Rebecca Walberg

I’ll take an expanded Conservative minority over a Liberal majority, minority, or coalition, but I can’t summon up the energy to pretend that last week’s election was anything to celebrate.  Why can’t Conservatives win full stop?  Are they still perceived as a western party, simply Reform rebranded?  Gerry Nicholls suggests that this is proof that incrementalism doesn’t work, or at least works only on a geologic time scale, and not one appreciable to humans.  He thinks we’ll be going through the whole circus in about a year’s time.  I think that’s pessimistic; as I write in a column aimed at Americans trying to make sense of our election, Harper can probably govern as if he had a majority, simply because the wrath of all Canadians will fall upon anyone who triggers an election in the near future.

Social conservatism was roundly ignored in 2008, and motivating the base enough to come out and vote Conservative might have made a difference.  It worked in Winnipeg South in 2006 and then again in 2008.  Rod Bruinooge is an example who should be studied by CPC riding associations that lost by narrow margins, as I explain in a column for the Edmonton Journal.

Much of the debate about climate change, emissions, and what steps should be taken focuses on what does or does not cause climate change, what policies can make a difference, and how far we must shift to be “green.”  Left off the table is any honest appraisal of how good environmental intentions hurt the poor.  Skyrocketing fuel costs, combined with higher grocery prices as farmers sell to biofuel companies as well as food manufacturers, are trivial to limousine liberals, a burden upon the middle class, and devastating to the poor.  Here’s an excerpt from my column on this for the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix:

Escalating fuel costs harm the poor disproportionately, acting as a de facto regressive tax. Thus, American families at the median income level pay five per cent of each household dollar for energy and those with lower incomes spend 20 per cent on energy, while households under the poverty line see fully half of their budget spent on gas, heating, and other fuel costs.

As in the U.S., certain minorities in Canada are disproportionately poor. To artificially inflate fuel costs therefore is not only an issue about class and wealth, but about race, and the disparate impact of carbon taxes and related policies must be acknowledged.

The full article is here.

A “wish list” for meaningful healthcare reform, at Canadian webzine c2cjournal.ca, is here.

And a column that I wrote two weeks ago, giving the outline of the election’s events and priorities for an American readership, is online here, at the website for The American, the magazine put out by the very influential American Enterprise Institute.  If I were writing it today, I’m not sure I’d be as optimistic.

One of the more distressing aspects of the culture war is the way in which consumerism, mass media and the popular culture in general seem to conspire against parents’ best efforts to raise sane, healthy, happy kids. An interesting new book, So Sexy So Soon, takes on this theme from a liberal perspective, and it is refreshing to see that proponents of healthy childhood from across the spectrum can agree on the importance of letting kids be kids, and not tiny, sexualized and commercialized adults, for as long as possible. I reviewed this book for the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, and the full review is posted here.