Politicians and bureaucrats are always attracted to simple ways to control health-care spending. In the early 1990s, they decided the best way to control spending was to cut down on doctors. This brilliant idea resulted in a doctor shortage that has taken the past decade to fix.

The reach for the quick fix has made fundamental change in health care all but impossible. It has given us the worst of all possible worlds – a system in which everyone behaves as if the competition for resources is a zero-sum game and no one is rewarded for acting in the collective interest. The system virtually guarantees turf wars. As a result, the medical professions resemble medieval guilds – fiercely protectionist, rigidly conservative and jealous of their status and perks.

This explains why all the sweeping top-down master plans to fix our health-care system will never work. As one insider puts it, “At each step, you find the structural impediments to change are extraordinary.”

There are lots of cheaper, more effective ways to do health care. But the system is rigged to squash innovation. Take a simple thing like colonoscopies. This procedure – the single most effective screening test for cancer – is conducted in Canada by gastroenterologists. In other countries, it’s done by nurse-clinicians. Why can’t we do that too? Because the barriers erected by the various professional silos are almost insurmountable. Who would pay? Who would be ultimately accountable for the procedure? And so on.

Or take prescriptions. Do you really need to see a doctor to renew your Lipitor? Why don’t we give prescribing powers to pharmacists? In fact, much of the work that family doctors do – ordering tests, taking your blood pressure, lecturing you to lose weight, even treating your bladder infection – is routine. Nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants could do it just as well. Don’t try to persuade the doctors, though. (The last time I tried, they told me I might have bladder cancer and could die.) Besides, they need the fee income they get from seeing you.

But doctors are defeated by the system too. One group of doctors came up with a way to improve care for breast-cancer patients. Instead of sending a woman on an endless round of specialist appointments to the radiologist, the plastic surgeon and so on, they arranged for all the specialists involved in her care to meet with her all at the same time in order to lay out a treatment plan. When they told the hospital CEO about this breakthrough, he begged them not to spread the word. He feared the hospital would be flooded with patients it had neither the space nor the operating-room time to treat.

What kind of room is there to do things more effectively and efficiently? Here’s one suggestive statistic. We spend around 12 per cent of our GDP on health care. Singapore spends around 2.4 per cent. By almost any measure, Singapore has better health-care outcomes than we have.

Everybody knows that health-care costs cannot continue to rise at the current rate. Everybody in the system can point out lots of ways to do things better. We have a highly trained work force full of talented, hard-working and dedicated professionals. But until we can figure out ways to get them to work collaboratively together, and to reward innovation – not punish it – genuine reform will be impossible. Doctor-bashing is not the place to start.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/margaret-wente/doctor-bashings-not-the-cure-for-health-care-costs/article2434938/ >

When Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks write their sequel to The Trouble With Billionaires, let’s hope they’ll help us understand why the 1 per cent whine even when they win.

Take Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of one of the world’s largest private equity firms, the Blackstone Group; worth $4.7 billion, Mr. Schwarzman is the 52nd richest person in America. He describes his business philosophy candidly: “I want war, not a series of skirmishes. … I always think about what will kill the other bidder.” He sees Wall Street locked in fierce battle with President Barack Obama which he once described, yes, as a war: “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

Mr. Schwarzman eventually apologized for his language – but not for the sentiment behind it. The heinous act that provoked him to compare the U.S. President to Hitler? Mr. Obama’s attempt to prevent billionaires like Mr. Schwarzman from paying tax at a lower rate than Warren Buffett’s secretary.

What’s particularly noteworthy here is that despite the success of the Occupy movement in putting inequality on the international agenda, it can safely be reported that just about everywhere, the 1 per cent are still laughing all the way to the bank. In fact they own the bank. Just a little south of here, the Bank of America was bailed out by American taxpayers to the tune of $45-billion. It claimed a pre-tax loss of $5.4-billion and so paid no taxes for the past two years. In one of those years, it dished out executive bonuses and compensation worth $35-billion. Could I make this stuff up?

The bargain between the 1 per cent and the governments of the 1 per cent is clear: huge tax breaks for the big boys, austerity for the 99 per cent. Can you handle more figures? Since the geniuses on Wall Street gave us the great crash of 2008, American banks received $7.7-trillion in bailout money and British banks $1.3-trillion. Yes, trillion, in both cases. To offset those losses to the public purse, the United States will cut public spending by $2.4-trillion in the next decade and Britain $128-billion. In Britain this will include almost half-a-million lost public sector jobs.

It’s time to resurrect the biting formula given us years ago by John Kenneth Galbraith, an earlier generation’s Paul Krugman: private affluence, public squalor.

Canada merely proves the rule. Despite our ever-receding kinder/gentler reputation, Canada is actually becoming more unequal faster than most other countries. There’s an elephant in the room here (as elsewhere) that’s almost always ignored. As economists Sam Gindin and Paul Kahnert report in the April CCPA Monitor, there’s far more wealth in Canada today than ever before. Per capita GDP is 50 per cent higher (adjusting for inflation) than 30 years ago. Yet most of that wealth has been transferred to the richest Canadians through tax cuts and government subsidies.

Since 1980, the ultra-rich have increased their share of the national income from 8.1 per cent to 13 per cent, a shift of $67-billion. Here’s a strange coincidence. The combined federal and provincial deficits now run at about $65-billion annually. So let’s see now. If taxes on the super-rich had stayed at their 1980 level – when no well-heeled Canadian was exactly suffering from cruel and unusual tax torture – there’d be no federal or provincial deficits today. Interesting.

Privileging the few and hurting the less privileged has been very much a non-partisan tradition in Canada, from Bran Mulroney through Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin to Stephen Harper. Between 2000 (Chrétien-Martin) and today, corporate taxes have been reduced to 15 per cent from 29 per cent, but instead of putting their extra profits into productive business investments Canadian corporate leaders have engorged themselves on their $500-billion windfall. Looking at the Harper government record alone, from its first year in office in 2006 to 2013-14, tax cuts will cost the government – that’s us, the citizenry – $220-billion, creating the very deficits that are now used to justify government spending cuts. Interesting.

But if the 1 per cent are still winning the brutal class war, the 99 per cent are not yet surrendering. Portents of hope are everywhere. France, of course. Britain, where the austerity-obsessed Tory-Liberal coalition got smashed in municipal elections last week. The United States, where Mr. Obama is framing Mitt Romney as the candidate of the 0.00001 per cent.

And if you sometimes fear that Occupy was just a dream, look hard and you can still find evidence across the United States of its existence. In fact there are mini-Occupies all over the country – Occupy Colleges, Occupy Our Homes, Occupy the Securities and Exchange Commission, even an Occupalooza organized by Occupy Fullerton, which seems to be a town in California.

In Canada too there’s a revival of protest. Of course most controversial are the Quebec students. But whatever you think of them – and I for one believe their protests have become counter-productive – it’s obvious these young people are amazingly committed and tenacious; that’s the spirit that the 99 per cent need.

