Harper discards respect for democracy

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This article was published 27/04/2011 (5455 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s current views on Canada’s Constitution and Parliament are not only inaccurate, they completely contradict his own published writings.

“I don’t accept the [premise of the] question,” he said last week when asked if he would be willing to compromise on his next Throne Speech or budget to get them through a minority Parliament. Instead, he attacked the opposition for daring to suggest he should have to. The other parties “are saying even if we receive a mandate from the people they will defeat us on our budget… They will get together and form another alternative, of some other kind of government.”

In 1996, Harper and University of Calgary political scientist and Conservative Party strategist Tom Flanagan co-authored a paper entitled Our Benign Dictatorship. It called for “consultation, committees and consensus-building” in government, proportional representation to replace the “winner-take-all” first-past-the-post electoral system and a Progressive Conservative-Reform Alliance-Bloc Québécois coalition to defeat the then-dominant Liberals.

“In today’s democratic societies, organizations share power. Corporations, churches, universities, hospitals, even public-sector bureaucracies make decisions through consultation, committees and consensus-building techniques,” they wrote.

“Only in politics do we still entrust power to a single faction expected to prevail every time over the opposition by sheer force of numbers. Even more anachronistically, we persist in structuring the governing team like a military regiment under a single commander with almost total power to appoint, discipline and expel subordinates… Many of Canada’s problems stem from a winner-take-all style of politics that allows governments in Ottawa to impose measures abhorred by large areas of the country…”

Not only has Harper jettisoned his democratic instincts for consensus and collaboration, he has tossed aside his praise for the greater democracy inherent in parliamentary coalitions and proportional representation.

Ever since the December 2008 constitutional crisis, Harper has waged a campaign to demonize what he variously labels the “illegitimate, reckless, dangerous” “Liberal-socialist-separatist-coalition.”

But the whole purpose of the Harper-Flanagan paper was to justify a coalition involving the two conservative parties and the Bloc. Fearing the likelihood of perpetual Liberal rule so long as the right remained divided, Harper and Flanagan noted: “If [the Reform-Alliance Party] and the Progressive Conservatives continue their war of attrition, they could keep each other in check for a long period of time… segmenting the right into two parties… In that scenario, the Liberals will continue to govern.”

The first-past-the-post electoral system, their paper continued, “encourages parties to engage in a war of attrition” — exactly as the NDP and Liberals and Bloc are doing now, benefiting the Conservatives.

The Harper-Flanagan cure for the predicament was first to take advantage of what they called “territorial concentration” — the respective strengths of the PCs in Ontario and the Maritimes and of the Reform-Alliance in the West. However, even that would only gain them about 30 per cent of the vote. To genuinely compete with the Liberals for power, they would have to woo Quebec nationalists and sovereignists.

Calling their structure “The Three Sisters,” here’s how they described what they now denounce as tantamount to treason:

“In the longer term… and assuming that Quebec remains in Canada, the alliance would find it hard to form a stable government without some Quebec support… On that basis, a strategic alliance of Quebec nationalists with conservatives outside Quebec might become possible, and it might be enough to sustain a government.”

The sugar-coating the two Albertans put on the sour pill of coalescing with Quebec separatists was this: “If cooperation is ever to work, the fragments of Canadian conservatism must recognize that each represents an authentic aspect of a larger conservative philosophy… Quebec nationalism, while not in itself a conservative movement, appeals to the kinds of voters who in other provinces support conservative parties.”

Michael Behiels, Canadian research chair in politics and the Constitution at the University of Ottawa, says Harper’s Alberta roots are driving a paradigm shift in Canadian politics. Steeped in the social, economic and political mores of Canada’s most American province, Harper is acting as corporate America’s Trojan Horse to recast Canada in the American image: the politics of personal destruction, the economics of corporate rule and the disempowerment of government.

Behiels expects the downloading of more and more programs and responsibilities to the provinces and the gradual dismantling of parliamentary institutions and safeguards and their replacement with an American-style president without the checks and balances of an independent and co-equal Congress.

Harper has discarded his former respect for parliamentary democracy in his quest for power. “He’s just moved on,” says Behiels.

Frances Russell is a Winnipeg

author and political commentator.