Saturday, February 10, 2007

A questionable comparison

Allan Woods optimistically suggests that PMS' journey from outright hostility toward public healthcare to claiming to support the Canada Health Act offers reason for hope on the environment. But ultimately, the comparison only highlights why the Cons aren't getting anywhere on the environment - and why they're altogether unlikely to change that anytime soon:
Taking the extra step to meet the 2012 target is a long shot, but Harper's health-care transformation of 2005 could provide a template, some say...

The man who, in 2002, said the Canada Health Act should be "opened up," stepped on to the stage as the Conservative party leader (before a Fraser Institute meeting) and vowed that a Tory government would do nothing of the sort.

Harper's Reform party predecessor, Preston Manning, and former Ontario premier Mike Harris had just released a report under the auspices of the Fraser Institute calling for the federal government to pull out of the health-care game.

"With all the respect that I do have for this institute and for these individuals, I could not imagine a proposal that's more of a non-starter than that one," Harper told the crowd.

"I will never compromise public health insurance in the country because it is the only system that most Canadian families, including my own family, have ever used."

His health-care turnaround, correcting a glaring policy vulnerability, came in the weeks before what everyone expected would be a spring election.

Senior party organizers were well aware of their weakness on the issue. They had been dealing with it for years.

"We were heading into an election with the same old bogeyman there," says one party official. "We had to put that to bed."

No sooner had Harper pronounced his radically reformed policy on health care than everyone – media, opposition parties and non-governmental organizations – stopped talking about it.

"That's the way he does things," the official says of Harper. "His strategy is to find out his weakness and fix it by whatever means. You shut it down, you neutralize it, you overwhelm it. You do whatever needs to be done."
It's entirely likely that the Cons want little more than to "shut down" the environment as an issue. But the extent of Harper's change on health care also seems likely to define the limits of how far he's willing to go on the environment - and it doesn't bode well for the likelihood of Harper going along with Kyoto without a serious push.

After all, Harper's health care stance can only be seen as a move from active hostility toward the program, to a hands-off approach. The Cons' message and action suggests a willingness to continue existing funding levels and avoid slamming the system in public. But then the Cons also quietly cut off existing Canada Health Act enforcement mechanisms, and have invested precious little time or money in the system beyond what was already there before.

Which means that Harper's means of "neutralizing" the weakness has simply been to do and say as little as possible - somewhat appeasing those who support the system without actually having to do anything to improve matters (which would then be subject to criticism by the Cons' hard-right base). And in the case of health care, that type of inaction may well lead to Harper's end goal, as the Cons' refusal to enforce the Canada Health Act has simply moved the issue to the provincial level where single-payer health care is being undermined.

When it comes to climate change, though, inaction won't satisfy anybody. There's certainly no strong movement in favour of the status quo (or the status quo ante), and aside from the most laughable of climate-change deniers the public debate is on the question of what action to take beyond that which has already been done.

Needless to say, that makes for a significantly different problem for Harper. The Cons can't appease anybody by quieting down and trying to declare the issue closed. Instead, PMS can only change the landscape on the issue by taking action which hasn't been taken before - which means having to put forward a plan and publicly defend the principles behind it.

Moreover, even if Harper were to come around on Kyoto, his government would still be subject to criticism to the extent its measures to get there are anything short of succesful. Which means that even by taking a strong course of action which will send climate-change deniers into conniptions, the Cons can do no more than kick the problem into the future and try to earn some of the benefit of the doubt in the meantime.

None of which is to say that the Cons can't or shouldn't make the switch to supporting Kyoto - hard caps, emission trading and all. But Harper's public transformatioin on health care simply doesn't offer a particularly apt analogy. And there's little reason for now to think that the Cons will be willing to take the next step from merely paying lip service while doing nothing about an issue they don't believe in, to actually taking the lead on one.

(Edit: fixed wording.)

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