Fp Manager of Special Projects Lloyd Walker

Mike Harris' Conservative government has taken control of Ontario and made an unprecedented number of dramatic changes. At least that's what we're being told in the papers and news stories every day.

But is it really so? Or are we actually witnessing a process quite different from what is being reported?

A few years ago in this column ('Mindset' - Freedom Flyer, December 1994), I pointed out how all the major political parties shared the same vision of what they are elected to do. They all believe that their role is to govern and control the people of Ontario, rather than to provide a framework within which we, as individuals, can govern our own actions.

Based on its early activities, it looked like the Harris government might be on its way towards breaking out of this mindset. Promises of reform in education, welfare, and the restructuring of municipal/provincial governments all seemed to suggest that this was a government seriously pursuing fundamental change.

Bill 26 was a true turning point for Ontario, and demonstrated the approach that the Conservatives will take toward government throughout the rest of their term.

In truth, it was a REturning point.

With Bill 26, things returned to the process followed in the past. The Harris Conservatives have borrowed an idea from the NDP, Liberal and the Davis Conservatives. They have bought into the socialist premise that the private sector cannot provide the services currently provided by government, but, lucky for us, the new blue Tories can do what their predecessors were wholly incapable of doing: continue to deliver the essential services that the people of Ontario need --- through government.

"If we control it, we can make it better..." The precedent established by Bill 26 is that everything in Ontario will work out fine if only the government has full control of it.

Let's take education for an example. Here was a fantastic opportunity to make fundamental changes to education in Ontario that could have brought educators, parents, and students a direct say. Instead, we will still have a system where the only voice that will matter is the one belonging to the government. Although the plan includes parent councils and boards that will make recommendations to the government, rest assured that the government will not allow anything that could violate its newly established control.

Rather than shuffling the existing system (which will do nothing to improve the quality of education in Ontario), the government could have brought in a system where taxpayers could direct their education tax dollars to the school of their choice.

Such a system would have allowed taxpayers to directly reward educators who are doing a good job, and to support education programs that get results. Taxpayers could have been able to do this without fear of being penalized, as they are now, if they choose to go outside the "public" (i.e., government-run) school system. This however, would be an example of moving the responsibility away from government and to the parents and educators. It would also mean that the power (the authority needed to be responsible) has to be moved away from the government.

The Conservatives (and all governments before them) have always rejected this approach. Even on an issue like education, which should never be a government-controlled service in the first place, allowing choice smacks of a failure to govern, and politicians don't like being accused of failing to do their job. The mindset says 'legislate, govern, control', so 'legislate, govern, control' is what they will always do.

Like their Liberal and New Democrat counterparts, the Conservatives believe that the problem with Ontario isn't the number of socialized systems that are in place; It's simply a problem of not operating them in an efficient manner.

Like all governments before them, they believe that 'less government' means delivering the same (or greater) amount of 'government', but doing it with less people. That's what 'efficiency' is all about.

The great danger in this approach to government is that it leads many people to believe (and this is a widely held belief by many small-'c' conservatives) that this brand of 'less government' will also lead to 'more freedom.' While that would be a wonderful thing to hope for, it's a little like saying that if you were being held hostage by 30 armed men and the quantity of guards was cut in half (because they had begun controlling you more efficiently), you would now be 'more free.'

Say goodbye to the Common Sense Revolution, and say hello to the Common Sense Shuffle.

No, it's not a new dance. It appears to be a form of government.

So far, the changes occurring in Ontario represent little more than the equivalent of shuffling a deck of cards. All of the same cards are present, just the order has been rearranged.

Let's look again at education. Think about the education system we had two years ago (under the NDP). Now look at the system proposed by the Conservatives. We'll still have a government-run school system. The government will still control the financing. The government will still have final say on the curriculum. The government will still get the money from the same taxpayers. Anyone opting out of the public system will still have to pay for it AND the alternative they have sought out.

The same cards are all present, just the order has been changed. So where's the revolution?

