Posted on 08/08/2003 11:17:57 AM PDT by knighthawk
Paul Martin, after long bouts of calculated silence, has spoken of his desire to bring the West into the Liberal fold. This would make the prospective one-party state a pan-Canadian operation. The big Liberal tent would welcome not only all ambitious politicos, but every region.
Other Liberal heavyweights, such as Anne McLellan and Sheila Copps, have recently pitched ideas for bringing the West onside. Ms. McLellan repeated the concept of a "regional PMO" located in Edmonton -- as if the proximity of bad decisions make them more palatable. Ms. Copps proposes a more paleo-Liberal plan, opening "her" pocketbook to fight various Western ills. Besides subsidized federal daycare, public housing and transit, she means to use some of her $6-billion float to stall rural depopulation.
All these schemes share the usual Liberal obliviousness to what most people in the West really want -- less patronage, not more; lower taxes; less federal waste; cleaner government; a functioning Parliament and so on.
Still, the next prime minister's comments must be taken seriously. Mr. Martin seems determined to make electoral gains at the expense of the Canadian Alliance. His talk of opening the civil service to Westerners and of regional industrial initiatives, of "bringing the West in," certainly signifies a political wedge meant to pry voters from the Alliance. All we Westerners need do to reap the benefits is vote Liberal.
But it is fair to ask exactly what the West would be getting into. The opposition leader, Stephen Harper, is right when he says there's an implied flip-side to this deal. If the West at any point says, "No, thank you," it can expect tough love.
Should Mr. Martin's velvet blackmail fail, his eminently grise mentor and prospective advisor, Maurice Strong, could administer the punishment. Mr. Strong knows just enough about the West's economy to be dangerous. Vigorously implementing Kyoto, continuing or increasing discriminatory taxes on energy companies, hiking needless spending and outrageous, Alberta-funded subsidies for other regions -- the Liberal tool kit rattles with such monkey wrenches.
What Mr. Martin may not realize is that his apparent plan threatens to upset a current system which, if nothing else, has a certain morbid internal logic. Under today's "robbing hood" redistributionism, taxes are transferred from Alberta and British Columbia (and Ontario) to other provinces, with a hefty transit fee left in Ottawa.
Under this system, there simply must be losers as well as winners. Mr. Martin's new plan would trigger a law of diminishing and eventually disappearing largesse as he attempted to bring the last, lost tribes into the fold. The fuller the tent, the less there is to pass around. Electorally prodigal provinces such as British Columbia, Saskatchewan and most of all, Alberta, couldn't expect much tourtière to be left once the favoured sons were fed.
Until now, there didn't need to be. Throughout the decades of Western electoral drought, Liberal patronage maintained little more than a loyal local coterie, those getting high on the smoke of burning tax dollars. The absolute number of beneficiaries was small, especially in Alberta, the only remaining major net contributor of federal tax dollars.
Out West, the "usual operation," as the Prime Minister would put it, was for failed Liberal candidates to be appointed to a refugee board or some such thing and for loyal local law firms to get some government business, while bagmen and other higher life forms could hope for a senatorial sinecure.
Regardless of Mr. Martin's recent musings, this is all Westerners could reasonably expect under a Martin government. Mr. Martin can't really be saying we can all be winners. While that sounds awfully Canadian, it would be trying to fool all of the people all of the time. Many Westerners sense the basic flaw in Mr. Martin's offer.
Another tired Liberal slogan, that of the "Canadian family," seems a more apt model of what's likely to continue going on. The proverbial family typically has a favoured son, maybe a prissy sister who wants to run off on her own, a flaky cousin, a pushy uncle, and so on. And perhaps also a child that can do no right -- the family's whipping boy. Guess which province fits that description?
If Mr. Martin really won the West, it would apparently mark an end to Canadian politics of positively Fukuyaman finality. Of course, Mr. Martin's claimed universalism is as false as the American academic's "end of history" thesis. One cannot simply paper over fundamental philosophical differences concerning how the country should work. If you doubt this, just ask Brian Mulroney.
At bottom, Mr. Martin's offer smacks of getting something for nothing, of Liberals blinding Westerners, especially Albertans, with their own redistributed tax dollars. Many Canadians no doubt hope that Mr. Martin can concoct the holistic cure for all our ills. Such people will step into the Liberal tent.
But most Westerners do not believe in cure-alls, but rather support fundamental reform of a federal system that was constructed by the very Liberals who are now urging us to vote for them. If we resist, we may again play the role of the Canadian family's whipping boy. But we see more chance for long-term change through principled resistance than through calculated servility.
So say some people who know much more about Canadian society than do I.
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