Progressive politics is clearly on a roll in Canada. In fact, some pundits question whether it has run out of new places to go.
The next few months in federal politics should be telling. New Democrats were just in Edmonton for their federal convention. The Liberals hold their national convention in Winnipeg in May. The Conservatives, who dropped ‘Progressive’ from their name when it became unfashionable a decade ago, could ponder renewing old nomenclature at their May convention in Vancouver.
Party conventions were once idea factories for future elections.
But as The Toronto Star’s Susan Delacourt and others have effectively argued, modern parties are now little more than election machines shopping for votes.
Over the past decade in Canada, political networking conferences have supplanted party conventions as the place for idea incubation and development, from the conservative Manning Centre’s three days of networking each spring to gatherings of New Democrats at the Broadbent Institute and Liberals at Canada 2020.
If the pulse of conservatism at the recent Manning conference was very healthy despite October’s election debacle, left-wingers at Broadbent and left-centrists at Canada 2020 seemed to need deep breathing to keep their giddiness from gliding off the scale.
But to their credit, progressives clearly understand they need some deep thinking to turn electoral gains into long-term social change. Five tension areas must be resolved if the progressive roll is to continue.
Redefining responsible government: Open Government was the theme of the Canada 2020 conference and constitutes a base of the new progressive agenda. Few can dispute the good of transparency and technology to engage citizens in public processes. But as one conference participant noted, it is one thing to value openness as part of providing quality service. It is quite another to manufacture “consultation processes” between the executive branch of government and the public while sidelining the legislature. Mostly ignored in the Canada 2020 conversation was the role members of Parliament have in providing a voice for constituents. In the preoccupation to ensure that every identifiable group and sub-constituency has a voice, the role of the 338 elected representatives speaking for and holding government to account on behalf of all constituents is diminished. Open government is one thing. Redefining democratic participation as a rough equivalent of retail customer satisfaction is quite another.
Mistaking government spending for wealth creation: The recent federal budget can be used as Exhibit A for the presumption that government spending is the key to economic stimulus and growth. Infrastructure legitimately refers to spending on framework resources necessary for economic activity such as roads and power lines. It is also used, erroneously, to justify program spending. An important case can be made that infrastructure is social and physical. When the word is applied to almost everything, however, it becomes meaningless. What’s lost is the critical relationship between government spending and economic growth. Government looks at the private sector and sees job creation. The private sector looks at itself and sees creation of goods and services – real wealth. Infrastructure is the bridge – sometimes literally – between the two.
Reducing inequality’s inherent complexity: There is much energy spent on describing how the gap between the top and bottom of the income spectrum is a problem, with the test of almost every program being how “progressively” its benefits apply. But focusing exclusively on the reduction of inequality without the context of market economics, which inevitably involves unequal outcomes, has the unintended consequence of reducing overall wealth production.
Believing religion is the problem: It seems the political left has abandoned its religious roots. The social gospel that led to forerunners of the NDP is conspicuous by its absence. What’s forgotten is that religion brings an impactful identity and worldview. The negatives and positives of religion need to be understood and dealt with. Nothing so powerful for the human spirit can simply be ignored or wished away. Real progress means accepting the reality of religious faith, not just tolerating its visible practices.
Going beyond fashionable diversity labels: If diversity and identity politics are your hammer, then everything becomes a nail. Progress has required overcoming blind spots about identity, and including those once marginalized. Yet it becomes counterproductive when labels like “old, white guy,” “religious fanatic” and “sexual bigot” simply replace the previous catalogue. Political dialogue can’t be reduced to scorekeeping at an elementary field day, in which the game is only about no one getting hurt and everyone getting a participation ribbon.
Unless these areas are addressed, the progressive political movement will surely stall.
Ray Pennings is executive vice-president of Cardus, Canada’s leading Christian think tank.
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