In the early 1990s prominent students of Canadian immigration policy wrote of a fundamental and comparatively- relative to other wealthy industrialized countries- enlightened consensus around immigration issues between Canada’s national governing parties, the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives. Hardcastle et al. (1994) considered a wide variety of potential explanations for immigration policies in the Canadian and Australian contexts. They concluded that the best way to understand Canadian immigration policy is that of a tension between statism and pluralism, but also pointed to a cosmopolitan elite ideological consensus as having some explanatory plausibility (121) within this policy field, where bipartisanship amongst the traditional governing parties seemed to reign (112, 120).
While the extent of such “enlightenment” has and can be challenged by critical scholars, the question of consensus and its breakdown is worthy of consideration. It is worth noting though that entering the 1990s in Canada multiculturalism was considered the hegemonic, if challenged nation-building ideology within that consensus (Lewycky 1992). However with shifts in the 1990s it was coming to be viewed substantively as being practiced in its “lowest common denominator” form, having been hollowed out in terms of state funding and anti-racist content
(Winter 2014a). Of great interest to this project, Hardcastle et al. (1994) noted that “[s]ubstantial national support for the Reform Party would be a challenge to bipartisan norms in immigration policy, though it is likely that its policies would need to be moderated in order for it to win substantial support beyond its western base” (114).
It is noteworthy that the distinctly neoconservative and skeptical thrust of Reform Party policies with respect to immigration and multiculturalism came during a period in during a time when Stephen Harper was the party’s policy officer, and later influential Conservative strategist and later Campaign Co-Chair Tom Flanagan had served as director of Policy, Strategy and Communications for the party. Reform’s policies and discourses through to the late 1990s were insightfully analyzed by Kirkham (1998). She found that “the party’s discourse on immigration and multiculturalism reveal[ed] an attempt to undo decades of progress on a number of initiatives that have sought to redress the structural inequalities in the distribution of power and resources, and foster greater racial-ethnic equality,” including that of “a more liberalized immigration policy” (264). Having risen to the level of the official opposition, the party had also
“re-politicized issues that in recent times have remained uncontested at the level of party politics,”
seeing immigration and multiculturalism polices as “long-standing shibboleths that require dismantling” (Kirkham 1998, 265).
As Tom Flanagan has described it in game theoretic terms in his Waiting for the Wave (2009) -- a work heavily influenced by Stephen Harper’s contributions12 -- the Reform Party project was politically a strategy of “invasion from the margin”- the right margin- of Canadian politics. The notion of invasion from the margin is that a political party can shake up a more centrist form of politics and become an important player by appealing to a constituency further
12 According to Flanagan, interviewed by Lawrence Martin, “Stephen was virtually a silent co-author of that book . . . He made extremely valuable contributions, and he also furnished documents to me” (L. Martin 2010, 9–10)
towards the margins rather than the centre of a political system or set of social values, and in doing so draw support away from more mainstream, centrist political parties (Flanagan 2009b, 224–25).
Reform’s early statements and platforms were overtly hostile to immigration and multiculturalism- part of what Abu-Laban and Gabriel termed a situation of “ethnic pluralism under siege” in the late 1980s and early 1990s (1992). As seen in part at the beginning of this chapter, the Reform Party argued that immigrants should be completely self-sufficient, that definitions of family and the ability to sponsor be narrowed while they expressed anxieties over changing demographics of Canada. Such statements clearly expressed alarm over shifts in Canadian society since the 1960s that accompanied the end of “White Canada” immigration policies. Reform targeted the Multiculturalism Ministry for dismantling and took aim at the
“special interests”- the “career politicians and immigration advocates” and “bogus refugees and other illegal entrants” they claimed were ruining Canada’s immigration system and harming the country (Reform Party of Canada 1989, 23–24). However much of this ground has been well covered in research by others (Abu-Laban and Stasiulis 1992; Patten 1999; Laycock 2002).
