Conservative Domestic Policy Reform in US and Canada

Reihan Salaam sets out an attractive domestic agenda for the Republicans here. Everywhere and always the biggest villains are tax expenditures. Next are cost-plus gummint contracts (and disguised cost-plus contracts). The right sometimes views the first as tax cuts and the second as being friendly to business. It needs to realize that tax expenditures are just welfare and cost-plus contracts are corporate welfare.

The Pithlord's not against a welfare state, but of course we have problems with affordability, especially in healthcare and moral hazard, especially in income support. A bad way to reform is just to means-test everything, since that effectively makes for punitive marginal tax rates on the working poor. The better way is to impose deductibles and then co-payments, which could be means tested. The welfare state needs to think more like an insurance company.

Why Constitutional Monarchy Rocks

There are a lot of Yglesias-haters in the comment box, but I would like to point out that he makes a damn good case for constitutional monarchy.

There is glamour in power. That's an irreducible fact about human nature. But democratic politicians shouldn't have access to that glamour.

Also, for some purposes, we need someone who can make gestures on behalf of the nation. Active politicians can't sensibly do that, because about half the population (give or take) hates their guts.

Unfortunately, Yglesias is too sanguine about actual Canadian practice. Liberals don't understand the monarchy, and have spent a lot of time trying to undermine it, so it isn't as unifying as one would hope. Quebec can't really get into it. And first ministers want the glamour, for the very reason they shouldn't have it, so they try to marginalize those in possession of vice-regal authority.

The crazy thing is that people who should know better think the vice regents are a bigger threat to democracy than the desire of the Prime Minister's Office to presidentialize our system.

Bottom line: You should totally be allowed to call the premier or prime minister "dude."

What Bugs Me About Michael Ignatieff: A Study in The Argument Ad Hominem

Robin Hanson of "Overcoming Bias" thinks "signalling theory" can tell us something about the left, particularly the wealthy, "post-materialist" left.

Signalling theory arises out of a paradox of game theory. It is often in our short-term self-interest to have a reputation for not always acting in our short-term self-interest. If people think my word is my bond (i.e., I will make sacrifices to fulfill my promises), then they will enter into transactions with me that they otherwise wouldn't and I'll be better off. If people think I am vengeful (i.e., I will make sacrifices to punish those who wrong me), they will avoid harming me when they otherwise would, and so on. From an evolutionary standpoint, the future benefit of having a reputation for doing such things is the explanation for why we have apparently unself-interested emotions in the first place. The trouble is that reputations for generosity, fair-dealing, vengefulness and so on are costly to acquire. So we are built (by generations of natural selection) with an aptitude for cheating: we try to get these reputations on the cheap. These mechanisms can be unconscious, and usually are, since if you can't fool yourself you are unlikely to fool anyone else. Other people are endowed by natural selection with a motive to pierce through my signalling strategies: I'm not.

Which is where politics comes in beautifully. Political opinions, at least in bourgeois democracies, don't cost us much, if anything. But they can signal (for instance) that we deeply care about the poor, a reputation it is useful to have, without requiring charitable contributions, which can put a dint in one's lifestyle (and therefore other possible status-seeking strategies). The right sees this, if the left does not, and calls on leftists to "do good at your own expense." That's Hanson's theory anyway.

Of course, a reputation for compassion is not the only kind of reputation that can be cheaply bought with political opinions. We, especially men, want a reputation for toughness and clear-headedness. We could get this by risking our bodies, but it is more convenient to get it by advocating muscular foreign policies. The left sees this, if the right does not: hence the "chicken hawk" argument which Dick Cheney and George W. Bush never liked very much: "Prove your manliness at your own risk."

Neither critique is strictly relevant to policy questions. A social program might still do more good than it offsets in charitable donations, even if advocating it provides cheap psychological benefits, and the same is true of a military intervention. But these critiques at least have the merit of dissolving the aura of virtue (whether soft or hard) that floats around arguments for "doing something".

