On track records

The serious concerns about Stephane Dion's economic vision for the federal government continue to pile up, as Murray Dobbin highlights the governing record of Dion's "principal secretary" Marcel Massé:

More than any single individual, Massé was responsible for designing the systematic gutting of the role of the federal government between 1995 and 1997, when Paul Martin's unprecedented budget cuts took place. He was chair of the Program Review Committee, which, despite its benign name, struck fear into the hearts of every Liberal cabinet minister and was referred to throughout the government as the Star Chamber. Cabinet ministers, even the most senior, were invited to the committee to receive -- not to discuss or debate -- their single piece of paper revealing the size of the cut to their departments. Paul Martin, Massé and Martin's deputy minister David Dodge (now head of the Bank of Canada) designed and implemented the most radical restructuring of the Canadian state in history.

Massé opposed across the board cuts -- he wanted, as did Paul Martin, to rewrite the role of government. So he saved the largest cuts of all for what we might call nation-building departments: transportation, natural resources, industrial and regional development, the environment, agriculture and fisheries. Then he delivered a savage, if not fatal, blow to the guiding principal (sic) of social program universality, killing the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP), which had provided national guidelines for social assistance since the era of Lester Pearson, and the long-standing (1977) Established Programs Financing, the method by which Ottawa provided targeted, accountable funding for health and post-secondary education to the provinces. These two programs were now to be delivered in a single lump sum to the provinces with no strings attached.

It was massive decentralization beyond anything Brian Mulroney had ever contemplated and greater than even Preston Manning had publicly called for. With the stroke of a pen, the three men reversed 40 years of federal leadership in social policy.

Dobbin also notes some additional points of concern in Dion's own background, including his links to Tom Flanagan (yes, that Tom Flanagan) and his past anti-labour votes.

But the bigger question isn't so much where Dion has been as where he's going. And based on Dion's choice to build his inner circle around the likes of Massé, it appears that Dobbin is right in retreating from his earlier hope that Dion would have any interest at all in trying to stand up to the pressures of corporatism and decentralization. Which leaves only the question of whether other Canadians who recognize the need for nation-building by the federal government will see through Dion before it's too late.