Even if they could not put an end to “hyphenated Canadianism” which they felt divided rather than united the country’s population, in the 1990s Canada’s political right was in many ways successful in helping to drive a neoliberal shift in immigration policy. In assessing the achievements of the Reform Party in the immigration field in Waiting for the Wave, Flanagan cites a November 1994 announcement by then-Immigration Minister Sergio Marchi reducing annual immigrant admissions intake and tighter rules around family reunification as a great victory by the Reform Party. Flanagan credited Reform’s immigration critic with waging a
“dogged battle” against then Liberal Immigration Minister Sergio Marchi that helped to push
policy directions rightward and in a more restrictive direction (Flanagan 2009b, 194).13 And indeed, it would be difficult to argue that by the end of the 1990s Canada’s immigration system was not being guided by the general principle that immigration policy be “essentially economic in nature” as had been demanded by Reform in its first policy documents (Reform Party of Canada 1989, 23), even if the country continued to increasingly receive immigrants from non-European countries.
Of greater interest here are the shifts in public pronouncements, points of emphasis and party positions over time as the Reform Party and its successors became more pragmatic vehicles for neoconservatism in the late 1990s and 2000s, as well as the continuities that remain. As the party soon learned, invading from the margin had its limits. The Western Canada-based party was hampered electorally by its negative reputation in other regions and segments of the population and by the vocal intolerance of some of its members (Harrison 1995, 174–75; Flecker 2008, 167–
68). Its supporters remained “overwhelmingly members of dominant ethnic and cultural (Western European) groups” (Laycock 2002, 132), which left the party far from power, even if it helped drive the centre of Canadian politics significantly to the right. Thus early in its history the need for discursive shifts quickly became apparent. The party would evolve significantly from its founding, when the party frequently exhibited its less politically palatable ‘rough edges,’ through to its Alliance and Conservative incarnations.
13 Of course Reform’s contributions to a rightward shift went far beyond immigration policy. Writing in 1998, Flanagan and Harper describe a Canada where “The impact the conservative movement has already had is shown in the growing conservatism of public opinion and public policy. Canada is not the same country it was ten years ago.
Sound money, balanced budgets, tax reduction, free trade, deregulation, privatization of public enterprise, and targeting of social welfare programs now constitute a broad consensus within the Reform Party, the Progressive Conservatives, and the business Liberals, who currently dominate the party (1998, 170). More generally, both Stephen Harper and his former campaign chair and occasional co-author have taken credit for much of the rightward shift of public policy in Canada (1998; Flanagan 2009b).
Stage 2: Reconfiguring the Discourse, Rebranding and Disciplining the Party: From Late Reform to the Founding of the New Conservative Party (mid 1990s to 2004)
Longer, and perhaps more interesting than the clear phase of “Invasion from the Margin” is the period of the sanitizing of the party’s discourse by high party figures. These included most prominently Tom Flanagan, once the Reform Party’s Director of Policy, Strategy and Communications, and Harper, the Party’s former Policy Chief and MP, both of whom
subsequently brought much greater discipline to the Alliance and Conservative Parties. This is perhaps best captured by Flanagan’s description of the Conservatives as having evolved into a top-down “garrison party” on a permanent campaign footing in the 2000s (Flanagan 2013). It was during the 1990s and first years of the 2000s however when the work of reconfiguring these parties’ ideologies in a manner reflective of global shifts in the political right’s discourse in a post-Cold War world would take place.
By the end of the Reform Party period one can already see platforms that ring familiar to observers of the present Conservative Party, though there was clearly a need to pass through the Alliance and into the early Conservative phases while conducting aggressive outreach in order to detoxify its reputation amongst some segments of the Canadian population. On its own for example, the Alliance Party failed to advance much in the capture of the “ethnic vote” than its Reform predecessor (Laycock 2002, 19).
It must be acknowledged that the stages outlined here are of course not fully
self-contained. For example by the early 1990s the party decided, at the urging of party elites, that it
“stands for the acceptance and integration of immigrants into the mainstream of Canadian life”
(Reform Party of Canada 1992, Reason 52) rather than to continue to focus on what it perceived to be negative demographic changes. This “integrationist” impulse and seeming need to assert a dominant vision of “Canadian culture” represents a strand of continuity in Conservative policy
and rhetoric to the present- part of their vision and practice of a form of what I term
neoconservative multiculturalism, which will be discussed in chapter five. By 1995 Reform
“remain[ed] convinced that immigration has been, and can be again, a positive source of economic growth, cultural diversity, and social renewal” (Reform Party of Canada 1995) – a problematic statement for what it implies about more contemporary immigration trends but an improvement on its earlier discourses.
