What did Stephen Harper actually win?
By John Chuckman

(John Chuckman is a retired Chief Economist for Texaco Canada)

There has been a lot of noise about the victory of Stephen Harper, leader of
Canada's new Conservative party, but just what did he win?

Stephen Harper's muzzling of the Conservatives' Social-Neanderthal Wing,
largely resident in Alberta, during the 2006 campaign also must be taken into
account. In 2004, several of Harper's religious-right throwbacks made
embarrassing public statements about social policy, reminding Canadians voters
that they might just be letting a gang of Jehovah's Witnesses into their
living rooms. Harper silenced these people in 2006.

Harper himself spoke more calmly than he did in 2004, when he sometimes
resembled a flat-footed, angry kid, and I truly believe Canadians, determined
to punish the Liberals, with their usual sensible and practical approach to
politics, realized that a minority Harper government represents little threat.

Harper simply will not be in a position to change any of the major social
policies most hated in heavily American-influenced Alberta. Even if Harper
were in a better position to try, Canada's enlightened courts stand ready to
strike down any poorly-conceived legislation. In some cases, notably that of
gay marriage, it was the courts themselves that brought important human-rights
issues to the point where legislation was required.

Harper has already spoken of the courts. I don't know why it is, but
right-wingers always castigate courts for doing their jobs. Thomas Jefferson,
the intellectual godfather of the American extreme right, absolutely hated
federal courts, and it had nothing to do with democracy because Jefferson didn
't believe in democracy, and his Virginia was a place were a tiny portion of
the population - white, male owners of substantial property (roughly one
percent of the population, even after the Revolution) - got to vote.

Jefferson was ready to have Virginia separate, more than half a century before
the Civil War, over the issue of the Supreme Court's interpreting the Bill of
Rights. Jefferson thought the words were just fine as advertising, but any
attempt at their enforcement threatened his comfortable world as slaveholder,
local aristocrat, and narrow-minded states-righter. His view reflected his own
life in which he wrote many high-sounding phrases as a false legacy while
living off the avails of slavery and believing blacks and women and others
were not suited to play a role in government. A toned-down version of this
nasty American intellectual heritage crops up in Alberta frequently, and
Harper sometimes mimics it, though admittedly with a less hateful tone than
that of its chief American exponent, ex-cockroach exterminator and big-time
political money-launderer, Tom Delay of Texas.

The greatest threat Harper's minority represents is agreement with the Bloc
Quebecois to de-centralizing programs with cash flowing to the provinces. The
reason for the Bloc's support of such programs is obvious.

I do not oppose specific new agreements where old ones are out of date, as for
example involving disproportionate impacts of immigration on a city like
Toronto. But wholesale changes are fraught with difficulties. You only have to
look at Bush's colossal blunders in reordering American taxes, depleting the
American treasury while rewarding segments of society with windfall wealth,
and yet spending like a drunken sailor on the things he thinks important.
Gigantic tax cuts like Bush's have huge long-term implications for a society,
many of them unpleasant or destructive.

Just one example of such destructive tax changes, perhaps many Canadians do
not appreciate, is the tremendous burden that has fallen on American local
governments, many of which are poor because they are home mainly to poor
people. Property taxes on homes in many U.S. cities have reached extortionate
levels, further driving people to distant suburbs and encouraging mindless
sprawl and the choking off of healthy cities. Another example is multilevel
income taxes in the U.S. with individual states generally having their own
separate systems, rules, and forms - this even involves some people filing and
paying income taxes to more than one state. Many American cities, too, now
levy taxes we do not associate with urban jurisdiction.

Canada already is a more de-centralized society, dangerously so in some
aspects. The informal coalition of a Quebec separatist party and the
implicitly separatist sentiments of Harper's Alberta crowd is a risky
combination for the nation's future health and stability. This is exactly the
path by which Quebec separatism is truly dangerous: federal politicians making
gradual cozy arrangements which weaken the bonds of national identity. Any
referendum on separation with a clear question, under prevailing arrangements
in Canada, cannot produce a majority in Quebec, much less a convincing
majority. The Bloc's behavior and results in this election, even at a time of
heightened resentment over past federal Liberal behavior, demonstrates this
forcefully, as do endless polls over many years, and as does the last
referendum with its impossibly-ambiguous and complex question. Even were it
possible to imagine a referendum producing a yes, the years of detailed
negotiation over assets and liabilities required to sort out a fair divorce
would soon exhaust the momentum for change.

In Alberta, we already have a government that doesn't know what to do with its
new-found wealth. What on earth would it do with more? It's all code for a
form of separatism, a severe weakening of the national government. If you
listen to some Alberta voices, you hear silly things like you might expect
from a pimply teenage rock star that has overnight become a multimillionaire.
Alberta has simply lucked out in the tar sands with world oil prices
exploding. None of the province's new affluence is due to the wisdom of its
premier, Ralph Klein, or to the philosophy of Harper's crowd. Klein balanced
the budget with an unanticipated flood of cash, something with which any
premier could balance a budget. Were world oil prices to collapse, all of the
braggadocio over right-wing intellectual nonsense like "not being afraid of
excellence in Alberta" would dry up like prairie grass in a drought.

Important social programs that almost define the character of Canada need to
apply, with accommodating variations, coast to coast, and they need the
resources from wealthier parts of the country to assist the poorer parts. When
we seriously depart from this principle, Canada will have become the United
States North.

I hope the Liberals take their rebuke by the electorate seriously, making it
abundantly clear before the next election that the party is thoroughly clean
and repentant. That and a sympathetic new leader, perhaps an altogether fresh
voice, are the sine qua non of coming back before the Conservative-separatist
axis inflicts too much damage on the country.

Harper's almost wet-eyed puppy attitude towards the United States is dangerous
over any extended period, especially at a time of American unapologetic
imperial hubris, the kind of thing that makes the ongoing, pointless
destruction in Iraq possible. If the Liberals do things right, Harper will not
have the time.

We can expect, in the not-too-distant future, American-led action against
Iran. With America's over-stretched military forces, the bad taste in many
Congressmen's mouths of a unbelievably costly, failed policy in Iraq, plus new
lows in Bush's popularity, actual invasion seems unlikely. However, severe
sanctions and bombing or missile attacks seem likely. The price of oil will
soar yet again since Iran is one of the world's great crude oil reservoirs,
sending a great, unpleasant shock through the economies of Western nations.
Islamic countries will yet again feel insultingly stung by the unbalanced
justice of American policy. Will Prime Minister Harper embrace such a
de-stabilizing policy that is not in Canada's long-term interest but is solely
guided by America's will to re-order the planet?