Voices-Voix, a non-partisan coalition of civil society groups and NGOs disappointed by the Harper government, is revving up its collective clout against the government. Canada can also now boast of Doctors for Fair Taxation, Lawyers for Fair Taxation and Faith Leaders for Fair Taxation. (Anyone who needs extra motivation should take a gander at Kevin O’Leary’s treatment on CBC TV not long ago of a serene and knowledgeable Tanya Zakrison, a surgeon representing Doctors for Fair Taxation.)

A couple of weeks ago 15,000 protestors demonstrated in Toronto against the McGuinty government’s attack on Ontario’s public-sector workers. Along with ever-lower taxes and an end to government regulation of the corporate world, destroying the trade-union movement has for decades been a key objective of the 1 per cent.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has now accomplished what the majority everywhere are fighting for. She actually forced the minority Liberal government, anxious to avoid an election, to agree to a small surtax for the 23,000 Ontarians who declare earnings of more than $500,000 a year. If I were advising Ms. Horwath, I would mobilize those crusading doctors and lawyers for fair taxation and make equality and fairness my campaign cry in the forthcoming Kitchener-Waterloo by-election.

I don’t think either American or Canadian billionaires have to sell off too many of their private jets just yet. But they shouldn’t be too complacent, either. The rich world is due its Spring Revolutions too.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/gerald-caplan/update-on-the-class-war-1-winning-99-regrouping/article2430024/singlepage/#articlecontent >

If there’s any branch of the federal government that should top the “hate list” for Canadian conservatives it has to be the Canada Revenue Agency.

This is the agency, after all, that big government uses to painfully extract our hard-earned wealth – sometimes with bullying tactics – so that Bev Oda has the funds to buy more orange juice.

Yet strangely, the supposedly “conservative” Harper government is giving $8-million in additional funding to the CRA.

What’s going on here? Isn’t that like Hobbits giving arrows to Orcs? Or like New York Yankees fans cheering for the Boston Red Sox?

It just doesn’t make sense.

Nevertheless, it seems the Tories want to bolster the CRA’s muscle so it can more efficiently squelch free speech.

Well OK, that’s not really fair to the Conservatives.

What they really want is for the CRA to more thoroughly investigate charitable groups that are trying (horror of horrors) to sway public opinion.

Under our laws a registered charity is allowed to engage in what’s called non-partisan political activity only if the money spent represents no more than 10 per cent of its resources.

The Conservatives want more information to ensure charities are respecting the rules. The government, by the way, can suspend a group’s charitable status if it doesn’t get the information it wants or if it finds the group has exceeded the limits.

Why are the Tories so interested in charities engaging in political activity all of a sudden?

Well, it’s likely because certain charitable environmental groups have recently spent money in an attempt to turn Canadians against the government’s plan to build the Northern Gateway pipeline.

This opposition has made the Tories very unhappy.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, for instance, recently decried “environmental and other radical groups” whose opposition to the pipeline, he said, is undermining the national interest.

And so the Tories are unleashing their tax-law legions.

They also want to amend the Income Tax Act to introduce penalties for charities that exceed the limits on political activity or fail to report it.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says this is just standard operating procedure. As he put it, “What is incumbent upon all charities is that they respect the laws regarding political activities. Those laws are clear.”

Technically speaking, of course, the Prime Minister is right – the law is the law.

But what if the law is wrong?

And in this case, the law gagging charities is most definitely wrong because it infringes on free speech.

To put it another way, democracy would be better served if charities had more freedom to advance ideas and to debate issues.

Certainly, this would help ensure voters are better informed when it comes to policies. And more-informed voters make more-informed votes.

Mind you, this is something Mr. Harper should already understand. In fact, as a conservative, he should be ideologically opposed to government rules and regulations that only serve to stifle free expression.

In other words, he should be loosening rather than tightening the regulatory straitjacket constricting the rights of charities.

And yes, if he did this it would give charities that oppose his agenda more freedom to speak out. But at the same time it would also give charities that support his agenda more freedom to do the same.

In the end the side with the best ideas would prevail in the court of public opinion. That’s the way it should be in a democracy.

If none of my arguments has convinced you, consider this final point: Less-regulated charities should frighten you far less than a better-funded Canada Revenue Agency.

Gerry Nicholls is a communications consultant.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/charities-silenced-by-the-taxman/article2433828/ >

When a crow went down with West Nile virus somewhere in Ontario, my phone would ring. Practising as an infectious disease specialist at the time, I was alerted to early warnings about threats to the public’s health from infectious agents. Immediate response was expected – and provided – by our strong public health infrastructure.

But here at the children’s hospital where I now work, a group of us meet regularly, if informally, about another pressing public health threat – hunger.

We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. But hunger is something that we at the hospital increasingly see among the families that bring their children to us for medical attention.

For 10 days beginning May 6, which marked the start of Hunger Awareness Week in Canada, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food is making a formal country mission visit to Canada. It’s the first-ever visit to a developed nation by Olivier de Schutter, a Belgian law professor who became special rapporteur in 2008.

As a signatory to both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976), Canada has a legal obligation to “respect, protect and fulfill the right to food.”

It’s my hope that this visit – and the recommendations in the report that Prof. de Schutter will subsequently produce – will throw a spotlight on the disturbing truth that far too many Canadian children are hungry because their families lack access to adequate and nutritious food.

Food Secure Canada estimates that almost 2.5 million Canadians live without secure access to food.

An infectious agent like West Nile poses an immediate threat as well as long-term health consequences (if almost exclusively in adults). Unquestionably, the consequences of hunger and food insecurity in childhood are similar.

Why are we concerned here? Many pediatricians with community practices tell us that finding the money to feed their children is the top problem faced by many parents they meet.

We see children whose parents struggle with poverty. We admit proportionately more children from high poverty neighbourhoods to hospital than from other neighbourhoods, and the children from poorer neighbourhoods stay longer at the hospital.

We know that childhood hunger – which of course is linked to poverty – has long-term impacts on physical and mental health.

For healthy growth and development, children need sufficient nutrients. Deficiencies of even small amounts during this important period can have long-term health consequences.

One thing we’re seeing in recent years is an upswing in cases of rickets, a condition still prevalent in developing countries but one that I thought would be corrected in Canada through the 1970s, when I trained in Montreal.

Rickets is preventable. It is primarily caused by a lack of sunlight and vitamin D, (including vitamin D supplementation with breast feeding), although a lack of calcium can also contribute to the condition, which causes bones to soften and become prone to deformity. Foods that contain vitamin D include fortified milk, as well as eggs, fish oils, margarine and some other foods.

The children we see who have developed rickets are quite simply not getting adequate amounts of sunlight and nutritious food, including vitamin D supplementation with breast feeding.

As a recent report from Toronto’s medical officer of health states: “Children who live in food-insecure households are more likely to have growth and developmental problems, be susceptible to illness and perform poorly in school, compared to children who are food-secure.”

Adequate nutrition is also a key issue when it comes to mental health among youth. Psychiatrists speaking at the request of community youth in one of our priority neighbourhoods advised that the first two mental-health questions that should be asked of young people are: “How did you sleep last night?” and “Have you eaten today?”

