A working class hero’s a good thing to be
I’ve told my caucus repeatedly, if you make conservatism relevant to ordinary working people, you make the most powerful political philosophy in Western democratic society,” Mr. Harper said, looking relaxed and speaking candidly in his hotel room during a campaign stop in Ontario’s cottage country. “Where Conservative parties are successful, and successful on a sustained basis, that’s what they do.”Andrew Coyne calls this “a realignment” and, from his perspective it may be; but while I hitchhiked up and down Galiano Island I got a lot of rides from “the working class”. Basically old hippies who turned their hand to carpentry or plumbing in order to follow their dreams on Galiano.Mr. Harper noted that the working class, particularly in provinces like British Columbia, tended to move away from his party in 2004.
“Not that we lost it all last time, but it rolled back. That surprised me a bit because that’s obviously the element I’m from and I don’t think we’d done anything terribly different,” said Mr. Harper, whose father was an accountant.
globe and mail
While many of these folks smoked pot, hugged the trees they were not chainsawing for fire wood and thought gay marriage was just fine; they had zero interest in having the government intervene in their lives or take their money. They made this stick with everything from small pot plantations to a thriving, and entirely untaxed, wine and beer industry through to a strong preference for cash rather than cheque transactions. It was not that they were so much anti-government as they were keen to be simply left alone.
The old style socialist, “government is good”, nanny statism of the NDP and, increasingly, the Liberals, simply was beside their point. Pace Kevin Brennan who suggests,
I don’t see any party actively making the case that Canadian federalism is a good thing, and that the federal government should be actively doing stuff–even though a very substantial number of Canadians believe it.The number of people who see government as the solution rather than as the problem is dwindling and dwindling fast.
tilting at windmills
The only groups who might embrace a message of bigger better government are a certain sort of urban unionist yuppie and the only reason why they would is that they would stand to personally benefit. Herein the great cleavage in the NDP between the actual working class and the psuedo working class of teachers, social workers and unionized civil servants.
The old working class, the working class of the IWA and the UAW, made things. Real things like lumber and cars. When sales went up and profits went up they felt themselves entitled to a piece of the pie they were helping to make. The bargaining was tough, the strikes intense; but labour and capital knew that they had to keep the business alive to make their money.
The new working class knows that its money comes from holding the taxpayer to ransom. And those taxpayers include a great number of the old working class.
It is not in the least surprising that the old working class, the guys pounding nails in civil servants’ island getaway homes which they could never afford, are less than impressed with the Liberals or the NDP. The last thing they want is endless taxes, endless debt and money being poured into social programs their kids are never going to have a chance to get into.
So they are going to vote for Harper and no one should be in the least surprised.
Sorry Jay, Canada isn’t in the US. I’ve never seen any numbers to back up your thesis, and even in the US it’s less true than a lot of Conservatives think it is.
Besides, if you want big government in the US, you vote Republican. On hard number terms they have expanded the government more, and run bigger deficits than Democrats for over 30 years.
Just another myth.
Also, beside the point of Kevin’s article, which is about federalism, not big government. The two are not synonyms.
Actually Ian, with the collapse of the classical liberal interest in the US you get big government no matter who you vote for.
The thing about federalism is that it has nothing to say as to the expansive claims of governments – rather it suggests what the relative responsibilities of each level of government are. In Kevin’s vision for the NDP he is saying the federal government “should be doing stuff”. Which implies that it will get bigger – doing stuff requires that at a minimum.
The trouble is that most people have begun to get a glimmer that the federal government does not have the legal authority to do much. Which makes one wonder why there are so many public servants run by Ottawa doing this not very much.
Put another way, Health Canada has 8,123Fulltime Equivilant Positions for 2005/6?health canada (pdf). Doing what exactly. The feds don’t pay doctors, run hospitals or train medical specialists…they write cheques to the provinces who have the constitutional responsibility to deliver healthcare services. How hard can that be? Does it really take 8000 FTEs?
The federal government, largely to fuel the egos and re-election hopes of the Liberal Party, has bloated and re-bloated over the last forty years. It has barged its way into provincial jurisdictions and, when offered the chance to get out from under the burden of endless transfer payments to Nfld and NS, caved at the sight of the Canadian flag’s disappearence.
