In the mid-90s, when NDP Ontario Premier Bob Rae had maxed out his province’s credit card and finally called an election, the Common Sense Revolution of Tory Leader Mike Harris came out of nowhere, blew by front-running Liberal Lyn McLeod, and took Ontario by storm.
This was more like it.
There is perhaps a modest western version of this happening in Alberta where Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith is trying to lure true conservatives out from under the all party holding tank of the ruling Progressive Conservatives, and therefore form a government following the April 23 election with a party that will re-embrace conservative pioneerism.
What Mike Harris did in Ontario was hammer home the party’s promise to lower taxes and reduce the welfare rolls and, unlike too many politicians of today, he actually lived up to his vow to do exactly what he said he would do.
This is where the Harper and Harris governments part ways, and where Danielle Smith might take note.
Harper intentionally says very little that is not scripted but, because his political beginnings were within the Reform Party, Canadians expected or perhaps assumed him to be a cut from a similar bolt of cloth as Preston Manning and even Mike Harris.
But this seems not to be the case.
Postmedia’s Andrew Coyne pretty well summed up what many small-c conservatives were thinking within minutes of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty plunking his 498-page budget into their laps.
For this is what he wrote: “You fiscal conservatives who hung on all this time, while the Harper Conservatives ran up spending to levels no previous government had ever dreamt of—you who stood by the party through the years of minority government while it discarded every principle it had ever held and every commitment it had ever made — you who swallowed all of this in the belief that, one day, the Conservatives would win their long-sought majority, and all your compromises would prove to have been worthwhile: You, ladies and gentlemen, have been had.”
It is a bit over the top, yes, but soften the edges and it is not that far off the truth.
As I wrote the same day in a national editorial for Sun Media, this was not the budget Canadians anticipated from a Conservative government that finally had its majority.
There were no deep cuts, as the left predicted in wholesale fashion.
And there was certainly no reflection of small-c conservative values finally coming to the fore, no significant lessening of the civil service when attrition was coughing up the majority of the bodies, and certainly no lessening of government spending.
At its best, the editorial read, it was a Progressive Conservative budget.
At its worst, it was almost Trudeauesque.
Now there’s two comparisons that must sting, particularly the latter, and much like when Tory Sen. Patrick Brazeau had his trash talk of “floating like an Algonquin and stinging like a Cree” come back to haunt him when Liberal MP Justin Trudeau laid a whole lot of hurt on him during their three-round charity boxing match last week.
Harper, like Brazeau, did not live up to expectations, but only Brazeau talked a good fight before faltering.
Harper, on the other hand, always stays close to mute, and therefore puts small-c conservatives into the position of having to guess whether the party had changed its name again.
Remember, in the lead up to the budget, leaks and loose lips among the Tories were suggesting spending cuts in the neighbourhood of $8 billion would be within the target range, all which had the left-wing media talking the end of days.
In the end, it was a modest $5.2 billion in cuts, and had enough “nuggets buried in the slurry” that all the prep work about Harper having a “hidden agenda” was erased from all the oppositions’ talking points.
But, if this budget was supposed to define the Harper government, howthen should it be described?
Perhaps “unmemorable” would fill the bill.
Or “progressive.”
Original Article
Source: toronto sun
Author: Mark Bonokoski
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