We know that in the Greater Toronto Area, the use of food banks is increasing rapidly. A key reason is that housing costs are eating up a growing proportion of family income. Initiatives are under way to help physicians and other health care providers better link families to resources such as food banks and government services.

But while there is a perception that food banks – as well as programs like school and community meal programs, community gardens and kitchens – are providing the needed response to food needs, Canadian research challenges this notion.

The UN Special Rapporteur will present his preliminary findings on food security in Canada on May 16 in Ottawa. It’s my hope that this will put child hunger squarely on the political agenda in Canada – and galvanize action to eliminate it.

Specializing in social pediatrics, Dr. Elizabeth Lee Ford-Jones is an expert adviser with EvidenceNetwork.ca, project investigator at the Hospital for Sick Children and a professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of Toronto.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/childhood-hunger-is-a-canadian-public-health-crisis/article2430182/ >

The Canadian government has just closed the visa section at its embassy in Iran’s capital, Tehran. Visas for Iranians – and there are many Iranians with relatives in Canada and others who want to emigrate – will be processed at the Canadian embassy in Turkey’s capital, Ankara.

Ankara is one country and 2,500 kilometres removed from Tehran. And yet according to a Harper government spokesperson, the processing of visas for Iranians in Turkey rather than Tehran will make things work “more effectively and efficiently.”

Of course, this statement is patently absurd. But these days in post-budget Ottawa, all manner of absurd things are being said without much public comment.

It’s as if the media is so beaten down by mantras that are not true, and the public so distant from what goes on in Ottawa, that a government can say almost anything without anybody caring.

The latest absurdities flow from the March 29 budget, and how the Harper government chooses to explain the cuts therein. The government developed a story line – or narrative, if you like. It sticks to that line under all circumstances, save a few.

The line is that budget cuts of $4-billion will not affect service to Canadians, but rather can be absorbed by (the following words are in the budget): rationalizing, consolidating, integrating, streamlining, refocusing, reconfiguring, modernizing, realigning and everywhere seeking efficiencies.

Who can be against such laudable management objectives? Moreover, polls consistently show that the public, when asked about any government’s fiscal dilemma, thinks it can be solved by eliminating waste and duplication and making the government more efficient.

So the government line aligns perfectly with the polling data, which in turn reflects the naive belief that all spending dilemmas in the public sector can be solved by the elixir of efficiency.

Doubtless, efficiencies can be found and should be pursued. But there are not $4-billion of them to be found. Only if governments stop doing things can such sums be saved, which is what is happening, and will happen. But just what it will stop doing the government has refused to say.

What will necessarily occur are cuts to programs beyond efficiency improvements. It is honest, for example, for the government to say it will close Kingston Penitentiary to save money. It is not believable to say that almost $300-million can be struck from the budget of the Correctional Service of Canada, as the budget did, through finding efficiencies. Double-bunking will happen, unless additional facilities are built – facilities the government insists it will not build.

The same applies across the government. Programs will go, but the government is not willing to say where or when and instead sticks to the line that all the withdrawn money can be compensated for by the gobbledygook of efficiencies and refocusing and streamlining.

Statistics Canada will stop doing many surveys, and those who rely on reliable data will suffer, just as the loss of the long-form census was an assault on accurate information.

Fisheries inspections will be fewer. Fewer Canadians will be given skills training. Embassies will close (at a time when the government declares that “Canada is Back!” in the world). Visa-processing will get transferred thousands of kilometres away.

Foreign aid to certain countries will be curtailed. Fewer Canadian-made programs will appear on the CBC. Certain military purchases will not be made. The RCMP will have fewer officers in absolute terms and in relation to a growing population.

Regional development agencies will give out less money. Fewer documents will be collected for the archives. The national parks will be somewhat less available or more expensive, or both. And so on across government departments.

Governments tend to grow in size, and they need periodic pruning. Cuts are not necessarily unwarranted, because some programs outlive their usefulness and some can be managed better. New priorities emerge, and these might be financed by shifting money from other departments.

What’s wrong, however, is to pretend that a smaller government will bring no dilution of services and programs, that somehow the constant repetition of the government’s line about streamlining and efficiency gains can hide the reality of what is really happening, and will happen.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/you-can-talk-about-efficiency-but-you-cant-hide-the-axe/article2429017/ >

The Conservatives have taken some Canadian environmental charities to task for accepting money from wealthy foreign donors to finance their campaigns against oil and gas projects.

But tax returns filed to the Canada Revenue Agency show most of the foreign money that fills the coffers of domestic charities does not go to the environmental groups now in Tory crosshairs.

An analysis by The Canadian Press of charities’ annual tax returns found only one of the top 10 foreign-funded charities could be considered a conservation group.

That group is Ducks Unlimited Canada. Tax returns show it has reported receiving more than $33-million over the years from foreign sources, making it the fifth-largest recipient of money from outside the country.

Ducks Unlimited Canada says it receives foreign funding from its sister organization in the United States, U.S. federal and state governments, corporations, private foundations and individual contributors.

CARE Canada reported the largest amount of foreign funding. It has accepted nearly $99-million over the years from foreign donors. Most of it came from United Nations agencies, foreign governments and the charity’s international members.

Second was World Vision Canada, which has reported $89-million in foreign income. It says the vast majority of that money comes from gift-in-kind donations from UN organizations and international corporations with branches in Canada.

“For example, these would be things like pharmaceuticals, clothing, school supplies and books and medical supplies,” spokeswoman Tiffany Baggetta said in an email.

“Then we have a very small portion that is from individual citizens who just happen to live outside of Canada. For example, sometimes we have people who sponsor a child through World Vision Canada, then they move to another country but want to continue sponsoring that child through World Vision Canada.”

Third was Hamilton’s McMaster University, which, like many post-secondary institutions, has charitable status. McMaster has reported $43-million in foreign income.

University spokesman Gord Arbeau says last year foreign students paid McMaster $25-million in tuition fees, while the school also received $13-million for research funding and $4-million from sales of medical isotopes from its nuclear reactor.

All that money counts as foreign funding for CRA’s purposes.

The charity that reported the fourth-most foreign funding was the Canadian UNICEF Committee, with $37-million. But a UNICEF Canada spokeswoman says the organization doesn’t actually receive much foreign funding.

“While it appears we received a significant amount of cash from foreign donors – we don’t,” Melanie Sharpe said in an email.

“That figure is almost entirely the value of donated health supplies that we send to our child survival programs in developing countries. Less than 0.5 per cent represents cash donations Canadians have made to one of UNICEF’s global fundraising campaigns.

“… According to accounting regulations all cash or in-kind donations have to be registered as revenue whether from a foreign or domestic source.”

The CRA database shows only 1,998 of the 85,000 or so registered charities now active in Canada have reported any foreign income. Most are aid organizations, religious groups or schools. All of their foreign funding over the years amounts to a combined total of $811,467,808.

“It’s certainly not as if this was something new,” said Marcel Lauziere of Imagine Canada, an advocacy group for Canadian charities. “And even if it were new, and it certainly is not, hard to understand why that would be a bad thing. I mean, unless Canada wants to isolate itself from the rest of the world, it would make no sense.

