O CANADA, ONE HAND CLAPPED FOR DECADES

"Here is the classic Canada joke: Canada had the chance to have the best of all possible worlds: French food, British culture, and American politics. Instead, it ended up with French politics, British food, and American culture." I heard that first on a trip to Canada when I worked for Amoco, which had recently acquired Dome Petroleum. I became friends with a nice female Oil Ministry official named Ms. Sparrow, who was from the manly province of Alberta, and had the pleasure of meeting a famous photographer whose nom de photo was Karsh of Ottawa. Canadians are friendly, but even the Deputy Finance Minister, a Liberal, told me that taxes up there are too high for a really thriving economy to flourish.

Canada appears to be sticking its toe into the frozen pond of winter elections. And the Conservatives/Reform Party have a decent chance to return to power. And the chattering-teeth classes of Ottawa/Toronto/Montreal are atwitter with the outside possibility that the tyranny of the minority that the Ontario/Quebec elite have imposed may be blown away by a Calgary Clipper

The Sun-Times’ John O’Sullivan has a good overall summation of how by way of Liberal policies, Canada has feminized itself over the last half-century, and even inserted a judicial activism component which, like the American Democrats, will keep the dead hand of a SCOTUS-clone on any real reforms.

Here is O’Sullivan:

In 1945 Canada was the world's fourth-largest military power. Its soldiers, sailors and airmen had played a major part on D-Day and in finally defeating Nazi Germany. And its national image was that of a tough, self-reliant, stand-up guy whom you would like on your side in a barroom brawl.

From 1945 to the present the history and changing national image of Canada was brilliantly summed up in the Monty Python song that begins "I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK" and gradually develops into "I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars." In other words, not necessarily someone you would like on your side in a barroom brawl.

This new Canada was the child of the Pierre Trudeau and the Canadian Liberal party. As the government in power for most of the postwar period, they remade Canada in their own image: left-liberal in politics, tightly regulated in economics, welfarist in social policy, officially bilingual and multicultural as regards national identity, allied to the United Nations and the Third World in foreign policy, and therefore self-consciously different from (and sometimes even hostile to) the United States.

In one significant respect, however, the new Trudeaupian Canadians imitated America: They ditched their British-style parliamentary constitution and introduced an American constitution with both a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, broader and more collectivist than America's Bill of Rights, and a U.S.-style Supreme Court to adjudicate and enforce it. By making the courts the all-but-final political authority, the Liberals hoped to ensure like-minded judges could continue to impose Trudeaupian liberal policies on Canada even during the brief intervals when they were out of office.

Such an interval may just be about to occur. Canada is holding a federal election Monday, and the latest opinion polls all show a lead of about 9 percent for the opposition Conservative Party. In Canada's multiparty system, that does not ensure a majority for the Tories. But there is a real prospect of a minority Tory government and a slim chance of an outright majority one.

The Liberals are going into overdrive to prevent this, hurling a series of charges against the rising Tories.

Their all-purpose portmanteau slander is that the Tories are a sinister force who are secretly planning a series of radical attacks on Canada's current multicultural-welfare state. Their latest television ad warned that the Tories intended to deploy the Canadian armed forces in urban areas, implying that they would be used not to help in Katrina-style emergencies but to impose martial law. This invited a raucous response from, among others, the shrunken Canadian military. "Where would we get the soldiers? Where would we get the guns?" asked one officer, who asked not to be named. "Haven't these guys been reading their own policies?"

The ad was quickly withdrawn amid Liberal embarrassment.

The next Liberal tactic was to exploit Canada's rich vein of anti-Americanism. Prime Minister Paul Martin picked up a favorable reference by the Tory leader, Stephen Harper, to American conservatives -- and proceeded to embroider it darkly: "That's what Stephen Harper means when he says it's time for a change in Canada. Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Harper. That's not the kind of change that Canadians want. America is our neighbor. It is not our nation." He also picked a silly quarrel with the U.S. ambassador in order to be seen "standing up" to the United States.

Such posturing has left voters unimpressed. They know Martin doesn't really mean it since his and previous Liberal governments have cooperated with the United States on serious matters such as defense and cross-border trade. They also think it would be a bad thing if Martin did mean it since it might alienate Canada's largest trading partner -- especially since the first faint signs of American irritation at these pinpricks has been lately observed.

As defeat has looked more likely, Martin's Liberal party has unleashed a third and more interesting attack -- that Harper and the Tories might one day use the "notwithstanding" clause of the Canadian constitution that allows parliament in the last resort to overrule the Supreme Court by exempting a law from its constitutional review. Martin promises to abolish the clause in order to protect such recent judge-made law as same-sex marriage.

The issue is certainly important. Removing the notwithstanding clause would make the Supreme Court the sovereign political authority in Canada, outside the control of the voters. It would then be impossible for an elected government to repeal any Liberal policy of which the courts approved. Democracy would be replaced by judgeocracy.

It is usually hard to get the voters to pay regard to such apparently theoretical risks. On this occasion, however, a report commissioned by Ottawa has just pointed out, with exquisitely bad timing, that the courts might well interpret the Charter rules on marriage so as to legalize polygamy. Without a notwithstanding clause, no Canadian government could prevent such legalization. It is now the Liberals' turn to look "scary."

At any rate their campaign of scares is visibly failing. The Liberals, still reeling from a massive financial scandal of influence-buying in Quebec, are simply not a credible source. The voters -- who last year were frightened away from voting Tory by a similar last-minute scare campaign -- have had 12 months to become accustomed to the possibility of a Tory majority. It looks a good deal less "scary" than legalized polygamy.

Above all, Tory leader Harper is not a very good candidate for demonization. He is a cool cerebral politician who has fought a controlled campaign on a distinctly moderate conservative manifesto.

Too moderate, some would say, since the Tory manifesto concentrates on cleaning up government after the Liberal scandals, offers only modest tax cuts, is willing to offer the United States a "free vote" in parliament on joining a missile defense system (rather than supporting it outright), and proposes raft after raft of government assistance programs rather than a smaller state.

That said, the Tories do want to rebuild Canada's shrunken military, to retain the democratic safeguard of the "notwithstanding" clause, to strengthen border security against terrorists, to advance Canada's interests by better relations with the United States rather than by pointless insults, and in general to revive the more vigorous Canada that existed before Trudeau. Harper's moderation is a recognition that the Canadians have become accustomed to the easy chair of all-encompassing government since then. He is inviting the modern Canadian to take the first small steps back to self-reliance and national pride.

But is there still a lumberjack under all that mascara?