Re: Ending Canada's 'benign dictatorship'

> http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/03/30/cv-milewski-harper-coalition.html?ref=rss

> So, let's consider that obscure but intriguing article, written in 1997 
> by two brainy conservatives, Tom Flanagan and Stephen Harper. Yes, it 
> calls Canada "a benign dictatorship."
>
> Oh, and it's a passionate defence of coalition governments.

Heh.  This, of course, was written at a time when many people assumed that 
the Liberal Party would basically own the country forever.  By the 1993 
election, the Progressive Conservatives and/or their voting base had split 
in three directions -- the Tories, the Bloc, and the Reform Party -- and 
in the early 2000s, the Reform Party (or, rather, the Canadian Alliance, 
for that was its new name) split yet *again* when the Democratic 
Representatives branched off to protest the incompetent leadership of 
Stockwell Day.  To many eyes, it was nothing short of a miracle that the 
Tories, the Canadian Alliance and the Democratic Representatives came 
together to form a single Conservative Party in 2003 -- just in time to 
lose the election in 2004, but win the election in 2006.

But that was all several years in the future.  At the time they wrote this 
article, it was widely believed that the Liberals were the only party with 
cross-country appeal, and that the Reform/Alliance was little more than a 
regional western party while the Tories were little more than a regional 
eastern party and the Bloc, of course, was by definition a regional 
Quebecois party.  And thus, it was widely believed that the Liberals would 
always, by default, have the run of the country: Jean Chretien won three 
majority governments in a row (in 1993, 1997 and 2000), even though he 
consistently got between 38% and 41% of the popular vote.

So, without reading Flanagan & Harper's article itself, my hunch is that 
they were writing at a time when "uniting the right" was a top priority 
among some conservatives, and that Flanagan & Harper may have thought that 
a coalition of some sort would be more practical and less utopian.

It's not *quite* the same thing as a coalition between two established 
parties like the Liberals and the New Democrats, one of which is nominally 
central and the other of which is far to the left.  And it's *definitely* 
not the same thing as a coalition with a separatist party like the Bloc, 
which by definition is dedicated to breaking up the country.

> Asked about his past enthusiasm for coalitions, Harper sidestepped this 
> week by saying he was just talking about 'uniting the right" — namely, 
> his plan to merge the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties.
>
> But that's not what he said at the time.

Yeah.  It was almost certainly the subtext to what he said at the time, 
but it was apparently not the text of what he said itself.

> In his article with Flanagan, he said the opposite:
>
> "A merger between Reform and the PCs, though still discussed, seems to 
> us out of the question. Too many careers would be at stake. Political 
> parties almost never merge in the true sense of the term, and the gap 
> between today's opposition factions is simply too great."

This doesn't feel like "the opposite" to me.  It sounds like he was 
talking about a practical co-operation of parties rather than a merger -- 
but either way, the idea was to get the right working together.

> Well, times change. Another aspect of the article has attracted comment: 
> the suggestion that an alliance of anti-Liberal forces might include a 
> Quebec separatist faction. A careful reading shows the article doesn't 
> rule that in or out.
>
> It says "a strategic alliance of Quebec nationalists with conservatives 
> outside Quebec might become possible, and it might be enough to sustain 
> a government."
>
> A Quebec nationalist isn't necessarily a separatist. They're not the 
> same thing. But "nationalists" don't have a party in Parliament;
> separatists do. The article does suggest that conservatives might have 
> "little choice" but to deal with the separatist party — the Bloc — as 
> the only political formation able to join such an alliance where it 
> counts — in Parliament — along with the Reform and the PCs.

That's an interesting section, given that Harper formally declared that 
the Quebecois are a "nation" not too long ago (not in the sense of being a 
nation-state, per se, obviously, but only in the sense of being an ethnic 
group with a distinct culture and history a la the "first nations").

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