“You know, if 80 per cent of funding of charities came from foreign sources, you’d say, ‘Okay, that’s a bit bizarre. What does that mean?’ That’s not the case at all. The lion’s share, by far, of the funding that charities get are provided by Canadians.”

Canadian charities do not have to disclose on their tax returns which foreign groups gave them money. But the recent federal budget promised to impose new penalties on charities that fail to provide full disclosure of funding and activities.

“There have also been calls for greater public transparency related to the political activities of charities, including the extent to which they may be funded by foreign sources,” the budget document says.

Sanctions for charities that don’t play by the rules could include fines or a suspension of a charity’s ability to issue tax receipts.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have been critical of charities that receive foreign funding, particularly environmental groups.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has accused “environmental and other radical groups” of trying to use money from “foreign special-interest groups” to hijack hearings on a pipeline that would bring Alberta oil-sands bitumen to a port on the British Columbia coast.

Environment Minister Peter Kent even raised the spectre of criminal activity in a recent interview broadcast on CBC Radio’s The House. Asked by host Evan Solomon if the government is trying to silence environmental groups by taking away their charitable status, Mr. Kent raised concerns about money laundering.

“Some groups with charitable status have been going well beyond the CRA guidelines for what is acceptable practice as a charitable agency,” he said. “And there has also been concern that some Canadian charitable agencies have been used to launder offshore foreign funds.”

The Environment Minister was not available to speak to The Canadian Press.

One group that has been singled out for receiving American grants is Tides Canada, which runs both a grant-making foundation and a charity that backs environmental and social-justice projects. It has reported $7.8-million in foreign income over the years, according to CRA tax returns. That makes Tides the 16th-largest recipient of foreign money.

However, U.S. tax records show a different amount.

Annual filings to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service from tax-exempt and non-profit organizations show the Tides Canada Foundation has received more than $63-million from wealthy American foundations. That would put it third on the list of Canadian charities that received funding from outside the country.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation gave the Tides Canada Foundation almost $33-million, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation gave it nearly $14-million, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation gave it $11 million, and other groups gave it smaller amounts.

Ross McMillan of Tides Canada said wording on the CRA tax form changed in 2009 to include a line for revenue received from all sources outside Canada. Prior to this charities only reported foreign funding under “other gifts.”

Since pre-2009 CRA tax forms did not distinguish foreign funding from other income, a search of the agency’s database does not turn up a higher number for the Tides Canada Foundation.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/which-charities-get-the-most-foreign-cash-not-those-on-tory-hit-list/article2428592/singlepage/#articlecontent >

The world has changed, and when it comes to its immigration system, Canada is not changing fast enough to compete in it. It is no longer possible to sit back languidly, as the best and the brightest queue on its doorstep. The global market for human capital is voracious. There may always be migrants wanting to come to Canada, but they may not be the ones that Canada needs. People with options are less and less likely to tolerate hidebound and cumbersome immigration process, waiting as long as eight years to have their applications processed. If you are ambitious, if you are skilled, if you are entrepreneurial, if you are educated, if you are impatient for success, you will look elsewhere. Increasingly, elsewhere is looking better.

Countries like Australia can now fast-track applications for permanent residency in less than a year. Nor is the competition coming only from developed countries. With growing prosperity at home, not every upwardly mobile citizen of China, India and Brazil sees re-locating overseas as the only path to success. In fact, the Chinese and Indian governments are using investment, tax and visa incentives to draw the highly educated children of Chinese and Indian immigrants to their ancestral homelands.

To ensure Canada remains attractive to the sharpest minds, the keenest entrepreneurs and greatest innovators, the country must move beyond an inefficient selection system and long waits. Why should people put their careers on hold, in order to come to Canada? “International competition is starting to heat up for the best immigrants, the Frank Stronachs, the people who will drive the economy,” notes Arthur Sweetman, an economist at McMaster University.

A new Gallup poll shows that Canada is the third most popular destination for people looking to relocate, with the U.S. first, and the U.K. second. Some might say that top three isn’t bad. But Canada fell a spot from 2010, the global survey of 452,199 adults in 151 countries shows. Despite the recession, the U.S. remains by far the world’s most desired destination for prospective migrants. Why isn’t Canada in first place?

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has enacted long-overdue reforms to streamline the selection system for economic immigrants. More points will be given for younger people with language proficiency who have prearranged employment.

He also plans to tackle the backlog by closing 100,000 files involving 300,000 people. This is a necessary measure – but one with consequences. It puts a stain on Canada’s credibility, and more reforms are necessary to ensure the problem doesn’t recur.

There is a need for a different kind of immigration officer to be sent to Canada’s missions around the world: not someone with a shiny badge, armed with a long list of bureaucratic time-consuming checks that may end up impeding people with desirable educations, entrepreneurial instincts and in-demand skills from immigrating to Canada. Instead they should be people whose job it is to find and recruit talent. Canada needs headhunters.

Canada needs to open the doors for the right kind of migrant. Faster processing times would enable Canada to take advantage of global cyclical downturns. The current unemployment rate for Spaniards under age 25 is 50 per cent, the overall rate in the country is 25 per cent. Spain has an army of highly literate, technologically savvy people sitting idle, people who could, in some cases, literally walk in and fill vacant jobs here in the hi-tech, telecommunications, mining and petroleum sectors.

Instead of having a system flexible enough to seize on such opportunities, we have immigration lawyers with stories of clients – such as a couple from South Africa with MBAs – who become so frustrated, they simply give up on Canada.

Mr. Kenney is trying. Ottawa has expanded the provincial-nominee category, which favours immigrants with prearranged employment. However, the model has some weaknesses: Newcomers entering through the nominee stream are also less educated, and have lower salaries over the long term, than those who enter through the federal points system. This category of workers remains crucial to Canada’s overall program, but it will not suffice.

Ottawa must do more to ensure newcomers can convert their foreign credentials and job experience. It must address discrimination in the labour market, and gate-keeping by professional associations. But first and foremost, Canada needs to change its mentality around immigration. It should be designed as much around whom Canada wants, as who wants Canada.

It is becoming a seller’s market. As Sergio Karas, a Toronto immigration lawyer, says, “People from developing countries are no longer automatically migrating to Canada.” Canada must learn to compete. Educated professionals, entrepreneurs, leaders, will not waste their most productive years trying just to get through the door. They know where they are wanted, and if they’re not wanted here they will pack up their bags and go to where they are, taking with them all their potential and promise.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/canada-must-actively-recruit-the-best-and-brightest-immigrants/article2423327/ >

The Conservative cabinet is giving itself sweeping powers to rewrite the rules on whether Canadians on EI can turn down certain jobs without losing their benefits.

The measure is contained inside the budget implementation bill and would give cabinet the power to change employment insurance rules later through regulation without the approval of Parliament.

Yet, even though the provision is currently before MPs, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley is refusing to explain its purpose other than to say further details will be announced over the coming months.

