White Paper: A Parliamentary Primer and the Centrality of Politics

In Canada, the federal parliament and the provincial assemblies are the legislative arms of the state. They are the focal point for the organization of political parties and debate and for regular democratic elections. Through the electoral process, citizens determine which party, and consequently which party leader, they wish to guide the federal or provincial government for a maximum five-year term. Once elected to office by winning a majority or at least a plurality of the seats in parliament or the legislature or assembly, the leader of the winning party will usually be called upon by the governor general—or by the lieutenant-governor in a province—to form a government. This is accomplished by the party leader, now the prime minister or premier, choosing a cabinet. The governing party then takes control of the executive and administrative institutions of the state and undertakes its responsibilities in policy making and program implementation.

As the governing party fulfills its duties, its actions will be scrutinized closely by opposition parties, those that won some level of representation in parliament or the legislature. Such representation comes with an institutionalized accountability function: the parliamentary opposition holds the governing party to account for its exercise of power. In parliamentary theory and practice, the government (the executive branch) must be accountable to parliament or the provincial legislature (the legislative branch) for all its actions. Ministers of the Crown must sit in the legislature and be prepared to answer questions about how they conduct government business, to debate the merits and demerits of new policy and administrative initiatives, and to have all new legislation reviewed and voted on by the members of parliament or the legislative assembly.

This brief overview of parliamentary procedure is a reminder of the centrality of politics to how any government functions and marks a fundamental point of distinction between the public and private sectors. At the core of public sector management is politics. Governments rise and fall, prime ministers and premiers come and go, and approaches to policy, policy making, and program implementation wax and wane. Everything governments do, and don’t do, can be reduced to political explanations because governments are forged out of party politics and democratic elections. Their behaviour is always judged in a political forum, and any assessment of their decision making is inherently political.

Canadian Parliaments, 1921–88, % by Major Parties

	Liberal		Conservative/PC		CCF/NDP
	Vote	Seats	Vote	Seats	Vote	Seats
1921	41	49	30	21	–	–
1925	40	40	46	47	–	–
1926	46	52	45	37	–	–
1930	45	37	49	56	–	–
1935	45	71	30	16	9	3
1940	52	74	31	16	9	3
1945	41	51	27	27	16	11
1949	49	74	30	16	13	5
1953	49	64	31	19	11	9
1957	41	40	39	42	11	9
1958	34	18	54	79	10	3
1962	37	38	37	44	14	7
1963	42	49	33	36	13	6
1965	40	49	33	36	18	8
1968	45	58	31	27	17	8
1972	38	41	35	40	18	12
1974	43	53	36	36	16	6
1979	40	40	36	48	18	9
1980	44	52	33	37	20	11
1984	28	14	50	75	19	11
1988	32	28	43	57	20	15

Canadian Parliaments, 1993–2000, % by Major Parties

	Liberal		PC		Reform/Alliance		NDP		BQ		Green
	Vote	Seats	Vote	Seats	Vote	Seats	Vote	Seats	Vote	Seats	Vote	Seats
1933	41.3	60.0	16.0	0.7	18.7	17.6	6.9	3.1	13.5	18.3	6.88	–
1997	38.5	51.5	18.8	6.6	19.4	19.9	11.0	7.0	10.7	14.6	0.43	–
2000	40.8	57.1	12.2	4.0	25.5	21.9	8.5	4.3	10.7	12.6	0.81	–

Canadian Parliaments, 2004-21, % by Major Parties

	Liberal		Conservative		NDP		BQ		Green		People's Party
	Vote	Seats	Vote	Seats	Vote	Seats	Vote	Seats	Vote	Seats	Vote/Seats
2004	36.7	43.8	29.6	32.1	15.7	6.2	12.4	17.5	4.29	–	–
2006	30.2	33.4	36.3	40.3	17.5	9.4	10.5	16.6	4.48	–	–
2008	26.2	25.0	37.6	46.4	18.2	12.0	10.0	15.9	6.78	–	–
2011	18.9	11.0	39.6	53.8	30.6	33.4	6.0	0.1	3.91	–	–
2015	39.5	54.0	31.9	29.9	19.7	13.0	4.7	3.0	3.4	0.3	–
2019	33.1	46.4	34.4	35.8	15.9	7.1	7.7	9.5	6.5	0.8	1.6 / -
2021	32.6	47.3	33.7	35.2	17.8	7.4	7.6	9.4	2.3	0.5	5.0 / -

Source: Reports of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada.

