TO: Prime Minister Harper

January 24, 2006

Congratulations, Prime Minister. Your win, unthinkable only a month ago, is a truly Earth-shaking accomplishment – one which has not gone unnoticed in the world at large. Two months ago, even a Conservative minority government seemed out of the question. Anyone who bet on a majority at that time is now rather wealthy. That’s the good news.

Now, for the bad news. While the campaign that you and your advisors waged was critical to your victory, it is also undeniable that this result is much more a result of Liberal incompetence than Conservative proficiency. In short, Prime Minister, you won because the Liberals lost.

Their party is now in chaos. Martin might want to hold on. But there’s no way he can survive this result. He’ll be out – if not within a week, then very soon. Then there will be a divisive Liberal leadership race that will take at least six months. At that point, (if not sooner) I am entirely certain, the traditional veneration of the Liberal Party in the media will resume.

Canadian politics since the Second World War has been defined by a remarkable and nearly fixed pattern. The Liberal Party governs for an extended period of time – and places more and more of a stamp upon the country – and then is tossed out of power by voters sickened by the party’s arrogance and corruption. When this happens the Conservative Party takes over for a little while and serves, in essence, as the Regent of the Welfare State. Diefenbaker and Mulroney may have tinkered here and there with Liberal policies and initiated one or two of their own, but no Conservative Prime Minister has shaken the foundations of our Trudeaupian Nanny State.

The pundits who claim that this victory changes the shape of politics in this country have the thing entirely wrong. We are not breaking new ground here. Your win, Prime Minister, is history repeating itself – not history being made in new. We have seen this pattern before.

Winning the election didn’t change things. What you do with the win is what can be the salvation of our country. Politics is like a locked wheel. The majority of the time, it can be shifted only slightly to the right or to the left. However, sometimes, the wheel comes unlocked for a single moment – be it bitter or be it glorious. When the wheel locks again, it can only be shifted slightly once more – but now it sits in its new position.

When a political earthquake occurs, the people are disoriented and, to a degree, frightened. They don’t know what is coming. The opposition is not organized to oppose. “Any port in a storm” is a saying because it is true. During the storm, the people will have no choice but to accept what you do. Your win means the coming of such storm.

Some may say that you lack the mandate for such comprehensive change. Nonsense, I say. It is obviously true that your campaign’s great flaw, from a small-c conservative point of view, was that it seemingly bought into the liberal view of government as a dispenser of goodies to the population and into the Liberal Party’s view of Canadian values and Liberal values as being one and the same.

If you allow Canada to be defined on the terms of the Liberal Party – as a nation defined by unlimited social tolerance, nanny-state interventionism in the economy, and a weak foreign policy, then your reign (be it for one term or several) will be nothing more than an interregnum. The creation of a new Dynasty to replace the old requires that you break free of the constraints imposed by the campaign and, instead, seek to forge a new Canada – one which restores the best traditions of the old, saves what is worth keeping of what is, and adds a few new steps to the pattern.

The goal here, Prime Minister, is not simply to form a new government. It is to create a new country. If we are to save Canada, we must remake it. To do so, we must use the power vested in you to undertake a revolution.

Broadly, the program I commend to you involves action on three fronts: the social, the economic, and the foreign.

The Social Front:

I recommend that you make crime the focus of your opening effort on social issues. Abortion and Gay Marriage – though important to some people – have limited popular appeal. They’re dead issues. A vote on gay marriage is fine by me – but it’s not going to change the course of this country. Your efforts on crime, on the other hand, just might.

This is one area where we know that conservative policies work from experience – and where the results will be obvious in four years’ time. We already know what to do here. Abolish conditional sentencing for violent crimes. Add mandatory minimums. Allow for conditional sentencing. Bring in new guidelines. Cut useless programs like the gun registry and use the money to put more cops on the streets. The final point, not talked about much, is probably the most important. It should be obvious (but for some reason isn’t to many people) but the best way to curb most crime it to put police out on foot on the streets. Build more jails. However, to truly make a revolution, a Conservative Majority ought to go one step further.

Prime Minister, if you want to change this country, then bring back the death penalty.

Bring it back on a very limited basis. Only for the most heinous of criminals – serial murderers and child killers – and only under circumstances where guilt is certain (requiring DNA evidence would be the obvious way of doing this). But do it.