Under the existing Employment Insurance Act, the government already has the power to terminate EI benefits if a claimant refuses to take “suitable employment.” That’s a term that isn’t explicitly defined in the law, but numerous court rulings have said personal considerations must be taken into account, such as geography and experience. Essentially, an out-of-work scientist can’t be denied EI for refusing to dig ditches or pick fruit.

The budget bill contains a small section that allows cabinet through regulation to define “suitable employment.” Ottawa isn’t saying what it has in mind, but Immigration Minister Jason Kenney recently expressed his frustration that Prince Edward Island was bringing in temporary foreign workers to fill fish plant jobs even though many Canadians in the area are unemployed.

Although the reference to “suitable employment” in the budget bill is vague, EI experts who cross-referenced the section with existing legislation say the government is clearly planning to give itself more power.

“I strongly suspect that they plan on writing regulations that will increase their authority to require people – or at least penalize them under EI – to take jobs for which the government thinks they’re suited. That’s clearly the direction they’re going,” said McMaster economics professor Arthur Sweetman.

Jon Medow, a policy associate with the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, said this and other EI changes in the budget bill – which also include replacing existing appeals bodies with a single “Social Security Tribunal” – are of such significance that they should be studied independently.

“Treating it in the context of a standalone bill would provide a much better framework to discuss any changes that are happening to the program,” he said.

Neil Cohen, who has worked with unemployed Canadians for more than 25 years and is executive director of Winnipeg’s Community Unemployed Help Centre, said he’s deeply concerned by the extent of the EI changes in the budget bill.

“It’s always been up to the courts to determine what constitutes suitable employment,” he said. “This government is determined to reverse the course of 70 years of history … They’re really giving themselves broad, sweeping powers.”

Alyson Queen, a spokeswoman for the Human Resources Minister, repeated that further explanation of the EI changes will come over time. “We will be further connecting Canadians with available jobs. That aspect of the EI improvements will be forthcoming in the coming weeks and months. We’re still working on it.”

NDP MP Jean Crowder said the budget bill should be divided and studied independently by committees with the related expertise. “You don’t know the repercussions when you ram through stuff like this.”

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/budget-bill-gives-conservatives-broad-power-over-ei-rules/article2420742/ >

Dear Prime Minister:

When I heard your words in the House of Commons that were deemed an apology for the debacle of Canada’s residential school system, I was heartened. At that time, it was nothing short of amazing to hear a prime minister use the word “wrong” in reference to Canada’s treatment of aboriginal people. Now, nearly four years later, I look at the astoundingly hurtful cuts to organizations whose sole purposes are the re-empowerment and well-being of aboriginal people, and I am disheartened. Hell, Mr. Harper, I am downright angry.

You said “sorry” and you were not. In aboriginal context, an apology means that you recognize the flaw within yourself that made the offence possible and you offer reconciliation based on understanding the nature of that flaw. That reconciliation takes the form of living and behaving in the opposite manner. You have not done this. In fact, you have continued in the same vein that made the original apology necessary.

Residential schools effectively separated aboriginal children from the influence of everything that could sustain, perpetuate and define them. When you cut funding for the National Aboriginal Health Organization and the Native Women’s Association of Canada’s health program and ended the mandate of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, you did the same thing.

Your apology and any actions you have undertaken since have only been the expedient motions demanded by tragedy, catastrophe or the public outing of your government’s callous indifference to the needs of Canada and her people.

Because it’s not just aboriginal people you harm when you deign to disengage us from vehicles of healing. You harm Canada. You make the entire country less.

As someone graced with a chief’s headdress and a native name, as you were by the Blood people, it is incumbent on you to learn the teachings those honours arise from. One of them is that the honour of one thing is the honour of all. Similarly, the dishonour of one is the dishonour of all. So when you dishonour us, you dishonour the country. You dishonour that headdress and the ceremony attached to it. You dishonour protocol, tradition, spirituality and the foundational principle of both the headdress and Canada – equality.

Residential schools left deep and grievous wounds on our national consciousness. Your actions only continue that legacy.

As individuals, we seek to heal through a process of learning to embrace our hurts, to hold them, so we can learn to let them go with grace. We learn to embrace our hurts by coming to understand and accept our whole story, our whole history. We leave out nothing. Only when we can accept our whole story can we move on as enlightened, empowered and whole people.

It’s the same for a community, a municipality, a province, a society and a nation. Aboriginal people understand this, and our health and healing organizations are geared toward the perpetuation of that process. We seek to build strong people within the context of Canada, to integrate whole people into the flux and flow of our homeland. But you choose to disallow us that and we can only feel the hurt of yet another wound and ask why.

I, for one, believe in the idea of Canada. I believe in the incredible potential for social greatness that resides here. I believe there is nothing we can’t accomplish as a country if we all work together to make it happen. For the most part, aboriginal people believe that, too. Every political motion we undertake is a step toward the vision of Canada we carry – of a homeland built on equality, harmony and unity.

But those things cannot occur when exclusion is allowed to happen. This is what we know. We seek to be a fully functioning part of this nation’s march toward a shining common future. We strive to be whole and well. We seek personal, community, tribal and collective fulfilment. We seek to be good citizens. In this, we are no different from our non-native neighbours.

I hope you have it in you to hear this. I hope you know that, of the one million aboriginal people in Canada, a significant number of us are potential voters and that our numbers can influence hundreds of ridings. I hope you know that three years is not a long time and that, if your hope is that Canada forgets your missteps before then, we as aboriginal people will not come election time.

Richard Wagamese, a B.C.-based columnist and author, is the recipient of the 2012 National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Media and Communications. His latest novel is Indian Horse.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/aboriginal-reconciliation-an-open-letter-to-stephen-harper/article2416077/ >

At the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, this month, Latin American leaders pushed hard for a resolution supporting Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands. Stephen Harper pushed back.

In a private session with leaders, according to people who know, the Prime Minister fiercely supported the right of the islanders to determine their fate, and they had chosen to remain British. For Canada, this was a matter of deep principle, Mr. Harper insisted.

The United States has always been neutral on the Falklands, but when Canada took the lead, President Barack Obama made it clear he backed Mr. Harper. The resolution failed.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was furious. “This is pointless. Why did I even come here?” the Argentinean president was overheard saying as she stormed out of the conference.

Mr. Harper’s willingness to confront an entire hemisphere’s worth of Latin American leaders, was born of the same deep conviction that has driven the law-and-order omnibus bill, that has made cutting sales and corporate taxes a top priority, that has given Canada the reputation of having Israel’s back like no other nation, that imposed spending cuts and job cuts on the public service in the last budget.

One year after winning his first majority government, a milestone he marks on Wednesday, and more than six years after becoming prime minister, Stephen Harper bestrides Canadian politics, a principled economic and social conservative who is reshaping the nation.

And yet, after all this time, his notorious personal reserve incites suspicion and the big questions remain. Is this Prime Minister determined to dismantle the progressive state, built up over decades by previous governments? Or is his truly a moderate, centrist regime that has abandoned its radical roots and betrayed its conservative base?

