Rescuing Canada's
Right
Conservative thought is losing the battle of ideas across
the country. Tasha Kheiriddin and Adam Daifallah argue that
there's only one way to change that—and it's not through
traditional party politics
After a decade in the political wilderness, a rare moment
of elation occurred last December for Canada's right wing.
The new Conservative Party of Canada, created from a merger
between the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance,
was taking its first baby steps. The joy, however, was short-lived.
Despite facing a new Opposition leader and public fury at
the worst government corruption scandal in generations,
the Liberals still managed to beat the newly merged party
in the June 2004 election and retain their hold on power.
Conservative voters were disappointed, party activists were
distraught, and the party's leadership was left scrambling.
Ever since, the Conservatives have been acting like participants
on the reality TV show, Extreme Makeover . To change the
party's image, leader Stephen Harper has reshuffled his
office to bring in more people from the old, more centrist,
Progressive Conservative fold. He has increased the number
of staff members from Quebec. He has sent out signals that
he is inclined to moderate party policies, by supporting
the recent federal-provincial health accord and state-run
health care. And, if experience from past policy conventions
is any indication, the policy convention set for March in
Montreal will probably not deviate from that middling path.
In short, Harper's doing everything that conventional wisdom
dictates he needs to do to win the election next time around.
And win he might. But at what cost? And, perhaps more importantly,
for what purpose?
It is hard to blame Harper for buying into the commonly
held belief that if the Conservative party is ever going
to form a government, it must run from the centre—essentially
transforming itself into a second Liberal party. There's
a lot of evidence at hand that seems to indicate that Canadians
are unprepared to embrace small-c conservative ideas. In
Ontario, John Tory, the most centrist candidate in the recent
Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership race, was crowned
leader of the party; something that, to most observers,
effectively marked the end of former premier Mike Harris's
Common Sense Revolution. In Alberta, Premier Ralph Klein
long ago abandoned any pretence of shrinking the size of
government. His government now outspends every other, and
still appears poised for yet another landslide victory in
the coming November provincial election. In Atlantic Canada,
provincial governments—all PC-led—have shown little interest
in any sweeping or particularly conservative change.
But the notion that conservative ideas make for unwinnable
platforms is only driving political strategy because parties
have become so reliant on polls, focus groups and media
spin. In other words, the public agenda is setting the course,
and until voters embrace conservatism, it will remain, politically,
a failing platform. For that to change, the conservative
agenda must first drive the public agenda. Only then will
it get the keys to the party machine. Change must come from
the bottom up, not the top down. If the federal Conservative
party is ever to win on a program of ideas that resembles
conservatism, the national attitude of Canadians—and the
media's perception of that attitude—must change.
What's needed goes far beyond the borders of the party and
party organization. Simply padding the party with volunteers,
platitudes, star candidates and clever campaign ads will
not cure the problem. What's needed is a genuine movement
to fuel the fire; an organized effort to build a critical
mass of conservative counterculture. Such a movement would
encompass the creation of think-tanks, publications and
media organizations. It would require the training of bright
young conservatives in professions traditionally dominated
by liberals, such as the media and academia. It would mandate
the establishment of legal action funds to bring forward
conservative court challenges.
It would require something akin to a revolution.
For a blueprint for change, Canadian conservatives need
look no further than south of the border. A well-funded
conservative infrastructure, acting as a support network
for the Republican party, has been instrumental in that
party's victories in the U.S. Over time, this infrastructure
has successfully made conservative ideas a major force in
the national discourse. It did not develop out of thin air,
however, but only because American conservatives were willing
to make it happen.
Throughout the 1960s and '70s, American conservatives realized
they were losing the battle of ideas. After the watershed
defeat of Republican Barry Goldwater for president to Lyndon
Johnson in 1964, U.S. conservatives got organized. Authors
like Irving Kristol and William Simon called for the creation
of a conservative “counter-intelligentsia” that would support
scholars oriented in favour of liberty, rather than against
it. Wealthy benefactors—among them the late beer magnate
Joseph Coors and banking heir Richard Mellon Scaife—provided
the seed money for the right-wing revolution to begin.
The result was a vast conservative network that spent more
than $1 billion in the 1990s alone. Money went to fund such
influential policy organizations as The Heritage Foundation,
the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute—all
of which played crucial roles in the advancement of conservative
ideas in the eighties, shoring up support for Ronald Reagan's
presidency (the current Bush administration would later
loot the think-tanks to fill various government posts).
A roster of subsidized conservative magazines—most notably
The American Spectator —was later crucial in exposing details
about Bill Clinton's sexual dalliances, helping to lead
to his eventual impeachment in the House of Representatives.
The growing chorus of conservative media voices was key
in defeating several Clinton administration proposals, such
as Hillary Clinton's big government health care reforms.
The movement has become so popular, it has taken on a life
of its own in the mainstream media. Regnery Publishing has
consistently churned out one blockbuster right-wing book
after the next, while television's Fox News channel and
right-wing talk radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh and
Michael Savage are ratings hits.
By 2000, conservatives had displaced liberals as “the party
of ideas,” according to the late New York Democratic senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In an article published in the
September-October 2004 issue of Philanthropy magazine, James
Piereson, executive director of the conservative John M.