Which gets me to Ignatieff, and the larger tradition of Pearsonian activism he has inherited. What bugs me about him is that he employs the signalling strategies of both the domestic left AND the international right, AND then leverages the contrarianness of doing both simultaneously into a reputation for "thoughtfulness." He's strong but sensitive. That would be appealing if Canada needed a boyfriend, but not if it is seeking a mere adviser to Her Majesty on matters pertaining to the federal government.

Meet the New Boss

The first thing the Democratic Party does with undivided power is ignore international law and commit the United States to the course of a unilateralist rogue nation.

I figured this would happen, which was why I held out for divided government until I finally had to accept that McCain just didn't take public policy seriously.

Well, if it passes, I hope we just high tail it out of Kandahar in less than a month. If America's going to treat its allies like this, it doesn't deserve any.

Update: Reason has a post on Canadian hypocrisy.

"Not Necessarily Coalition, But Coalition if Necessary"

What do you think, faithful readers? Do I have a future as an Ignatieff speechwriter?

First Snapshot of Public Opinion

And it's divided, presumably along partisan lines.

That supports my view that Harper should concentrate on substance, not on how unfair it all is. We will see tonight.

What Should the Governor General Do?

That's easier.

She should give Harper any recess he wants ("proroguation" sp?).

She should not give him a new election ("dissolution". I know how to spell that one.)

What Should Harper Do?

Clearly, the NDP/Liberals are taking a perilous step. It is justified, if at all, by a sense that the Government has not taken the economic crisis seriously. The merits of taxpayer-subsidized political parties or bans on public sector strikes aside, no one thinks these are sensible responses to what ought to be the government's biggest priority. Harper should not have reappointed Flaherty as Finance Minister, but should have chosen someone broadly respected, like Prentice.

Harper's only chance now is to make his case about the appropriate response to the crisis. He needs to wonk out. If he swings public opinion in his direction, a few opposition MPs may get cold feet at the last minute, and he may survive. But even if the government goes down, it would be better to go down over something substantive than over process criticisms about legitimacy.

The heart of the analysis is traditional Keynesianism. We face a massive shock to aggregate demand. Normally, the Bank of Canada could address this shock just by reducing interest rates. That's better than dealing with it through fiscal measures because it doesn't leave a legacy of debt for future generations.

However, right now, governments can borrow unusually cheaply and monetary policy cannot do any more good. So we need to use fiscal policy. If the money is used for investments that pay off at better than the rate at which the government can borrow, then future generations will be better off as well.

The trouble is that emergency injections of public money tend to be spent badly. Here is where the Tories have an advantage. The public will be skeptical that a coalition between Dion's Liberals and the NDP will spend money well.

The agenda set out by the Coalition hardly sets those fears to rest. Do we want the CAW dictating how "strategic investments" in the automotive, manufacturing and forestry sectors are going to be spent? The Coalition program states aid will be "contingent on a plan to transform these industries and return them to profitability and sustainability." That is the most remarkable expression of hope in government planning I have seen in a long time. The League for Social Reconstruction lives.

The Coalition program is fundamentally incoherent, since it blames the federal government's deficit position on "the policy choices of the Conservative government", but also embraces "stimulus" -- which necessarily means increased deficit financing. I agree that bigger deficits are necessary, but it doesn't make sense to simultaneously criticize the Tories for too small and too large a deficit.

Increasing the supply of housing is got to be the craziest proposal for dealing with a popped housing bubble I have ever seen. The Coalition also makes as one of its dozen point a purely ideological insistence on ramming the Canadian Wheat Board and Supply Management down the throats of unwilling farmers.

Note the Preamble reference to "Canadians and Quebeckers". Presumably the plan is to develop a clean energy source from PET rolling in his grave.

Infrastructure investments are a good idea in principle, but there are practical limits to how quickly they can be "accelerated." Government tendering rules, made more complex by the Accountability Act, mean that new infrastructure takes a long time.

