For Canadian conservatism that is. I know that Adam Daifallah is working on such a project but maybe there is a sneak peak in today's Vancouver Sun. Stephen Brooks argues that the future for small-c conservatism is not exactly bright. At least when compared to the American conservatism. To make this point he references Seymour Martin Lipset who
...visited Canada during the 1988 election campaign, he remarked that all three federal parties -- they were then the Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats -- were to the left of the centre of gravity of the Democratic Party in the United States.
Whether the new Conservative Party of Canada is to left or the right of the Democratics is non-obvious. Mr Brooks argues that there are two key elements in conservatism, social and economic. Since Church attendance is lower in Canada than in the United States the social conservative movement does not play as well north of the border. However, he argues, Canada is pretty much as economically conservative as the U.S. but comes up against more entrenched ideology competition.
...First, it has relatively few influential friends, but many powerful enemies among those who shape the public conversation. Recently I was perusing the table of contents of a new book on Canadian political thought. Of the 13 post-Second World War thinkers profiled in this book only one, George Grant, could be called a conservative. And of course George Grant's brand of conservatism belongs to the archeology of ideas, buried in a Canada that no longer exists.
Who are the idea champions of contemporary Canadian conservatism? David Frum, Andrew Coyne, the "Calgary School," the Fraser Institute, certainly. And after that? Compare this to the George Wills, William Buckleys, Victor Davis Hansons and Thomas Sewells, to name a handful, of American intellectual life, and to the dozens -- perhaps close to 100 according to a recent book -- of conservative think-tanks in the United States.
Ranged against the Canadian champions of economic conservatism are most of the social sciences and humanities professoriat of the country's public university system, much of the media, particularly the CBC, and an intellectual establishment whose current favoured sons and daughters include John Ralston Saul, Mark Kingwell, Naomi Klein and Michael Adams. What they have in common is their construction of an idea of Canada on the basis of anti-Americanism. This is a very old and very Canadian enterprise.
There is one caveat in all of this, Quebec. Which reminds me of William Johnson's biography of Stephen Harper. Mr. Johnson argues that the political spectrum in Canada has not been aligned on the left-right axis like most other western democracies. The reason for this is the appeasement of nationalist/separatist sentiment in Quebec.
...The political culture of this province is significantly different from the rest of Canada in many important ways. Quebecers are even less likely than other Canadians to support social or economic conservatism. But Quebec still accounts for close to one-quarter of the seats in the House of Commons. So an ideologically conservative party has a dilemma. Either it writes off Quebec and tries to win a national election based on its performance at the polls in the rest of the country -- the arithmetic is daunting -- or it dilutes its message in the hope of attracting respected Quebec candidates and appealing to enough of the province's voters to win some seats.
Maybe there is nothing really new in the article but it makes for some good Saturday morning reading.
