Canadian General Election: The Conservative Platform

Welp, my punishment-gluttony kicked in and I'm going after another party's platform now. Which? Well, the Conservatives', of course.

I've been sitting on this one for a couple days, being both busy with other stuff and feeling vaguely traumatized at the platforms in general. (When I'm king of the future, there shall be a word-per-pledge ratio, and yea, it shall be low.) My annoyance goes double for this specific type of platform, as it bothers my general sense of optimism and, well, civility. This evening, the English debate was held between the leaders of the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and BQ. I noticed with not a little horror that the candidate I ended up liking most was Duceppe, who managed to stay clear of the worst of the rampant mudslinging but, well, is a traitor to the country.

In general, the thing was fairly ugly. The tone of the debate roughly matches the tone of the Conservative Party platform - a fairly pessimistic, wrathful expanse, laying out things to oppose in great detail without terribly much in the lines of positive wording. And so, without further ado, the platform. You can follow along here; like last time, I'll be going by the PDF. Also like last time, if you don't want to trudge through the whole thing just scroll to the end of the article for my overall impressions.

The overall tone of the platform has that same attack-ad tone as much of the campaign so far. The official campaign slogan of the party this time around is "Demand Better - Vote Conservative," and they jump right into it; by the time you're three sentences into the platform, the introductory letter from Stephen Harper is launching into this type of mode, and every promise in the platform is given in terms of what the Liberals did or did not do. Composed mainly of mudslinging in this way, however, the platform is a third shorter than the Liberals', weighing in at 44 pages including covers and whatnot. This platform says a lot less, and it uses fewer words to do it in, so let's see what we can find.

The first chapter, "Demand Better," is self-explanatory. Talking about accountability in detail, the platform focuses down on the (admittedly huge) financial scandals of the last few years of Liberal government, specifically the $100 million sponsorship scandal. The other major scandal is the gun registry program, originally pegged at a few million, which ballooned up to $1 billion (half what the platform claims) because of the costs of dealing with gun owners who are convinced that Canada has a Second Amendment. After describing this, they jump rather sharply into a series of promises for a "better and cleaner government" which will "change the way Ottawa works." Some of the promises include (not exhaustive):

• Several ethics-related shifts to the Auditor General and the PMO to keep a better eye on where money goes;
  
• "End[ing] corporate and union political donations;"
  
• Switching to fixed election dates on four-year terms "and examin[ing] other democratic reforms" (in other words, they want election campaigns to last years as in the US model, not weeks as in ours. Oh good God no);
  
• Changing to an elected Senate (one of The Standard Promises of the conservative parties);
  
• Ceasing to recognize Supreme Court rulings on Charter issues;
  
• And a few of the standards all parties have, like Ensuring Fairness and Improving Relations With The Provinces. (This has been a recording.)
  

The next few pages are spent going over these in slightly more detail - a couple of sentences of plans as opposed to one, with a prodigous mix of mud as well. One thing this section likes doing is assuming Paul Martin was the Prime Minister since 1993 - saying "Paul Martin did this" or whatnot when he was serving in Chretien's cabinet and therefore following Chretien's orders as head of government. This is a subtle spin but one that's taking effect, the fact that Martin's been in power since December 2003 alone notwithstanding.

Most of the promises in this area are in the grounds of "We want Parliament to do X, not the Prime Minister" or whatnot. I'm skeptical about these, as many things along these lines - an elected Senate, more free votes, parliamentary oversight for appointments, etc - are extremely standard promises for the opposition and have been for a few decades. They're also generally the first promises tossed once things get in, especially since not a few of them require constitutional amendments, which simply aren't going to happen in Canada.

One interesting claim the Consevatives are making is their plan to end corporate and union funding of political parties. I'd kind of like to see something like this, actually; the Liberals and Consevatives have traditionally been too buddy-buddy with businesses, and the NDP's gotten uncomfortably close to unions at times as well. As well, they have ideas for limting taxpayer support of political parties - parties recieve a subsidy based on the percentage of the popular vote they recieve, which averaged out to about $40 million in the past year. I like this idea in a way - it helps give third parties a boost in particular - but at the same time I'd like to see political parties subsisting entirely on private - really private, not corporate-disguised-as-private or company mandated - donations. The platform promises to "prohibit all corporate, union, or organization donations to political parties and candidates," but it says two paragraphs further down that they will allow individuals and organizations to support parties. I'm outta aspirin, so I'm going to the next page.