*The first priority should be ensuring that the provinces have enough money to maintain their spending programs. Provinces spend better than the federal government does. The last thing we want is pro-cyclic spending cuts by cash-strapped provincial governments. The Tories should propose a short-term boost in transfers to make sure this doesn't happen. If the feds have to borrow the money, that's fine, since they can borrow cheaply.

*The Tories should also propose more generous matching-fund programs for municipal and provincial infrastructure spending. That injects money without going through the sclerotic federal process. The Coalition appears to want federal control over municipal infrastructure.

*We should get money into the hands of the citizens. Make all federal tax credits refundable, and temporarily increase them.

We don't know how long the global downturn will last or how hard Canada will be hit. It makes sense to think through longer-run federal infrastructure programs, like a high-speed rail link between Toronto and Montreal. God forbid, we may have to partially nationalize the financial institutions -- the Tories have set up the legislative authority to do this.

Panicking now may reduce our scope for maneuver later.

The Leaders' Debate

Recycling what I posted on Andy's site:

I just heard part of the leaders' debate on the radio driving my daughter back and forth from choir practice (and over her loud complaints about choice of radio station). My impression was that Harper and Layton did best. Next time, the Liberal Party should consider that reasonable facility in English is an important asset in a national leader especially since they seem destined to be shut out of Quebec.

On the substance, I thought Harper dealt pretty well with corporate taxes/income trusts and Afghanistan. However, I thought Layton had a good point that it is outrageous that he is going to the voters without any program at all. I worry about rewarding that kind of behaviour.

One commitment he made struck me as just as foolish as never taxing income trusts. He seemed to say that the federal government would run a surplus no matter what happens with the financial crisis. Herbert Hoover lives. Fortunately, Harper's past record means we can rely on the fact he will break this commitment in a minute when it becomes necessary.

Who Should Win the Election?

I am a bit on the fence. (My actual voting behaviour is already determined, since I think my local MP, who is a Liberal, is a mensch and ought to be re-elected.)

Harper is right on Afghanistan. He probably ultimately has good impulses on economics, although I have seen scant evidence of it in the last 3 years. Arguably, the Liberals would grow government more. Certainly, there is a risk of a unionized, one-size-fits-all universal daycare program, which is immeasurably worse than Harper's baby bonus. Harper should also get credit for selling a symetrically decentralized federation to the soft nationalists in Quebec.

On the other hand, Dion's plans are actually broadly economically sound. He wants to shift taxation to negative externalities which is good both for Pigovian reasons and because the long-run elasticity of demand means it will shrink the tax take. Harper's GST cut was unwise.

Finally, the election call itself is such a cynical breach-of-promise that I can't help but hope it backfires.

But while I hope that the Liberals win a plurality, I don't expect it. My prediction is the Conservatives back with an increased plurality, based primarily on gains in Quebec, but no majority. The Liberals will collapse in Quebec, and lose some ground to the NDP in their urban Anglo strongholds.

What Should the Governor General Do?

It is now universally acknowledged that Prime Minister Harper will soon ask the Governor General for a dissolution of Parliament. Patrick Monahan argued in the Globe on Saturday that when he does, she has no choice but to give it to him. I think this is wrong. She should accept his resignation, but she should not dissolve Parliament until M. Dion has been offered a chance to form a Ministry and meet Parliament and has either (a) refused the Governor General's invitation or (b) accepted, and then lost the confidence of the House or been denied supply.


The dissolution of Parliament is a Crown prerogative, vested in the Governor General by Letters Patent of George VI in 1947 ((reproduced in R.S.C. 1985, App. II, No. 31). Legally, she can dissolve Parliament or not at her wish. This power was retained by Bill C-16, which created fixed election dates, and indeed it was confirmed that the dissolution of Parliament was 'at the Governor General's discretion."


