Finding the issue...

I thought I should put up something to mark the start of Canada's national election campaign.

But I have to admit that finding a passion for any party right now has been tough, given our recent focus on our despicable "human rights" codes and commissions, especially as they pertain to the regulation of speech and writing, and the apparent unwillingness of even the Conservative Party to make an issue of this restraint on free expression, and this politicization and cheapening of Canadian justice, this institutionalization in law of the victimary left.

Admittedly there are rumours that Harper and the Conservatives have given a warm reception to Ezra Levant when he has pleaded our case, but we would like to see more of Harper speaking out on what should be an ethical no-brainer. Maybe there is already some understanding, among various players, about what a Harper majority government will do. But the voter has yet little reason to believe it; and if politicians' public promises are often not kept, one should not fall for the conspiracy theorist's fanciful idea that private promises about political direction are more likely to be kept by leaders in opinion poll-driven democracies. In any case, Harper remains cautious and quiet as, unconscionably, the list of HRC victims grows.

Yesterday I felt I was with David Warren who wrote:

Regardless of his political persuasions, I doubt any reader is himself in doubt about the views of McCain and Palin on, say, abortion, or same-sex marriage, or the ramifications of the U.S. First Amendment. Messrs Obama and Biden have more “nuanced” views -- i.e. more likely to say one thing and do another -- and yet their own positions are clear enough, when the lights are trained on them.

If I were a woman, and the most important issue to me were the preservation of my unfettered legal right to kill my unborn children, I would have no difficulty in choosing the Democrat ticket. Whereas, up here in Canada, it really wouldn’t matter if I voted Conservative, Liberal, New Democrat, Bloc, or Green.

That is an extreme case, but the same goes for every other issue I can think of, including all the routine ones touching our daily lives.

For instance, all parties are committed to preserving Canada’s dysfunctional socialist health care system. All are committed to the continued heavy regulation of private enterprise generally, and to choking small business in particular with red tape. All are committed to maintaining a crippling tax burden, and a tax collection system with arbitrary and unaccountable powers of search and seizure. Moreover, in the name of the “global warming” imposture, all are committed to significantly extending the leaden hand of government micro-mismanagement into every aspect of our daily lives that may touch even tangentially on “the environment.”

And to take a subject of special interest to me, none is prepared to defend our country’s common-law heritage, and due process in our courts (especially our family courts). None will vindicate the most elementary rights of free speech and free press. None will lift a finger when journalists and many others are hauled before “human rights” kangaroo courts, and put under star chamber inquisitions, as if Canada were exactly the sort of country our fathers fought in two World Wars.

Then today I was reminded by Jay Currie of one of the main reasons we have such meek, almost cowardly, political parties.

Our essentially three- or four-party, "first-past-the-post", system insures that all parties do a lot of hedging, in the quest to maximize the number of MPs they can elect, lest one party finds a way successfully to outflank the other two.

Consequently, we don't have well polarized or refined debates. In a mature democracy, in a mature economy, as one would like to think Canada is, most issues would be discussed and refined to the point where there is a somewhat conservative and somewhat liberal position to be advocated. When political choices are well considered, there are rarely three distinct positions; and pretending there are only muddles the picture and makes harder the building of coalitions that can engage sufficient people to make clear what are the national preferences, i.e. the politically well-refined choices, and compromises, and to act on them.

In a large, sparsely populated country, national political parties have, at times, played an important role in bringing disparate Canadians together and getting them in conversation and in common cause. Again, this work is unnecessarily fractured by a three- or four-party system.

So, while I think Jay may be indulging in some wishful thinking when he declares this an election over the future of the Liberal Party - there remains a sizeable chunk of the Canadian electorate who will think themselves constitutionally incapable of voting for the Conservative party (being indebted to their long-stoked fears of the "right") and many of these will also think it below them to vote for the unworldly true believers in the NDP's age-old "progressive" rituals - I am nonetheless thinking this is an issue to truly get excited about: the mere possibility that this election will clarify the need for Canadians to solidify a two-party system.

Either the Liberals or the NDP has to go. At least I would like that idea to become commonplace. I hope many of those who won't vote for the Conservatives will come to a certain understanding, and will not let minds wander into fanciful Green fields.

Jay writes:

In reality this election will really be a referendum about whether or not the CPC under Harper deserves, or can be trusted, with a majority. I think they can and I think there is every reason to believe that a cross country consensus will give the CPC a thin majority.

This has, I am afraid, nothing to do with any endorsement of CPC policy; rather it is the reality that, a couple of years in, the Liberals have nothing at all on offer. The Green Shift is simply silly and a rather obvious tax grab. The idea that Harper is somehow George Bush in cunningly bad suits is a meme without wings.

To the converted, the Green Shift and Harper=Bush are truths as solid as the happy thought that 9/11 was an inside job. To the rest of us they are the last gasps of a party which has ceased to have a reason to exist.

Cynics have suggested that this election is about financially bankrupting the Liberal Party. I would not be at all surprised if they are right. It is time for the Liberal Party to end. It is time for Canada to have a left party and a right one. The Liberal Party is simply in the way.

The Liberals climbed on board the dying Green/Kyoto trope and, finally, have found the issue which could finish them. They will make assorted noises about national unity and assorted women’s issues and just how very scary Harper and the CPC are; but I suspect those noises will be their death rattle.

Canada has changed. We are no longer obsessed with a seemingly resurgent Quebec, Women are who they are and don’t need the feds to define them. Harper is rather dull; but not in the least scary.

For many of us, a confederation which allows provinces to seek their own destiny is a confederation we can support. Lock step centralism is an idea whose time has passed.

Most of all, with a bit of prudent management and a world hungry for our resources, Canada is poised to become a resource rich Switzerland. Rich, capable and very much its own nation.

The Liberal Party has, I suspect, outlived its usefulness. It is mired in identity politics, an unstoppable urge to take from the successful and give to the losers, and a belief in its own righteousness. Canada used to be a nation of losers. Now it is not. Canada used to think multicult was the Grail, now it doesn’t. Canada used to think the Liberal Party was the natural party of government, now that view is pretty much exclusive to the Toronto Star.