The next few sections are a pledge to convert the Canadian parliamentary system of government to an American style system. Declaring the Prime Minister's ability to call an election to be undemocratic, the Conservatives say they will switch to fixed election dates every four years "except when a government loses the confidence of the House (in which case an election would be held immediately, and the subsequent election would be four years later on the date established in the legislation). On the surface, this looks like a good idea - prime ministers like to jerk around election dates, and the Conservatives are still bruised from Chretien's hamstringing them this way in the 2000 election. On the other hand, our election campaigns would change from the five-week campaigns they are now to multi-month or even multi-year campaigns.

A few other electoral reforms are proposed as well - shifting from the current appointed to an elected Senate, and devolving party appointments from the party leader to the general electorate. The Senate plan is a common proposal for the right, calling for a change to a "triple-E Senate" for "Equal[responsible to ridings], Effective[nebulously defined by anyone] and Elected[duh]." They refer to the current appointed Senate, established in the tradition of deliberately being unaccountable to the electorate, as a "patronage body" and claim that "every major federation in the world except Canada has an elected, regionally-based upper chamber" (which is not true, but I digress). A final plan is to increase MPs' powers by eliminating party discipline, making all votes ("except the budget and main estimates") free votes, as well as giving them more power to review judiciary and Crown corporation positions. They claim the Senate reforms will not require a Constitutional amendment, which implies Harper seeks divine intervention should he form the government.

Right after this, they express disdain for the judiciary and the Charter of Rights by saying the Supreme Court should not be permitted to rule on Charter questions, specifically reaction to the Court's declaration that homosexual couples can marry because prohibiting it is unconstitutional. In effect, Harper promises to ignore Supreme Court decisions he does not agree with. Uh.

One of the euphemisms the party is using repeatedly throughout the platform is the term "spending controls." Harper went so far as to claim on the debate that the Conservatives were not planning any spending cuts at all - simply "spending controls." Mixed in with another string of attacks on the Liberals, the Conservatives claim that an average of $15,000 in taxes are being paid by every man, woman, and child in Canada (This is perhaps true, but as anyone knows wealth distribution is hardly even enough across the country for this to be a useful statistic. Providing tax burdens by income level, however, would not help the case), and imply that it's all being wasted. They propose a number of solutions to control spending and income, including

• A 25% reduction of the tax rates for middle-income Canadians; (I noticed low-income Canadians are essentially unmentioned in this)
  
• A $2000-per-child deduction to reduce families' tax burdens;
  
• Reducing taxes on all businesses; and
  
• Reducing the national debt and spending at the same time.
  

A few other things are listed, such as supporting research and development, but those came across as something of a non sequitur.

For other funding-related issues, the Conservatives wish to transfer about 30% of the federal fuel tax to the provinces for repairing infrastructure such as roads, airports, and other urban infrastructure. This, at least, is a Good Idea, although I shudder to think of Roadwork Season getting more involved than it already is.

On to spending cutscontrols! This section starts by saying that the Liberals have treated debt reduction "as an afterthought - what to do with money that [they] can't spend fast enough" after "go[ing] on year-end spending binges [to] dispense political favours rather than engage in careful planning." Now, as far as far as something that's supposed to be a campaign document goes, snarks like that are taking mudslinging fairly close to flat-out defamation. It also conflicts a bit with Harper's saying in the debates that the Conservatives would not concern themselves with the national debt this mandate. However, they say it in the platform. How they'll do it with the tax cutes, I'm not sure, but that's promised.

Under the natural-resources sector of the economy - a major concern in Canada - the Conservatives propose many things, mostly involving safety nets or expanding the free trade network. There's a few comments implying giving greater freedom to the fisheries, which concerns me since many fish stocks are dangerously low, and the current management is the only thing keeping them from a complete collapse. I do the idea of investing more in the idea of sustainable harvesting, which carries some implications of farms rather than simply wiping out huge stretches of ocean. Aquatic farms need more research anyway, as they tend to Go Wrong more spectacularly than natural fishing.