Federalism, at least in the Liberal definition of that term has meant a vast, largely unconstitutional, federal bureaucracy has been created to make it look as if Disneyland by the Rideau is somehow necessary.
Much of it isn’t and the quicker it is disassembled the better for Canada.
Jay,
I think Ian’s right, you’re misreading my post slightly. It’s not making a case for federalism (although I think the case is much stronger than you acknowledge). It’s simply stating that:
1. There are quite a few voters who believe in a strong federal system.
2. That number is larger than the number of people who currently vote NDP.
3. None of the major parties are explicitly endorsing that view.
4. Without a strong federal government, the federal NDP has no reason to exist.
Therefore, it makes strategic and tactical sense for the NDP to explicitly make themselves over as the party of federalism.
Whether our current federal system works well or not is a different debate. That said, I don’t think there’s any basis for asserting that the current federal spending in areas like health care is unconstitutional. This isn’t America; the federal government was always supposed to be superior to the provinces, from the day Canada was created. The POGG power gives it the right to enter provincial jurisdiction under certain circumstances, and the federal government still has the power to veto any provincial law (reservation and disallowance).
In the U.S., the federal government is supposed to only have power over the things specifically assigned to it; everything else is a state matter. In Canada it’s the reverse. If something is not explicitly a matter of provincial jurisdiction, the Constitution says that it’s regulated at the federal level.
Health Canada does drug testing, health promotion, health research, aboriginal health, and a wide variety of public health functions, ranging from disease monitoring and control to population health. If you don’t understand that there’s more to the health care system – and public health in particular – then seeing patients, you obviously don’t have the slightest idea how the system works or the importance of non-clinical functions.
I am fine with every Canadian outside Ontario agreeing the federal government should stop spending money on things it has no Constitutional mandate to tinker with. This way, Ontario, and particularly all us urbanites in Toronto, can stop paying for the rest of Confederation (excepting Alberta, which has mastered the manly art of sucking oil out of the ground). Heck, we might even get the extra 16 seats in Parliament we should have by population.
Josh, I am perfectly aware of the fact the federal government has assumed responsibility for a variety of health related matters. However, in many cases those functions belong at the provincial level and are, in fact duplicated at that level. Or, as in the case of drug testing, are largely redundant in the internationalized world of big pharma. Or are simply bizarre like the federal “responsibility” for Aboriginal health care which has bbrought us some of the most severly compromised personal and public populations in Canada. Seriously, other than requiring the warning label on smokes, what are those 8000 people doing which cannot be sent to the provinces – native heath care – achieved with cash grants, most public health and epidemiological tracking and response, eliminated altogether – health promotion – or done over an international network – drug testing.
Flea, no reason at all why Ontario should not have her proper share of seats – as should BC and Alberta thank you. (And I wil refrain from pointing out that a great deal of the wealth in Toronto derives from the manly art of loaning money for resource development and that nearly half of all the money spent on the oil sands is spent in Ontario lest oily hairs begin popping out on that perfectly sleek Toronto torso.)
Kevin, at the strategic level embracing federalism is rather like harkening back for the good old days of Expo 67. Lovely, but irrelevant.
Because the federal Liberal Party was so eager to destroy the national symbols and mythology of Canada in so far as it implied a British heritage, the relation between Canadians and the federal government has, to a greater or lesser degree, become purely or largely pragmatic. And the Liberals’ embrace of immigration, particularily non-European immigration has meant that any residual affection or loyalty to the Ottawa government is now a minority taste.
More to say later but now the rug installers are coming and this computer has to shut down.
Desire for the feds to butt out of provincial jurisdiction—check.
Denouncing nanny-staters—check.
Respect for the old symbols of Canada and its particularly British heritage—check. (God save our Queen, and Heaven bless the Maple Leaf forever!)
Complaints about immigration, particularly of the non-European type—wha? Where can I get off this working-class juggernaut?
“The number of people who see government as a solution rather than as the problem is dwindling and dwindling fast”
I’m sorry Jay, as much as I would like this to be true, I just don’t see it. There’s alot of populist rhetoric about smaller government, more freedom, etc. but that’s all it is. When the rubber hits the road Republicans and Conservatives love their pork, special priviledges and targeted tax bribes just as much as any Commies they can claim to oppose.