The significant factor in all this is that the Conservative government, those supporters of free enterprise, haven't moved at all in a direction that will allow alternatives to the public system to flourish. Instead, they have shuffled the deck, and like a magician using a distraction to cover his sleight of hand, taken greater control of education with hardly any notice.

Not to be uncovered, they have also worked to ensure that it's even more difficult to notice that all the same cards are present. When you know that the players in the game are counting the cards in the deck, you can always resort to using more than one deck at the same time. Harris has deftly mixed the welfare and social services decks into the pile. Now the shuffling is more cumbersome, but no one can focus on where any one card is in the pile.

Rest assured that they are all there, and that they've thrown in a couple jokers with them. You can bet that the jokers are all wild cards that will allow the government to pave the way to even more control, perhaps in the form of television commercials telling us how much better 'efficient government' is for Ontario.

The opposition parties, seeing that the order of the cards has changed, busily condemn the changes. They are joined by the media, who also don't recognize anything except that the order of the cards is different. Both groups voicing their criticisms are simply accusing the PCs of stacking the cards.

They never question the role of the government dealing the cards at all!

On closer inspection, Bill 26 was inevitable. The government gets a great deal of flack over various facets of our society and (regardless of which party is in power) they don't like it. We can all identify with this. In our lives circumstances may arise where we are held responsible for something but don't have the authority to do anything about it. It's a fairly common situation for employees, and has been identified as a major beef that most people have in their jobs. Responsibility without authority is frustrating, destructive to morale, and generally difficult to deal with.

There are two ways to deal with responsibility without authority. One is to have the responsibility placed on the shoulders of those who hold the authority or power to control the situation. The other is the one that the Conservatives chose: to grab the authority. Under the influence of their mindset, they had to. They were elected to 'govern', so there's no way they would give up responsibility by (excuse the cliche) 'empowering' others to deliver services. They are, instead, going to make a grab for the authority (the power) to control the situations for which they are being held accountable.

This is what Bill 26 did. Bill 26 was a power grab, nothing else. It gave the government more control of the situation. It fit the mindset that politicians must 'govern' the province. It fit their definition of 'less government' because they can seek efficiencies with greater ease.

It also fits the course of all socialist programs. Since they never work in practice and quickly become bloated, inefficient, unresponsive, and ineffective, they always have to be 'taken over' once again by the government. However, this time the government needs to ensure that it has more control in the name of making those programs work.

Many will undoubtedly argue that the PCs are doing a good job. They're cutting spending which was badly needed, and that's good for Ontario. I can't disagree with that goal, just as Freedom Party didn't disagree with the goal of reduced spending found in Bill 26.

What should bother us is the ends towards which these new means are being created.

The same power in the hands of a benevolent government or a tyrannical one has drastically different results. The problem with a stacked deck is that if you stack the deck and then pass it on to the next dealer (next government), you'll get the lousy cards you intended for them. They'll get the great hand. All of the authority assumed by the Conservative government will also be assumed by the next government. Think about that. Do you trust McGinty or Hampton as much as Harris? Do you really think anyone should hold that much power?

Less governMENT should mean less governING. It should mean reducing the amount of government control, red tape and regulation in order to increase the choices available to the people of Ontario. A change with the goal of increasing choices in education would be a positive step for Ontario. A change that delivers the same less choice, even if it does so more efficiently, is not a change significantly for the better. Of course, stopping the province of Ontario from bleeding to death economically is a good thing, but in and of itself, it does not make us more free.

Unlike the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, Freedom Party is a party that wants to truly empower the public. We want the power where it belongs, in the hands of private citizens. It doesn't belong in the hands of legislators who think they must continually 'govern' us. It should reside with each individual so that we may each properly 'govern' ourselves.

Freedom is what is at risk.

Governments shuffle and deal the cards to one another, but what is in the pot that they hope to win? Our right to govern ourselves. Our right to freely pursue our lives. Our right to take responsibility for our lives.

Those are the stakes. That is what we stand to lose. And lose we will, until we get a dealer who wants us to win.

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Page last updated on April 28, 2002