Over the course of the 1990s the leadership of the party, particularly Harper and Flanagan worked to cleanse the party’s platform of its most offensive statements (Kirkham 1998). By 1997, the Multiculturalism Ministry was no longer slated for abolition in party platforms, nor would the notion of abolishing the ministry re-emerge in subsequent platforms, though some observers see the ministry as having been marginalized through a process of “Reform by Stealth”
after the Conservatives assumed power (Abu-Laban 2014).
Nonetheless, as Kirkham noted late in the life of the Reform Party, although “the tone . . . bec[a]me less vitriolic, the perception of an immigration system out of control is still a theme party officials perpetuate” (1998, 253). This was particularly the case with respect to refugees.
While the party dropped the idea of constitutional amendment and use of the notwithstanding clause “to ensure that Parliament can ultimately control entry into Canada,” (Reform Party of Canada 1989, 23) the notion of “queue-jumping” and system integrity have remained a consistent preoccupation through the Alliance and Conservative incarnations of the party.
By 2000 the Alliance version of the party recognized Canada as having “always been enriched by new arrivals to our shores” and stated that “[a] Canadian Alliance government will maintain the current level of immigration” (Canadian Alliance 2000, 22) - a promise and policy that helped obscure other significant policy shifts that were never advertised in the party’s platforms and that helps to inoculate them from criticisms of being ‘anti-immigrant,’ despite the
negative impacts of many of their policies on immigrants and migrants.14 This was a significant shift from prior platforms and statements of principle by the Reform Party stating that
immigration “amount[s] to the local nomination busing phenomenon on a national scale” in favour of the then-governing Liberals, and a great contrast with prior calls for immigration levels to be capped at 150,000 per year (Reform Party of Canada 1995, 5).
However the Alliance platform’s harder edges stated that “Canadians are also angered by policies which have let dangerous criminals into this country, and with unscrupulous human smugglers who bring in illegal migrants, jumping the queue and hurting the integrity of the system,” reflecting the assertions of a system “out of control” as noted above.
In words that are strongly echoed in Conservative Party discourses, the Alliance Party’s immigration platform purported to “accommodate legitimate immigrants and their families who seek to contribute to Canada, while locking it tight to those who would abuse the system”
(Canadian Alliance 2000, 22). This maintained an authoritarian populist law and order discourse, though cleansing it of its most openly xenophobic elements. The party also dropped –
declarations by 2017 Conservative Party Leadership Candidates aside- references to using the notwithstanding clause to ensure Canada can deport undesirable immigrants as described in their first statement of principles (Reform Party of Canada 1989, 25). These are themes that were reflected in Stephen Harper’s candidacy for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance- itself a prior effort to rebrand the Reform Party and shed it of some of its baggage. In that context Harper portrayed himself as ‘pro-immigration,’ albeit troubled by Canada’s refugee determination
14 This was evidenced in Jason Kenney’s replies to simplistic assertions of a Reform-rooted anti-immigrant bias by then Liberal MP Bob Rae in response to controversies over the temporary foreign worker program- replies which cited the maintenance if not slight increase in permanent immigration levels (Vincent 2014).
system, which he linked to security concerns15 in a manner echoing the work of the conservative Fraser Institute at the time and foreshadowing his future government’s harsh changes to the refugee determination system.
As the Conservatives’ own “Harper Quotations database” reveals, however, Harper himself had made statements that are less than receptive to many racialized Canadians and had not yet fully absorbed the need for careful party messaging on such questions. When asked about comments then Prime Minister Jean Chretien had made that implied that many Western Canadian voters may be parochial in their interests because they did not vote Liberal in the 2000 Federal Election, then National Citizens Coalition head Harper asserted “I think Chretien just doesn’t care. You’ve got to remember that west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from eastern Canada: people who live in ghettoes and who are not interested in integrating into western Canadian society”
(Grace 2001, 10)- words that would be inconceivable to hear from him as party leader and Prime Minister. In the ensuing years the Conservatives moved far beyond such simple and insulting rhetoric in their general discourses around immigration and sought to construct a more attractive neoconservative discourse suited to Canada’s demographic realities.
The Roots of Neoconservative Multiculturalism: A Moralistic, Civilizational Bent to Canadian Identity and Nationalism
As will be seen subsequently, particularly in chapters five and six, of great significance for contemporary citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism policy have been the party’s efforts to redefine Canadian nationalism and Canada itself along neoconservative lines.
