The message scrawled on the flight attendant's placard — and waved defiantly during a recent union protest on Parliament Hill over the Conservative government's no-strike stance in an Air Canada labour dispute — stated succinctly what certain segments of the country's population are muttering darkly about these days.
Six months after the landmark election of a Conservative majority on May 2, which finally gave Prime Minister Stephen Harper a firm and unfettered grasp on the levers of power in Ottawa, critics claim the Harperization of Canada is in full swing.
Over at Heritage, they note, history's on parade like never before. War of 1812 soldiers armed with muskets and bicentennial bayonets (to be followed soon by waves of First World War fighters a century after 1914) are widely seen to be chasing the blue-helmeted, Pearsonian peacekeeper from Canadians' collective imagination.
And those back-to-work orders — once used sparingly as a legislative last resort — are now issued or threatened automatically.
In the realm of Justice, meanwhile, there's been a juggernaut of tough-on-crime reforms revived from the last Parliament and — despite arguments from most experts that the changes are costly and unnecessary in an era of falling crime rates — promptly pushed toward passage.
A royalist rebranding of the military has been carried out at National Defence, part of a governmentwide rekindling of Canada's ties with the monarchy. The flag, too, has been declared off-limits to meddling, patriotism-challenged landlords.
And on the world stage, in both Foreign Affairs and Finance, there's a discernible new strut in Canada's stride — lockstep with Israel in the Middle East; a boot aimed squarely at the backsides of big banks in continental Europe.
It's no hidden agenda foisted on an unwitting public; the national makeover is going pretty much according to the Conservatives' well-publicized plans — though faster and more forcefully, perhaps, than was expected in the wake of that spring vote six months ago Wednesday, when a suddenly robust NDP and its superstar leader seemed certain to mount a formidable (if ultimately outnumbered) Opposition to Harper's Conservatives.
But Jack Layton is gone and the NDP — despite sporadic attempts to needle a mathematically invincible government — is otherwise occupied in its search for a new leader. The Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and Green party are each wandering the political wilderness, too, in their own ways.
And so the Conservatives, essentially unchecked by political rivals in Parliament, have spent the first 180 days of their majority mandate ticking boxes on an ambitious checklist of change.
Scrap the Canadian Wheat Board: check. Begin the end of the long-gun registry: check. Initiate reforms to House of Commons seat counts: check.
Award a $35-billion shipbuilding contract; kick the nastiest criminal imports out of Canada; and kick-start governmentwide cuts to save $4 billion in four years: check, check, check.
But do the measures already implemented or set in motion in the half-year since May 2 amount to something more than the sum of the individual parts of the Conservative agenda? Is Canada undergoing a truly transformative shift in character and values — a root-and-branch supplanting of one kind of country for another?
In short, are we witnessing the final eclipse of Trudeau's Canada and the rise of Harper Nation?
"At its heart, it's a government of the radical right that's carrying out its agenda and that's got its majority," interim Liberal leader Bob Rae told Postmedia News. "I really do think they're failing to understand there is a deep concern in the country about this pursuit of an ideological agenda. I think they need to continue to be aware of the very real risk they're taking with some of the basic loyalties and instincts of Canadians."
He says the Conservative government's "willingness to throw collective bargaining out the window," the deep-sixing of the gun registry and the dismantling of the wheat board are examples of a hard-right agenda that "points the way to a real break with some of the common threads of the past."
Rae described the wheat board in particular as an institution that — by pooling and protecting the market power of Western grain farmers from foreign-owned agri-giants — has served well as a Canada-wide "symbol of our collective capacity to do things together.
"I think the Conservatives are making a classic mistake in the arrogance with which they express the confidence that everybody in the country secretly agrees with them," said Rae.
Elizabeth May, the Green party's leader and first elected MP, cites the "militarization of metaphor" as the clearest, "most deliberate attempt" by Harper's majority government "to change how we see ourselves" as Canadians.
"In the Conservative party election platform, there was more text and detail on plans to celebrate the bicentennial of the War of 1812 than there was on the climate issue," said May, a tone of incredulity in her voice.
"This is going to be a very profound change, to have this notion that we are a 'warrior nation,' that we're tough on crime," she added, quickly noting how opposition members who question the Conservatives' crime reforms are routinely cast as "taking the side of criminals against victims" — much the same way that critics on the Afghan detainee issue were previously dismissed as Taliban sympathizers.
"There's a consistent part of the discourse here that says Canadians are — at least this is how Stephen Harper's Conservatives would like us to see ourselves — as judgmental, as basically opposed to nuance, as allergic to complexity and prone to the kind of simple solutions that work on Fox News, but which aren't solutions at all," said May. "The messaging of the Harper Conservatives works to divide us, because that's the way it works to elect Conservatives."
