The Western Standard
July, 2004

Every election of recent times has followed the same pattern. The parties of the right win more seats than ever--but fall short of the most optimistic expectations. They are consoled in defeat by the advice of their "friends" at the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, which invariably amounts to advising conservatives to be less, well, conservative, since everyone knows it is impossible to get elected on a conservative platform in centrist Canada.
In fairness, that is also their advice when conservatives win. The same was said before, and after, the elections of Gordon Campbell in B.C., Ralph Klein in Alberta, Mike Harris in Ontario, and Jean Charest in Quebec. It never seems to occur to these sages that the middle ground of which they are so inordinately fond is not fixed in place, but moves about, in response to the very ideologically-based campaigns they urge conservatives not to make. Today's cautious centrist, espousing balanced budgets, free trade and the Clarity Act, is yesterday's wild-eyed radical.
But to say that the Conservatives need not remake themselves as Liberals in drag (it never worked for the old Progressive Conservatives, and what would be the point if it did?) is not to say that all is well. Over large sections of the country, the Conservatives are regarded as an alien, even hostile force. They remain confined to their ancient burial grounds in Atlantic Canada; are nowhere to speak of in Quebec; achieved only limited success in Ontario.
More serious is their continued failure to make inroads, outside of their Alberta-Saskatchewan heartland, in the cities, even in parts of the country where they did win seats. Look at the results. In Halifax, they were shut out of the city's four seats. In Ottawa, they were 1 for 6. Toronto, 0 for 23. London, Kitchener and Hamilton: nada, nada, nada. Winnipeg 2 for 8. Vancouver, 0 for 5. Victoria, Fredericton, St. JohnÉ the list goes on.
Some, looking at these numbers, advise the Tories to cut the social conservatives, whose values are so offputting to downtown voters, adrift. This is offensive in principle--these are legitimate points of view held by millions of Canadians, who deserve representation--and suicidal in practice. The Liberal party can win elections just on the strength of the urban vote. The Conservatives cannot. Their coalition must represent the interests and values of both urban and rural Canadians.
Besides, there are good numbers of city dwellers, particularly among recent immigrants, who share these views. There is more room to debate these issues than is commonly realized, provided people feel there are some boundaries around the debate: namely, that whatever policies emerge are in conformity with the Charter, which--like it or not--has assumed iconic status with much of the public.
If the solution is neither to shift left nor to drop the so-cons overboard, how should the Conservatives reach out to urban voters? How do they appeal to young people, to immigrants, and other groups disproportionately represented in the cities? Answer: you broaden the base by deepening it--by presenting your case in richer, more varied hues, in a way that bespeaks confidence both in yourself and your listeners.
Certainly Conservatives have to learn to speak in the language of urban Canada--but that's a matter of presentation, of cultural codes, as much as anything. What's more important is to stop implicitly apologizing for their policies, whether by concealing, downplaying, softening or otherwise seeming to acknowledge the rightness of their critics' accusations.
Rather, Conservatives have to fill in the gaps in their program, broadening it to take into greater account the concerns of urban voters. Tax cuts alone won't do it. Conservatives have been far too willing to concede issues such as the environment and social justice to the Left, contenting themselves with denouncing their opponents' proposals as too costly, misguided or both. What they haven't done is get out in front of these debates, proposing alternative solutions grounded in a market-based, smaller-government approach. Conservatives have to take ownership of these issues.
The environment is a particular missed opportunity, not only because environmentalism has become, especially among the young, the universal religion of our time, but because free markets and the environment--economics and ecology--are such a natural fit. Both, after all, concern themselves with the problem of minimizing waste. Many modern environmentalists have discovered the power of markets and of market mechanisms--prices, competition, private ownership--as correctives to environmentally destructive behaviour. Why haven't Conservatives?
This is a single example of a broader issue. I am struck, talking to people who are unfamiliar with market economics--which is to say, most voters--how many of them view free markets as, in essence, a nullity: as simply the absence of government. This is disturbing to those who value order in human affairs--a natural constituency, one would have thought, for conservativism. Conservatives often comment on the contradiction in liberals who value freedom in the social sphere, but not in the economic. But in fact there is no contradiction in their minds. Both are, so they imagine, about liberating the individual to do as he likes: a good so far as it means permitting people to love whom they please, an evil so far as it means indulging greed.
But in fact markets are not about liberating individual wills, or not only that: they are about integrating individual wills into a socially beneficial order. Greed is a constant, but the discipline of competition tempers its reach and channels it to other-directed ends. Prices, likewise, are ruthless enforcers of the common weal, forcing each, in his consumption of the scarce pool of resources available to society, to take account of the claims of others. In short, markets are social institutions, no less than governments, and should be defended as such.
That would address a key fear many younger, urban voters have about Conservatives: that their general preference for markets over governments is nothing more than a refusal to act, a concession to chaos and self-interest, rather than an alternative means to the same ends.