Dunn, B. A. “Is There a Better Way” 
The New Federation 2.2 (1990): 8-11.

Is There a Better Way?
by Brian A. Dunn

Meech Lake has now passed into history but the impact on Brian Mulroney’s future remains uncertain. The electorate may either reward him for a noble effort or indicate its displeasure with the process – for which he must bear sole responsibility. 
Perception is everything in politics. So is credibility. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the man who brought the Progressive Conservative Party its greatest electoral victories, now faces the most difficult period of his political career.
The Prime Minister has to start the long process back to political rehabilitation. What has eluded him so far has been a genuine feeling of respect and admiration which accompanied the tenures of former Prime Ministers. Part of the reason lies in the substance of some of his policies.
Every major policy initiative he has introduced, whether in his first or second term of office, has landed both him and his government in political difficulty with the public, special interest groups, and sometimes the press. From free trade with the United States to the Goods and Services Tax (GST); the Meech Lake Accord to pension clawbacks; bilingualism to abortion; the Atlantic fishery to high interest rates; patronage to daycare, the Mulroney government has truly lacked the Midas touch. It has either failed to deliver on its promises or has failed to sell its policies to the people.
On the personal side, heavy-handedness and Godfather-like tendency to bend the rules of decency – one thinks of patronage scandals and the recent expulsion of MP’s Kilgour and Kindy from Party ranks – have widened the gap that separates the public from the Prime Minister.
The Canadian tradition is to dump any leader whose party can only command twenty percent at the polls. Prime Ministers with greater support in the public opinion polls have been forced to resign. John Diefenbaker and Joe Clark were unceremoniously jettisoned. Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau and John Turner read the writing on the wall and quietly withdrew. Mulroney defies Canadian tradition.
John Sawatsky has been writing the definitive book on Mulroney for the past two years – it will be published by McFarlane, Walter & Ross in 1991 – and is easily Mulroney’s most knowledgeable biographer. He says, “There is absolutely no doubt in Mulroney’s mind that he can recover from his low standing at the polls. He’s absolutely convinced that he can do it. He’s made his reputation by pulling off the impossible. He does whatever he has to do. He’s not hamstrung by any ideology. That’s why he’s always been able to turn it around.”
Sawatsky points to Mulroney’s past feats. “He settled the famous La Presse strike for Paul Desmarais in 1971 when the general view was that it couldn’t be done. He won the leadership of his party against all odds. Tory history has always required that its leader come from the federal Parliament or a provincial legislature and Mulroney could offer neither. He ran against that tradition and won. He’s done that kind of thing consistently. He’s famous for always pulling it off.” Dalton Camp, political guru, pollster and recent political advisor to Mulroney, echoes some of Sawatsky’s comments on Mulroney’s survival prospects.
Camp says, “There’s a general maxim that anything’s possible in politics. Mulroney’s recuperative powers are a matter of record. He almost always comes from behind. He did it during the leadership race with Joe Clark. Political experts wrote him off in 1986 and he went on to win the 1988 election.”
Camp warns that it is far too early to attempt to predict the outcome of the next election. He says, “We’re in a curious situation. We have no idea what kind of a country Canada will be in the next two years. At the moment, we don’t know who Mulroney will face in the next election. Whoever it is will have to be tested at the polls.”
Recalls Camp, “I never met a single person who liked Mackenzie King and yet he was our most successful Prime Minister in terms of getting re-elected. It’s impossible to predict the outcome of an election until the election campaign is fought. The polls say that Mulroney stands at seventeen percent popularity but Canadians never have a closed mind about those things. It’s like the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The eighty games played during the season mean nothing. Anybody can win the final round of battle.”
Mulroney’s courage in taking on big issues has no doubt contributed to his low standing at the polls. He introduced Free Trade and the Goods and Services Tax, negotiated the Meech Lake Accord, reduced the size of the federal civil service, cutback Via Rail and sold off Petro Canada and Air Canada.
Mackenzie King survived for twenty-six years by ducking the big issues – witness the memorable phrase, “Conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription.” He would never, for example, agree to fixed annual meetings with provincial premiers or world leaders because such meetings would allow issues to arise that were safely simmering beneath the surface.
That’s not the Mulroney style. He didn’t have to implement any of his government’s unpopular policies, and the electorate would probably forgive Mulroney for any one of his unpopular measures – although it may not forgive him for their cumulative effect. His Achilles heel is either Meech Lake or the GST. The latter is frightening the public and small business and he faces rebellion in English-speaking Canada – the Reform Party will be a major force to contend with in the West during the next election campaign.
Mulroney often expresses his love of Canada. He should start now to rally Quebecers behind his much-vaunted national unity vision. A hard selling job lies ahead to block the Parizeau-Bouchard-led separatist forces. In Quebec the situation has changed dramatically and sovereignty-association has all the earmarks of a social revolution in its advanced stages. Years of not having Quebec leftenants capable of driving home the federal gospel, unlike what occurred in the Trudeau era, have taken their toll.
The Prime Minister should not wait for the next referendum to put in place a vast apparatus to show, with studies and statistics in hand, that Canada is still the best option for Quebec in the 1990s.
The leading edge of Mulroney’s message in Quebec should be the traditional  claim   that   a   bilingual Canada still is the best antidote against U.S. domination. It still offers the best protection for the survival of Quebec’s distinct culture and traditions. An independent Quebec next to the U.S. giant will face insurmountable odds and recent American studies have been all too oblivious to this fact. As part of his strategy, the Prime Minister should launch his own province-wide initiative among business, special-interest groups, labour, students, et cetera. The Mulroney-Bourassa alliance, which has proven so fruitful politically, should now turn its attention to a post-Meech Lake Canada. This alliance would be strengthened if Jean Chrétien became a party to it.
Mulroney can’t stand pat on other issues in the hope that Jean Chrétien, or whoever leads the Liberal Party, will repeat John Turner’s inability to lead his party to electoral victory. Mulroney’s credibility is severely tattered and he must take steps to restore it. Promises in the run-up to the next election will not sway the electorate. 
He still has time to put a more human face on his government. He can introduce a series of programmes and legislative reforms without abandoning the government’s fight to reduce the deficit. He might take a page out of former Ontario Premier Bill Davis’s book. Davis was in serious trouble in the 1971 election. The Spadina Expressway was about to be built through the heart of downtown Toronto to the chagrin of environmentalists and residents. Davis rose in the legislature and said, “If a city was to be built for cars, Spadina would be a good place to start. A city should be built for people and Spadina is a good place to stop.” Davis won the election and won the support of traditional NDP voters.
Mulroney is seen as a friend of big business, a label that was always affixed to the Liberal Party. Few will forget that John Diefenbaker was elected in 1957 because the Liberals used closure to pass a federal bill in favour of Trans-Canada Pipelines. Mulroney could change this perception by taxing corporations that have been getting a free ride – David Lewis’ “corporate welfare bums” still exist.
He could introduce a guaranteed minimum income for all Canadians, as recommended by the 1985 Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada (the Macdonald Commission), without bankrupting the country. Much of the money is already being expended through family allowances, child tax credits, provincial tax credits, pensions, the guaranteed income supplement, general welfare, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensations and a variety of grants.
Mulroney periodically demonstrates a capacity for compassion. He must use policy to give a face to that compassion. He could lead the struggle against family violence and the abuse of women and children, and against the related problems of drug and alcohol abuse. A large number of people in communities all across Canada are already involved in these areas: educators, legal and social workers, and many others. Mulroney’s strong show of support could only trigger a positive response from the Canadian electorate.
Mulroney could take a bold initiative and pull Canada out of NATO. Canadians don’t like war and don’t want to fight someone else’s battles. Mulroney should formally recognize that the Soviet Union no longer represents a threat to the West.
Mulroney has to put the patronage issue to rest once and for all time. He should create an independent commission with the exclusive authority to make all non-political appointments. Canadians remember Mulroney’s 1984 campaign promise to end patronage in the same way they remember Trudeau’s pledge not to impose wage and price controls.
Mulroney should mend his fences with labour by strengthening federal labour laws. New health and safety regulations, the right to grieve working conditions, pay equity for women, and affirmative action employment policies for women and ethnic minorities should be put in place. The legislation should cover federal government employees, Crown corporations, those who contract with the federal government and those who are subject to federal regulation.
The next two years will be critical. The government’s Green Plan on the environment is a step in the right direction. Other bold steps are necessary. Only by returning to the populist tradition of the Tory party will the government be able to recapture the national agenda and restore its fallen fortunes. With new policies for the 90s, Prime Minister Mulroney may still be in the driver’s seat come the next election.