Of course, responsible government implies the convention that -- in general -- she will only exercise her powers at the "advice" of the Prime Minister. The extensive legal powers of an appointed Governor General are only acceptable in a democracy because she almost never uses them.


However, as the King-Byng and Whitlam-Kerr crises show, and as the Supreme Court of Canada recognized in the Patriation Reference, the general rule that the Governor General must do what the Prime Minister says (whether or not she agrees) is subject to limits. Democratic legitimacy and responsible government are the basis for the rule, but they are also the basis for exceptions. It is only because the Prime Minister presumably enjoys the confidence of the House that the Governor General should listen to her, rather than to someone else.


If Mr. Harper tells Mme. Jean that Parliament is "unworkable", then that amounts to saying that he can't work it. He does not think he enjoys its confidence, at least if he wants to do what he feels he must. She has no business in going behind this statement. If the electorate think he is really motivated by a desire for a tactically-favourable election date, it is up to them to punish him.


However, by saying that he can't work with this Parliament, Harper also ceases to have the legitimacy of responsible government behind his "advice." If there is even a remote possibility that someone else can form a Ministry, then that person should be invited to do so. There are innumerable examples from before the modern party system calcified of Parliaments long outliving Ministries.


Before the fixed date amendments to the Elections Act, it could be argued that whether the failure of a Ministry implied the failure of Parliament was a matter of political judgment. Therefore, it was said, the Governor General should only disregard the Prime Minister's advice when it was clearly abusive (for instance, if it occurred very soon after the election). However, it seems to me that the fixed election date changes that. Parliaments are presumed not to fail until their time expires -- it is only if the Governor General has exhausted potential ministries that she should go to the people.


The Liberals have never had a chance to try to make this Parliament work. They could decide that it isn't in their interest to do so -- and if they did it would be harder for them to slam Harper politically for going sooner than Bill C-16 suggests is normal. Or they could bring forward a budget and legislation based on their green tax proposals and dare the (now) opposition to bring them down. But they should get the chance.

Confound Their Politicks

Ross Douthat defends the practice of asking politicians about their relationship to their flag pins, rather than their health care plans, thusly:

Or cast your mind further back, to 1992, and consider something as seemingly insubstantial as the controversy over Bill Clinton's draft-dodging - or something less substantial still, like the mini-controversy over Hillary (Rodham) Clinton's now-she-uses-it, now-she-doesn't approach to keeping, or not keeping, her maiden name. I think you can make a pretty strong case that Clinton's peculiarly Boomerish relationship to the military brass - the mix of suspicion, condescension and ignorance on both sides - had a more decisive impact on American foreign policy in the 1990s than, say, what Clinton-the-candidate said about China policy in the run-up to the '92 vote. And while there's a sense, obviously, in which nothing could be further from the actual work of governing than the question of whether the First Lady of the United States has her husband's last name, in hindsight I think that the mix of echt-feminist principle and political opportunism that Hillary displayed in her changing choice of last and middle names probably told us as much about her approach to politics than most of the speeches she gave in the course of the campaign against George H.W. Bush.

Douthat admits that it is pretty hard to reliably make these inferences, though, so I'm not sure what it proves. Still, it is hard to deny that people talk a lot about the "personality" of their politicians, although I doubt it has a big impact on voting behaviour.

Of course "personality" =! personality. I have known a few politicians, and have known a lot more people who know politicians. And one consistent result is that their personalities, as perceived by those who know them, bear no resemblence to their popular personas. Those the public think of as aloof aren't. Those the public think of as smart aren't. Those the public think of as nice aren't. I wouldn't go so far as to say there is a negative correlation between public persona and actual personality, but there is definitely a zero correlation.

On the other hand, there is actually a pretty strong correlation between election platform and what is implemented in office -- the reason we remember it otherwise is because the exception is more prominent mentally than the rule.

