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Blog of Adam Daifallah -- author, journalist, law student. Lover of politics, writing, golf, curling, fitness, fashion, bacon and maple products -- not necessarily (but probably) in that order. Partisan of the Anglosphere. Contact me via email at adam@daifallah.com.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Lawrence Martin, John Ibbitson and Canada's phony "shift to the right"
I'm a little late getting to this, but I cannot let Lawrence Martin's claptrap from last week's Globe and Mail go unchallenged. Martin penned one of his typically weird columns about conservatism, reiterating his nutty theory that the conservative movement is quietly taking over Canada:
But he (Harper) is a core conservative, a founder of the Reform movement. In the old Canada, their kind was barely welcome in the Tory tent. Now they run the country.
The media, historically centre-left in Canada, is now centre-right. The conservatives have made enormous gains. They control the country's two largest newspaper chains, CanWest Global Communications and Sun Media. They have their own national newspaper and the run of the national magazine, Maclean's. In English Canada, it is hard to find one major centre-left newspaper apart from the Toronto Star. The conservatives dominate the columnist ranks and AM radio talk shows and are strong in private television. The CBC is a declining force.
Well, at least he's admitting that the Toronto Star and the CBC are liberal. That's a step in the right direction. But to cite the other examples as proof of a rightward shift is just silly. Many of his claims are contestible (CanWest media properties are not all controlled by conservatives; the CBC is not declining any more now than it was before) and some of his other examples are not recent developments at all (the National Post, for example, which Martin used to write for, was launched with a conservative editorial page bent in 1998 and has grown less conservative in the eight years since its founding.) Aside from Harper being elected in January, none of what Martin cited is really connected or new.
The next day, John Ibbitson, demonstrating once again that he's the only political analyst at the Globe worthy of the name, panned Martin. Ibbitson says what's really happening is that everyone's converging in the centre, because liberal parties moved rightward and basically joined the conservatives. This is a far more plausible thesis, although I don't agree with everything he said in his column (registration required, I couldn't get the Google cheat to work.)
I have seen no evidence of a recent Canadian shift to the right. Granted, if Harper continues what he's doing, there very well could be one soon.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 10:22 PM
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