Looking North
Election time in Canada.

By David Curtin, a freelance writer in Toronto
March 18, 2002 9:55 a.m.

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."