Wednesday Evening Links

Assorted content for your evening reading.

- Murray Dobbin nicely summarizes what the Cons are hoping to do in prioritizing big-money "philanthropy" over a functional state and civil society:

Ideology is meaning in the service of power, and the Conservative government, libertarian to its core, intends to create the appearance of an increasingly volunteer society as it systematically guts the social and cultural role of government. Harper hopes to justify massive cuts to programs (and in general the role of the federal government period) by shifting responsibility to charities and foundations. This is the Americanization of Canada -- remaking the country in the image of the minimalist government that the U.S. has experienced for decades. The problem is that there is very weak tradition of foundations and corporate giving in this country, so it has to be engineered, too.
...
When all the social programs and the activist government that Stephen Harper seems to detest were implemented there was widespread public support for them. Governments were responding to social and labour movements pushing for these things: unemployment insurance, Medicare, subsidized university education, Family Allowances, public pensions, old age security.

These programs were not imposed by a cabal of liberal and socialist intellectuals and bureaucrats. They were rooted in the expressed values -- and votes -- of the vast majority of Canadians. At the pinnacle of this stage of Canadian democracy in the early 1970s there was a virtual consensus on the part all three federal parties about the direction of the country. This was not a conspiracy. It was democracy as it should be.

All of these elements of Canadian political culture were the result of a democratic imperative. All the polling on these government programs and the social equality they promote suggests at least three quarters of Canadians still support an activist role for government in the interests of community, not to mention the viability of families.

- Barbara Yaffe gives far too much credence to the spin that the Cons faced some "bitter experience" in trying to pass legislation in previous minority Parliaments. So let's ask once again: what on their current legislative agenda couldn't they have passed (with at most some minor amendments) when the Libs were holding their fire over a period of several years?

- Meanwhile, Duncan Cameron highlights the Cons' strategy of insulting Quebec for fun and perceived political gain.

- But as Frances Russell notes, that may just be overcompensation for the Cons taking Canada's sad history of capitulation to the U.S. to new depths.