Once Stephen Harper unveiled his cabinet choices, the media and public reaction understandably focused on two controversial selections, the floor-crossing David Emerson and the unelected Michael Fortier. While they demonstrate a breathtaking degree of hypocrisy, these two selections have served to distract attention from a wider survey of the shape of the new government.
Despite the two missteps, Harper continues to carefully manage the image of the party, choosing to overlook many long-serving western MPs from the Reform wing of the party. He is desperate to broaden the appeal of his party across the country, particularly in Québec. Still, Harper clearly felt it necessary to include a significant social conservative contingent within his cabinet. Finally, Harper is, above all else, a hardcore free-market conservative or neoliberal and his caucus reflects that priority.
Long-time Reform Party supporters must have been shocked to realize that the new cabinet has as many links to Brian Mulroney as to Preston Manning. Ministers Rob Nicholson (House Leader, Democratic Reform), Jean-Pierre Blackburn (Labour) and Greg Thompson (Veteran Affairs) were all MPs under Mulroney. The new Government Leader in the Senate, Marjory LeBreton is a confidante of Mulroney and a long-time Progressive Conservative Party insider. Once you add Derek Burney, Hugh Segal and Mulroney himself on the transition team along with Michael Wilson as the new ambassador to the USA, you’ve got serious flashbacks to the Progressive Conservative government that first spawned the Reform Party reaction in the west.
The only former Reform MPs in cabinet, beside Harper, are Monte Solberg (Citizenship and Immigration), Chuck Stahl (Agriculture) and Gary Lunn (Natural Resources). This leaves twenty veteran MPs who got their start during the Manning years (elected in 1993 or 1997) on the Conservative backbenches.
If this wasn’t enough to cause some unease in Alberta, Harper appointed nine ministers from Ontario, five from Québec and only three from Alberta. Having elected ten MPs from Québec, Harper appointed four of them to cabinet and is adding the unelected Michael Fortier to the Senate and cabinet. While Blackburn is a holdover from the Mulroney years, the new Québec ministers are not well known especially outside of Québec.
From 1985 to 1999, Michael Fortier (Public Works) practiced law with Ogilvy Renault, the same firm at which Mulroney currently hangs his hat. More recently, he has been an investment banker with Crédit Suisse First Boston and TD Securities. Politically, he was president of the Progressive Conservatives in the 90’s and ran for the leadership in 1998. During his leadership campaign he advocated private health clinics and merger discussions with the Canadian Alliance. In 2004, he served as co-chair of Stephen Harper’s campaign to lead the new Conservative Party of Canada. He was CPC campaign co-chair in 2004 and 2006.
Lawrence Cannon (Transport) was an aide to Robert Bourassa in the early 1970s, became a Member of the National Assembly in 1985 and Minister of Communications from 1991 to 1994. In 1990, he worked on the Sheila Copps campaign for the federal Liberal leadership. In 1994, Cannon left politics and became a vice-president of the telecom company Unitel. Under Harper’s proposed conflict of interest rules, such a move would not be acceptable. More recently he has been involved in local politics.
Josée Verner, the new Minister of International Cooperation and the Minister for La Francophonie and Official Languages, also worked as an aide to Robert Bourassa. However, in the 2003 provincial election campaign she campaigned for the right-wing Action Démocratique du Québec (ADQ).
Maxime Bernier (Industry) is a lawyer who once worked as an aide to Parti Québécois Finance Minister Bernard Landry. He then served on the executive of Standard Life Assurance. More recently, he was vice-president of the Montreal Economic Institute, Québec’s version of the Fraser Institute. The wealthy and powerful Desmarais family is said to be a financial benefactor of the institute and Hélène Desmarais, who is the wife of Paul Desmarais Jr., also sits on its board of directors. Bernier advocates a flat tax and as a supporter of a greater private sector role in healthcare, he welcomed the Supreme Court decision in the Chaoulli case.
For Reform party supporters the most promising (and to many on the left, the most disconcerting) aspect of the new cabinet was the prominent positions given to rabid social conservatives like Stockwell Day (Public Safety) and Vic Toews (Justice and Attorney General). Harper is not part of the social conservative wing of the party but his appointment of Toews to Justice is a bold and dangerous step. Toews is well known for his law and order approach and reactionary social views. In all, there appears to be nine outspoken social conservatives (anti-abortion, anti-same sex marriage) in cabinet: Day, Toews, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl, Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Monte Solberg, Minister for Democratic Reform Rob Nicholson, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn and National Revenue Minister Carol Skelton. At the same time, some prominent social conservatives, including Alberta MPs Jason Kenney and Diane Ablonczy, did not make the cut. On the other hand, Jim Prentice and some of the new comers to caucus and cabinet, including Cannon, Verner, Emerson and John Baird are liberals (in relative terms) on social issues.