Ross's post just shows the benefit of constitutional monarchy. I don't doubt the existence of a hunger for a relationship with the persona of public figures, whether positive or negative. It just should be supplied by hereditary monarchs and their families, not by politicians who should be considered unglamorous professionals, like dentists. The increasingly-presidential style of Canadian politics shows how much we have lost as the Liberals have undermined the monarchy, but the recent US election does at least provide a warning of how much further there is to go.

We Have Nothing to Fear But FIRA Itself (2): The Tory Edition

Sigh. Just what we need in a global economic crisis. Stupid protectionism. This would never happen if Stephen Harper were Prime Minister.

Bastarache Resigns

Mr. Justice Bastarache has decided to call it quits. This gives the Tories the chance to fill the Atlantic seat on the Supreme Court.

The only reasonable candidate that the general public is likely to have heard of is Clyde Wells, and he seems like a highly contrarian choice for a Conservative government seeking to make inroads in Quebec. So I guess we will just have to see.

My "Racism" Problem and Ours

Post-modernism comes in for its share of ridicule on the Internet. And some of it is deserved: one should only read Jacques Lacan, for example, firmly understanding that most of the time he is pulling your leg. And while I am second to no one in demanding that the world recognize Mao as morally equivalent to Stalin and Hitler, when undergraduates respond to every normative or positive statement with "That's just their culture, man", I sympathize with the idea of having them spend some time doing farm labour.

But there was an important point underlying all of the bafflegab and French pseudo-profundity. While there is nothing inherently difficult about distinguishing a true proposition from a false one, propositions are made from concepts. And concepts are neither true nor false. As the pragmatists know, they are either useful or not useful. And as the pragmatists tended not to emphasize, something isn't just useful in general, it is useful for somebody who wants to do something. In other words, the process by which concepts arise and die is a political process. You don't refute a concept - you persuade people to abandon it.

Now, this persuasion can be more or less rational. For example, you could try to argue that the concept is useless and dangerous (taking for granted, of course, that your interlocutor shares some sense of what consequences are good and what are bad). Or you could get your interlocutor in a small room and start a chant, "Positivist conceptions of law are vacuous! Positivist conceptions of law are vacuous!" Other than the fact that no such persuasion exercise is one of pure logic, we can't necessarily say ahead of time what will and will not work.

All of which is prologue to the task I am going to undertake. I want to persuade you that the concept of "racism" is basically useless. That is distinct from persuading you that no one (or everyone) is or is not racist. I'm just saying that this language game no longer accomplishes what it once did, and we need to have a sounder sense of how to accomplish a civilized ethnic politics.

The trouble with "racism" as a concept is that it is an obstacle to clear thought on these matters. I also suspect that, as a concept, it will primarily be employed against the uneducated in general and disadvantaged minorities in particular. Once upon a time, racism may have been the tool of the man, but today "racism" is the tool of the man, man.

1. The first move is to point that racial/ethnic differences are profoundly important, politically and socially. This may be the most obvious thing anyone ever said, but the obvious is a good starting point when you are trying to bust the paradigm. Everywhere you go, ethnic groups entere into coalitions and struggles with each other to change the rules to their benefit.

2. And everywhere you go, ethnic groups do differently in the market (or under any set of neutral rules). That's because human capital is always built ethnically. Some may say that some ethnic groups have genetic advantages or disadvantages in building particular forms of human capital. That is unproven. What is indisputable is that different ethnic groups in fact have very different levels of human capital. Expropriate the Ismailis of Eastern Africa, force them into refugee camps, let them find a place with a halfway market economy and a generation later they will be richer than the locals. Do the same (but in a much milder way) to Australian Aborigines, and you have a perpetual nightmare. These differences may be entirely cultural, but they are nonetheless enduring and resistant to straightforward policy fixes.

3. Given #2, it follows that different ethnic groups do not have the same political interests. It also follows that there are potential economic gains from trade when they interact (it's called comparative advantage, man). But however nice it is to think that people could interact economically for mutual gain, people are not going to stop using politics to promote rules that work in their favour.