Teachers generate wealth in spades, Jay. And social workers are among the hardest working workers I know. Just because they don’t produce something with their hands doesn’t mean that their work is somehow less valuable.
Everyone’s work presumably has value to someone. Jay simply suggests the number of Canadians who want that value to be defined and mandated by someone other than themselves might be diminishing.
My parents were immigrants. It is a funny thing but having lived most of my life in this country I am sometimes reminded I am not quite Canadian enough. Good thing I have another passport to fall back on.
Another aspect, often overlooked, is that a federal government operating within the boundaries of the constitution has fewer priorities to worry about. Fewer priorities would result in a more focused and hopefully more effective government.
It is an interesting problem. On the one hand there is no question that immigration has fundamentally altered Canada as it has been doing for the last 100 years. But by mentioning the shift from a largely European base for immigration to a largely non-European base I raise an issue which causes The Tiger a degree of angst. For which I am sorry but unrepentant.
Non-European immigration to Canada has meant that many people have arrived in Canada without much exposure to such things as the unwritten constitution which the Dumpling so egregiously ignored. Which means that they are unable to understand why this might be a big deal. That is a huge shift and one which resonates in Canada’s current political world. The Dumpling thought, not unreasonably, that he could get away with a constitutional coup simply because he knew that at most a minority of Caandians would understand the coup for what it was.
The Canadian foray into multiculturalism has meant a systematic gutting of what is increasingly seen as irrelevant history teaching. It has meant that the defining moments in Canadian history – Vimy, Dieppe, the Statute of Westminster or the 13 none too sober days in Charlottetown – have ceased to be taught as anything which actually matters. In our attempt to accomodate entirely different cultures we have ceased to have a robust culture of our own. At least officially.
I think it is perfectly legitimate to wonder if the general lack of affection for the national government might not have something to do with the destruction of national symbols which accompanied the Liberal’s pandering to what – I think incorrectly – they percieved to be the aspirations and grievances of Quebec. And I think it legitimate to question whether the emphasis on non-European immigration from the 1960’s forward has not hastened the process of the destruction of those symbols and values.
Flea, it is not a matter of whether you are Canadian enough, it is rather a question of whether there is in any sense a meaning, particularily a postive meaning, still attached to the idea of being Canadian at all.
Nonsense, Jay. You’re not going to convince me that the Ukrainian peasants who came here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had any more idea about the unwritten constitution and ministerial responsibility and all that wonderful stuff than do our present crop of immigrants. I daresay that someone from the Indian subcontinent may even have more knowledge about those things than many native-born Canadians.
The problem lies in a failure to teach Canadians about their (our) own history and their own system of government and way of life. Multiculturalist pablum may be the problem, but it wasn’t the fact that more brown people are coming here that led to any more or less respect for our constitutional fabric and our storied past.
(Besides, if you’re going to credit/blame anyone for taking race out of immigration, pick the right guy and the right party. It was Dief the chief who moved to a colour-blind system, not any Liberal PM. The idiocies of state multiculturalism didn’t come till Trudeau’s time. And, well, there was a slight issue with racism, too, which mustn’t be overlooked in our rose-coloured view of the past, much as I admire the British principles of liberal governance and liberal constitution-molding.)
Jame Bow said…”Teachers generate wealth in spades, Jay. And social workers are among the hardest working workers I know. Just because they don’t produce something with their hands doesn’t mean that their work is somehow less valuable.”
did you not know Jay considers Teachers, Nurses ,civil workers” psuedo-workers”
who extort the taxpayers
...’The new working class knows that money comes from holding the taxpayer to ransom. And those taxpayers include a great number of the old working class.”...
read his full post :
http://thetyee.ca/electioncentral/2006/01/17/why-workers-abandon-the-ndp/
“The Canadian foray into multiculturalism has meant a systematic gutting of what is increasingly seen as irrelevant history teaching. It has meant that the defining moments in Canadian history – Vimy, Dieppe, the Statute of Westminster or the 13 none too sober days in Charlottetown – have ceased to be taught as anything which actually matters. In our attempt to accomodate entirely different cultures we have ceased to have a robust culture of our own. At least officially.”