Case Study: Assessing the Legacy of Stephen Harper

While opponents would grudgingly admit that Stephen Harper proved remarkably able in turning many of his policy ideas into reality, especially in cutting taxes, diminishing the role and stature of the federal public service, deregulating the economy, promoting the oil and gas industry, increasing the funding to and role of the Canadian military, and establishing much tougher anti-crime legislation, he did so through a very tightly controlled command approach to prime ministerial leadership that critics consider excessive, abusive, close-minded, or worse. The charges against both the style and substance of Stephen Harper’s approach to governing are legion. Critics such as Lawrence Martin (2010), Michael Harris (2014), Donald Savoie (2015), and Bob Rae (2015), to name just a few, accused this prime minister of:

• concentrating excessive power in his own hands and in that of his PMO;
• rendering cabinet government next to meaningless;
• stripping ministers and caucus members of their independent voices;
• being, in Michael Harris’s words, “a party of one”;
• stripping the federal public service of its important role in the policy process;
• basing policy decisions more on ideological beliefs than on evidenced-based research;
• using distortion, deceit, manipulation, and outright lies to support his policy actions;
• being contemptuous of parliament;
• overturning a half-century of balanced Canadian diplomacy; and
• being a threat to Canadian democracy.

In his critical biography of Stephen Harper, Michael Harris (2014) accused Harper of being a “rogue prime minister,” one who is authoritarian, manipulative, cynical in his hyper-partisanship, secretive, contemptuous of those who disagree with him, and, perhaps worst of all, a direct threat to Canadian democracy. In a similar vein, Lawrence Martin (2010, 272), stressed that Harper, in power, had “circumvented the conventions of democracy so much” that academics were beginning to say that Harper’s “abuse of executive power is tilting toward totalitarian government and away from the foundations of democracy and the rule of law, on which this country was founded.” Bob Rae (2015), admittedly a political opponent of Prime Minister Harper, attacked his leadership for being contemptuous of parliamentary democracy. Rae noted the Harper government’s serial use of massive omnibus budget bills as a means of passing large numbers of unrelated legislative matters with limited parliamentary review and debate leading to a single Yes or No vote. “A 2012 budget bill,” Rae charged, “changed seventy laws, gutted environmental protection, killed off a multitude of agencies, and raised the age of retirement from sixty-five to sixty-seven. Shortly after introducing the bill, the government limited debate and this massive, four-hundred page monstrosity headed to committee for a pro forma discussion” (109). Canadians, Rae stressed, should have been outraged by the Harper government’s increasing streak of authoritarianism and disrespect for Canadian democratic traditions. In summing up his assessment of nine years of Stephen Harper’s leadership of this country, Rae concluded that “[w]e’re now living in a democracy with dictatorial tendencies, and Canadians should not see their democratic institutions diluted and muzzled because of political timidity” (110).

But in his biographical study of this prime minister, John Ibbitson (2015), a more sympathetic conservative analyst, found Stephen Harper to be a man of various shades of grey. His character, according to Ibbitson, is authoritarian, cold and Machiavellian, “the most controlling prime minister in Canadian history” (251), and he is a man committed to the support of core conservative ideas. Stephen Harper has been the most ideological of all Canadian prime ministers, and to Ibbitson, this is what made Harper such a lightning rod of discontent to Canadians who do not share his ideological vision. “One of the fundamental priorities of the Harper government,” writes Ibbitson, “is to shrink the size of the state. Permanently. Shrinking the size of the state is Harper’s greatest imperative. It is what makes him a genuinely conservative prime minister.… It is perfectly reasonable to object to all of these measures. But it is not reasonable to expect a conservative government not to act like a conservative government” (262).

White Paper: Historical Evolution of Canadian Political Culture

As the text highlights, throughout the twentieth century Canada witnessed a fascinating evolution in our political culture. While the fourth edition of Thinking Government provides an overview of this history, we provide below a more detailed review of these changing times and evolving ideas. We are very much the inheritors of these ideological battles and the political culture they have shaped.The following section of material is taken from the third edition of Thinking Government.

The Laissez-Faire Decades
In the early decades of the twentieth century Canadian political culture was dominated by conservative, laissez-faire principles, supportive of free enterprise, a largely unregulated private sector, and a very small state with a limited social and economic role. This was the era of the “night watchman” state; most people, and thus the two main political parties, wanted the state to provide basic public security and infrastructure services (policing, national defence, roads, harbours, railways, and sanitation), supported by minimal taxation. A federal income tax system was not introduced until 1918 and then only as a “temporary” wartime measure.

In those years the centre of Canadian politics was essentially what we today think of as on the right of the political spectrum, and notwithstanding the gradual emergence of the labour, agrarian populist, and socialist movements that would lead to the creation of the CCF in 1933, the Conservative and Liberal Parties shared a broadly similar conservative orientation to the nature of society, touting the importance of individualism, the sanctity of private property, the virtues of free enterprise, and the wisdom of a limited and restrained public sector. While the Conservatives possessed a Red Tory heritage dating back to the relatively active statist policies of the Macdonald government, the party under Robert Borden in the 1910s came to hold more conservative values, as had the Liberal Party of Wilfrid Laurier in the first decade of the century. Significant political differences emerged only in matters of party leadership and policy relating to the French–English question, Canadian–American relations, and Canada’s position within the British Empire (Campbell and Christian 1996, 27–33).

