Speaking to delegates attending the Conservative Party conference in Winnipeg Wednesday night, Prime Minister Stephan Harper emphasized the need for the party to be “practical and pragmatic” as opposed to “ideological” in its approach to dealing with the country’s business. I couldn’t agree more. So here are a few practical and pragmatic suggestions of my own.
First, do not – I repeat – do not climb back onto the deficit treadmill. The government must resist the temptation to embrace the ideological argument that current levels of consumption should be propped up by borrowing against future wealth not yet realized. Deficits are little more than deferred taxes levied on our children and grandchildren and their families – the ultimate violation of the principle of “no taxation without representation”. What's more, Canada’s federal debt remains precariously high, especially when real and implied unfunded liabilities like public pensions and health care costs are added on. Not only would taking on more public debt be a breech of trust with future generations, as a practical matter it would seriously impair the government’s ability to meet its long-term policy commitments and legal obligations without running further deficits. Those won’t be hard to rationalize once Pandora’s Box has been opened again either.
Second, the government should resist the temptation to sell crown assets and apply the revenues to the operating budget in order to stay in the black, an idea floated by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty at the conference. Don’t get me wrong, selling assets to reduce the size and scope of government is a good thing, and I’m all for using the revenues from those sales to reduce spending by retiring debt and lowering interest charges, but that’s not what Mr. Flaherty is talking about. Instead, he wants to use the revenue to pay actual operating costs. That’s like taking out a second or third mortgage on your house to pay for a Caribbean cruise you can’t afford because you just lost your job.
This is more than just back door deficit financing; it’s poor fiscal management. Businesses that sell capital assets to finance operational expenditures quickly go bankrupt unless they simultaneously restructure their operations to either increase revenues or decrease expenses. The reason is simple enough: eventually the cash runs out because are no more assets to sell. The sort of cookbook accounting proposed by Mr. Flaherty would actually be worse than running a deficit because it would have the effect of masking the depletion of treasury resources behind the smiling face of budget surpluses.
Third, the government should take a stand against the ideological position that the state has an interest in regulating what people think and say. It should introduce a bill to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act in a way that will limit the purview of federal human rights commissions and it should allow a free vote on the bill. There’s no question that there is a lot of stupid and despicable thought and speech out there, but it is a dangerous illusion to think that this can be stamped out by replicating the most odious practices of a police state. Inevitably, a campaign to suppress offensive thought and speech will mutate into a campaign to suppress dissenting thought and speech. As a practical matter, amending the CHRA would be a measured and welcome policy in response to the controversy surrounding human rights commissions.
Fourth, the government should stop flirting with the anti-intellectual and paradoxical ideology that the state must shield unborn children from any form of protection. It’s one thing to say, for practical reasons, that the Conservative Party has no policy on abortion, but that’s not the position staked out by the Prime Minister just prior to the last election when he promised to suppress any legislative initiative to regulate abortion, even going so far as to whip his cabinet on the issue if necessary. In one fell swoop, without any sort of debate, Mr. Harper converted the Conservative Party from being neutral on abortion to being, for all intents and purposes, pro-abortion. I confess that I don’t know how this bell can be un-rung, but I do know this – as a practical matter, cuts to arts funding won’t do the trick.
There are many more practical suggestions I could make, not as a critique, but as a friend who passionately wants to see the Prime Minister and Conservative Party succeed. The main thing is this: it is critically important that Mr. Harper understand that he and his government are at a fork in the road. He must not allow himself to be seduced by the poll-driven, but otherwise inexperienced counsel of those telling him that the best way to advance the middle-of-the-road conservatism he has always believed in is to don the robes of a small-l liberal. If that’s the path he chooses to follow he will soon discover – as his predecessors all did before him – that the sweet voice of pragmatism was nothing more than the call of a Syren whose loving embrace quickly becomes an ideological death grip from which it will be impossible to escape.