Fiscal Conservatism

Via the Toronto Star:

OTTAWA—As Conservatives prepare to recall Parliament, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is setting the stage for a clampdown on federal government spending under the newly elected government, that would include cutting the public service by 80,000 — or one-third.

The Conservatives now have the power to cut spending to bring down the deficit, says Flaherty, a message that could foreshadow a round of deep cuts to services and programs in coming years.

I've made my own opinions clear on the causes of Canada's current fiscal deficit; a combination of tax cuts and the recession has pushed Canada into a sea of red ink.  Not surprising the Tories' solution to fixing this rather fixable problem is to choose austerity by axing a third of the entire civil service.  The Tories are arguing that they want to concentrate on the economy by focusing specifically on the deficit; yet spending reductions, especially the kind of hardcore austerity that results from hacking apart a third of the civil service, are only going to add further downward pressure on the Canadian economy.  Precisely as the British Conservatives have done and experienced across the pond.  This increases the likelihood of a double dip recession and will only serve to depress revenues and increase outlays through social spending programs such as EI, widening the deficit in the process.

The Conservatives aren't stupid, they know that this is the case.  Which leads us to another matter, which is the intentional underfunding of the public sector with the purpose of undermining the welfare state.  If you can't simply destroy the Canadian Pension Plan, Medicare or Employment Insurance through direct legislation (this would be political suicide), then why not underfund and under-staff them so they are indirectly denied the ability to preform the services to which they are intended?

Quoting Mrs. Ducharme, national executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada:

“If we went back to the 1990s, the federal government cut around 45,000 jobs, and they realized pretty quickly that they didn’t have the people to actually do the work that Canadians expect.”

She said the people who suffer in this scenario are those most dependent on government services such as immigrants, the unemployed, pensioners and military veterans.

“I think this government really needs to stop and think through some of their ideas before they, quite honestly, destroy the public service and services that are expected, needed and delivered as part of everyone’s day-to-day lives,” Ducharme said.

 They did think it through, which is why they're doing what they're doing.

Could American-Style Supreme Court Struggles Come to Canada?

Kirk Makin says that with now two vacant positions on the Supreme Court, that Harper has the opportunity to entrench a conservative majority:

In an opinion piece he wrote for The Globe and Mail in 2000, in which Mr. Harper explained why he was trying to have a federal election law overturned by the courts, he offhandedly endorsed criticisms of so-called activist judges: “Yes, I share many of the concerns of my colleagues and allies about biased ‘judicial activism’ and its extremes. I agree that serious flaws exist in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that there is no meaningful review or accountability mechanisms for Supreme Court justices.”

While Judge Charron was conservative when it came to criminal justice issues and the Charter, Judge Binnie, a skilled jurist in every area of the law, was one of the few liberal voices on the court.

The notion of a liberal bloc forming is quickly moving out of reach. Legal experts believe that Madam Justice Rosalie Abella, the only left-leaning judge on the court, is now doomed to perpetually find herself on the wrong end of 8-1 court decisions.

If there's anything to be learned from the efforts of conservatives in the United States, it is that they are more than willing to play the long game of using judicial bodies such as the Supreme Court and lower courts as a means of entrenching and institutionalizing conservatism into the very fabric of the state.  Harper's previous complaints about 'judicial activism' is classic rhetoric pulled directly from the play book of conservatives in the States.  Conservatives attack the courts as 'activist' in the sense that they use constitutional documents as precedents to expand civil rights to individuals or groups; this was the case in regards to same-sex marriage where they were expanded exclusively by judicial rulings across the country.  Yet conservatives find little wrong with judicial decisions favorable to their interpretations which have absolutely no precedent in tradition or legal statute.  In the United States this happened with Citizens United v Federal Election Commission which overturned the McCain-Feingold Act and paved the way to a massive influx of corporate money into American politics; in particular the campaigns of conservative Republicans.

If anything can be gleamed from progressives' stances on the court in the United States, it is that inaction or ignorance to the intent and actions of conservatives regarding judicial appointments is a colossal mistake that can lead to enormous political defeats.  Progressives in Canada can not allow themselves to merely think that prior traditions regarding the Supreme Court are going to hold firm in this country, especially with a modern conservative movement intent on denying the left the capability to enact any significant social change in the future.

In a significant way the strategy of using institutions such as the judicial courts as mechanisms of institutionalizing conservatism is similar to conservatives' position on the Canadian Senate.  The intent isn't to 'bring democracy' to the 'Other Place'.  It is designed to strengthen a veto point on future legislation drafted by a theoretical left-wing House of Commons, through entrenching conservative Senators into a position where they can block or diminish the strength and relevance of progressive legislation permanently.  It is a long game that progressives must be aware of, lest they end up forced to fight from behind.