On to the next section, which is discussing health care. After getting through the mud, they show the same basic concern and plan as the Liberals - providing a roughly-similar amount of new money to health care with the main goal of reducing waiting times. For the most part, the plans are very similar at a basic level.

On health emergencies, things diverge a bit. Raising the spectre of "bio-terrorism in a post-September 11 world," the platform jumps into handling the Liberals' response to the SARS outbreak, claiming "the federal response was limited to handing out pink cards at the airport" when the city of Toronto was basically deactivated during the wake of the epidemic. The specific plans include defining federal and provincial responsibilities during health crises and creating a national public health agency. I endorse these products and/or services; the latter is just common sense, and the former is useful in a country where a lot of issues wind up as hot-potatoes tossed from Ottawa to the provincial capitals and back again.

Out of health - which is covered pretty briefly even if they do largely gel with Liberal plans - we go into community programs. In this area some matters of relevance finally show up to lower-income Canadians, including attempts at reducing financial barriers to post-secondary education (the Tories in Nova Scotia have largely opposed this sort of thing for several years), the implication of controls of insurance, utility and gas prices, tax credits to home caretakers, facilitating immigration credentials(!), and so on. Some specifics of these plans involve improving the Canada Student Loans Program (which is nightmarish!), eliminating any taxes on gasoline if prices rise above $0.85/litre (they're at $0.938 here, now), and double the size of home caregivers' tax credits to $7,000. Immigration reforms aren't specified, only promised. On the aboriginal situation, the Conservatives of course (justifiably! Even Martin agrees!) slam the Liberal policies to this point, and suggest a plan to renationalize the population in general, as well as provide funding for access to native-language schools, which is generations overdue.

Environmental policy is essentially a cut-and-paste from the Red Book - $4 billion to clean up the Sydney Tar Ponds, emissions caps on various pollutants, large fines on polluters, and promoting alternative energy with the implication of wind plants. The one difference is the Conservatives' explicitly not recognizing Kyoto, and implicitly not recognizing climate change. The rest of their environmental policy, however, I rather like.

Under improving security, the plan involves Getting Tough On Crime, scrapping the firearms registry, increasing the deportation rates and implementing a "Made in Canada foreign policy." Let's see what we've got here...

Under GTOC, plans include eliminating house arrest for violent or sexual offenders, as well as drug dealers, eliminating the concept of concurrent rather than consecutive sentences, forbidding felons from voting, and trying violent offenders above the age of fourteen as adults. Additionally, the plan is to scrap the firearms registry and shift the funding from it to law enforcement, which I like on the surface until I realize that it involves eliminating the gun registry. Canada has neither a Second Amendment nor anything like it, but much of the rural culture has grown up under the belief that we do, which creates some nastiness to say the least.

For the other type of security, the standard claim of the country becoming a Safe Haven For Criminals And Terrorists is made. Now, this is certainly a valid concern, especially in the past year or so as we've had folks rather baldly declare themselves to be al-Qaeda operatives. To this end, the Conservatives will attempt to focus on the 36,000-strong removal order backlog, "putting priority on individuals with criminal records or connections to terrorist organizations and organized crime," as well as "ensur[ing] that refugee claimants who arrive in Canada without proper documentation do not put Canadian security at risk." They don't say how they intend to do the latter, however, so I suppose we'll have to see.

A section is added for the Canada-US relationship. Harper and company wish to make the position of Canadian Ambassador to the United States a cabinet rank. This idea intrigues me, considering the importance of the relationship, and I find myself cautiously liking it. Creating a seperate Secretary of State for Canada/US relations is perhaps a bit overboard, though. Otherwise, the plan here is kind of uneven. There are mentions of vigorously defending national interests, but also the implication that the United States should not be criticised, going so far as to publich an article in the Wall Street Journal last year "officially" apologizing to the United States for Canada's refusal to participate in the war against Iraq. Considering the general tendency of the current Conservative Party to mimic the ideas and policies of the US Republican Party, especially in the past couple of years, there's an overall tone of going back south on bended knee to fix "problems" which have arisen.

