A Conservative report card (Part II)

... Health: B. You have to give them credit for speaking out in favour of private health care provision, even in the middle of an election. And the overall policy is the one I'd choose on the merits: public financing, private provision. User fees were always a false idol. Health care is provincial jurisdiction, of course, so there isn't a whole lot more a federal party can or needs to say. But it's distressing to see the Conservatives echoing the false notion that what the health care system really needs is lots more money. I know, I know: money and reform. But as we've seen repeatedly, money doesn't "buy change." It buys stasis. Every time the feds have kicked in more billions, the impetus for reform has lessened. In fact, the most predictable result of an influx of cash is an increase in health care strikes. The unions know the money's there -- they've just seen the premiers announce it -- and they're determined to get it. Which, by and large, they do. Education: C+. The party would separate education funding from the old Canada Health and Social Transfer, which I gather is now the Canada Social Transfer, health care having been severed from the transfer already, scant years after it was bundled in with it. Bollocks: it all goes into provincial general revenues. More creatively, the party would make some useful reforms to the Canada Student Loan program, and even mentions income-contingent loans -- my preferred policy -- as a model. All to the good. But the party sees this as a complement to existing government-to-government and goverment-to-universities funding, when it should be a replacement for them. Apart from research grants, all the funding should go to the students, to take with them to the university of their choice. And yes, it should be federal funds: the market for higher education is national, if not international. That it still languishes in provincial jurisdiction is one of the greater anomalies of our constitutional impasse. Child care: B+. Good news. The party has staked out very strong turf in opposition to a government-driven child care system, preferring that funding go to parents to use as they see fit. And it rightly protests that stay-at-home parents' choice should also be recognized. Housing/Cities: C. Speaking as a Trudeau centralist, what on earth is the federal government doing in the municipal housing business? And why is a Conservative party swallowing this guff about cities being underfunded, to be remedied by handing over a share of the federal gas tax (Why the gas tax, precisely? Nonsensical earmarking of taxes is always a sign of muddy thinking.) Aboriginals: B+. The four resolutions on aboriginal policy are probably the best thing in the document. Sensible, wise, humane, even daring in spots, they promise to repair some of the wreckage that has been made of these people's lives. How one wishes the same vision informed the rest of the document. Charter rights! Choice in schools! If they're good enough for natives, how about the rest of us? Women: C. Mostly inoffensive pandering, and then this: "Women must be entitled to equal pay for work of equal value." What the hell? I mean, what the hell?? The single craziest policy ever to spring from the addled minds of the social-engineering left, and the Conservative Party of Canada endorses it? Do they even know what the term means -- that is, that it means nothing comprehensible? MiningEnergyFisheries: C. Pander, pander, pander, blather, blather, blather. Agriculture: F. If there is a worse policy on the books than supply management -- a conspiracy in restraint of trade, expressly intended to drive up the price of the most essential foods, at vastly disprorportionate cost to the poor -- I don't know of it. What do the Conservatives have to say about this travesty? "A Conservative government will support supply management." Not just the "goal" of supply management, which was the fudge they'd settled on before, but supply management itself. Plus, of course, subsidies till the cows come home. Environment: C-. There's a lot of showoffy talk of "aquifer mapping" and "invasive species", designed to show the party speaks green. But it's all very steeped in a command-and-control approach to environmental policy, with very little recognition of the role markets and market mechanisms -- private ownership, prices, etc -- can play in promoting wise resource use. Defence/Foreign: B+. Nice to see they're on side for missile defence, at last. Otherwise pretty sound. Justice: C. A lot of pandering to the victims' rights movement, but no more than usual. The promise to remove any defence to the possession of child pornography is pure demagoguery. Culture: C+. The party would reduce the role of the CRTC "to eliminate duplication where other legislation exists," whatever that means. Half-marks there. But then another howler: "The CBC-SRC is an important part of the broadcasting system in Canada." Ack. Plus the film and television production industry "must be strengthened to participate in a global marketplace." More subsidies? More to come...