Economists weigh in on the Conservative budget

The Calgary Herald features an article which discusses the perception of the budget with some of Prime Minister Harper’s former mentors, which belong to a group of economists and political analysts known as the Calgary School. The group interviewed is split on the value of this week’s federal budget.

Comments include those from political science professor at the University of Calgary, and former Harper senior advisor, Tom Flanagan. Flanagan is not impressed with the direction the Conservative Party has taken with this budget.

"You can find some things in the budget that are consistent with the Conservative philosophy, but the weight is like 90 to 10 against it," said Tom Flanagan.

He even goes as far as saying that this heavy-handed intervention in the economy is "unwise and unnecessary."

"In this budget there is no direction really, except political survival," Flanagan suggested Wednesday. "So I'm hoping this is a temporary phenomenon brought around by circumstances."

Harper’s masters’ thesis advisor, University of Calgary economist Frank Atkins, also warns of the misleading impact of deep government spending. He qualifies the announcement as a political, rather than economic budget.

[Atkins] warns the big-spending budget won't solve the country's economic woes and could create bigger problems down the road, such as inflation, higher taxes and greater interest rates.

"This is not an economic budget in my mind. It's a political budget, much more so than any other budget has been a political budget," Atkins said.

"Probably most importantly, it was designed to cut off the legs of the coalition, which it has done."

However, others who are part of the Calgary School have more lenient views in relation to the latest Harper budget.

[Roger] Gibbins, president of the Canada West Foundation policy think-tank, calls the overall budget package fiscally sensible and politically attractive, offering broad and modest financial relief to Canadians.

"They had to do something. We couldn't be the only G-20 country that wasn't responding in some way," Gibbins asserted. "It was a reasonable response to the time, just trying to cushion things a bit for Canadians and that's probably all that the federal government can do."

One must not forget this engagement taken with the international community. But Gibbins does not think the Canadian spending plan will help the country’s economy very much, because Canada’s financial health is dependent on a rebound in commodity prices and the United States' demand for goods.

Robert Mansell another economist who taught the Prime Minister at U of C, believes the budget does offer the right remedy for these tough economic times, particularly the government's plan to significantly boost infrastructure spending.

"That is one of the areas where the government can have a major effect in terms of stabilizing in the economy," Mansell said, adding he doesn't deem the deficit-financed budget a departure from Harper's political and fiscal ideologies.

"He's very practical,"Mansell noted. "As a student of economics he understands there are ups and downs in the economy and one of the roles of government is to respond and help stabilize those.

"And this is one of those downs. So I don't see an ideological shift."

Neither does [Barry] Cooper, a political science professor at U of C. In his view, the Harper government's budget is pragmatic, not a transformation of core conservative beliefs.

"It's probably an inevitable response to the public perception of the (economic) problem," Cooper said. "And that's what politicians have to respond to, not their understanding of the underlying realities because the underlying realities don't vote. The public perceptions vote."

Flanagan also commented in a Canadian Press article:

"I spent five years getting Harper into power, so God knows I want him to survive," Tom Flanagan, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said in an interview Wednesday.

"I perfectly understand the imperatives of political survival and the need to make compromises and to adjust, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But ... it's got a creepy feel to it."

[…]

"The record of accomplishment is still there," said the former Conservative campaign director.

"But it looks like things are grinding to a halt. Are we just going to enter a period of political pragmatism, when all you do is fight to survive? That's very discouraging.

"We thought that Mr. Harper had the strategic acumen to survive and make some progress toward conservative goals."

While the debate on the budget measures is far from drawing to a close, we cannot let this cause a divide among conservatives. This would be too beneficial to Ignatieff and the Liberals.

The budget, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff suggested Wednesday, "throws the Conservative movement in Canada into a certain form of deep ideological confusion - from which I sincerely hope it never recovers."

As former cabinet minister Monte Solberg reminds us in his Sun Media column yesterday:

The Conservatives have easily escaped to fight another day, but what are they fighting for?

This budget isn't a conservative document so much as it's a political document; a document that will give the Conservative government the room necessary to craft a compelling conservative vision for the future.

They must craft that vision without hesitation, and they must do it in a way that makes people want to be a part of it.

Flanagan denounces unelected coalition government

Conservative strategist and professor of political science at the University of Calgary, Tom Flanagan, signs an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail this morning, denouncing the lack of democratic legitimacy of a coalition government brought to power without a voter mandate. He brings us his educated perspective on the matter of strengthened democracy in Canada, and the evolution of conventions.

The coalition's apologists glory in the supposed fact that Canada's Constitution is not democratic. Responsible government, they say, means only that the cabinet has to maintain majority support in the House; it doesn't mean the voters have a voice. Canadians, in their view, are just deluded if they think Canada is a democracy.

Obviously, the apologists didn't pay attention in Political Science 101. Here's why they're wrong.

[...] Canada changed from a constitutional monarchy to a constitutional democracy as the franchise was extended to all adults and political parties became national in scope. That evolution was recognized in 1982 in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 1 characterizes Canada as "a free and democratic society," and Section 3 grants the right to vote to "every citizen of Canada."

[...] The most important decision in modern politics is choosing the executive of the national government, and democracy in the 21st century means the voters must have a meaningful voice in that decision. Our machinery for choosing the executive is not prescribed by legislative or constitutional text; rather, it consists of constitutional conventions - past precedents followed in the light of present exigencies. The Supreme Court has said it will expound these conventions but will not try to enforce them. The virtue of relying on conventions is that they can evolve over time, like common law, and can be adapted to the new realities of the democratic age. [My emphasis]

I agree, and I think most Canadians do too. The context of our democracy has changed. With a new day of information and all its associated technologies, the public is much more aware of issues of importance, and do not simply rely on "their voice in Parliament" to decide what is best for them. Canadians demand ownership of their right to decide.

The coalition partners, moreover, did not run on a platform of forming a coalition; indeed, the Liberals' Stéphane Dion denied that he would make a coalition with the NDP.

Right on the nail, of course. The leading concern with this coalition is that they cannot be held accountable, because they have taken no specific engagements towards Canadian voters.

The Governor-General, as the protector of Canada's constitutional democracy, should ensure the voters get a chance to say whether they want the coalition as a government.

Yes, she should.