15 “I'm pro-immigration in principle. I think the biggest concern in the immigration system right now is the refugee determination process, which has become such a boondoggle. It not only threatens the integrity of the immigration system, it threatens national security. I've been saying for years that the most important thing is that this country makes its own immigration selection and that this policy be consistent with Canadians' views. A refugee determination system that has effectively created a backdoor immigration stream that bypasses legal channels is unacceptable. And we need to tighten that system. But I want to make it very clear--I don't want it to be said that I'm anti-immigration. I'm very supportive of [a] significant [level of] immigration and always have been” (Harper 2002).
Then on the route to becoming leader of the Canadian Alliance, in the early 2000s Stephen Harper expressed his frustration and distaste for the “moral nihilism” of contemporary liberals and the left, and asserted the need for conservatives to “give greater place to social values and social conservatism, broadly defined and properly understood,” even if it meant a
reconfiguration of their electoral coalition. When considering the question of having one
“‘conservative’ party or two,” the very real danger Harper identified was Canada’s right having
“no conservative party at all.” Thus, while not lamenting the loss of what he described as “some old ‘conservatives,’ Red Tories like the David Orchards or the Joe Clarks” and backing the invasion of Iraq and war in Afghanistan, Harper argued that Canadian conservatives needed to build a “a more coherent coalition.” That coalition, Harper urged, would fight debates on foreign affairs on “moral grounds” and required a revival of a more organic, Burkean (neo)conservatism in terms of “preserving historic values and moral insights” against asserted leftist frameworks of
“moral neutrality, moral relativism and moral equivalency” (Harper 2003) that he associated with contemporary (L)iberalism and social democracy.
The period of “invasion from the margin” and ultimately the victory of Reform over Progressive Conservative elements in the parties’ eventual 2004 merger saw an unambiguous rejection of Progressive Conservatism, which Harper had referred to as an “oxymoron” (Jeffrey 2015, 36) and a defeat of Red Toryism. Red Toryism was a form of conservatism that at least acknowledged a paternalistic need for modest wealth redistribution out of a duty of the wealthy to the poor, a “willingness to place some limits on the free market, which left to its own, results in unacceptable levels of deprivation,” as Farney and Rayside note. It is was a version of
conservatism far less hostile to the welfare state and a more inclusive societal model than modern neoconservatism with its mix of intensified neoliberalism and social conservatism. However this has been a declining strain of Canadian conservatism since the 1970s (Farney and Rayside
2013b, 6) with the rise of neoconservatism in the West. It was a more centrist vision of Canada as a multicultural country and whose remnants in the 1980s meant the Mulroney Progressive
Conservatives were somewhat restrained in their attacks on the welfare state, at least in their first term (Patten 2013, 65). In 1988, during their second term they also passed Canada’s first
Multiculturalism Act, an act for the “preservation and enhancement of multiculturalism in Canada” (Canadian Multiculturalism Act 1988) .
In the context of this dissertation, in considering the evolution of Canadian conservatism it is also notable, for example, that the Order in Council governing the modern Interim Federal Health Plan that provided health benefits to all refugee claimants and acknowledged the plight of the vulnerable seeking safety in Canada was introduced by the Red Tory Diefenbaker
Conservative government in 1957 and had remained in place without controversy until 2012. In that year Canada’s newer, more neoconservative party employed divisive rhetoric concerning refugees as “bogus” outsiders and gutted the program for many refugee claimants (Voices-Voix 2014), a development highly indicative of the eradication of Red Tory ideology and the ascension of punitive and exclusionary law and order discourses, some of which will be discussed in
chapters five and six.
The new Conservative Party under Harper would push for a deepening of neoliberalism well beyond the levels that had been embraced by the Mulroney government, which Reform supporters such as Stephen Harper had felt fell far short in its neoconservative credentials, leading him to help found the Reform Party. As Patten has chronicled, neoliberalism and its ideology of limited state involvement and individual self-reliance has emerged as the dominant economic ideology of the party since its founding convention. Prior influences of “red tory ideological commitments and milder market liberal influences” have been purged (Patten 2013, 70–73). The Party has also witnessed a stronger embrace of expensive punitive law and order
policies and social conservatism, although the latter has been tempered by electoral
policies and social conservatism, although the latter has been tempered by electoral