In case you missed the news, American conservatives are looking to Canada for inspiration these days. Specifically, they like how we handle our finances, manage our natural resources, lower taxes and address wasteful spending.
That, at least, is the word from David Wilkins, the U.S. ambassador to Canada under President George W. Bush. Wilkins, who hails from South Carolina and hews to the right side of the Republican party, knows a conservative when he sees one.
Which is how he has declared — no, disclosed — that Canada is a nation of conservatives. “Canada has a lot to teach us,” he says. “Canada is a shining example that conservatism works.”
Behold, then, the new northern redoubt of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley. As Wilkins tells it, Canada’s Conservatives are the envy of America’s conservatives.
Unfortunately, Wilkins is wrong about Canada. Like his endorsement of the buffoonish Rick Perry for the presidency in 2012 and his misplaced confidence in the early approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, his judgment is off, once again.
Perhaps he was playing to the crowd at the Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa. It’s easy to get carried away among the true believers who had gathered, as Preston Manning put it, to reflect and not just “to self-congratulate ourselves.”
But congratulation seems to be what Wilkins is offering. He seems to be celebrating Canada’s embrace of the right — unless he has always thought that was our true nature.
It’s unlikely, though, that he felt that Canadians were so conservative when he arrived in Ottawa in 2005 to find the Liberals in power.
Still, this son of South Carolina kept his personal views to himself, which was a testament to his professionalism. As a devout Christian and a southern conservative, he could not have liked Canada’s acceptance of gay marriage, abortion, no-fault divorce, open immigration, universal health care and opposition to capital punishment.
While Wilkins was an able envoy — representing an unpopular president, tending the commercial relationship and playing the innocent — he never seemed to get Canada.
It is true that Canada has exhibited an admirable fiscal prudence, but it is less conservative than practical. Moreover, it was the Liberals, not the Conservatives, who tackled Canada’s crippling deficit in 1995.
Indeed, what distinguishes Stephen Harper’s Conservatives is how, in so many ways, they resemble Jean Chrétien’s Liberals — they have done what they thought was necessary to sustain prosperity: cutting taxes, firing public servants, cancelling programs, developing the oilsands, building pipelines.
Both parties have tried to balance the budget with prudence. That’s why the Conservatives have been running deficits since 2008, however philosophically uncomfortable for them.
It is true that Canada is governed by the Conservative party, which has dropped “Progressive” from its name and tilted to the right on global warming and domestic crime, while celebrating the military and embracing the monarchy. The reality remains that the Conservatives are conservative only on the margins.
That’s because they know their limits. This is a country in which Albertans have rejected Wildrose, Quebecers have elected (secessionist) social democrats and the New Democrats are the official Opposition in Ottawa.
This country is pragmatic and progressive; it leans left and right by turns but usually straddles the radical centre. The Conservatives know that to challenge this moderate consensus would be foolish.
Canada, the conservative kingdom? That’s about as credible as President Perry.
Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University.
