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 e don't
often look to Canada for inspiring leadership. But Jim Flaherty
— the finance minister of Ontario, its largest and wealthiest
province — is poised to make his constituency a model of smaller
government and respect for individual freedom.
Flaherty is
running to succeed premier Mike Harris at the helm of Ontario's
governing Progressive Conservative party in the party's leadership
election on March 23. His full-bodied, conservative platform of
tax cuts, privatization, and school choice has set the agenda for
the contest, and won him important momentum against party-brass
candidate and early front-runner Ernie Eves. Eves is a former Harris
finance minister who left politics last year for a lucrative position
with Credit Suisse First Boston.
(The Ontario
Progressive Conservative party is not to be confused with its more
centrist and much less successful federal counterpart, which, through
its continuing rivalry with the right-wing Canadian Alliance party
— formerly the Reform party — has fatally split the conservative
vote in Canada at the federal level.)
Harris, who
won consecutive majority votes in the 1995 and 1999 provincial elections,
announced his retirement last fall. His Common Sense Revolution
— which featured a 30 percent provincial income-tax cut, a
22-percent welfare cut, mandatory work for welfare, balanced-budget
legislation, and the repeal of the previous government's affirmative-action
legislation — contributed to an economic boom after a decade
of socialist and semi-socialist rule by the New Democratic and Liberal
parties. Since 1995, Ontario's economy has created 824,200 new jobs;
602,000 people have been removed from the welfare rolls; and take-home
pay has increased by 20 percent. An appalling annual budget deficit
of more than $10 billion (roughly $7 billion USD in 1995) has been
eliminated, with most taxpayers getting $200 rebate checks in 2000.
All this was
achieved in what the multiculturalists celebrate as one of the most
diverse societies on the planet. (Toronto and its suburbs are home
to about half the population of the province; half of Toronto's
population were born outside of Canada.) Canada's astonishingly
smug chattering classes, who insisted that Ontarians would flatly
reject the Common Sense Revolution manifesto, were proved spectacularly
wrong.
The pace of
reform has slowed dramatically in recent years, however, and in
that time the Liberals — under Dalton McGuinty — have
gained a wide margin over the Conservatives in public-opinion polls.
For the most part, the five candidates seeking to replace Harris
are rejecting his successful strategy in the last two elections
and staking out positions closer to the political center.
Flaherty, however,
is having none of it, and through a campaign of bold speeches and
skillfully timed policy statements has transformed the leadership
election from an Eves coronation to a contest for the heart and
soul of the party. Eves has maintained the serene composure of the
frontrunner, relying on his close, 20-year friendship with premier
Harris to cast himself as the heir apparent — even while distancing
himself from the Common Sense Revolution and courting "moderate"
country-club Conservatives.
But recent
events have exposed the folly of Eves' expedient, policy-free campaign.
Flaherty's commanding performance in the February 27 leadership
debate — the only one of the six debates to be televised province-wide
— was widely acknowledged as a major victory. As Toronto
Star columnist Ian Urquhart remarked, "On issue after issue
— education, privatization, homelessness — it was Flaherty
grabbing center stage, both literally and figuratively." The
Toronto Sun's Christina Blizzard wrote that Flaherty "managed
to pull off a remarkable performance. He took control of the show.
He was almost like a traffic cop, directing the others."
More dramatic
still, in a speech to the Toronto Board of Trade on March 5, premier
Harris — apparently disgusted with the centrist posturing of
most of the candidates — broke his silence on the race and
defended his record, warning his would-be successors against "passive
mediocrity." "As a leader," Harris said, "you
should question everything that is presented to you. Revisit every
preconceived assertion, take on every sacred cow, play devil's advocate,
think outside the box."
National
Post reporter Robert Benzie said that Harris's "address
appeared to be a veiled attack on Ernie Eves," and "sounded
like a tacit endorsement of Jim Flaherty." The Globe and
Mail's Graeme Smith agreed: "By accusing his current and
former colleagues of losing faith with the party's conservative
agenda, Mr. Harris' comments were widely interpreted as a show of
support for his aggressively right-wing Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty."