Why should you do this? Not, of course, because it will deter these individuals. Nor simply for retribution. Rather, there are two very good reasons to do this. One is political, one is moral.

Morally, having the death penalty – and using it – says something about a society. A society unwilling to look a Paul Bernardo, Clifford Olsen, or Robert Pickton in the eyes and judge them to be unfit to live is a soft society, not a merciful one. In some cases (the number may vary) we have to pronounce some individuals as being so evil that their continued existence is evidence of our own moral turpitude. That we accord such demons the benefits of humanity is an insult to our race as a whole. Bringing back the death penalty – even to a limited degree – begins a crucial process of hardening our society to face the coming struggle. It also represents a stark and complete break with the forty-year Liberalization of our justice system.

The political reasons for this should be obvious. First of all, it would be overwhelmingly popular with the public (about 60% of them including 20% who, just based on the numbers, didn’t vote for you). Second, it would be totally unpopular within the Liberal and New Democratic bases, thus forcing the leaders of both parties to oppose it and leading certain members to do so with unvarnished hysteria. I need not point out that forcing Liberal and New Democrats to go on CTV every night for weeks to defend the value of the life of Clifford Olsen cannot fail to be of political benefit for us. Additionally, if gives us an issue which can be used to attack every Liberal leader to come along for decades to come.

The Economic Front:

There are two major jobs to be done on the economic front. It will be necessary to cut a whole host of present-day programs, for reasons both fiscal and political. Of greater importance is the need for rapid reform of the great fiscal albatross around the neck of the Federal Government – health care.

The first step in any program of budget cutting will be to comb the government’s books for money which is being spent to further Liberal ambitions, rather than the good of the people. Broadly, I would include in that grab-bag the overwhelming majority of cultural funding, most “national unity” funding, the majority of the budget of the Heritage Ministry, and most of the various off-the-books funds created by the Liberals over the years.

While you’re doing this, Prime Minister, I strongly advise you to junk a good chunk of the CBC. Sell all of the over-the-air television stations and turn the radio stations and CBC Newsworld into a series of publicly-supported stations in the style of PBS and NPR in the United States. The left will be outraged by this, of course, but, let’s be entirely frank: is there a reason why we should care what they think at this point?

The CBC, especially the old-fashioned television stations, is entirely useless at this point. Only sentimentality keeps it around.

While you’re at it, greatly scale back the powers of the CRTC and let foreign (read: American) television stations flow into Canada. It’ll cost you a little bit of corporate support, but it’ll win you no end of public support. Even the hearts of die-hard Liberals will rejoice in knowing that they will no longer have to wait for months to see their favorite cable shows on second-rate clones of American stations.

On the matter of health care, we all know what needs to be done. If we’re to truly remake this country, you need to step on the Third Rail of Canadian politics and allow for a true private health care system to operate alongside the public system. The way to make this politically palatable is simple: pledge to maintain full funding for the public system while allowing people to buy additional insurance. Couch it in a lot of technical language. In four years, waiting lists will have disappeared altogether. It won’t be necessary to cut health funding at this point – rather, it can remain flat (or steady with inflation) as people opt out of the public system, thus ensuring that more money will be available on a per capita basis for the people within it. The key to winning on health care, Prime Minister, is to turn the issue from an emotional one into a technical one.

For health care reform, I would suggest departing from prior practice and conducting a number of American-style addresses to the nation over some period of time, complete with flip charts and PowerPoint slides in the fashion of Ross Perot in 1992. “Health care is about curing sick people, not anyone’s political ideology” should be your mantra. Turn the Liberal attack around. You’re the one simply interested in making the ill better. They’re the ones who are attacking sensible measures because they are so driven by political considerations.

Eliminating government funding for pro-Liberal institutions like the CBC and reforming health care have a similar transformational basis. They undermine the national image of this country as defined by the Liberal Party. In particular, stealing away health care from the Liberals would be the coup of the century.

The Foreign Front:

On matters of foreign policy, Prime Minister, you should follow the words, but not the spirit, of the Liberals. They claim that they want Canada to have an “independent foreign policy.” What they really mean is an anti-American foreign policy. What I propose instead, Prime Minister, is that you chart a genuinely independent course for Canada. You should do this not by making sanctimonious speeches before the United Nations, but rather through rebuilding our Armed Forces and aggressively asserting Canadian values – those of individual liberty and security of the person – all over the world, with force if necessary.