4. If it were possible to have a completely ethnically homogenous polity, it might resolve the problem of ethnic politics. However, it would give rise to all sorts of other self-interested coalitions whose power would be hard to overcome, and it would be culturally sterile (here is where I lose the paleos who will start complaining about ethnic food). Those of us who do not hail from Iceland unavoidably live in a multi-ethnic polity. Human nature being what it is, that means we are going to have conflict. However, it is not beyond the realm of possibility to manage this conflict in a way that means we still gain from the possibility of ethnic competition and economic co-operation.

5. The problems faced by ethnic groups whose human capital does not get a big price on the market are not primarily caused by discrimination -- at least not in contemporary Canada and the United States. That's not to say that discrimination is non-existent or morally OK or anything. It's just to say that the big problem is the lack of human capital -- the lack of bourgeois habits, the lack of skills, etc. Since the days of the Moynihan report, it has become more or less possible to say this in the United States. Obama says it. It is still very diffilcult to say in Canada, at least if you care about your reputation.

6. But Canada has a serious problem arising in the next generation. Depending on the extent of white flight, aboriginals will be a majority or a very large minority in the Prairies very shortly. Public services for aboriginals are terrible. I live near an urban reserve. You can tell where the reserve is, because there are no sidewalks, even though the reserve borders on two arterial roads. The Building Code's writ does not run, and the addresses on the reserve's main road are not sequential. There are two schools in the area. One is diverse with kids from everywhere in the world. The other has Indian kids, and it would be considered child abuse by parents of any other ethnic group to allow your children to go there. Every day, I see sixteen year olds pushing strollers along the shoulder of the busy road, and just have to hope no one gets killed. And this is in a liberal city and undoubtedly one of the better run reserves.

7. There are no obvious answers to these problems, but if our public discourse can't get to the point the Moynihan report got to over thirty years ago, there aren't going to be any.

8. Political correctness on the subject of race is difficult to learn. You aren't going to pick it up at a reserve school where you'd be lucky to get basic arithmetic. I have no brief for David Ahenakew, but I see the Tories reaction as a harbinger of a future of right-wing political correctness (also on display in the whole Jeremiah Wright business). It will be highly insensitive and hurtful of any racial minority to advance its own interests in the political sphere. But we also won't point out how the political dynamics on the reserves are impoverishing the majority and enriching the elite.

9. It comes down to the problem with "racism" as a frame. It worked in the post-war world because it tied continuing de jure segregation to the defeated Nazis. But it ignored the reality that ethnocentrism is univeral and, in its mild forms, harmless. As long as Anglo hegemony could be taken as unthreatened, we could just say that all other groups are permitted their ethnocentrism and the burden should be given to the Anglos, since they run anything anyway. That was reasonable then, but it isn't going to continue to work.

10. To the extent the "racism" frame is taken seriously internationally, it makes sensible ethnic accommodation impossible. Malaysia worked out a decent compromise between the Malays and the Chinese by being "racist." Maybe it is time for that compromise to be rethought, but it was itself a good thing because it let a lot of people live and prosper who wouldn't otherwise have done so. The "racism" frame is completley useless in the Middle East, and has been one cause of recent Western stupidity there.

11. The better way to look at things is to accept the inevitability of ethnic politics, and then distinguish between bad negative-sum ethnic politics and good positive-sum ethnic politics.

To the extent I support Obama, it is because I think he is closer to realizing all this than most. That is the key political message of visiting Kenya in Dreams.

We Need to Stay in Afghanistan

The Manley Panel's report is pretty sensible. If Canada were to leave Kandahar, we would wrong those who trusted us, undermine our international reputation and provide a victory for al Qaeda and the Taliban. So we should stay. If we can guilt other NATO countries into helping out, great. But if we can't, we have our duty.

My own view is that every day the Taliban is out of power is a day when the world is safer than it was in September 2001. And it is also a day when Afghanistan has some hope of progress.