Canadian political culture slowly altered in the 1920s when the federal Liberal Party came to endorse reform liberalism as its credo. This leftward shift can be attributed both to Mackenzie King’s strongly held views about the philosophical importance and moral virtue of reform liberalism and to the Liberals’ sense of a political reorientation among a majority of Canadians in favour of a modest centre-left approach to social and economic life. In other words, they sensed that the broad political centre was itself shifting from the solid right to the soft left.

The Effects of Depression and War
While this political shift was reflected more in party platform than in Liberal government policies and programs during the 1920s and 30s, the prolonged economic collapse, widespread poverty, and social malaise of the Great Depression reinforced Mackenzie King’s support for reform liberalism and created the social conditions for the emergence of a serious and persistent political threat from the left. The CCF became an organized and articulate voice of democratic socialism, and in the 1930s and 40s it came to be viewed by the Liberals as their greatest long-term threat.

Growing public belief that the state could and should demonstrate capable and progressive leadership was only enhanced by the experience of World War II (Campbell and Christian 1996, 77–83). Over the six years of conflict the country operated under a state-directed command economy in which all sectors of society—public, private, and voluntary—worked toward a common goal. The war years witnessed not only the creation of a remarkable Canadian military capacity but also the development of a powerful industrial economy operating at full employment and directed, by the state, to serve a great national crusade. The war years brought increasing wealth and prosperity, growing unionization of the industrial workforce, and the involvement of women in this workforce.

Most important, it was the state itself, in the form of the federal government, that emerged from the war years as a driving force in the life of the country. It had demonstrated that it could overcome difficult challenges through the exercise of firm, competent, and visionary leadership. Through its wartime actions the government showed that the immense material resources and wealth of the nation could be used to achieve large ends when strategically directed to common goals. For many Liberals the war demonstrated that Keynesianism worked and that the state could deploy public resources to address serious social problems such as unemployment, poverty, hunger, lack of shelter, lack of education, and lack of hope.

The end of the war marked the beginning of modern Canada. The government of Mackenzie King heralded the modern Canadian state through policy initiatives launched during the war or shortly after:

• a national unemployment insurance system (1940)
• family allowance payments (1945)
• national labour relations system recognizing the legality of trade and industrial unions, unionization, and collective bargaining between union and management (1944)

These initiatives were a prelude to the amazing growth of the federal state in Canada after the war.

The Liberal Party controlled the federal government for 33 years between 1945 and 1984 (Table 2.2). Despite the Progressive Conservative governments of John Diefenbaker and Joe Clark, it came to be popularly viewed as the “natural governing party.” Successive Liberal governments under St. Laurent, Pearson, and Pierre Trudeau built the modern welfare state and mixed economy that have defined Canadian politics and government and have been imitated, to various degrees, by all the provincial governments. In a period marked by a seemingly ever-growing economy, steady industrialization, increasing trade and commerce, and an ever-wealthier society with a burgeoning middle class, federal and provincial governments possessed budgetary surpluses and seemed able to address almost any social and economic problem through the application of state power. Indeed, it was Pierre Trudeau who best captured this sense of optimism, purpose, and capability when, in the federal election of 1968, he stated that the prime objective of his Liberal government would be nothing less than the creation of the “just society” (Campbell and Christian 1996, 86–93).

Less, Not More, Government—Again
While the centre of political opinion in Canada, as throughout the Western world, was clearly grounded in the terrain of modern liberalism in the three decades following World War II, by the late 1970s a change became apparent. By then the national economy had begun to experience serious problems of “stagflation”—an unhealthy combination of inflation and stagnant economic growth. The results were increasing unemployment, declining economic growth and productivity, mounting labour unrest, rising consumer prices, and falling consumer and business confidence as fears of recession came to replace economic optimism. People began to worry about their ability to provide basic necessities for themselves, let alone attain “the good life,” and about the ability of their governments to manage the economy and lead society to a brighter future.

This led to growing disenchantment with government and, in the late 1970s and early 80s, to a conviction within the political right not only that government had failed in its attempt to lead the economy but also, more pointedly, that the idea that any government could or should engage in macro-economic management was fallacious. Keynesianism was attacked by conservative critics, who complained that government was not a solution to growing economic and social tensions but in fact a major cause of the problems.

“Less, not more, government” became the conservative mantra, with the concomitant position that more business-friendly, private sector-oriented policies would promote economic growth. From this viewpoint the desired government was one that would rein in a bloated and incompetent state, “freeing enterprise” to get on with the task of building a strong and viable economy (Woolstencroft 1996).

Case Study: The Mulroney Government

By the early 1980s, conservatives in Canada were buoyed by the electoral successes of their counterparts elsewhere. Both Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and President Ronald Reagan in the United States preached a return to traditional conservative values associated with individual responsibility and initiative, free enterprise, the protection of private property, the importance of competition, the key role of the private sector, and the need to radically diminish the size and scope of the public sector in order to regain control over public finances while advancing the interests of business. The re-emergence of conservative thought to a level of great prominence and influence in Canadian political life, however, was relatively slow and marked by some ironic twists.

