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Panic sweeps latte land
By MARGARET WENTE
Thursday, January 19, 2006 Posted at 3:55 AM EST
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
My girlfriends are beside themselves. Stephen Harper and his barbarian horde are about to conquer Canada and sack it. My friends are convinced he'll rule like a cross between the Taliban and George Bush. If he has his way, he'll repeal gay marriage, lock up the homeless, and throw orphans onto the streets. He'll send our soldiers to fight in imperialist foreign wars, and allow the Arctic ice to melt. That kinder, gentler remake? It doesn't fool them for a second.
"The very concept of Stephen Harper is impossible," said a distraught e-mail I got the other day. "We will be the laughingstock of the world. Pro-Bush, pro-military, anti-environment, Christian Reformer for a prime minister?"
Here in latte land, the panic has reached a fever pitch. "Mr. Harper's policies are not just a threat to Canada, but to the world," said environmentalist Elizabeth May the other day, with tears in her eyes. Barbara Cameron, a York University professor, warned that a Tory government would be able to "hobble permanently the capacity of the federal government to act for the social welfare of Canadians."
To be fair, my Harper-allergenic friends aren't all women. A lot of men are also wondering where they can hide until the Liberals reinvent themselves and the barbarians are beaten back.
"Can you say anything in this final week?" pleaded my distraught e-mail friend. Yes, I can: Get a grip.
When last I looked, we lived in a democracy. This means the government requires the consent of the governed and, if the governed feel they have been vandalized, they will throw out the rascals -- just as they are doing now.
Mr. Harper is no barbarian. He is a smart, strategic thinker who knows that government must reflect the public will. Last spring, he gave a speech to the Fraser Institute, where he responded to a Mike Harris-Preston Manning plan for sweeping policy reform. Two-tier medicine, he told them, is not on. That's because, as he correctly pointed out, most Canadians don't want anything to do with it.
Mr. Harper is a deep-blue Tory in the sense that he believes people can spend their own money more wisely than governments can. This message is connecting with middle-class voters -- "people who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules," as he likes to say -- whose disposable income hasn't increased even though the economy has boomed. He wants to redirect resources from service providers (e.g., bureaucrats and daycare workers) to consumers (e.g., parents). This strikes fear into the hearts of service providers. But it strikes a lot of other people as a good idea.
Mr. Harper is guilty of being a Christian. But he's no theo-con. From the dawn of Reform, he has warned that letting socially conservative issues dominate the agenda would be a recipe for political disaster. People who claim he'll reopen the abortion debate are just blowing smoke. "I would use whatever influence I had to keep that off the agenda," he said this week, for about the zillionth time. In other words, any private member's bill on abortion would go nowhere, just as all the previous ones (some of them introduced by Liberals) have done. The same is true for efforts to repeal gay marriage. Mr. Harper would prefer civil unions. But gay marriage is the law of the land, and likely to remain so.
Would he be pro-Bush? Well, I guess so, if that means you stop poking your biggest ally in the eye. Pro-military? Yes, if that means buying equipment for soldiers that doesn't fall apart. Anti-environment? Mr. Harper says he'll clean up Saint John Harbour. That would do more for our environment than our Kyoto bureaucrats have done.
The reforms Mr. Harper has in mind won't turn us into a mini-United States. Instead, we might start looking more like Britain (where private contractors have been brought in to manage poorly performing public hospitals) and Australia (which is trying to change the dependency culture of its aboriginal underclass).
Mr. Harper aims to undo the culture of entitlement and special interest groups and chart a dramatically new course for Canada. Maybe you think that's a bad thing. Or maybe you think it's about time.
By MARGARET WENTE
Thursday, January 19, 2006 Posted at 3:55 AM EST
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
My girlfriends are beside themselves. Stephen Harper and his barbarian horde are about to conquer Canada and sack it. My friends are convinced he'll rule like a cross between the Taliban and George Bush. If he has his way, he'll repeal gay marriage, lock up the homeless, and throw orphans onto the streets. He'll send our soldiers to fight in imperialist foreign wars, and allow the Arctic ice to melt. That kinder, gentler remake? It doesn't fool them for a second.
"The very concept of Stephen Harper is impossible," said a distraught e-mail I got the other day. "We will be the laughingstock of the world. Pro-Bush, pro-military, anti-environment, Christian Reformer for a prime minister?"
Here in latte land, the panic has reached a fever pitch. "Mr. Harper's policies are not just a threat to Canada, but to the world," said environmentalist Elizabeth May the other day, with tears in her eyes. Barbara Cameron, a York University professor, warned that a Tory government would be able to "hobble permanently the capacity of the federal government to act for the social welfare of Canadians."
To be fair, my Harper-allergenic friends aren't all women. A lot of men are also wondering where they can hide until the Liberals reinvent themselves and the barbarians are beaten back.
"Can you say anything in this final week?" pleaded my distraught e-mail friend. Yes, I can: Get a grip.
When last I looked, we lived in a democracy. This means the government requires the consent of the governed and, if the governed feel they have been vandalized, they will throw out the rascals -- just as they are doing now.
Mr. Harper is no barbarian. He is a smart, strategic thinker who knows that government must reflect the public will. Last spring, he gave a speech to the Fraser Institute, where he responded to a Mike Harris-Preston Manning plan for sweeping policy reform. Two-tier medicine, he told them, is not on. That's because, as he correctly pointed out, most Canadians don't want anything to do with it.
Mr. Harper is a deep-blue Tory in the sense that he believes people can spend their own money more wisely than governments can. This message is connecting with middle-class voters -- "people who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules," as he likes to say -- whose disposable income hasn't increased even though the economy has boomed. He wants to redirect resources from service providers (e.g., bureaucrats and daycare workers) to consumers (e.g., parents). This strikes fear into the hearts of service providers. But it strikes a lot of other people as a good idea.
Mr. Harper is guilty of being a Christian. But he's no theo-con. From the dawn of Reform, he has warned that letting socially conservative issues dominate the agenda would be a recipe for political disaster. People who claim he'll reopen the abortion debate are just blowing smoke. "I would use whatever influence I had to keep that off the agenda," he said this week, for about the zillionth time. In other words, any private member's bill on abortion would go nowhere, just as all the previous ones (some of them introduced by Liberals) have done. The same is true for efforts to repeal gay marriage. Mr. Harper would prefer civil unions. But gay marriage is the law of the land, and likely to remain so.
Would he be pro-Bush? Well, I guess so, if that means you stop poking your biggest ally in the eye. Pro-military? Yes, if that means buying equipment for soldiers that doesn't fall apart. Anti-environment? Mr. Harper says he'll clean up Saint John Harbour. That would do more for our environment than our Kyoto bureaucrats have done.
The reforms Mr. Harper has in mind won't turn us into a mini-United States. Instead, we might start looking more like Britain (where private contractors have been brought in to manage poorly performing public hospitals) and Australia (which is trying to change the dependency culture of its aboriginal underclass).
Mr. Harper aims to undo the culture of entitlement and special interest groups and chart a dramatically new course for Canada. Maybe you think that's a bad thing. Or maybe you think it's about time.