The watering down of history in school is not the fault of multiculturalism. You see it also in the watering down of English and the other soft sciences in favour of mathematics and the “hard” sciences. And don’t blame the watering down of English on our multiculturalism, either, please. Some of the best students in my English classes were of Chinese descent, and they considered themselves as ill served by the curriculum as I did.
And I don’t believe there is a connection between multiculturalism and the watering down of the touchstones of our national history, and certainly the increase in non-European immigration did not bring about an increase in new Canadians that somehow seemed, to the untrained eye, to be less Canadian in the public view. Should I remind you of the interning of the Ukraines during World War I? The swastika riots in the Jewish neighbourhoods of Toronto during the 1930s? Or the descrimination against Irish Roman Catholics by the Orange Lodge?
Finally, the decision to open up our immigration to people outside Europe after the 1960s only makes sense. Unless we want to start paying natural born Canadians to breed, we will need an influx of young professionals to keep the economy moving once our baby boomers start to retire. And given Europe’s demographics, it’s unlikely we could get enough immigrants from that area of the world.
Arguably James, “given Europe’s demographics” that might be a very good place to look for young, well educated, people who want to come to Canada.
Maybe Jay’s been out of school so long that he’s lost all touch with, you know, what’s exactly taught. I finished Grade 12 in 2000, long after the establishment of official multiculturalism. Guess what, we learned about Vimy, Dieppe, the Charlottetown Conference, and never once were they considered not to matter. I’m interested to know, by the way, how you can rightly consider non-European immigration as the source of ignorance about our constitutional and legal history, as if many people in the country have or have ever had a solid understanding of it.
Given that Europe appears ready to compete with us for immigration in order to keep their population levels stable, I can’t see them as being a strong source for Canadian immigrants in the foreseeable future.
Josh, your comment prompted me to take a look at the BC curriculum guide for grade 8-10 which you can find at http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/ss810/sstoc.htm
Vimy, not there, Dieppe, not there, Statute of Wesminster…not there. Good news though, in Grade 10 the students are:
It is just possible that such an exercise might expose the poor kids to Charlottetown….but mostly it won’t. Now, I use 8-10 simply because everything beyond this point is elective in BC so what is taught in 8-10 is pretty much all that a highschool graduate will be certain of, more or less, knowing.
Now, truth to tell, the reason why the curriculum does not include such events as Vimy is that it stops at 1914. Which gives a hint as to just how badly we are teaching our kids.
Wow, talk about coming back late to the party.
Anyway, Jay, I still think you’ve missed my point. Even if I agreed with you 100% about the general future of federalism as a political stance, the NDP would still benefit from embracing it. First, because there are more federalists than NDP voters (so room to grow), second, because a strong federation is a necessary precondition for NDP electoral success.
James, I believe Jay’s point is not that we should compete with Europe for immigrants, but that we should compete with Europe for Europeans. As Europe seeks to make itself less European by importing south-central Asians, we will contribute by removing north-west Europeans.
I doubt that we could do that very effectively. Under depopulation, the economic incentives for Europeans to remain in Europe will be quite strong.
The best immigration export markets for us will be those areas experiencing significant population increases. Europe isn’t one of those markets.
One more thing: if it’s educated and entrepreneurial Europeans we are hoping to entice, we’ll be competing against the US, not Europe.
Merely taking in mobs of immigrants will not be seen as a solution by anyone who has been promoting increased public education funding in Canada under the reasoning that we need an educated work force.
Well, we do need an influx of educated immigrants, no mistake.
We’re not going to get them from Europe. We’re more likely to get them from India and China, and possibly East and South Africa.
And I should point out that Canada has benefitted from the “mobs” before. If we bring in young families with parents who will act as manual labourers and children we put through school, we will still reap substantial benefits from these migrants in the years and decades that followed.
Last time we brought in mobs, we gave them land and they were capable of supporting themselves on it (and prospering) without much help.
The late economist Julian Simon had some useful thoughts about immigration. I know his writings have been made available on the web, but not exactly where.