Olin Foundation, notes that “there is now a robust debate
in American intellectual life between conservatives and
liberals. The one-sided debate, dominated by the left, is
a thing of the past.”
If Canada wants to once again engender genuine policy debates,
ones that are open to all perspectives, it's going to have
to follow suit, creating the media and scholarly networks
that will bring conservative thought in from the cold and
back to mainstream acceptability. With the right united
and the popularity of the federal Liberals weaker than it's
been for a decade, the time to do it is now.
Luckily, the timing is also right in terms of available
capital. “Canada will undergo a $1 trillion intergenerational
wealth transfer over the next decade,” says Sylvia LeRoy,
a policy analyst for the Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based
free-market think-tank. All that money changing hands, from
parents to children, means nonprofit groups will have access
to a whole new market of potential donors. “This is a huge
opportunity for conservatives — as long as the message gets
out and they take up the challenge,” says LeRoy.
And, these days, it's easier than ever to establish charitable
foundations. While a typical foundation requires a minimum
investment of about one million dollars, the establishment
of community foundations allows smaller donors to band together
by pooling smaller donor-directed funds of as little as
$25,000. Despite the fact that Canadian tax law does not
allow “activist” organizations to qualify for charitable
status, charities focused on education and research are
legal. But it's not as though the Canadian public policy
landscape is rife with foundations bankrolling conservative
scholarship.
“You could list on one hand the number of philanthropic
foundations in Canada that support or bankroll the efforts
of Canadian think-tanks,” says Don Abelson, professor of
political science at the University of Western Ontario and
author of the 2002 book, Do Think Tanks Matter?. “For the
conservative movement, if they could somehow tap into some
success stories in the United States, they could really
have an impact, and what it might come down to is drawing
on conservative foundations in the United States and elsewhere
to support the policy initiatives they want to advocate.”
Because private money is so scarce in Canada, even a small
reduction in funds can have an important impact on the well-being
of the conservative cause. Such is the case with the Donner
Canadian Foundation, the lifeblood of conservative research
in this country. A decade ago, with a mission to “encourage
individual responsibility and private initiative to help
Canadians solve their social and economic problems,” and
an annual giving budget of over $5 million, the Donner made
a huge difference. From 1993 to 1999, under the leadership
of executive directors Patrick Luciani and Devon Cross,
it provided seed money to start a host of topnotch free-market
think-tanks across Canada: the Atlantic Institute for Market
Studies, the Montreal Economic Institute, the Frontier Institute,
the Society for Advancing Educational Research (dedicated
to promoting charter schools), the conservative The Next
City magazine (now defunct), and Energy Probe (a free market–oriented
environmental organization).
According to the Donner's records, in 1997 it gave $4,632,944.49,
or 69 per cent of its total budget, to public policy research.
The bulk of it went to projects with conservative themes,
such as advancing the role of free markets, the effects
of trade liberalization, and the impact of taxes and regulation
on jobs in Canada. In 1998, the Donner allocated $2,190,561,
or 67 per cent of its budget, to the same sort of work.
But, starting in 1999, that figure dropped dramatically,
to $1,041,802, or 25 per cent of that year's budget. Insiders
say that the cuts happened when family members on the Donner's
U.S.–based board decided they wanted more say in the granting
process in Canada. And, besides funding projects that, in
the words of then-program director Sonia Arrison, “promoted
liberty,” the foundation also started backing causes that
mattered to individual board members, including donating
money to land and wildlife conservation, international development,
medical research and the arts.
Today, while the Donner's pro-individualist mission statement
remains, only 26 per cent of its 2003 budget— $1,349,667—ended
up in the hands of public policy researchers. (By comparison,
the Donner gave half that much—$624,985—to animal welfare
organizations, including $270,000 to the Calgary Zoological
Society to repatriate its mountain bongo antelope to its
native Kenya). Arrison, now with the Pacific Research Institute,
a San Francisco–based free-market think-tank, calls the
impact of the cutbacks on the conservative movement in Canada
“devastating.”
Allan Gotlieb, Canada's former ambassador to the U.S., who
is now chairman of the Donner Canadian Foundation, says
the organization is still “the most significant contributor
among foundations to policy studies in the country.” While
he concurs that the Donner's funding for university-based
research has declined, he emphasizes that the foundation
continues to support groups like Winnipeg's Frontier Centre
for Public Policy (focused on promoting fiscally conservative
economic policies in the Prairies), the Toronto-based C.D.
Howe Institute (a pro-market economic research centre),
and the Fraser Institute. “I think the last five years has
been very rich in support for these groups,” says Gotlieb.
“I think the impact has been greater in the last few years
than in earlier times.” As an example, Gotlieb cites the
Montreal Economic Institute, the feisty voice of free markets
in Quebec, which over the years has received, he says, “between
$600,000 and $700,000” from the foundation.
It's true that Canada's free-market proponents owe much
to the Donner. Even with the cutbacks, the foundation is
still one of the most generous benefactors to the right
in Canada. The trouble is, they're one of the only groups
that many researchers can rely upon for funding. And as
the Donner goes, so go Canada's conservative scholars.
