The Canadian conservative tradition: An historical perspective

If Canada did not agree to a customs union with an independent Quebec and instead followed the apparently preferable course of negotiating free trade with the United States, Quebec would have little option but to follow suit. This would obviously not be the most desirable alternative for Quebec, given its needs to preserve the integrity of its population and to effect a redistribution of income in accordance with nationaHstic ·preferences. But it is an alternative which, in the long run, would likely improve the living standards of Quebeckers and provide a stronger economic base for its national aspirations. Given the increasing tendencies toward the integration of regional economies in the world, a closer integration The Canadian conservative tradition: an historical perspective1 TERRY COOK From an historical perspective, the Canadian conservative tradition has usually been interpreted as one in which the Conservative party has used state intervention to build and maintain a strong, east-west nation on the northern half of this continent. There has been, it is held, a "pragmatic conservative acceptance of the positive role that government must play in order to counteract the vulnerabilities of the Canadian economy and polity."2 Until Diefenbaker, it has been asserted , "Canadian conservatism . . . used public power to achieve national purposes." 3 Developments in Canadian history which support such assertions are well known. George Grant reminds us that the "ConJournal of Canadian Studies of the Canadian and American economies is perhaps inevitable; Quebec's separation may only serve to accelerate the process. NOTES 1. Le Consell Executlf du Partl Quebecois, Quand nous serons vraiment chez nous (Montreal: Les Editions du Partl Quebecois , 1972). 2. Le Comlte de documentation du Partl Quebecois, La souveralnete et l'economie (Montreal: Editions du Jour, 1970). 3. J. Viner, The Customs Union Issue (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1950). 4. H. G. Johnson, "An Economic Theory of Protectionism, Tariff Bargaining and the Formation of Customs Unions,'' Journal of Polit/ea/ Economy, Vol. 73, 1965, pp. 256-83. 5. A. Breton, "The Economics of Nationalism," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 72, 1964, pp. 376-87. 6. Partl Quebecois, Quand nous serons vra/ment chez nous, p. 133. 7. Sept Jours, 15 December 1970, pp. 21-24. 8. Rodrigue Tremblay, lndependance et marche commun Quebec - Etats - un/s (Montreal: Editions du Jour, 1970). 9. Roma Dauphin, Les options economlques du Quebec (Montreal : Editions Commerce et Editions du Jour, 1971). servative Party...created Ontario Hydro, the CNR, the Bank of Canada, and the CBC."4 Donald Creighton has praised the conservatives ' realization that Canada's destiny depended on a careful combination of political nationalism and industrial capitalism.5 In the pre-Confederation period, this combination yielded, when operated by an alliance of merchants and Tory politicians, such admirable enterprises as the Welland Canal, extensive harbour improvements, and the Grand Trunk Railway. Under the watchful eyes of John A. Macdonald, it yielded Confederation itself, the acquisition Qf the Hudson's Bay Company's lands, the addition of three new provinces, a strong centralist constitution, and the National Policy. The state-supported lntercolonial and Canadian Pacific railways were intricate parts of these Conservative national initiatives. This conservative vision of a strong, independent Canada was severely undermined by the enervating parochialism of the provincial rights movement, a movement in31 spired by Liberals such as Mowat, Mercier, Fielding, and Greenway, and roundly condemned by conservative historians.6 Borden briefly stemmed the Liberal tide and halted such narrow-sighted provincialism; the extensive centralization which accompanied his war-time measures, not to speak of that "great experiment in public ownership," the C.N.R., helped to raise the federal government once more to "the paramount position which the Fathers of Confederation had intended it tb have...." 7 Perhaps the culmination of this conservative tradition, or at least its final glory, was the New Deal of R. B. Bennett. On previous occasions the Conservative party had certainly used the state to promote new programmes of social legislation: the trade union acts of Macdonald, the "progressive" conservatism of James P. Whitney, and the Halifax Platform of Robert Borden.8 Yet the New Deal was much more extensive than any of these; it was a proposal in which, as Professor...