The last Pierre Trudeau government, of 1980–84, was marked by confusion and lack of direction in the energy sector, leading to dramatic policy reversals with the National Energy Policy (NEP). In a major sign of a rightward shift, Brian Mulroney and the Progressive Conservative Party won the federal election of 1984. This new government came into power promising to restore economic confidence in the country through the traditional conservative policies of free enterprise, individualism, competition, and support of the private sector. As a fundamental part of this reorientation, it pledged to reduce the role of the federal government in Canadian life through rigorous programs of privatization of Crown corporations, deregulation of the economy, and federal government downsizing and fiscal restraint. All such initiatives were held to be beneficial and necessary in and of themselves, as well as leading to the elimination of the growing federal deficit and the reduction of the national debt. But the record of the Mulroney government with respect to these broad economic and political goals is decidedly mixed.

Privatization, Deregulation, and Free Trade
Mulroney’s government did engage in a major program of whole or partial Crown corporation privatization, among them Air Canada, de Havilland, Canadair, Canadian National Railways, Canadian Arsenals Limited, and Petro-Canada. It also pursued major initiatives to deregulate the Canadian economy by loosening federal economic and environmental regulation and shrinking federal agencies charged with monitoring private sector adherence to regulatory rules. The elimination of the NEP, the reconstitution of FIRA into Investment Canada—a body designed not to screen and restrict but to encourage mainly American foreign investment into the country—and the diminution of the Canadian Transport Commission and its eventual reconfiguration as the National Transportation Agency all indicated this new push for a smaller and less onerous state regulatory presence within the Canadian economy (Gollner and Salée 1988).

Of course, the most fundamental reordering of the Canadian economy and the role of both federal and provincial governments was the ratification of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on January 1, 1989, following some three years of difficult bilateral negotiations and fractious political debate. This agreement—expanded into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the early 1990s to include Mexico—endorsed market economics, a lead role for the private sector, and economic efficiency and corporate profitability as key goals of society. It condemned the impact of government regulation on the economy as generally deleterious (Belous and Lemco 1995; Walker 1993). These agreements boosted the interests of private sector entrepreneurialism and trade while restricting the range of policy instruments and actions available to all governments to regulate the economy and establish national or subnational (provincial or state) economic support programs. The push for free trade was part of a broader conservative agenda, furthered by political actors in all three countries to institutionalize this pro-market, free enterprise, less-government approach throughout the continent.

Given the decidedly ideological orientation of free trade policy, and the real and potential limitations that such a policy implies for specific government initiatives and the general role of the state in society and the economy, it is no surprise that the free trade issue dominated the life of the country in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The federal election of 1988—the infamous free trade election—was one of the most bitterly fought and divisive in Canadian history. John Turner, the federal Liberal leader at the time, called his opposition to the FTA “the fight of my life,” and the televised leaders’ debate on the issue still stands as testament to the passion that can indeed infuse Canadian politics.

How Conservative Is Conservative?
Privatization, deregulation, and free trade policy stand as exemplars of the Mulroney government’s conservative vision. Yet the conservative record of his government is debatable. Many conservative critics of the Mulroney government—notably Preston Manning, Stockwell Day, and others who would eventually rally to the Reform Party—claimed that this government was not conservative enough, not sufficiently true to conservative principles and practices, and that, in fact, it was still excessively liberal-centrist in many ways.

That centrist tendency was most pronounced in the field of federal expenditure policy. Far from constricting spending, as conventional conservative thought advocated, the fiscal record of the Mulroney government was one of ever-increasing federal expenditure, higher annual deficits and debt loads, and greater reliance on public borrowing. In 1985–86, the first full year of the Mulroney government, total federal budgetary expenditures stood at $109.8 billion, with an annual deficit for that year of $33.4 billion; by 1992–93, its last year, total federal budgetary spending stood at $159.3 billion, with a deficit of $39.0 billion. Notwithstanding its public exhortations for government to be more economical and efficient, the public service more frugal and able to do more with less, and Canadians overall more self-sufficient and less inclined to look to government for solutions to social problems, this Progressive Conservative government was consistently unwilling to put the harsh medicine of rigorous and persistent fiscal restraint into practice.

This tactic ultimately paid the governing party no political dividend. To many conservative-minded Canadians, the disconnect between conservative principles and rhetoric on one hand, and the centrist, traditionally liberal fiscal approach of the Mulroney government on the other, simply demonstrated that the Progressive Conservatives could no longer be trusted to advance a conservative agenda in Ottawa. This position was most strongly advocated by Preston Manning and the emergent Reform Party. To many liberal and social democratic-minded Canadians, however, the policy legacy of the Mulroney government—its advocacy of privatization, deregulation, and free trade—suggested that Canadian politics, government, and society were becoming increasingly subject to American values and government practices. These people distrusted almost every move of the Mulroney government, and they disparaged any claim made by the prime minister that his government was one of the moderate centre-right.