As a party, the Conservatives are now in a tie with the New Democrats among decided voters, according to a Nanos Research poll released Friday.

Even more worrisome for Mr. Harper are the clouds gathering over his government, clouds that have many Canadians who thought highly of him only two months ago, the poll suggests, questioning his competence, trustworthiness and vision for the country.

But has Canada changed much at all under Mr. Harper? Are shifts in foreign and domestic policy incremental and sensible, or the first steps toward a “night watchman” state that polices the border and the streets, and does little else?

Has the government reined in environmental extremists or put our land and water at risk? Has it given Quebec the political space to pursue a separate destiny within a united Canada, or left French Canada dangerously estranged?

When we look at our country today, what do we see?

As for the man himself, who is this enigma? What lies behind that impassive mask? Do we know him any better now, after a year with a free political hand, than when he appeared on the national scene almost 20 ago?

It may well be that his angriest critics and most passionate advocates are both right. This Prime Minister’s steady shifts in policy are not overly radical on their own but taken together are reshaping the nation’s sense of itself. He has established what could be called a new “Brand Canada” – a land of low taxes, law and order and a strong military, infused with a robust nationalism, rooted in the West and powered by Ontario’s affluent, aspirational suburbs.

This new Canada has eclipsed some once-potent political forces – the Liberal Party, Quebec, even Ottawa itself. There are dangers in their decline, as regions drift apart and factions grow more strident.

And as the Conservatives accelerate their efforts, resistance accelerates, as shown by the polls. The dramatic decline in the PM’s personal cachet occurred as his government was being accused of suppressing the opposition vote during the last election, hiding billions in the cost of new fighter jets and breaking parliamentary ethics rules.

But this will pass, claims John Reynolds, the former B.C. MP and Harper confidant. “He’ll get rid of the tough things in the first year or so, and then he’s going to be in power for a long time.”

How long? “I think one of the achievements he’d like to have is to be the longest-serving Conservative prime minister – if not the longest serving prime minister” of all.

To pass Tory record-holder Sir John A. Macdonald requires staying until 2025 – add another two years to top all-time leader William Lyon Mackenzie King of the Liberals. But however long he serves, by the time Mr. Harper leaves, the country will be a very different place.

It will be divided as never before between left and right, progressive and conservative, east and west, decline and growth. Politics will become – has already become – a clash of irreconcilable values, of stark choices, with the voters forced to choose.

The story so far

In the past 12 months, the Conservatives have:

• enacted an omnibus crime bill that, among a host of other changes, increases sentences for many crimes, especially those involving drugs or sex.
• formally withdrawn Canada from the Kyoto protocol on global warming, claiming the standards set by the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien could not be met.
• launched investigations into what it calls “environmental and other radical groups,” some of them foreign-funded, claiming they are determined to sabotage the Conservative plan of exploiting natural resources to grow the economy. Many environmental assessments are being handed to the provinces.

As well, the March 29 budget cut program spending and reduced the size of the public service by almost 20,000 positions. The qualification age for the old age security retirement benefit will gradually rise from 65 to 67. Refugee claimants from developed countries will be given speedy assessments and in most cases sent back. Workers on unemployment insurance who don’t apply for jobs currently being filled by foreign temporary workers could lose their benefits.

In December, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced a multi-year funding formula for health transfers to the provinces that largely removed Ottawa from its role in promoting a national public health-care system.

These and other changes delivered a one-two punch, greatly diminishing the federal footprint in programs Ottawa shares with the provinces, while cutting back spending in areas within its own jurisdiction.

All this has left some worried about what will be left when the Conservatives are through.

Alex Himelfarb was Clerk of the Privy Council – head of the federal bureaucracy – under Mr. Chrétien and his successor, Paul Martin. He caused a stir with a recent blog post lamenting what he calls “the dismantling of the progressive state.”

“The consequences of such a shift are never immediate or obvious; they are subtle and slow burning, inevitably hitting the most vulnerable first and hardest … ” he wrote.

“If we want to imagine the consequences of crushing the progressive state … we might want to have a look at the twenties and thirties, a time of massive inequality and personal vulnerability which presaged the Great Depression.”

In an interview, Mr. Himelfarb said that he believes the cuts are too deep: “We need to raise taxes to the extent necessary to protect and renew key services and meet our economic, social and environmental challenges.”

Canadians “were told that tax cuts are a free good,” he adds. “They are not.”

Mr. Himelfarb stresses that he does not believe the Conservatives are implementing some hidden agenda. “They said they were going to do this, and they did it. There is nothing hidden about it.”

He is right. It has been almost a decade since Mr. Harper laid out a strategy that has truly begun to take shape only in the past 12 months.

A plan long in the making

The Prime Minister chose this year’s Davos economic conference to unveil the surprise plan to raise the retirement age.

Many observers consider that speech a virtual mandate for the conservative transformation, but it was in a much earlier address that he actually revealed his game plan.

In 2003, speaking in Toronto to Civitas, a private conservative club, the then-leader of the Canadian Alliance laid out his core beliefs and priorities as an economic and social conservative.

The victories of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had already realized much of the economic-conservative agenda, Mr. Harper said, although “we do need deeper and broader tax cuts, further reductions in debt, further deregulation and privatization.”

But the real challenge, he maintained, lay in confronting “the social agenda of the modern left.” Conservatives must fight for “issues involving the family … such as banning child pornography, raising the age of sexual consent, providing choice in education and strengthening the institution of marriage.”

But he cautioned that “rebalancing the conservative agenda will require careful political judgment … issues must be chosen carefully … real gains are inevitably incremental … any other approach will certainly fail.”

Just as he predicted, Mr. Harper was able to move more quickly on the economic than on the social front during the minority-government years.

But the government has raised the age of sexual consent, and this year introduced a bill that would expand police powers to monitor the web in search of child pornographers. As well, couples with children will be allowed to split their income for tax purposes, making it easier for one parent to stay home.

Yet part of the Prime Minister’s learning curve was realizing that, on issues such as capital punishment, abortion and gay rights, the national debate was settled and Conservatives would reopen it at their political peril. If his has one key asset, it’s his ability to learn from his mistakes.

Two-sided personality

Few are more ruthless in analyzing, even eviscerating, his performance than Stephen Harper himself. No one did a better job of explaining how the Tories lost the 2004 election – in part because he fed fears that the new Conservative Party was too radically right-wing – or realized how much trouble he was in when the opposition parties nearly combined to oust him from power in December, 2008.

No one recognized better that, if the Conservatives focused exclusively on the economy in the last election, he could win a majority government.

The flip side of his personality is Mr. Harper’s apparent inability to empathize. Some who know him say he is unable, or unwilling, to understand the values and beliefs of those he disagrees with. And when he believes his opponents are weak, overconfidence can lead him to overreach.

A hint of this hubris surfaced last summer during a barbecue at the home of Toronto Mayor and staunch conservative Rob Ford. Mr. Harper was caught urging provincial Tory leader Tim Hudak, then heading into a fall election, to “complete the hat trick” that would see conservatives in power at Queen’s Park as well as City Hall and Ottawa.

The remark drew some flak and, of course, Mr. Hudak came up short – a clear indication, along with this week’s result in Alberta, that Mr. Harper’s message isn’t exactly driving progressive government from the landscape. And now, with the sweeping justice, immigration and fiscal changes made in the past year, the question is whether he is overreaching yet again.

Intimates such as John Weissenberger dispute the notion that Mr. Harper can’t see the other side of an argument. The geologist and oil-company manager says detractors underestimate Mr. Harper’s ability to appreciate an opponent, citing his respect for late NDP leader Jack Layton.

He also speaks of his old friend’s “very strong strategic sense” – a talent that allowed Mr. Harper to see before almost anyone else that a new conservative community of interest could reshape the political map.

Hockey-loving new Canadians

In the depths of the 2009 recession, the hockey-obsessed Prime Minister was talking with the owner of a Canadian franchise in the National Hockey League and asked how ticket sales were holding up in the tough times.

The best news, the owner replied, was that immigrant fans were staying loyal. For them, he said, a ticket was for more than a hockey game – it was a ticket to becoming Canadian.

Immigrant Canadians with money enough and will enough to buy hockey seats in the middle of a recession have become an integral part of a new Conservative coalition.

Mr. Harper realized that in the Civitas speech, predicting that an economic and socially conservative party, with the right leadership and approach, “can draw in new people. Many traditional Liberal voters, especially those from key ethnic and immigrant communities, will be attracted to a party with strong traditional views of values and family.”

Patrick Muttart, the political and marketing consultant who was Mr. Harper’s deputy chief of staff from 2006 to 2009, is credited with identifying and targeting key voter segments. He sees the 2011 result as not just an election, but a culmination.

“In charting out a new course, a new national narrative, [the Conservative Party] is starting to move the country along with it,” he says.

The Conservatives always commanded the loyalty of voters in the Prairies and rural Ontario attracted to their core message: low taxes, sound finances, an overriding emphasis on growth leavened with law-and-order values.

Mr. Harper’s genius was his ability to sell the same values to what Mr. Muttart calls “the suburbanization of affluence and influence.”

In marketing terms, middle-class suburbanites are “strivers,” upwardly mobile people seeking to own a home in a safe community while they pursue their dreams. They contrast with “creatives,” who place a stronger emphasis on community supports, the environment and international engagement.

More likely to vote Liberal or New Democrat, creatives also tend to live downtown, which is where those parties remain strong, at least in English Canada. But in each election since 2004, suburban strivers have increasingly identified with the Conservatives – and immigrants are more likely to be strivers than creatives.

Mr. Muttart says that Mr. Harper’s ability to appeal “to their aspirational sensibilities with the focus on jobs and growth and balanced budgets” produced the Conservative victory last May.

That victory marked a sea-change in Canadian politics. The political, cultural, business and media elites who live principally in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal have long dominated the national agenda.

But for the first time in this country’s history, they are not part of the governing coalition, as suburban Ontario voters in the millions have joined Westerners in a new coalition, leaving the old guard hunkered down in their urban enclaves, enfeebled and impotent.

“It’s been in the making for a long time, but Harper accelerated it,” says Rainer Knopff, a member of the Calgary School – academics whose conservative world view influenced Mr. Harper profoundly when he was a student at the University of Calgary.

With that new conservative coalition at his back, Mr. Harper is finally able to implement at least part of an agenda that he laid out nine years ago, an agenda that has also fundamentally altered Canada’s place in the world.

A man of the world

Nowhere has Mr. Harper’s conservative vision been more fully realized in the past year than in his foreign policy. In the Civitas speech, he proclaimed that “the emerging debates on foreign affairs should be fought on moral grounds.” In defending “democracy, free enterprise and individual freedom” Canada has “the duty … and the responsibility to put ‘hard power’ behind our international commitments.”

In the past year, the Conservatives have implemented that manifesto with a vengeance. In John Baird, the Prime Minister appears finally to have found a foreign minister who fully reflects his own priorities and passions. Mr. Baird has been even more vocal than Mr. Harper in his support for Israel and in Canada’s criticism of its enemies, including Syria and Iran. And Canada played a leading role in NATO’s overthrow of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi. A Canadian general led the mission, and Mr. Baird was the first allied foreign minister to tour the former dictator’s compound after Tripoli was liberated.

Mr. Harper’s strongly pro-U.S. stance led his government to embrace a continental security perimeter with the United States, along with a pledge to harmonize standards and regulations in automobiles and other products between to two countries, along with an agreement to remove obstructions at the border.

In his early days, his agenda also meant embracing human rights over commerce, confering honourary citizenship on the Dalai Lama, even at the cost of angering China. But Mr. Harper eventually came to realize that his principled stand was freezing Canadian businesses out of the burgeoning Chinese market, and that the United States and European economies – Canada hopes to sign a free-trade agreement with the European Union this year – may never recover fully from the recession.

And so he pivoted, swallowing a public humiliation during his first Chinese trip – Premier Wen Jiabao chided him for taking so long to visit – to demonstrate to his hosts that he was serious about making a new start. Now, if Mr. Harper meets with the Dalai Lama at all, it is in private – as he did this week.

He also learned that the United States is a neighbour and ally and customer, but not always a friend. Relations with the Obama administration have been strained in the wake of the President’s decision not to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, at least for now, and by the Americans’ apparent unwillingness to sponsor Canada’s entry into the Trans Pacific Partnership trade negotiations unless this country agrees to scrap protections for the dairy and poultry industry.

And so the government has launched a flurry of two-way trade talks with Pacific nations, including Japan and Thailand as well as China. A free-trade agreement with India is expected next year.

These initiatives underscore Mr. Harper’s appreciation that Canada is increasingly a Pacific nation, that the 250,000 immigrants arriving here each year – many of whom now vote Conservative once they become citizens – are affecting economic as well as cultural and political change, that with 46 per cent of Toronto’s current population born overseas, mostly in Asian or Pacific nations, Ontario is becoming a Pacific province, too.

Derek Burney was Brian Mulroney’s chief of staff during the Canada-U.S. free-trade negotiations in the 1980s, and later served as ambassador to the United States. He applauds the increased focus on trade, but there may be too many lines in the water.

“These are all encouraging moves,” he says. “But what the government needs now is a sense of priorities. Mr. Harper needs to take charge and give negotiators the authority to get results. They haven’t put anything in the window yet.”

Rise of the West

However crucial Pacific Ontario may be to the Conservative coalition, this is the most West-centric government ever. Westerners are to Ottawa today what Quebeckers were in the Trudeau years. They chair half of the 26 parliamentary committees, and the governor of the Bank of Canada, the clerk of the Privy Council and the chief justice of the Supreme Court are all Westerners, as is almost half of the governing caucus.

Truly two solitudes

The Tories’ great good fortune is that the West and suburban Ontario, where they are strongest, are also the dynamic growth centres of the country. But Conservative success there leaves Atlantic Canada declining politically as well as economically and in terms of population. And, more dangerously, it isolates Quebec.

In its minority years, the Harper government actively wooed Quebec voters: giving the province a seat at UNESCO; recognizing the Quebec nation within Canada; rebalancing the notorious “fiscal disequilibrium;” promising compensation for a harmonized sales tax and funding for a new Montreal bridge.

But last May, the Conservatives defied conventional wisdom by winning a majority without substantial support from Quebec. And since that victory, their policies and announcements, if not calculated to offend Quebeckers, appear indifferent to such offence. Stripping equalization components out of programs, as the Tories have begun to do, does not favour the province that is the largest recipient of equalization. Putting the “royal” back in navy and air force is like a red flag to a province with little affection for the monarchy. Cutting funding to the CBC is a hostile move in a province where Radio Canada is a valued cultural voice.

Scrapping the gun registry and refusing to let Quebec keep its own records, toughening sentencing even though Quebec emphasizes rehabilitation over punishment, abandoning the Kyoto Accord and pulling back on environmental assessments even though Quebec prides itself on its low-carbon footprint – none of this has gone down well.

Yet the most profound impact may be indifference – a willingness to let Quebec go its own way without asserting the role and importance of the federal government within the province. It is one thing to win without Quebec and another to govern without it.

“For the average Quebecker under 35, the federal government is totally irrelevant,” says André Turcotte, a pollster who teaches political communication at Carleton University. He describes Mr. Harper’s unwillingness to engage the province as “separatism by default … quiet detachment … a marriage with separate bedrooms.”

And that’s with a Liberal government in Quebec City. No one knows what would happen if the Parti Québécois ever came back to power.

“The situation is very volatile,” adds John Parisella, former chief of staff to premiers Robert Bourassa and Daniel Johnson and, until recently, Quebec’s representative in New York.

“The Harper government has to be aware that Quebeckers are sensitive,” he warns. “There is an emerging discourse coming especially from the PQ that the Harper government is trying to create a Canada without Quebec.”

That said, he remains confident that Quebec and Canada have both evolved away from endless fits and fights. In fact, Mr. Harper’s strongest suit in confronting a separatist Quebec premier may be his record, despite the affronts of the past year, of simply leaving Quebec alone.

Yet another transformation the Harper’s Conservatives have effected is intangible, and yet perhaps more pivotal than any other.

Mr. Muttart argues that Mr. Harper has created nothing less than a new national narrative. “He has carved out a space that is unique, that is authentic.”

This narrative, which Mr. Muttart has long existed but been dormant, features a robust military, a strong defence of the Arctic, the ties to the British monarchy, the celebration of Canadian excellence in sports. It celebrates individual freedom ostensibly liberated by a government retreating from the excesses of the welfare state. It celebrates families with children as the bedrock of a well-ordered society.

This is, emphatically, Stephen Harper’s Canada, instilled in him while growing up in Toronto’s Leaside and Etobicoke, nurtured during his years at the University of Calgary. But though it is his narrative, it resonates with millions of others.

It competes with the long-entrenched Liberal narrative that celebrates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, peacekeeping, multiculturalism and variegated sexualities, a Canada the world should want more of.

Although the Liberal idea of Canada remains robust, in Canada today Mr. Harper’s new Brand Canada seems to be on the rise: aggressively patriotic, conservative in fiscal policy and on the law-and-order front, relatively unconcerned about the environment, at least at the federal level, proud of its military and willing to spend money on it, led by a man who runs his government with a cool head and a committed conservative heart.

This brand is anathema to the downtowns of Ontario’s big cities, as well as Montreal and Vancouver. But neither of their national representatives – the NDP and the Liberals – appears ready to mount a serious challenge.

Without a permanent leader until next spring, the Liberals now seem so enfeebled that some wonder whether the party can survive. The NDP under new leader Thomas Mulcair, a Quebecker, is making tentative gains in public support, but it is too soon to judge whether that support will hold.

That said, when majority governments dominate in Ottawa, the most powerful resistance has traditionally come from the provinces. There may soon be a fresh and powerful new centre of resistance in Mr. Harper’s western back yard.

By next spring, the NDP’s Adrian Dix could be premier of British Columbia – he is consistently ahead of Liberal Premier Christy Clark in the polls (although Monday’s surprise result in Alberta serves as a reminder of how unreliable polls can be).

Mr. Dix stresses that, should he become premier, he hopes to work with the federal government on improving the quality of life for aboriginal Canadians in British Columbia and in promoting Canada overseas. But he quickly rhymes off four areas where he seriously disagrees with Conservative policy: the law-and-order agenda, which could crowd provincial courtrooms and prisons and drain provincial budgets; the proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline between Alberta and the Pacific Coast; the reduced increases in federal health transfers; the Canada-EU trade agreement, which could increase drug prices as a result of tougher patent protections.

“These are issues that are unavoidable,” he maintains, “because the consequences for provincial jurisdictions are so severe.”

Ultimately, opposition to a Harper dynasty will coalesce around someone with a set of opposing values voters come to prefer. Ironically, that may be this Prime Minister’s greatest achievement.

Visible changes are few

While many Canadians, including many who watch him very closely, puzzle over the man behind the mask, there may be no mask. “He is exactly what he is,” John Reynolds contends. “What you see is what you get.”

He is greyer – Mr. Harper turns 53 on Monday – but also more relaxed, especially over the past year, with his political future more secure thanks to majority government. Friends describe a more confident leader, but one fundamentally unchanged from the Stephen Harper they first met, whenever it was they first met him.

He is passionate about hockey and loves to play the piano. He is also a man with few close friends. His political ruthlessness is legendary and he so distrusts the media that he tries to control their access to government.

He gives considerable latitude to the few who earn his trust – within the cabinet that includes Mr. Flaherty, Mr. Baird and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney– and very little to those who don’t. His confidence in his own ability to solve problems and to lead is self-evident, as is his discomfort with large crowds and small talk.

And he is an evangelical conservative, so dedicated to converting others to his world view that he has transformed – polarized, really – the political life of the country.

For most of Canada’s history the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives did not differ fundamentally in political philosophy. Each attempted to broker competing regional, linguistic and class interests. A third, values-based party, the NDP, camped out on the left.

But Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party is infused with his own dedication to economic and social conservatism. Rather than being a brokerage party, it is values based. Eventually, a progressive coalition will rise to challenge it, making national politics a two-party, values-based contest. That progressive coalition could form around the NDP or the Liberals – or it could emerge from a merger of the two.

If so, Canada will finally mirror other English-speaking countries: Republicans versus Democrats in the United States; Conservatives versus Labour in Britain; Liberal versus Labour in Australia. Other parties, either regionally based or values-based, may exist, but only on the fringe.

“Clear choices in elections are good for democracy,” Patrick Muttart argues. “It gets people involved. It gets people talking.”

It can also lead to polarization and gridlock. But nothing appears likely to stop the Canadian drift toward politics defined by ideological divides that Stephen Harper himself defined.

For better or worse, that could be his most lasting legacy.

John Ibbitson is The Globe and Mail’s parliamentary bureau chief

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