Conservatism in Canada.

• Author: Giroux, Mathew
• Position: Book review

Conservatism in Canada, edited by James Farney and David Rayside, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2013, 400 pp.

Following three consecutive Liberal Party majority victories in 1993, 1997, and 2000, there was a sense among many that the Liberal domination of Canadian politics might be indefinite. Sure, Jean Chretien may not have been beloved exactly, but when his superstar Finance Minister Paul Martin inevitably took over the party's leadership, its majority would only expand.

So went the narrative in the aftermath of the 2000 election in which the Liberals, after two terms in government, picked up seats, securing yet another victory against a divided Right without breaking a sweat. The dread this inspired on the part of Canadian conservatives was perhaps best captured in a 2001 book written by two rightists entitled Gritlock: Are the Liberals in Forever? It was a serious question.

Yet by 2004, the Liberals found themselves rocked by the Sponsorship scandal, while the once seemingly intractable divisions which separated the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives had been resolved in the form of a new Conservative Party of Canada. Led by Stephen Harper, it reduced the Liberals to a minority in the 2004, won its own minority in 2006, and increased its seat counts in 2008 and 2011--winning a long-coveted majority mandate in the latter election.

While these developments provoked a great deal of media commentary, a comprehensive scholarly study of the rise of both small "c" and big "c" Canadian conservatism had proven elusive until now. Conservatism in Canada is a perceptive and provocative collection of essays which insightfully identifies Canadian conservatism as a multifarious, complex, and sometimes conflicting, body of ideas, values, and policy commitments, rather than treating it as a monolith.

Edited by James Farney and David Rayside, the collection skillfully explores the diverse strains of conservative ideology within both federal and provincial politics. It aims to address the roles of each branch of government and, the relationship between them, while simultaneously seeking to determine to what extent Canadian conservatives can be regarded as distinct from their American and European counterparts.

Ambitious in scope, Conservatism in Canada offers an in-depth discussion of both domestic economic and cultural questions, as well as foreign policy. While some of the collection's essays advance their arguments more...