The political result of such a decline in support from both the right and the centre-left was the electoral rout of the party in the federal election of 1993. The once-mighty PCs dropped from 151 seats nationwide to just 2—a staggering and historic defeat.

Case Study: The Chrétien Government
It is ironic that the profound shift to the right by the federal government in the 1990s was undertaken by the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, but the irony fades when one appreciates the political context (Campbell and Christian 1996, 103–7; Clarkson 1996; Dobrowolsky 2000).

In the general election of 1993, the Liberal Party campaigned on a rather vague platform of centre-left platitudes, as enunciated by its Red Book:

• to restore honesty and accountability to public life;
• to promote the social and economic well-being of all Canadians, not just a privileged few;
• to protect the Canadian social welfare system, including the creation of a national day care program;
• to reinvest in public infrastructure;
• to eliminate the GST and replace it with a fairer consumption tax;
• to reopen and renegotiate the terms and conditions of free trade with the Americans to better promote Canadian national interests; and
• to promote governmental fiscal stability and deficit reduction by encouraging a growing economy and undertaking cautious cutbacks in areas of obvious government waste and mismanagement.

In particular reference to the federal deficit, the Red Book committed a new Liberal government to reducing the deficit to three per cent of gross domestic product, roughly $25 billion. Once in power, though, this centre-left agenda was quickly displaced by a more conservative orientation, as the government moved decisively to the centre-right in its policies and programs.

Chrétien’s new government quickly sensed that the ideological centre of Canadian politics was shifting further right, as most citizens (as documented through both government and privately commissioned public opinion polling) feared that the federal deficit, debt, and size of government were major problems that had to be resolved before any new socio-economic reform projects could be advanced. Such expressions of conservative public opinion were, in turn, often encouraged and advanced by other actors and forces within the realm of public policy discussion: the national and regional media; business advocacy organizations such as the C.D. Howe Institute, the Business Council on National Issues (now the Canadian Council of Chief Executives), the Canadian Manufacturers Association, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and a collection of more specialized business support groups; and the Reform Party and remains of the Progressive Conservative Party. Among the broader forces felt by the Chrétien government were those of the American bond-rating agencies that were instrumental in setting the credit-worthiness of the Canadian federal government, the fear of fiscal collapse if the government could not borrow money at a reasonable rate of interest, and the general pressure of mainstream business influence and conservative thought in the face of such dire fiscal difficulties.

Slaying the Deficit
In this political environment of high federal deficits and debt, of a still large state presence in the economy, and of a strong rightward bent in public opinion with regard to politics and government, it is no surprise that the Liberal government under Jean Chrétien and his finance minister, Paul Martin, made the elimination of the deficit its top priority in its first term of office. Martin had always been on the right wing of the Liberal Party, more a business liberal than a social liberal, and had always advocated prudent fiscal management in the affairs of the federal government. In the 1990s, this future prime minister became the second most powerful figure within the government, and his belief in the necessity of deep and persistent budget cuts aimed at eliminating the federal deficit altogether came to represent the government’s overall approach to financial management. As Martin famously remarked in 1995, “We are in hock up to our eyeballs,” and, in reference to the budgetary target of reducing the deficit to $25 billion from $42 billion over three years, “It is a target we will meet come hell or high water” (Greenspon and Wilson-Smith 1997, 203–4).

In essence, the Liberal government took the rhetoric of the previous Progressive Conservative government and turned it into policy and program reality. Whereas the Mulroney government had been perceived as merely paying lip service to fiscal restraint, the Chrétien government was committed to actually restoring fiscal prudence to Ottawa by aggressively reducing and ultimately eliminating the budget deficit. The federal coffers moved to balanced and then surplus budgets. This policy approach allowed the government to express its sober concern for the deficit/debt crisis facing the country and to brag about its rigid fidelity to tough financial management as the way to resolve the problem. Eventually it gained fiscal room to proceed with policies of debt reduction, tax cuts, and new socio-economic spending programs.

How Liberal Is Liberal?
In the short term, the Liberals moved to the right in tandem with the centre of Canadian politics. This allowed them to continue to lay claim to the centre ground of political life as the party and government that could be trusted to serve the interests of most Canadians in continuing to provide intelligent yet prudent approaches to policy and program development, coupled with fiscal restraint. Once the deficit had been overcome, and if and when the political centre began to move back toward the centre-left, they would be well positioned.

All such reforms, moreover, dramatically affected the nature of public sector management. As the federal government retrenched, the structure and mission of the public service were subject to great change and subsequent unease and dispute. As Canadian society generally, and its federal government in particular, swung to the right in the 1990s, the federal public service and all its provincial counterparts assumed a downsized policy and program role.

The public sector experienced serious cutbacks to financial and personnel resources, only to hear further calls to do more with less. Generalized policies of restraint, privatization, and deregulation also led governments to strip departments and agencies of roles they had long administered as essential public services; in this sense, some restraint policies called for the public sector to do less with less. Other policies demanded that the public sector interact with the private sector in more innovative and supportive ways, upholding the private sector as the principal motor of national economic growth and applying private business practices to public sector services.