“It's very difficult to get research money for Canadian
conservative ideas,” says Arrison. “The ‘professional Canadians'
[Arrison's term for government bureaucrats who grant research
money] don't want conservatives to go anywhere . . . [They]
want to keep Canada in one mode—they love state health care,
they speak two languages. There's this idea of what Canada
is, and there's this entire apparatus that exists to keep
it that way.”
Abelson agrees that a lack of private funding is problematic
for think-tanks. “In the United States, most free-standing
think-tanks are privately funded; in Canada, few think-tanks
have the luxury of turning down government money. And that's
a huge, huge problem.” And, while Canadian conservative
scholars may struggle to make do with what limited private
sector funding they can get their hands on, their ideological
enemies are often propped up with the public's own tax money.
Examples include the government-funded Policy Research Initiative
and Canadian Policy Research Network, both established in
the mid-nineties. The latter is a quasi-public think-tank
with the Trudeau-esque mission “to make Canada a more just,
prosperous and caring society,” and it's received more than
$14 million in public money over the past nine years. The
PRI was set up to counter the perception that the government
was cutting the size and policy capacity of the public sector;
in 2000, its annual budget was $3 million in public funds.
Latest but not least, in 2002, the federal government gave
a $125-million endowment to found the Trudeau Foundation.
Based in Montreal, the foundation's main activity is awarding
fellowships (worth up to $175,000 over three years) and
doctoral scholarships (worth up to $50,000 annually) in
the humanities and social sciences. While officially non-partisan,
according to its website, the foundation's work “focuses
on four themes that shaped the life and career of Pierre
Trudeau,” among them “Human Rights and Social Justice” and
“Responsible Citizenship.” The foundation announced its
first roster of fellows in 2003. Included in the list was
University of Toronto professor Janice Gross Stein, who
served on Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty's transition
team.
Naturally, left-leaning think-tanks have no problem accepting
public funds to promote a big-government agenda. And, presumably,
big governments are more than happy to pay to have their
own squad of tax-and-spend cheerleaders. The Pembina Institute,
an Alberta-based organization that has been publicly pushing
the Kyoto accord, received roughly $300,000 in funding in
2000 and 2001 from the federal Liberal government. Between
1991 and 2001, B.C.'s then NDP government handed over more
than $400,000 in taxpayer dollars to the Canadian Centre
for Policy Alternatives, a hard-left think-tank. (Its prize
publication is the annual “Alternative Federal Budget,”
which advocates such “alternatives” as higher spending,
higher taxes, a wealth transfer tax, higher capital gains
taxes and ending public-private partnerships.)
Some on the left argue that any government money they receive
balances the backing that conservative groups have from
their big-business allies. It would seem natural, after
all, that those who make their profit from the free market
would want to sponsor those researchers working to articulate
the benefits of the capitalist system and the dangers of
government intervention. But the notion that Bay Street
is any pal of Canadian conservatives is just not true.
In the past 10 years, Canada's business community gave most
of its money to the Liberal party—more than it did to the
old Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties
combined. In the decade after 1993, when the Liberals first
formed the federal government, they collected a total of
$91,436,281 in corporate donations. Compare that to $39,253,276
for the old Progressive Conservatives and just $18,089,629
for the Canadian Alliance. That doesn't necessarily mean
that Bay Street rejects the right-wing ideology. Odds are
that most of that money was intended to curry favour with
a governing party that has made it known that its influence
can be bought. In the meantime, however, those in Canada's
capitalist class are working to entrench a government opposed
to careful fiscal management and sound economic principles,
and, therefore, against their own interests.
If a conservative revolution is going to happen, that's
going to have to change. Abelson puts it bluntly: “You need
a philanthropic revolution, institutions prepared to bankroll
it, and a stronger entrepreneurial spirit; (you need) people
who are prepared to step up to the plate, are passionate
about policy issues and are prepared to support them.”
And this revolution must start now. Given the current reality,
conservatives must seriously begin to ask themselves whether
a point may soon be reached from which there is no return.
There could come a time when the power of liberal and statist
forces will be so entrenched that it can no longer be seriously
rolled back. Wealthy Canadians and business people will
have to put their cash where their convictions are, or conservative
ideas will continue to be drowned out by those more powerful
interests dedicated to preserving the status quo: the CBC,
with its billion-dollar-a-year taxpayer-funded budget, the
country's major newspapers, the Toronto–Montreal axis of
cultural literati and elite, our major institutions of learning
and professional associations, and, of course, the federal
government.
For anyone—right or left—who cares about the future of the
country, and a competitive political system, that would
be a tragedy. A revival of conservative thought and ideas
could only help to engender a genuine dialogue about what
Canada should be, and how we should define ourselves, that
has not been seen since the great debates of Confederation.
If conservatism is ever to play its rightful role on the
Canadian political stage, the revolution has to start today.
Tasha Kheiriddin, Ontario Director of the Canadian Taxpayers
Federation, and Adam Daifallah, a member of the National
Post editorial board, are collaborating on a book about
the future of the conservative movement in Canada.
