From Martin, Harper inherited a policy of purposeful action for the Canadian military in Afghanistan. It blended humanitarian aid, reconstruction, and security created by troops on the ground. It was consistent with our peacekeeping traditions and with the new Canadian-inspired “responsibility to protect” thrust of the United Nations. That precious balance has been forsaken by the Harper government, and Martin has said so.
Not only does Harper’s militaristic approach to Afghanistan preclude Canada from acting in a meaningful way in places like Haiti and Darfur, the absence of proper diplomacy has put us at odds with our nato allies and has our soldiers doing disproportionate duty in Afghanistan’s danger spots. More over, the cynical, hurried vote to extend the mission to 2009 represented an abuse of Parliament. Harper, seemingly anxious to let the Americans off the hook in Afghanistan, put politics above the national interest.
Martin will pursue this matter, as he will pursue others. Nearing seventy years old, he is wiser now about the politics of politics, but the passage of time will produce a political epitaph that stretches far beyond the simple construction, “He lost.” Martin will not run for elected office again, and the federal Liberals will find him tough to replace.
Paul Martin is a socially progressive fiscal conservative. His sensibilities and political instincts are those of a new Liberal who, much like a Red Tory, believes in targeted public-sector investments based on understanding where world economies are moving. The point is to look outward, not inward. Over and above the headline-grabbing appetites of those in the race to lead, for the Liberal Party of Canada to win the next election it had better look closely at the Martin economic record. Martin’s policies fitted Canada’s needs for twelve-plus years, and, as the veil is lifted on Prime Minister Harper’s economic plan, it is clear that the Conservatives see wisdom in many of Martin’s core economic ideas.
Too shrewd to admit to theft, the Harper government’s economic agenda — investments in post-secondary education and research and development (especially for knowledge-based industries), infrastructure funding in British Columbia to build a gateway to Asia, recognizing cities as economic engines, etc. — has been lifted almost verbatim from the 2005 Liberal “Plan for Growth and Prosperity.” Sounding positively Martinesque, here’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty in a recent speech in Kingston, Ontario: “By providing predictable, long-term funding for postsecondary education, we can train our future researchers, scientists, and innovators and have a better chance of keeping them in Canada.... In the [Greater Toronto Area] alone, it is estimated we are losing $2 billion a year due to inefficient infrastructure.”
The light-fingered pilfering does not end with the economy. On the constitutional front, there are echoes of Martin’s openness to Quebec in Harper’s early overtures. Martin, against party orthodoxy, supported the 1987 Meech Lake Accord because he believed it represented an appropriate accommodation for Quebec and that it would close the circle and allow Canada to move beyond backward-looking national unity debates that threatened the country. Such beliefs helped shape Martin’s support for asymmetric federalism, the sensible view that in a country 5,500 kilometres across, it is simply more efficient to define national goals at the federal level but leave it to provinces to determine how best to achieve them.
As the ten-year, $41-billion Health Care Accord, signed in September 2004 by ten provincial and three territorial governments demonstrated, this can be done without sacrificing the role of the federal government in creating and sustaining national programs. To be sure, as provincial health care systems put the reduction of wait times for specific services at the top of their to-do lists, other pressures emerge, but wait times are coming down, and the various systems are increasingly functional. The success to date of the accord (which has funding escalators tied to system performance and cost-control incentives built in) has removed health care as a constant public-policy problem. Furthermore, in the wake of the Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the Chaoulli case, which established that if the state cannot provide timely service for critical medical procedures, people have the right to seek them out from private providers, Martin’s move to establish achievable benchmarks backed by secure federal funding was prescient and will do much to preserve public health care. Perhaps most importantly, the accord saw Quebec sign a national deal. Martin’s approach to federalism — one issue at a time and avoiding sweeping gestures — moved the province closer to union with the rest of the country.
Though it borrows from Martin’s openness, Harper’s strategy will lead to anything but unity. Exploiting a Liberal opposition in the throes of finding a leader and nailing down a platform, the Conservatives are assiduously rolling back social programs and gutting the progressive aspects of Liberal reforms. Plans for universal child care, gone. The $5.1-billion Kelowna Accord, designed to close the growing gap between aboriginal Canadians and mainstream society, shelved. The federal Court Challenges Program, which among other things allowed francophones outside of Quebec and anglophones inside to defend their Charter language rights, gone. Status of Women Canada and funding for museums, gutted. Funding for medical-marijuana research, gone. It is a long list.
Harper is trying to rebrand Canada. He will deal with the “fiscal imbalance” — a non-issue if one accepts that the federal government has a part to play in the nation’s business — by getting the federal government out of the way and voiding Ottawa’s traditional role in sharing prosperity. As is evidenced by the shelving of the Liberal government’s Kyoto Protocol targets, Harper will abdicate leadership and responsibility on national and international issues such as the environment. The provinces will get more money, but the tax base for government services will be whittled away. In short, Harper is taking advantage of the electorate’s desire to teach the Liberals a lesson by hollowing out the federal government through the devolution of more and more responsibilities to the provinces with no strings attached.
Such an approach is sure to gain favour with provincial premiers, some of whom will trumpet a new era of cooperation, until they realize what municipal governments have realized: that the downloading of responsibilities requires local governments to embrace the politically unpalatable need to tax more heavily. Nonetheless, Harper’s message and strategy represent a potent mix, and unless the federal Liberals match it, he will be re-elected and may even receive his much-coveted majority government. At that point, all bets are off.
At a time when Canada has never been so involved in international affairs — and necessarily so — Harper’s vision of a hollowed-out federal core, if realized, will prevent us from meaningful engagement in the years to come. Understanding the challenge posed by his devolution-of-powers agenda and the threat of market fundamentalism to come requires Liberals to step back in time and analyze why Paul Martin was central to the party’s victories in four straight elections and how federalism remained intact.
One was a political novice bursting with energy and new ideas; the other was a canny veteran representing the Liberal status quo. It was the 1990 Liberal leadership race, and the differences between Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien were clear. Chrétien Liberalism was rooted in central Canada, in a centralized federalism, in wealth redistribution, and, for the sake of national unity and winning support in vote-rich Ontario, in being tough on Quebec. It was a narrative known to one and all, and there was comfort and security in it.