All such changes elicited great debate about the best public sector management practices and how the sector should relate to private business and to individual citizens. These issues remain at the forefront of political debate about the future of this country and the direction of its governments.

Case Study: The Martin Government
Once the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien tamed the deficit, a new era of balanced budgets and surpluses opened new opportunities for the Liberals to redefine who they were, what they believed in, where the federal government should be leading the Canadian people, and to what ends. When Chrétien retired in the fall of 2003 and Paul Martin became prime minister, the future looked rosy for the governing party. But how quickly fortunes can change.

The Martin government sought to maintain a liberal centrist policy position that offered fiscal discipline with social progressivism by promising to

• to focus on tax cuts;
• to pay down the national debt;
• to support “business-friendly” economic and regulatory policies;
• to enhance Canada’s national defence, security, and intelligence capabilities;
• to maintain a restrained, less interventionist state presence; and
• to support core social and economic policies such as national health care, employment insurance, regional equalization, regional development policies, and substantial federal transfers to the provinces with respect to health, postsecondary education, and social assistance programs.

In the fall of 2004, Martin signed a health policy accord with all the first ministers that would witness a transfusion of $75 billion in federal funds over ten years into provincial health care systems. His government also focused on the need to reinvest in cities, to support postsecondary education, to protect the environment more effectively through implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, and to provide significantly stronger funding to the Canadian military. But all these new initiatives were to be achieved within a framework of balanced budgets and tax relief when necessary and convenient. All in all, a classic appeal to the political centre.

The Martin government was doomed. Just as Paul Martin took power, the federal auditor general released a highly critical report on the sponsorship program. Throughout his two years in office, the scandal acted like a cancer on Martin’s government, weakening the credibility of the Liberal claim to sound fiscal management while giving opposition parties (and especially the Conservative Party led by Stephen Harper) the ability to denounce the federal Liberals as corrupt, incompetent, unaccountable, and undeserving of high office.

In June 2004, the Liberals won a minority government, but Paul Martin was never able to escape from the shadow of the sponsorship scandal and a growing reputation for dithering. His government survived until the fall of 2005, when it was defeated on a non-confidence vote in the House of Commons.

White Paper: A New Liberalism?

Between 2011 and 2015 the Liberal Party of Canada was in trouble. For the first time since Confederation it was neither the governing party nor the official opposition. The party of Mackenzie King, St. Laurent, Pearson, and Pierre Trudeau was long viewed as Canada’s “natural governing party,” but some said after 2011 that the Conservatives had become “Canada’s party.”

But how things can change in a few years. By 2015 most Canadians were tired of Stephen Harper and his brand of conservatism and a plurality of Canadians voted for a renewed Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau. In 2015 the newly elected Prime Minister Trudeau promised to do politics differently. But did he? As of 2022, Trudeau has served as prime minister for seven years. Over this time has the Liberal Party really transformed Canada? Or are the fundamentals of Canadian politics and policy really little changed from what has gone before? If Canadians want a better Liberal Party of Canada can traditional liberal values and beliefs be mined to give the Liberal Party a new identity and policy focus?

Take a look at the following list of reformist liberal policy and program ideas and initiatives. Since 2015, how many have been acted upon by the Trudeau government and why? And which ones have been sidelined or ignored? And why? How would you assess the type of progress this government has made on bringing a new liberalism to this country? Does more need to be done, and why? Or has this government gone too far already, and why?

• a guaranteed universal basic income
• legalization and taxation of prostitution and marijuana
• abolition of college and university tuition
• a national daycare plan
• a national pharmacare plan
• a national carbon tax, the revenues of which would fund the development and commercialization of sustainable energy technologies
• tax incentives for green industries
• a national policy for education and the promotion of educational resources
• an industrial policy to promote managerial leadership and technological innovation
• guaranteed access and funding for abortion services
• enshrining gay rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms
• increasing immigration and acceptance of refugees
• support for labour and environmental rights within free trade agreements
• support for aggressive international action on global warming
• renewed emphasis on peacekeeping over peacemaking
• the establishment of a Canadian peace and development corps as a cornerstone of foreign policy

What are the pros and cons of these proposals? What type of list would you develop?

A hundred years ago, ideas such as workers’ compensation, legal unions and collective bargaining, national pension plans, national public health care plans, gender and racial equality, and human rights codes were considered either radical or extremist or utopian—or just downright unworkable in a modern society. Visionaries can help to chart the course for the future.

