That's a pretty retrospective justification. If anything, the Liberal party is somewhat to the right of where it was earlier and the Chretien government is just about as close to reasonably fiscally conservative (albeit preserving valuable social programs like Medicare) and socially liberal as you're going to get. Back when they were somewhat closer to Fabianism (though still far from it), they won a good plurality of the vote in every single election between 1962 and 1984.
The Chretien government was easily the most fiscally conservative federal government of my lifetime. But it wasn't by design. It was a combination of being forced kicking and screaming into austerity and a very effective opposition.
But like Greece's socialist party, facing credit downgrades and fiscal insolvency, there comes a point when a politician of any ideology will become a fiscal conservative. And Canada's debt downgrade in the early 1990s was certainly the catalyst that sparked a decade of fiscal responsibility.
To try and suggest that Chretien actually believes in small government as a general rule is challenged by the very fact he's running around right now, saying that the Liberal and NDP are a match made in heaven and should merge. Which seems like a pretty slam dunk case for the argument that Chretien is, at his core, a moderate social democrat. Not a moderate small L, classical liberal.
Bob Rae, too is a moderate social democrat. So was Stephane Dion. They orbit around an ideology whose history is grounded in socialism, not liberalism. Thus, my point still stands.
I'm not saying they're socialists. They're not. But their political ideology of big, centralized government, with more moderation than the NDP is at it's core a Fabian ideology. With the exception of, like say New Labour in the UK, believing the market has a role to play.
Earlier in the history of the liberals, their ideology was grounded in liberalism itself, which was starkly opposed to socialism. But now they are a moderate social democrat party. To the the right of the NDP, but not so much they'd be comfortable trucking with their ideological forefathers -- like Laurier for instance. Rather, most Liberals today would consider Laurier a far-right nut-job in his unabashed support for free markets and small government. They'd laugh him out of the party.
To argue that modern day Liberals find their ideological roots in classical liberalism would be nonsense. They are Fabian except-fors. Not liberal except-fors. But their list of except-fors is somewhat longer than the NDP. That's it.
As an
actual liberal in the classic sense of the word, I find this to be a point of great consternation.
The conservatives on the other hand are just classic conservative populists. They're for liberty and markets when it suits them. And not when it doesn't. For instance: the Harper conservatives have blocked more foreign takeovers of Canadian companies in the past three years, than the Chretien government did in all of it's 11 years. So much so, that it led to criticism from John Manley. Etc.