Brian A. Dunn is a Contributing Editor of The New Federation.

TORY PRINCIPLES REVISITED

One puzzling aspect to many conservatives is why the government has not adopted a more middle-of-the-road approach to government – a recipe made famous by Ontario's Frost/Robarts/Davis dynasty. 
These days the Conservative Party seems to be suffering from a period of philosophic stagnation where it is bereft of social ideas, locked in a neo-conservative right wing agenda far removed from the traditional centre where most Canadians reside. The Tory government has abandoned the populist tradition of the Party and the electorate has abandoned the government.
For four years, Charles Taylor searched Canada to find the soul of the Conservative Party. In his Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada, he concluded his search writing, “To me, now, it seemed hardly beyond the realm of human ingenuity that these conservative values could be translated into a political program with a strong populist clout.”
The conservative values of which Taylor spoke have been of high concern to former leader Robert Stanfield. As Taylor quotes him, “The Party should be recognized ... not merely for its affluence, for its comfort – for its power – but for its humanity, for its compassion and for its decency.”
In November 1974, Stanfield imparted these words of wisdom to his caucus, “For a Conservative ... there is much more to national life than simply increasing the size of the Gross National Product. A healthy economy is obviously important, but a Conservative will be concerned about the effects of economic growth – what it does to the environment, what kind of living conditions it creates, what its effect is on the country-side, what its effects are on our cities, whether all parts of the nation benefit or only some parts, and whether a greater feeling of justice and fairness and self-fulfillment results from this growth, thereby strengthening the social order and the quality of national life.”
Social justice and compassion are not easily reconcilable with economic globalization and deficit reduction. But the Conservatives will have to come to terms with both worlds if they wish to stage a comeback in the second half of their mandate.