Next on the list is the description of the aforementioned Made In Canada Foreign Policy. The Conservatives don't care much for the idea of a middle power, openly calling for a leadership role in world affairs and claiming that the Liberals "are the last to notice" that the world has changed. Harper's platform calls for a closer relationship with NATO and the UN to "articulate our core values" of democracy, individual freedom, capitalism, and "compassion for the less fortunate" across the world. For international development policy, they actually provide some specific (to an extent) focus areas, namely an expansion of Canada's Asia-Pacific presence and improving the African situation - specifically promising to reform patent laws to allow low-cost medication for AIDS and other epidemics, something really, really sorely needed.

Last on the platform is military reform for the Department of National Defense. At the English debate the other day, Harper repeatedly - and vaguely, but understandably - called for a better spread of capabilities and more modern equipment for the military. A problem with Canadian defense is that nobody wants to try procurement; the Liberals have hemmed and hawed over replacing the Sea Kings with helicopters which were invented after the discovery of fire, but the Conservatives have pledged to kill any Liberal replacement programs as well. This is playing politics with the lives of DND personnel, which Ain't Cool. Going into the platform itself, we've got a 10% increase in defense funding with the goal of moving to the NATO European average percentage of GDP for defense budgets, as well as an increase of Regular Force strength to 80,000 - from the roughly 60-65,000 that it is. For actual equipment, upgrading the national fighter arm, providing heavy-lift aircraft, replacing the Sea Kings (hah!) and designing or procuring main battle tanks are listed as major priorities. Additional proposals include a significant upgrade of the navy, procuring new destroyers, as well as helicopter carriers (is that a plural I see?) for strategic airlift. Considering Canada's current role and capabilities in the world, I could park myself behind every one of these proposals, although I'm not sure how an extra $1.2 billion of funding could support this, or even the $3 billion the Liberals are proposing, particularly since new Canadian gear in the navy is typically rather, ah, advanced and therefore up there in price tag terms.

-----

This platform leaves me with mixed feelings in a few places. Some of the proposals, including the general health platform and defense policy, meet with a significant amount of approval from me. However, there are a lot of issues I don't like with it. The general tone of the platform is the first thing; it campaigns on hostility, on a "vote us because they're bad" platform, rather than propping up proposals on their own merits as the Liberals and (as we'll largely find with the next post) the NDP both tend to do. The priorities are striking as well - roughly half the 44 pages of the platform are devoted, essentially, to taxation issues, with a very powerful tone of supply-side economics throughout. I don't like how those worked out under Mulroney (or his American equivalents past and present) and wouldn't like them again. Additionally, Conservative support for privatizing health care worries me as well, as does their rather callous disregard for the Constitution, both in terms of traditions and of rights and law.

The tone of the platform overall is a fairly pessimistic one. It's almost impossible to read a paragraph of the platform which doesn't include the phrase "Paul Martin and the Liberals...", and the platform is comparatively short. As a result, when you strip out the attacks, there really isn't much to say in a lot of the sections. In the sections where there are things to say - particularly the community and justice sections - the tone is that the system is broken and needs to be repaired, versus the other parties' tones that the system is working alright and needs to be improved. Other sections, especially with regard to the Consevatives' plans for the economy, are rather the opposite - forecasts which are optimsitic, perhaps even idealistic.

When it gets down to the almighty loonie, the platform is a combination of massive tax cuts and significant spending increases, particularly in the areas of health and defense (I refuse to believe the defense promises can be accomplished without getting much more funding than they have). It's less than prudent to say the least, particularly while the country's still paying off Mulroney's long fiscal grand mal.

That's that for the Consevatives, anyway. (If my bias hasn't shown through, I'm voting for someone else.) My apologies for this one taking so long, as that awful thing called the Real World reared its hideous, misshapen head and called me away for stuff. Next, however, are the New Democrats' platform, which promises to be entertaining in a number of ways.

Posted by zibblsnrt at June 17, 2004 11:33 PM

---