Manley's criticisms of the Harper government for allowing its centralized media strategy to undermine public confidence in the war is well-taken.

Here's hoping Manley can turn Canadian public opinion around somewhat.

Common Sense Revolution: Introduction

The Chief Economist at Midland Walwyn, one of Canada's most respected securities firms, concludes...

"This plan will work. The Mike Harris plan to cut provincial income tax rates by 30% and non-priority services spending by 20% will give Ontario a balanced budget within four years, and create more than 725,000 new jobs."

- Mark Mullins, Ph. D. (Economics)

The people of Ontario have a message for their politicians -- government isn't working anymore. The system is broken.

You sent that message when you handed the provincial government its dramatic defeat in 1990. You sent it in the referendum campaign in 1992. You sent it in the federal election. And yet, no one seems to be listening.

Over the last few years, I have been out talking with the people of Ontario. In Town Hall meetings, in living rooms and around kitchen tables.

I have heard your message. You are looking for a Common Sense Revolution in the way our province is run. Well, I'm prepared to actually do something about it.

It's time for government to make the same types of changes all of us have had to make in our own families and in our jobs. If we are to fix the problems in this province then government has to be prepared to make some tough decisions.

I'm not talking about tinkering, about incremental changes, or about short term solutions. After all, the changes we have all experienced in our personal lives have been much more fundamental
than that.

It's time for us to take a fresh look at government. To re-invent the way it works, to make it work for people. While many goals remain important to us -- creating jobs, providing safe communities, protecting health care -- we are governed by a system that was designed to meet the needs of the 1950's, not the challenges of the 1990's or beyond.

It's time to ask ourselves how government spending can double in the last ten years, while we seem to be getting less and less value for our tax money....

To ask ourselves why we spend more money on education than ever before, but our children aren't able to get the kind of education they need to secure a good and prosperous future....

Time to ask ourselves how we can spend more and more money fighting crime,
while our streets end up becoming more dangerous.

I have been troubled by these realities for some time. I fear Janet and I cannot hope for a better future for our children.

I want to do something about it. So, today I'm putting forth a plan to help build a better future.

There are more than half a million people unemployed in this province. The bottom line is that Ontario needs jobs. This plan will create more than 725,000 new jobs over the
next five years.

Ontario is among the highest-taxed jurisdictions in North America. There have been 65 tax increases in the past decade, including 11 hikes to your income tax.

This plan will cut your provincial income tax rate by 30%. Government spending has more than doubled in the past ten years, pushing both the tax burden and the provincial deficit higher.
This plan will reduce non-priority government spending by 20%.

Too many services essential to the public are now being cut, or are under such financial pressure that the quality of service is in danger.

This plan guarantees full funding for health care, law enforcement, and education spending in the classroom.

A decade of tax-and-spend economics has pushed our annual deficit over the $10 billion mark, mortgaging our children's future.

This plan will fully balance the budget in four years.

This is not a wish list or a bunch of empty political promises. This is a solid plan based on four years of study, analysis, consultation with workers, employers, party members and ordinary
Ontarians through extensive public hearings.

To be sure of our conclusions, we subjected this plan to an independent analysis by one of Canada's leading economic experts.

In short, our plan will work, and bring hope, opportunity and jobs back to Ontario.

There is nothing wrong with Ontario that a new vision, a new direction and turn-around management can't fix.

We can build a safe and prosperous province, but first we need a major change in the way government works.

It will not be easy, but it CAN be done, and it WILL be worth it.

In order to create the jobs we so badly need, and to renew our economy, we will have to set priorities and stick to them.

Tinkering with the system will not be enough. It is time for fundamental change, and change is never easy.

The political system itself stands in the way of making many of the changes we need right now.

Our political system has become a captive to big special interests. It is full of people who are afraid to face the difficult issues, or even talk about them. It is full of people doing all too well as a result of the status quo.

