There’s a book launch tonight at Sauve House in Montreal for Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution by Tasha Kheiriddin and Adam Daifallah. Don’t be put off by the title: You needn’t be conservative to profit from this book. You just have to wish there was a viable alternative to the Liberal party. On that basis, there should be millions of potential readers.
In spite of its coincidental timing, Rescuing the Right won’t buttress the hopes of Conservative candidates in this election. It’s about the long conservative haul and the struggle for Canada’s “soul.” Indeed, the authors candidly deplore current Conservative negativity and amateurism, and the lack of inspirational leadership. They say the movement needs a leader who radiates hope (this is something Paul Martin excels at, without actually delivering on it)—one who consistently upholds conservative values of smaller government, free-market alternatives, individual freedoms and personal responsibility.
When an excerpt from Rescuing Canada’s Right was published in the Post earlier this month, columnist Adam Radwanski wrote a rather curmudgeonly assessment of the book. He feels a small c-conservative movement has no future here because Canada has always been a country of “safe and moderate” politics. He gloomily concludes that conservatism is fundamental to the U.S. culture,“but the idea that a similar spirit is waiting to be awakened in Canada is the great myth conservatives delude themselves with.”
Tell that to Mike Harris—in fact, many did—when he was in third place in the Ontario legislature in the early 1990s. That Canada is by nature a happily statist country is a myth that has been propagated by the Liberals for over 40 years, according to Kheiriddin and Daifallah. Canada, they note, was founded by explorers, adventurers and capitalists. It became a culture of dependency over time. But, says Kheiriddin, “cultures of dependency can be reversed.” As a case in point, she singles out Great Britain, on the socialist track for years, but rerouted under the robust leadership of Margaret Thatcher.
This book is rich in prescriptions both large—think-tanks, leadership institutes—and small for countering the Liberal juggernaut. Here is one simple strategy journalists can employ, taken from Kheiriddin and Daifallah’s playbook for balancing the terms of public debate, presently colonized by Liberal locutions: For the Liberal terms “medicare” and “public health care,” substitute “state health care monopoly”; for the Liberal “social services,” substitute “government programs”; for the Liberal “investing tax dollars,” substitute “spending taxpayers’ money”; for the Liberal “budget surplus,” substitute “amount Canadians were over-taxed.”
Daifallah, a former member of the National Post editorial board and co-author of Gritlock: Are the Liberals in Forever?, is studying law at Laval University. Kheiriddin, an award-winning journalist, is now Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. They call themselves “Opportunity Conservatives,” by which they mean that the role of the state and every policy it implements should be framed through the lens of creating opportunity, as well as strengthening the family (including gay families: “The time to stop gay marriage has passed”). They prefer volunteerism to state intervention, and advocate market-based environmental policies. They would also encourage conservative youth mentorship, establish private universities, seek funds for conservative Supreme Court interventions and abolish the Indian Act.
Here is an interesting feature of the authors, both of whom are committed to—and well-equipped for—leadership roles on Canada’s political scene: The fluently bilingual Kheiriddin and Daifallah are “Trudeau children” who have categorically rejected the multicultural vision he designed with them in mind. Kheiriddin’s immigrant parents are a German/Turkish/Russian mix; Daifallah is half-Palestinian. Their fiercely independent, hard-working parents raised them as unhyphenated Canadians. Inspired by their parents’ values, both chose conservatism early. At age nine, Adam cheered Mulroney in the 1988 leadership debate; at eight, Tasha wrote a letter of congratulation to Margaret Thatcher.
Once, Kheiriddin described herself as a “conservative activist” to a new acquaintance. He laughed, she recalls, because “Well, you don’t usually think of activists as conservative.” That perception must change, Kheiriddin and Daifallah insist. Thanks to their book, it just might.
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