Polls of the
general public have consistently placed Eves well in the lead, but
some more recent surveys of the 100,000 Conservative party members
who will be eligible to vote in the leadership election suggest
that he has lost most of his advantage, and that Flaherty is gaining
on him rapidly.
Princeton-educated
Flaherty first caught the attention of grassroots conservatives
with his unexpected announcement in last year's budget of a $3,500
($2,300 USD) per-child tax credit for parents who send their children
to independent schools. The measure, according to Laura Swartley
of the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation for School Choice,
is the most generous education tax credit in North America. It alone
has won Flaherty the support of social conservatives and minority
religious groups.
(Despite the
statist prejudice against independent schools in Canada, the country
is actually more open than the United States to education-choice
initiatives on one crucial point: Canada's constitution contains
no church-state separation clause. In fact, the British North America
Act establishing confederation in 1867 enshrined state-supported
minority religious education rights, a crucial element of the deal
between then-Catholic Quebec and then-Protestant Ontario.)
Flaherty's
leadership campaign platform, which has energized party members
across the province, is intended to complete the Common Sense Revolution.
It includes legislation to require that 50 percent of future surpluses
go to paying down the debt and that the other 50 percent be rebated
to taxpayers, and also mandates: a 25 percent reduction in the number
of government ministries; the sale of the provincial liquor monopoly
and TVOntario; elimination of the personal income surtax and capital
taxes for businesses; paycheck protection for union members; a limit
on welfare eligibility for at two years out of every five; the designation
of education as an essential service, in order to prevent teacher
strikes; and the moving of homeless people off the streets and into
shelters, hospitals, or crisis-intervention centers — or, as
a last resort in extreme cases, to jail for the night.
This last policy
in particular has been greeted with howls of outrage from the usual
suspects, but Flaherty's readiness to defend it with confidence
has earned him respect as an honest and serious leader. In its lead
editorial on February 18, the National Post remarked, "Mr.
Flaherty's policy shows he understands homelessness better than
most and is principled enough to argue for measures that, however
far removed from the orthodox egalitarian view, would do the poorest
stratum of society the most good."
Flaherty has
also managed to deal with the potentially explosive topics of abortion
and gay rights without raising the ire of any interest groups. He
implemented a court-ordered same-sex benefits bill as attorney general
in 1999, so the gay lobby has nothing against him; but since the
bill was dictated to the government by the courts, it has not cost
him significant support among pro-family activists. He is unapologetically
pro-life, and since he is the only pro-life candidate in the race
has attracted some support on this score; since he has made no significant
promises on the issue, however, he also has not been attacked by
the pro-choicers.
Flaherty's
policies and frankness have also revealed the politically correct
vacuity of the other leadership candidates. Eves stirred up a tempest
when he said he fears the education tax credit will help religious
schools that "teach hatred." Environment minister Elizabeth
Witmer called Flaherty's homelessness policy "absolutely disgusting"
and "inhumane," and health minister Tony Clement labeled
it "Dickensian" — but neither offered any alternatives
for helping the homeless beyond sentiment and the status quo.
This being
Canada, however, even Flaherty has vowed not to break the province's
monopoly on health care. He promises to improve the system —
which even some socialists admit is crumbling — by eliminating
waiting lists for cancer treatment within five years. (Yes, waiting
lists for cancer treatment. This is the system Americans
are supposed to be envying.)
Whatever happens
on March 23, members of the party will now be making a clear choice.
As Flaherty put it in a speech on January 30, "I represent
the school of thought that says Conservatives win when we sound
and act like Conservatives, because if we are Tories wrapped in
Liberal clothing, people will elect Liberals. Ernie [Eves] and I
personify the choice that lies before our party: the choice between
moving forward with the Mike Harris agenda, or moving backwards
and undoing the gains we have worked so hard to make."
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