In terms of relations with the First Nations, the selection of Jim Prentice as Minister for Indian Affairs has some Native groups cautiously optimistic since he does not share the reactionary views of Harper advisor Tom Flanagan. During the early 1990s, Prentice served on the executive of the federal Progressive Conservative Party. In 2003, he ran for the leadership of the PCs advocating a merger with the Canadian Alliance. During the election campaign Solberg attacked the Kelowna agreement between the First Ministers’ and Native groups, but Prentice supported it.
Even if the inclusion of the social conservatives is alarming, the real story for the new government is the prominent role given to a group of fiscal conservatives from Ontario. There are only five women among the twenty-seven cabinet ministers and they hold relatively minor positions. The main players in cabinet appear to be a group of experienced male politicians with hard-right, neoliberal track records. Coinciding with the on-going inquiry into killing of Dudley George, the new federal cabinet marks the ominous return to political power of three members of the “Common Sense Revolution” regime in Ontario. Jim Flaherty (Finance), John Baird (Treasury Board) and Tony Clement (Health) take on central positions in the new government. All three are committed right-wing ideologues. The Harris regime blazed a path of destruction across Ontario and these three cabinet ministers certainly played their part, particularly when it came to poor-bashing and privatization.
Flaherty twice ran for the leadership of the Ontario Conservatives (in 2002 and 2004) and was perceived as too right-wing to lead the party. Now he occupies the most powerful seat in the federal cabinet. His provincial legacy provides a cautionary tale. As Attorney General, Flaherty declared war on squeegee kids and the homeless with the Safe Streets Act. During one of his leadership campaigns, he proposed making homelessness illegal and sending the homeless to jail. As Finance Minister, he introduced the private school tax credit.
Clement was a key player in the battle to shift the Ontario PCs from the centre-right party of Bill Davis to the hard-right during the late 1980s and early 90s. Later, he was actively involved in ‘unite-the-right’ initiatives during the late-90s and beyond. As Ontario’s Transportation Minister during the 1999 strike by TTC workers, Clement admonished Torontonians for being too dependent on public transportation. As Health Minister, he supported private clinics and P3 hospitals. When the SARS crisis hit Toronto in 2003, Clement expressed surprise at the shortage of nurses and the casualization of their working conditions.
During his time as Minister of Community and Social Services, Baird oversaw the province’s workfare system and the government’s costly and incompetent deal with Andersen Consulting to restructure the department’s computer system. He introduced drug-testing for social assistance recipients, a welfare fraud line and a lifetime ban for welfare fraud. In 2001, such reforms contributed to the death of Kimberly Rogers who died while under house arrest for collecting social assistance and student loans at the same time. Baird was Energy Minister at the time of the 2003 Toronto blackout.
Before his stint in the Liberal cabinet, David Emerson (International Trade) was the President and CEO of Canfor Corporation. Previously he had bounced back and forth between the public and private sectors, including posts as the president and CEO of Western and Pacific Bank of Canada, the head of the Vancouver International Airport Authority, the deputy minister of finance and the deputy minister to the premier of British Columbia.
The new Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor is a former General and worked as military lobbyist with Hill & Knowlton until 2004 when he was first elected. He even lobbied for Airbus on a contract for military transport planes that he will now play a leading role in judging. While Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay plays the role of diplomatic red Tory à la Joe Clark in the Mulroney years, O’Connor will be pushing for a more aggressive and expanded military role for Canada including Canadian participation in the American missile defence project.
Rona Ambrose, self-described as a libertarian and avid reader of Ayn Rand, gained a cabinet post as Environment Minister ahead of many other more experienced Alberta MPs. She has previously worked on intergovernmental affairs for the Alberta government. She will place a leading role in defining the government’s position toward the Kyoto Accord.
Diane Finley (Human Resources and Social Development) previously worked for Canadian Medical Response, Canada’s largest private ambulance service company. She was also actively involved with The Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships. Having attacked the Liberal child care proposals during the campaign, she now becomes the minister responsible for the Conservative plan.
Bev Oda becomes Heritage Minister. She is a former commissioner with the CRTC and vice-president at CTV. Her strong ties with, and fund-raising support from, the private sector players does not bode well for the future of the CBC.
Stephen Harper is an ideologically committed neoliberal. He does not want to waste his mandate as Prime Minister by not introducing significant neoliberal reforms. At the same time, he realizes that to have room to manoeuvre he is going to need a majority government. That will require some patience and pragmatism in the short-term. He is trying to appease his core supporters while reaching out to new constituencies, particularly in Québec. The extent to which Harper is trying to resurrect the Mulroney coalition of western social conservatives, Ontario business interests and conservative Québec nationalists is striking. Harper hopes that a law and order agenda and some free votes on social issues and will appease the social conservatives in the caucus while not scaring off mainstream voters. Even with large budgetary surpluses to work with, the combination of lowering the GST and addressing the fiscal imbalance may require his neoliberal Finance Minister to introduce significant program cuts. The federal state and civil service, already under dramatic attack during the Chrétien-Martin years, face even further downsizing.•
| Relay #10: March/April 2006 | ^ Back to Top ^ |