There is no reason why Canada shouldn’t be a genuine Middle Power worthy of serious weight in International Affairs. Britain is. Australia is. We should be one as well.

As Prime Minister, your first act should be to dispatch a notable force to assert our claim to Hans Island, and to defend it if necessary. You should address the nation and explain exactly why this is necessary. Explain that the resource value of the North is potentially tremendous over the long-term and that allowing other nations to lay claim to our territory undermines our sovereignty as nation. State further, that you will defend Canada against all opponents.

Beyond that, further action will have to wait for the reconstruction of the Canadian Armed Forces. This, I think, ought to be done on more lavish a scale than previously contemplated, serving as a great national project and, indeed, as the most urgent fiscal priority of your government.

A nation is not a nation without an army. We have the nucleus of an army – but not an effective field force. Nor, for that matter, do we have an army in name. All of this should be rectified.

Put right one of the greatest atrocities of the Liberals and restore the Canadian military to its rightful shape – with an Army, the Royal Canadian Navy, and the Royal Canadian Air Force. Give them back their names, their symbols, and their heritage. Do it right away. Nothing could more comprehensively signal the seriousness of your government in this area.

Over the first term of your government, the military budget should be increased to a proper 3% of the GDP – or about thirty billion dollars. This money should be used to build the best-trained and best-equipped force in the world, designed for expeditionary missions either as an ally or, if necessary, on our own.

The money should be used to put together a force of rapidly-deployable world-class infantry and their supporting elements. There’s no real point in our buying weapons to fight a major conventional opponent. Even if the United States goes to war with China at some point in the future, we could best assist the Americans by having forces which can take over American responsibilities elsewhere in the world.

Instead, you should build an Army of 100,000 men, organized into eight Brigade Units of Action, on the new American model, with associated support units and reservists. The focus of the Army and Air Force should be supporting this Army. That means building Amphibious Carriers and support ships for the Navy and buying C-17’s, tankers, and close-support planes for the Air Force.

Of course, we don’t want to build a force simply for the sake of building one. Instead, we need to build an armed force to suit or foreign policy.

What should that policy be? It should be, to put it simply, our idealism made real. Canadians like to talk a lot about “inventing peacekeeping” and our compassion for the oppressed. Well, I would suggest, that it’s time to put up or shut up. We live in a dangerous world. Terrorists seek to kill us simply because of who we are. Millions are murdered for no good reason. Our goal should be to defend Canada – and the West – by being an active force for good in the world. We should act as part of American or UN-led missions where appropriate but, where the world fails to act, as it has in places like Rwanda or as it is now failing in the Sudan, then Canada should act in the name of humanity.

The goal of this is three-fold.

First, domestically, it will change how Canadians think of themselves. We will cease to be the academic who sits at a cocktail party talking about the plight of the poor and instead become aid-workers on the front lines. And it will happen on the watch of the Conservatives. Our action will expose the rhetoric of the left as the empty fraud that it is.

On the matter of foreign policy, this expansion and assertiveness will make us a middle-power or better. Right now, in the councils of the world, Canada – despite its large economy and strong population – punches massively under its weight. In influence and power, we probably rank outside of the top twenty. A well-armed and assertive Canada should aim for the fifth position in the world of the future – behind the United States, China, India, and a re-armed Japan. Our ambition should be to replace a declining Britain (and rise-ahead of a soaring Australia) as the top Western nation behind the United States.

Such an increase in our national strength would not only be good for the nation in the sense that it would make us a better nation – it would be good in that it would confer benefits upon us. Do you really think that there would be a Softwood Dispute between that Canada and the United States? Strength breeds respect.

And, of course, the third goal should be obvious: we can save lives, kill bad guys, and make the world a better place.

None of what I have proposed, I will fully admit, is simple. Nor will it be easy to achieve.

But, Prime Minister, I put it to you that it is necessary to our future. Our country is in a lot of trouble and it will not be redeemed by our simply replacing the Liberals for a little while. A great national transformation is in order. A change is coming, one way or another. I hope that you are the man to lead that change.