Leaders of Major Canadian Political Parties

Dispatch Box: Red Toryism

1. Describe the fundamental principles of conservatism, including attitudes toward the role of the state.

Your answer should elaborate on the following broad concepts, drawing on examples of these principles in practice under a Conservative government:

• a focus on individualism, competition, and rational self-interest
• a focus on individual liberty and freedom in relation to equality of opportunity
• support for the importance of private property and capitalism and their connections to free enterprise and materialism
• democratic accountability
• a limited state role and primacy of the private sector
• promotion of business through limited taxation
• promotion of law and order
• promotion of family values
• promotion of a strong national defence

2. Describe the fundamental principles of liberalism, including attitudes toward the role of the state.

Your answer should elaborate on the following broad concepts, drawing on examples of these principles in practice under a Liberal government:

• balancing individual self-interest and the best interests of society
• balancing equality of opportunity and equality of condition
• democracy defined as political freedom and government support for societal interests
• a significant role for the public sector in society
• state regulation of the private sector to promote social needs and the long-term interests of the sector itself
• state support for a mixed economy
• promotion of fair tax policy
• state promotion of equal rights to education, health care, social security, and human rights
• state focus on law and justice, national security, and international development

3. Describe the fundamental principles of social democracy, including attitudes toward the role of the state.

Your answer should elaborate on the following broad concepts, drawing on examples of these principles in practice under a social democratic government. You will have to select a provincial example.

• prioritizing social compassion over individual competition
• balancing individual liberty and collective interests
• focusing on equality of condition
• strict regulation of the private sector
• state promotion of economic nationalism
• support for a mixed economy with lead role for government
• fair and progressive taxation as a social obligation
• willingness to undertake public spending
• state promotion of multiculturalism and social justice at home and abroad

4. Outline the development of Canadian political ideology through the twentieth century in the federal context.

Your answer should trace the following events and concepts, though you may wish to focus more on some threads than on others.

• Explain the nature of public policy prior to World War I.
• Address the evolution of Reform Liberalism and the role of William Lyon Mackenzie King.
• Describe the evolution of the Canadian social welfare system.
• Highlight the pressures from the CCF faced by the King Liberals.
• Assess the shift of the political centre to left under King, St. Laurent, Pearson, and Pierre Trudeau.
• Assess the continuing influence of the Progressive Conservatives.
• Highlight how the PCs and the NDP were drawn to the centre.
• Trace and account for the slow shift back to the right under Mulroney, Chrétien, and Harper.
• How has this shift affected the Liberals and the NDP?
• Assess the relationship between liberalism and conservatism now.
• Is Liberalism newly ascendant under Justin Trudeau?
• Do the Conservatives now need to move closer to the centre, to become more moderate, if they wish to win the next federal election?

5. Explain the current Canadian political climate in relation to the role of the state.

The following are some aspects of the topic you might choose to focus on. In each, draw on concrete examples from current or recent events.

• Account for how and why the role of the state was diminished over the past three decades, focusing on policies of the Mulroney and Chrétien governments.
• Examine why the state is vulnerable to public criticism and assess the fairness of such critiques.
• Explain the continued presence of the state and public policies in everyday Canadian federal and provincial life.
• Explain past Conservative policy initiatives from both the Mulroney and Harper governments that affected the role of the federal government. Look at how these Conservative governments drew the country further to the right on the ideological spectrum. But also assess examples of a strong continued state presence in social and economic life. For example, address federal policy approaches to abortion, handgun regulation, the CBC, official bilingualism, the federal human rights commission, and federal regional development policy.
• Assess the degree to which the country shifted to the right during the Harper years and which policies and programs highlighted this change. But also account for the defeat of the Harper government in the 2015 election. Does this result show the continuing power of the liberal centre in Canadian politics, or were most people just tired of Stephen Harper’s personal style of leadership?
• Assess the leadership and policy direction of the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau. Is this Liberal government bringing Canadian public policy back to the liberal centre or is it maintaining certain core features of the old Harper government? In thinking through these issues, be sure to look at leading policy fields such as tax policy, health care, pension and old age security policy, the environment, trade policy, national defence, and foreign affairs. Is the Trudeau government really all that different from the Harper government, or is there more continuity than change?
• Assess how both federal and provincial governments in Canada responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. What were the strengths and weaknesses of these actions? What do these actions say about the powers of the state in this society? And should the full nature of these powers only be used in times of national emergency? Or should governments use their spending powers to address other pressing social and economic needs? If so, what issues should governments address, and why?

1. The term ideology of the centre refers to

• a. the ideas and policies of a coalition government formed from the Liberal Party and NDP
• b. the idea that the federal government is the key to a strong national identity
• c. the idea that the majority of Canadians support a blend of conservative, socialist, and liberal policies
• d. the idea that Canadian conservatism is moderated by social democratic ideals

2. Which of the three major political ideologies supports a strong national defence capacity coupled with policies to promote economic development, social justice, and liberal democracy throughout the world as the cornerstones of its security policy?

• a. conservatives
• b. liberals
• c. social democrats
• d. both liberals and social democrats

3. Which of the three major political ideologies support a policy of economic nationalism?

• a. conservatives
• b. liberals
• c. social democrats
• d. both liberals and social democrats

4. Which of the following policies are part of the Canadian social safety net?

• a. health care
• b. disability insurance
• c. family allowances
• d. all of the above

5. Which of the following is not a core conservative principle?

• a. Individuals are naturally competitive.
• b. Equality of condition is paramount.
• c. Capitalism is the best form of economic organization.
• d. Traditions and social norms must be respected.

