February 2, 2001
A neo-conservative kick in the ass - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
Before the main Commentary... On Monday, the 301 MP’s who were elected or re-elected in last November’s federal election, returned to work. The first order of business was to elect a new speaker. There were a number of MP’s in the running including BC MP, Randy White. The main contenders were Bob Kilger, an Ontarian MP who up to recently was the Chief Government Whip and Peter Milliken the MP for Kingston and the Islands, the riding of Sir John A. Macdonald and Flora MacDonald, (whom Milliken beat in 1988 for that seat.) After 5 ballots, Milliken succeeded, to become the Speaker of the House of Commons.
A couple of years ago, I was in grade 11 at the time, Prime Minister Chrétien had wanted to have some PR thing going on so as to publicise the government in the “West”. Well, my Grade 11 classroom, one day, was visited by our Liberal MP, Sophia Leung, C.M. She brought along with her Peter Milliken, who at the time was Deputy Speaker to former Speaker, Gilbert Parent. During the Q & A with the both of them after, I asked a very pointed question regarding the Liberal position on the then creation of the United Alternative, the successor to the Reform Party and forerunner to the Canadian Alliance. My question dealt with how the Liberal’s viewed this. Ms. Leung, deferred the question to her colleague, who very diplomatically informed me that they viewed the right-wing coalition as nothing but the Reform Party and that their focus would be on winning disenchanted small-l liberals from the NDP. I scoff, with the proper amount of cynicism. (That was a couple of years ago, and their thinking looks to have paid off. The NDP is certainly considered a non-entity.)
The funny story with regards to Milliken however, took place after. Ms. Leung wanted to get some photos taken for her own constituency propaganda, so we all got into our places. Having been in position where I’d be in the shot, Milliken darts in front of me, so as to not include me in the photo. Several shots are taken and in-between, he turns around and with a slight amount of disdain in his eyes, and says to yours truly, “Now, I wouldn’t want to block you out, would I?” He turns around, full smile for the prying eyes of photography.
VANCOUVER -- There’s Allan Fotheringham’s space on the back page of Maclean’s and then there’s the dynamic duo of Barbara Yaffe and Vaughn Palmer on the Vancouver Sun’s editorial page. The point being real estate in the murky world of journalism in Canada. Both the Maclean’s backpage and the Yaffe/Palmer duo in the Sun are must reads. I would suspect if I were in the yesteryear of Canadiana, I’d religiously frequent the haunts of Pierre Berton in the Toronto Star, Marjorie Nichols in the Ottawa Citizen and her and Foth in the Vancouver Sun, as I would the space elegantly inhabited by Bruce Hutchinson in the Victoria Times-Colonist. The Globe and Mail currently has too few must reads. There’s Fotheringham, Tuesday’s and Saturdays, but his column read fake, as the checkers at the Globe must be editing voraciously. Jeffery Simpson in that so said paper, is good, but he’s a tad too restrained, as is Peter Gzowski’s items column on Saturday. Jan Wong is slightly entertaining on Saturday’s, but I don’t get the Globe and Mail for the single reason it attempts to show Canada via a Central Canadian perspective and simply that. (As an aside, the National Post, my paper of choice, is beginning to show its true colours in cramming an anti-separatist perspective, far too unabashedly.)
Speaking of the Post, in this space today, let me dwell on the reorganisation of one of the Post’s best features. The op-ed page on Saturday’s has the triumvirate of the incredibly talented Christie Blatchford, the legendary intellect of Mordecai Richler and neo-conservative (neo, not ultra) David Frum. That page over the last couple of years has been a remarkable treat for a newspaper consumer. The perspectives are wide-ranging, and the writing is nothing short of superb. David Frum, the son of the late CBC broadcaster Barbara Frum, has authored a number of books including Dead Right and What’s Right, all on the subject of, you guessed it, conservatism in Canada and the United States. Frum, also recently authored a volume on the subject of the 1970s, How We Got Here. I’ve used Dead Right and What’s Right as sources for a paper I wrote on conservatism and they’re excellent resources. I have also read portions of How We Got Here and it’s nothing short of a remarkable work. David Frum, I believe will be regarded as one of Canada’s finest imports. (Yup, right up there with John Kenneth Galbraith.)
Frum prefers the politics of America and probably that has to do with the fact George W. Bush is in office. And so with the Dubya in the Oval Office, Frum (who already calls Washington home) started work for the President last Tuesday. Marshall Whitman, a fellow with the conservative think-tank, the Hudson Institute, regards Frum as, “one of the seminal young libertarian writers to emerge in the last decade.” I enjoyed David Frum’s columns because they didn’t talk down to the reader, yet there was enough to make me pause and think about the politics I keep. Some of the things Frum suggests however, don’t bode well for me. He has lambasted the legacy of Ronald Reagan for not rolling back the welfare state and he has also advocated for some uncomfortable aspects of social conservatism. I can tolerate some fiscal conservatism and his ardent support for the Canadian Alliance, but I balk when he rants on about libertarian rhetoric that is frankly, scary.
David Frum’s task in the next little while will be composing speeches for President Bush on matters economic. With Bush’s articulation factor in the pits, having Frum on his team will do him no harm.
With that, however, the triple-whammy of Blatchford, Frum and Richler is no more. I wonder who they’ll put in, but it’ll be different for sure. When I get the Post tomorrow morning, it’ll be a melancholy experience for this amateur newspaper consumer. I shall lament a time when many Saturday’s were spent devouring Ms. Blatchford’s bitchings of her better-looking friends, M. Richler’s high-brow repetition of Gore Vidal’s witticisms and of course, David Frum’s neo-conservative kick in the ass that made us all, hopefully, think right.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .