I have to admit that when I first heard that Michael Chong was running for the
leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) I thought: Oh, cute - a progressive conservative is running -- they'll squash him like a bug.
I had an opportunity to hear Mr. Chong in person on Wednesday February 22 at an event hosted at the offices of
OpenConcept (a business owned by long-time friend Michael Gifford). There was about 30 guests there, and Mr. Chong's meet-and-greeting very quickly turned into a Q&A session.
Most of what I heard I really liked. Enough to decide to
become a member of the party in order to vote in the leadership election in May (March 28 is the final date to become a member if you want to have your say). I also made a $350
campaign contribution to Mr. Chong.
I'll highlight three areas of policy he spoke about, the first being from that bulk of ideas I agreed with, then one area I am mostly with him but with some reservations, and one area I disagreed. Two are key elements of his platform:
Economic Opportunity,
Environmental Opportunity, and
Democratic Opportunity.
Green Tax Policy
Mr. Chong is a
GreenPAC endorsed candidate, and I was grinning from ear-to-ear when he was talking about his proposal for a revenue neutral shift from income taxes to a carbon tax (one much higher than proposed by the Liberals). He even used the phrase "taxing things which are bad rather than things which are good", a phrase that has been used by the Green Tax Shift movement for decades. (The shortform "Tax bads, not goods" confuses people as they think of the wrong meaning of "goods").
I have been a large supporter of the Green Tax Shift since I heard about it in the early 1990's. Then I was a member of the Green Party, and remember one election where we were setting up a campaign office for the region (we didn't have the funding to have per-district offices). This was a rental of a building where the previous tenant was "H&R Block Income Tax". I wanted us to put up a sign that said "Abolish" over the "H&R Block" part of the sign, but was opposed by some in the party which had more traditional lefty views on these issues (one of the first signs I might have been in the wrong party).
The question came up about why the carbon tax shouldn't be put into general revenue and used to increase fiscal capacity, reduce deficits/debt, etc. His answer was that he wanted those other issues to be separate, and that this should be a revenue neutral shift so that the average taxpayer wouldn't be opposed to the tax (the average person wouldn't feel a tax increase, while those who pollute more than average would be paying more than those of us who pollute lower than average would be paying less).
The benefits of this policy are greater than he had time to discuss. When tax-shifting you are taking something that is out of your hands and putting it into your control. If you want to do something to reduce your taxes you can make better choices for your energy usage and other activities which are carbon emitters. It becomes both carrot and stick, which is far more efficient than a stick-only approach that will meet with large political opposition from a wide variety of citizens.
Mr. Chong discussed how income tax is an inefficient tax, and that its introduction was only a temporary measure to help pay for Canada's involvement in World War 1. While the last surviving war veteran from WW1 died in 2010, income tax is unfortunately still here. To be clear, I'm not personally against taxes or government, but I think taxing income is the wrong way to go.
Electoral Reform
The question came up about where he stood on electoral reform. He said that most of the proposals to replace our current voting system had some seats granted to political parties, and that we needed to reform political parties first before considering these types of changes.
I understand where he is coming from, but am disappointed with fellow Canadians that this is the answer. He is correct in that nearly all the proposals that have come from the most vocal activist groups are party functioning, granting "top up" seats based on implied or explicit support for political parties.
A different direction could be taken, which is to take the party-focused features (Like optimizing for
Gallagher Index style proportionality) off the table. Ranked ballots in single and/or multi-member districts without top-up seats or above-the-line voting doesn't privilege party affiliation. Moving from single-member districts to multi-member districts enables competition between candidates from the same party within a multi-member district, further diminishing the influence of political parties.
Unfortunately I can't fault Mr Chong for his views. If we went forward with a referendum today (maybe a ranked ballot, like was used in PEI and is being used to decide the Conservative Party leader), it is quite likely that some party-privileging system would be brought in and the excessive control over MPs by the party and party leader would only become worse.
We not only need to do as Mr. Chong suggests and reform parties, as well as both the upper and lower houses, we need to help educate fellow Canadians about the features of different voting systems and the risks associated with some of these features.
Merging government departments and agencies
This is one of those areas of policy that a few attendees had a problem with.
Mr Chong acknowledged that government shouldn't be treated like the private sector, and that the PM should not be thought of like the CEO.
He then proceeded to use private sector examples to explain why merging government departments would be a good idea.
There are many differences between the public and private sector, and this is one of those areas where the differences need to be recognized. In a company, the company will work best when everyone is moving in the same direction. If some branch thought the company was moving the wrong direction they could split off and form their own company that could compete or cooperate with the original company.
Governments don't work that way. There are different departments with bureaucracies that have competing mindsets, and that is a good thing. There is a monopoly on governance, and some branch that thinks another branch is heading the wrong direction can't split off and form their own government. They need to hash it out within the structure of government, with there being debate between government departments that is not unlike the debate that happens between MPs in parliament.
While I believe there are efficiencies to be had in government, I believe merging dissimilar departments or even branches is harmful. I still believe it is wrong for consumer affairs to have been added to Industry Canada (Now Innovation, Science and Economic Development) as that creates a conflict of interest within the department that would have been easier to negotiate if it were different departments (and thus different management structure trying to bring forward policy initiatives).
My political context
When I became politically active in the early 1990's I was introduced to the Green Party by someone who was familiar with the center-right German Greens. The Greens resonated more with me when the NDP was doing well (and lefties headed to the NDP), but I felt out-of-place whenever the NDP was doing poorly (and more lefties came to the Green Party).
I joined the Progressive Conservative party in 1998 because I was excited about the leadership campaign. What David Orchard was saying resonated with me, and the party as a whole was more appealing the more the aspects of the conservative movement that didn't resonate with me moved to the Reform party. I was called a tourist by Joe Clark during the campaign, and after that race which Joe Clark won I didn't really feel welcome. Even though Joan Russow was leader, and her ideas didn't resonate with me at all, I returned to the Green Party as I believed at the time I had to be involved in a party to be involved in politics.
Starting in 2002 I started to
meet more sitting MPs, and the more MPs I met the less partisan I became. There were days when I would walk out of the office of an NDP MP and into the office of a Conservative MP, and it did not seem politically jarring at all.
I currently don't consider myself partisan, and find that there are candidates and MPs from every party who I share many ideas with, and well as MPs from each party which I don't share many ideas with. I have found that political affiliation is a poor indicator of an MPs views on the issues that concern me the most.
While I still believe I'm politically center-right, I don't think I will ever feel at home exclusively with any party. I suspect instead I'll want to become more involved with the individuals within the parties that I support.
Even from listening to Mr Chong for a very short amount of time on Wednesday evening I believe he is one of those individuals I can support -- and will be supporting as he runs for leadership of one of the two parties whose leader is most likely to become the next Prime Minister.
Whether or not Mr Chong wins, a good sized showing will demonstrate that there is support for the type of conservatism that he represents! Whoever becomes the next CPC leader will need to listen more closely to these views.
