Stephen Taylor

I almost let this story slip by:

OTTAWA–Literacy — it’s all about reading, writing and getting your story straight.

Or so it seemed this week in Ottawa.

On Monday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government axed $17.7 million from the human resources department’s Adult Learning and Literacy Skills Program as part of a wave of spending cuts.

Yesterday, Harper’s wife Laureen was on the streets of Ottawa, promoting literacy.

Clad in a yellow T-shirt and handing out newspapers in the drizzle as part of a CanWest media company promotion of child literacy, it seemed that perhaps Laureen Harper hadn’t seen the memo about the literacy cuts earlier in the week.

Ditto for Harper’s chief of staff, Ian Brodie, who coughed up a $20 literacy donation when he came across his boss’s wife on the street in front of the Parliament buildings.

…

This story, of course, is frame as ironic by the Toronto Star. There are of course a couple of inconsistancies here. First, Mr. Harper cut funds to adult literacy while Mrs. Harper was raising funds for child literacy.

Most important, however is that because this is framed as ironic (Mrs. Harper raising funds for literacy as Mr. Harper cuts them), the ideological factor which explains these events has been completely ignored. As conservatives, we believe in supporting private charitable initiatives whereas the taxpayer should be less involved.

We believe in helping the less fortunate, but more so as a personal and private and charitable decision rather than having the government make that decision for us. Mrs. Harper is indeed on the same page as her husband.

Socialism is charity without consent.

Sad news struck the Conservative and general political community this weekend as it heard the tragic news of the death of Peter Naglik, a committed political activist.

From the many discussions with a number of the Calgary conference attendees and from the emails I received over the weekend from friends in Ottawa, I learned how much Peter enriched and touched the lives of many of my friends and those that worked with him closely. I didn’t know Peter personally, but learning about his life, I now know that I would have been lucky to. By all accounts, Peter was a committed to his politics, witty among his friends, and fully engaged to any job he was working on.

A friend emailed to say, “Peter was an outstanding human being and impacted so many people.”

Graham Hughes
Ottawa Citizen (subscription)

A longtime behind-the-scenes political operative and speech writer for the Conservative party died early yesterday in a car crash near Metcalfe.

Peter Naglik, 39, of Russell, was driving his 1995 Chrysler Concorde when it went out of control.

Police did not release his identity, but it was confirmed by Conservative MP Pierre Lemieux for whom Mr. Naglik had worked in the last federal election.

Mr. Naglik had been campaign manager for Mr. Lemieux in his Glengarry-Prescott-Russell riding.

“I was honoured to have him as my campaign manager in the last election and we worked very closely together,” Mr. Lemieux said yesterday.

“He’ll be missed by me and the many people who knew him,” he said.

“He had a lot of experience, a lot of good ideas.”

Tim Powers, of Summa Strategies Canada, a government relations firm, said Mr. Naglik was “a really decent man.”

“Peter was seen as a very good writer, a really loyal friend — just a fundamentally decent human being.”

Mr. Naglik was a principal with Crestview Public Affairs, a government relations firm he had recently helped found with Mark Spiro.

“The business was going very well. I saw them (Thursday) morning and they were looking forward to the next little while because they’d just brought in some new business,” Mr. Powers said.

He added that Mr. Naglik and his partner had been working long hours in the last few days.

Mr. Powers said Mr. Naglik had worked for former Conservative MP John Reynolds and Stephen Harper when he was leader of the opposition.

Mr. Naglik had been question period co-ordinator for the Canadian Alliance, having been hired by former leader Stockwell Day in 2001.

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To read more thoughts on Peter Naglik’s passing, please visit here, here, and here.

This weekend, I find myself in Calgary for the Calgary Congress put on by the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy. The conference is a discussion on Renewing the Federation, filled particularly with discussion on the topics of equalization, senate reform, provincial jurisdiction and ‘rebalancing’ of federal power. The attendees certainly consists of conservatives from the Reform tradition of the Conservative Party, but a number of constitutional scholars, activists and bloggers are also present.

On Friday night, L. Ian MacDonald inititated much discussion and debate with his very academic speech on the duality of Canada’s constitutional traditions, namely the British North America Act and the Charter. He described the two Canadian constitutional tradition as ‘two mints in one’. Here are a couple of excerpts:

“The Conservatives, from Sir John A. Macdonald to Stephen Harper, are the party of classical federalism. The Liberals, from Lester Pearson to Paul Martin, are the party of centralizing federalism. The Conservatives are the BNA party. The Liberals are the Charter party. After a quarter century of Charter ascendancy, we are experiencing a renewal of our BNA inheritance. What Harper is proposing, and implementing, isn’t “open federalism”. It’s classical federalism.”

“Harper’s stance as a classical federalist puts him in the Conservative tradition as the BNA party, in a line that stretches from Macdonald to Mulroney. As classical federalists, all have understood that the provinces are their partners in Confederation, not the vassals of Ottawa.”

Macdonald went on to outline the examples of the centralizing federalist failure of the National Energy Program and the classical or “cooperative” federalist success of the QPP and the Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec.

Harper’s non-encroachment of the federal government on provincial areas of spending is a uniting force between the Quebec and Alberta, Macdonald argued. The re-introduction of BNA tradition is what is driving Conservative success in Quebec.

The notwithstanding clause of the Charter and how it allowed Trudeau to patch constitutional tradition in this country was another feature of Macdonald’s speech. Indeed, as he quoted Peter Lougheed, the Charter wouldn’t have existed without the notwithstanding clause and Macdonald argues that the clause actually protects the spirit of John A. Macdonald’s BNA tradition of respecting the differences of provinces with the federal government whether legislative or judicial.

Macdonald’s speech certainly refreshed my perspective on constitutional matters and particularly the rationale and purpose of the notwithstanding clause. It was certainly ironic to note that Paul Martin, the self-proclaimed defender of the Charter sought to remove its reason for being during the last election. It was a dough-headed move to appeal to an emotional electorate faced with a potential PM that might change the status quo on hot button issues and for constitutional scholars it was a desperate move that indicated that Martin either didn’t respect or understand (the former is the obvious conclusion) the constitutional traditions of Canada.

UPDATE: For those that are interested in the full-text of the speech, you can find it here.