Time for small-c conservatism

The early months of 2012 will define the legacy of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, its success dependent upon whether he resurrects the small-c conservative ideals he was somewhat forced to abandon during his minority government years.

Once upon a time, Harper was the young policy wonk who assisted in the rise of Preston Manning’s Reform Party and ultimate demise of the Progressive Conservative Party under the hiccup reign of Kim Campbell as Canada’s only female prime minister.

Harper must reseed and nurture those grassroots principles because, as it stands today, the small-c conservative refrain for small government that gave the Reform movement its historic foothold has been drowned out by a federal civil service that has become morbidly obese under Harper’s stay at 24 Sussex.

Its obesity, without question, is partially the result of years having to appease the federal Liberals and NDP to avoid a coalition overthrow, but those days are now history.

Harper has a clear majority now.

The Liberal Party of Canada is on life support, and the NDP of Jack Layton now has no Jack Layton.

There is no real opposition, and the budget expected in March will be the tale of the tape when it comes to displaying the conservative values of the Conservative Party of Canada.

To put it bluntly, if Harper were the CEO of a private company, shareholders would be demanding his firing since no private company saddled with debt and huge interest payments would have spent the last five years increasing its workforce by 45%.

But this is what Harper allowed to happen in the federal civil service.

During his tenure, and despite a recession, the entire federal workforce has increased by 33,000 bodies, bringing the number of people paid by the taxpayer to 280,000, National Defence personnel excluded.

The March budget must therefore contain a huge knife, otherwise the Harper government might as well raise the Liberal and NDP banner, and bury any small-c conservative values it pretended to embrace.

The fact the Harper government has done nothing to stop the money drain of the CBC, which needs $1.1 billion a year from the taxpayer to stay afloat, is not a good omen for those who want to see the government downsized in the upcoming budget.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s sabre rattling gave warning last year that all government departments had best find savings of at least 5%, and preferably 10%, or risk having his people do less genteel cuts.

Parliamentary budget chief Kevin Page has publicly stated that 10,000 job reductions can be accomplished by attrition, which is a bit of a reach considering attrition did nothing in the last five years to avoid today’s swollen federal civil service.

“If you look at the federal government’s wage bill, the wage bill grew by 45% over five years,” Page said in one interview. “It’s almost unprecedented.

“We’re talking about a major put-the-foot-to-the-gas-pedal approach,  and now it’s let’s try to put the brakes on.”

If it is indeed time to put on the brakes, and it is, then job slashing is the only way out, and the only guarantee that $4 billion in federal civil service wages can actually be eliminated.

This is what private companies do to survive because, if they don’t, they go bankrupt. Government is no different.

Even if the jobs cuts are done coldly and clinically, it will nonetheless still leave the Harper government with a long row to hoe if it expects to eliminate the annual

$31 billion deficit by 2016, and secure Stephen Harper’s legacy as a fiscal conservative.

Anything less and he will have failed.

According to information garnered by Kevin Page, the government has earmarked the slashing of 4,613 federal positions over the next three years, this on top of the supposedly 10,000 jobs that will come through unfilled retirement vacancies.

But this, if accomplished, represents only 50% of the jobs which bloated the federal civil service since Harper came to power.

And this hardly represents the true definition of small government, or small-c conservatism.

But call it a start.

Original Article
Source: TO Sun