Observers more sympathetic to the Harper's vision don't see things quite so grimly. Renowned historian Jack Granatstein, who has controversially — and influentially — critiqued both the declining knowledge of Canada's past and the diminished stature of its military, welcomes the Conservative government's robust agenda on both fronts.
"I obviously want the government — all governments — to do more to bring history to the fore. I think for very small dollars, the government can have a pretty big bang," he said.
And pointing to the recent, relatively outrage-free awarding of $35 billion in federal shipbuilding contracts to B.C. and Nova Scotia, Granatstein noted that maintaining "an effective military" is vital to projecting Canada's interests and values abroad.
"And this government has been the best for the Canadian Forces since Louis St. Laurent," he said.
But Granatstein, a self-described "straight-out republican and Canadian nationalist," dismissed as "dumb as a hammer" the government's midsummer restoration of "Royal" titles to the Canadian navy and air force.
"The ties to Britain have long since gone into decay and there's no reason to try to bring them back — especially since we're liable to get saddled with Charles as king," he said.
Overall, though, Granatstein says the Conservative reshaping of Canada is "a small-scale, incremental process. I don't think there's big changes anywhere."
And while he says Canada's stiffened stance in favour of Israel will have little impact in the contentious sphere of Middle East politics, Granatstein expressed admiration that at least "Harper has principles," and has displayed them in pursuing a clearly pro-Israel policy for Canada, especially in recent months.
"It's something that he believes in, and he thinks it's important to support what he sees as the one democracy in the Middle East," said Granatstein, applauding what he views as a greater overall clarity of Canada's foreign policy under the Conservatives.
"Talk to aid agencies and, oh, it's the new, terrible Canada," he said. "If you talk with people involved in NATO and foreign policy — and they happen to be the people I talk to — they're impressed that the Canadian government has some backbone again."
University of Toronto political scientist Janice Stein, director of the Munk School for Global Affairs, said the "general thrust" of foreign policy under the Conservative majority is "not significantly different" than it was during Harper's minority governments.
And even looking at the international file across the full, nearly six-year run of Conservative rule, said Stein, shows only "differences in emphasis, differences in tone" from previous Liberal governments. "When you actually look at the practices" — on the Middle East, on involvement in multilateral organizations — "the changes are not significant," she said.
Gerry Nicholls, a political commentator and former Harper protege at the conservative National Citizens Coalition in the 1990s, said the only real "ideology" driving the Harper government is the prime minister's fierce will to "eliminate the Liberal party."
Since May 2, Harper "has done a lot of the easy things to appease his base and keep his campaign promises — the gun registry, the wheat board," said Nicholls. "These are the kinds of issues that might be controversial in that some people won't like it, but they're people who won't vote for him anyway. And his base will be happy with it, and for the vast majority of other Canadians they're not big issues."
He does, however, perceive an apparent attempt "to create a Conservative mythology as opposed to a Liberal mythology — you know, instead of peacekeepers, we're warriors, and the restoration of some of the past ideas, like the monarchy."
Nicholls sees the late 1960s as a time of "revolution" in Canadian identity, one orchestrated by Liberal titans Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau to construct a modern, multicultural vision of the country — one that Canadians could easily associate, like the Maple Leaf flag itself, with its Liberal creators, as opposed to Conservative, John Diefenbaker-era defenders of certain Union Jack values.
"For a lot of Canadians, the Liberal mythology never stuck with them. They wanted the monarchy, the old symbols back," said Nicholls. "And there was always this trend in conservatism in Canada to go back in time, to go back to before Lester Pearson started changing everything. I think that's what Harper's doing right now — he's speaking for those people."
Universite de Moncton professor Donald Savoie, an expert in politics and public administration, played down the notion that Harper's Conservatives are rushing to create a profoundly changed Canada — even if it's warranted in some ways, he said.
"A different Canada will never emerge suddenly, quickly or radically. That is not the Canadian way," he said. "But a new Canada is struggling to make its presence felt."
Harper, he said, has long believed "in his bones" that the phrase "national policy" is a "code word for Ontario and Quebec."
So the prime minister, said Savoie, will turn to regional interests in the West, East and North to help "define the new Canada. I think he will turn to the private sector to define the new Canada. And I think . . . he will look to new Canadians to define the new Canada."
For those who lament such shifts in the Canadian political landscape, Savoie said — and such boilerplate Conservative policy initiatives as scrapping the wheat board and long-gun registry — democracy offers the prospect of future reversals.
"Six months ago, Canadians made a decision to give this party a majority government," he said. "People who don't agree with the policies? Well, they'll have their chance again three and a half years from now."
Origin
Source: Canada.com
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