6. Social conservatism refers to

• a. conservatives who give priority to social policy and moral issues
• b. the right wing of the NDP
• c. the left wing of the Conservative Party
• d. the centre of the Liberal Party

7. Which of the following is not a social democratic principle?

• a. support for a mixed economy
• b. support for individual human rights
• c. support for nationalization of the banking sector
• d. support for strong national social welfare programs

8. Which of the following conservative policy ideas did the Chrétien government refuse to implement?

• a. signing the North American Free Trade Agreement
• b. cutting government programs to eliminate the deficit
• c. cutting taxes in the upper income brackets
• d. reducing the GST

9. Which campaign promise did the Liberals make in 1993?

• a. signing the North American Free Trade Agreement
• b. cutting government programs to eliminate the deficit
• c. cutting taxes in the upper income brackets
• d. reducing the GST

10. Which of the following did the Harper government abolish?

• a. a woman’s right to an abortion
• b. official bilingualism
• c. the Human Rights Commission
• d. none of the above

Chapter 2 Answer Key

• 1. c
• 2. b
• 3. d
• 4. d
• 5. b
• 6. a
• 7. c
• 8. d
• 9. d
• 10. d

Table 2.1 from Thinking Government 5e— Political Principles across the Spectrum

Table 2.2 from Thinking Government 5e— Federal Governments and Prime Ministers since 1900

Figure 2.1 from Thinking Government 5e— The Canadian Political Spectrum

business liberal
A member of the right wing of the Liberal party who believes in the primacy of economic policy and fiscal prudence over social policy. Business liberals are likely to express interest in balanced budgets, tax cuts, debt repayment, and industrial development and trade.

conservatism
An ideology that ascribes importance to individualism, liberty, freedom, equality of opportunity, private property, capitalism, free enterprise, and business interests. Conservatives believe that the state should take a generally circumscribed role in the life of society.

Fabian socialism
The British parliamentary tradition of socialism, as distinct from Marxism. The term originates in the Fabian Society, founded in London in 1884 by British socialists, including playwright George Bernard Shaw. Fabian socialists believe in achieving socialist ends through democratic means centred on winning parliamentary power. The Fabians were early supporters of the British Labour Party.

ideology of the centre
The idea that most Canadians are moderate in their political thinking, desiring a blend of conservative, socialist, and liberal policies and a mixed economy in which the state takes a leading part in national socio-economic development but respects the important role of the private sector. In this view, the party that can dominate the middle ground in Canadian politics will reap the most votes and thus win power.

liberalism
An ideology that mediates the competing claims of conservatism and socialism. Liberalism places importance on individualism, freedom, equality of opportunity, private property, and the role of the private sector while stressing that these values and their policy offshoots have to be balanced with the collective well-being of society, equality of condition with respect to fundamental matters of social policy, and a substantial state to regulate the economy in the service of broad national or provincial interests.

Red Toryism
An ideological variation of conservatism that places importance on tradition, the maintenance of Canada’s historic link to Britain and the British monarchy, and the Canadian national collective identity, all of which are seen to require the active protection of the state.

social conservative
A conservative who emphasizes the importance of social policy and moral issues, usually with a grounding in religious beliefs, as opposed to economic policies and matters of business. While most conservatives believe in a limited socio-economic role for the state, social conservatives stress that it has a vital role to play in regulating matters relating to pornography, abortion, same-sex marriage, and lewdness in mass culture and supporting moral issues such as family values, faith-based welfare policies, and school prayer.

social democracy
The belief that socialist political parties should espouse moderate and practical socio-economic policy positions in order to appeal to the broad centre of the political spectrum. Canadian social democrats assert that the New Democratic Party must be willing and able to work with the private sector in matters of economic policy. They also believe that the NDP must see itself as a political party with a credible message for electors rather than as a visionary movement appealing only to democratic socialists.

social liberal
A person on the left wing of the Liberal party who asserts the primacy of social policy over business and economic concerns. Social liberals are likely to express interest in social welfare policy, human rights, environmental policy, international development, and Indigenous rights.

socialism
An ideology of social collectivism that elevates the concept of class consciousness, the socio-economic interests of common working-class and middle-class people, equality of condition and freedom from want, and concern for the gross inequalities in wealth and power found through the working of a capitalist society and economy. Socialists believe that solutions to the profound social and economic problems found in modern capitalist societies can be found only through active and progressive public policies designed by the state, under the leadership of socialist governments, for the benefit of common people.

surplus
An amount of something left over after requirements have been met or, more specifically, the budgetary dynamic in which revenues exceed expenditures and other liabilities, resulting in excess monies at the end of a fiscal year. Such surplus monies are then available for new spending.

Bloc Québécois

Conservative Party of Canada

Green Party of Canada

The Hill Times

Liberal Party of Canada

New Democratic Party