right to stand with our allies, but the duty to do so and the responsibility to put “hard power” behind our international commitments.

SOME CAUTIONS FOR POLITICAL SUCCESS

Rebalancing the conservative agenda will require careful political judgment. First, the issues must be chosen carefully. For example, the social conservative issues we choose should not be denominational, but should unite social conservatives of different denominations and even different faiths. It also helps when social conservative concerns overlap those of people with a more libertarian orientation.

Second, we must realize that real gains are inevitably incremental. This, in my experience, is harder for social conservatives than for economic conservatives. The explicitly moral orientation of social conservatives makes it difficult for many to accept the incremental approach. Yet, in democratic politics, any other approach will certainly fail. We should never accept the standard of just being “better than the Liberals” – people who advocate that standard seldom achieve it – but conservatives should be satisfied if the agenda is moving in the right direction, even if slowly.

Third, rebalancing means there will be changes to the composition of the conservative coalition. We may not have all the same people we have had in the past. The new liberal corporatist agenda will appeal to some in the business community. We may lose some old “conservatives,” Red Tories like the David Orchards or the Joe Clarks.

This is not all bad. A more coherent coalition can take strong positions it wouldn’t otherwise be able to take – as the Alliance alone was able to do during the Iraq war. More importantly, a new approach can draw in new people. Many traditional Liberal voters, especially those from key ethnic and immigrant communities, will be attracted to a party with strong traditional views of values and family. This is similar to the phenomenon of the “Reagan Democrats” in the United States, who were so important in the development of that conservative coalition.

CONCLUSION

To be successful as a conservative party – indeed, to have any success at all – the Canadian Alliance must be driven primarily by policy, not by process. I have written many times that the Reform Party and Canadian Alliance made gains in the past by taking principled conservative stands on the issues of the day. I believe our party has been doing that under my leadership on a range of issues – from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to defence and foreign policy, taxes and spending, childcare and criminal justice, healthcare reform, and even on environmental matters like the Kyoto accord.

The rediscovery of the conservative agenda requires us to maintain the coalition of ideas that is the heritage of enlightenment liberalism and Burkean conservatism. Yet contemporary reality requires us to re-emphasize the Burkean tradition as a key part of our conservative agenda. In other words, while retaining a focus on economic issues, we must give greater place to social values and social conservatism, broadly defined and properly understood.

Eight years ago, I wrote that the Reform Party had to become the principal force in the democratic Right in Canadian politics by adapting contemporary issues to a new conservatism. This remains the essential task of the Canadian Alliance – to unify conservatives in a broad coalition of conservative ideas.

Posted on Christian Coalition International

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