We need a revolution in this province....a Common Sense Revolution.

It will be a revolution of practical ideas for making government work better for the people it serves, and a revolution against the last ten years of government thinking when it comes to job
creation.

Ontario needs jobs today, and jobs tomorrow.

This plan will show you how this can be done....how Ontario can once again become an economic powerhouse, full of hope, opportunity and real jobs.

If you believe, as I do, that we need lower taxes, less government and 725,000 new jobs in Ontario, I am asking you to join me in my fight for a Common Sense Revolution.

- Mike Harris

The "Common Sense Revolution": An Internet Never Forgets

We encourage digressions in the Pith & Substance comment threads. And so there was nothing unusual about a discussion on the merits of the Common Sense Revolution (both the 1994 document and the post-1995 event). The debate caused me to look for the document on the Internet. Wikipedia provides a link, but it is now dead. It seems the Ontario PC's had it on their website until August 2005. Comparisons to the airbrushing of Trotsky and Zinoviev from Politburo get-togethers are unwarranted. I'm sure there is some innocent explanation for why this rather important historic document was deleted.

Anyhoo, thanks to those who archive the Internet, I can provide a link here: http://web.archive.org/web/20051124195225/http://www.ontariopc.com/feature/csr/csr_text.htm

Update: The hypertext link doesn't work. You have to copy the URL and put it in your browser.

As I write, even that doesn't work because the Wayback Machine is offline.

I think it is a sad thing that the Common Sense Revolution is not available somewhere on the live web. So, pending any notice from copyright lawyers, I am going to start publishing it as a series of posts. Comment away.

Iggy Says "Sorry About the War"

Michael Ignatieff's mea culpa on his support for the Iraq war can be found here

Ignatieff's line is that as an academic he was too interested in ideas, and didn't have the horse sense he's subsequently developed in the political trenches. I think that's disingenous. Ignatieff was never really a theorist: he was an academic politician, and from the very beginning his cause was humanitarian war.

When he's prepared to consider the problems with that construct, it will be time to listen.

The Politics of Property Rights

If Harper were to take it up, how would strengthening the Bill of Rights' property rights provisions play out?

David Cheifetz is skeptical:

The Trogs are going to have a big problem beefing up the property rights portions for the Bill of Rights for the same reasons the attempts to add those protections failed in the Charter run-up. You're also right, I think, that it would divide the Grits.

But, and here's the big big but: there's a real "be careful what you wish for" danger for the Trogs in what you're proposing. My suspicion is that the attempt might "unite the left" and the traditional centre. That's still a bigger voting group that the Tory core and the newly successful entrepeneurial immigrant core.

My sense is that the political context has changed since 1982. The economic left has been in retreat for that entire time: lots of serious people announced they wee socialists twenty five years ago. More importantly, the PCs were fighting on two fronts at the time. The cause of parliamentary supremacy being lost, property rights would no longer be divisive on the right.

Also, I don't think this would be as unifying for the centre-left as all that. There are arguments against entrenched or semi-entrenched property rights, of course, but they aren't easy ones to articulate in a politically compelling way. A parade of Lochner-style horribles can be met by incredulity that the Canadian courts would ever countenance such things. If the opponents of property rights expresses distrust in the courts, they can be met by questioning their Canadianness. The Pope is only infallible when speaking ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals: the Supreme Court is infallible on everything. If you allow the possibility that the courts might err, what would come next? You'll be denying that Tommy Douglas introduced medicare or that Justin Trudeau has a three digit IQ! If the critic persists, then "that's what the override is there for, man" should work.

The most appealing reason to do this is that it would appeal to the key constituency Harper has been trying to attract: "market dominant minority" immigrant communities. If your experience consists in being expropriated by envious majorities, then this could be the symbolic issue to shake you from your historic attachment to the Liberals. Alternatively, enough Liberals will realize this to support the government, in which case it works for Harper as well.