The contribution that Western Canada makes to the rest of the country is normally considered in economic terms. People from coast to coast benefit from the economic fruits of the West, especially due to the energy sector. The net financial contribution of Alberta to the rest of the country over the last half-century is well-known..But sometimes the West makes other positive contributions as well, even in the realm of ideas. In the 1990s, for example, Western demands for fiscal responsibility forced a Liberal federal government to reduce spending and ultimately eliminate the federal deficit. Make no mistake – it was the Reform Party of Canada that convinced an otherwise reluctant federal government to make spending cuts. The resulting change was a boon for all of Canada..This intellectual contribution did not go unnoticed. In 1998, the Center for Strategic and International Studies – a Washington, DC- based think tank – published a study by political scientist David J. Rovinsky entitled The Ascendancy of Western Canada in Canadian Policymaking. It was this study that introduced the idea of the “Calgary School” of thought, which consisted primarily of four political scientists and one historian at the University of Calgary..Rovinsky notes that until 1984, political observers in Western Canada were largely focused on the local concerns of the prairie West. However, things then began to change. He writes that since 1984, “western thought has adopted the style of argument of the international neoconservative movement, criticizing state intervention in the economy and government debt on overtly philosophical grounds, and expressing skepticism about duality and official bilingualism in the name of classical liberalism. By broadening the argument, the west has come to influence politics across English-speaking Canada as governments retrench and attack deficit spending while turning their agendas away from constitutional reform and the accommodation of Quebec. As the source of the most novel – at least from the Canadian point of view – and most influential ideas on the Canadian political horizon, western Canada has definitely come to be the motor of Canadian political thought in the 1990s.”.Rovinsky identifies the Western intellectuals who were making a difference. Political scientist Barry Cooper and historian David Bercuson, both from the University of Calgary, co-wrote two books in the early 1990s. Deconfederation: Canada Without Quebec was published in 1991 and explains how a considerable amount of federal spending could be attributed to a desire to appease Quebec. Their 1994 book, Derailed: The Betrayal of the National Dream, shows how the original purpose of confederation gradually receded, and was ultimately replaced by Pierre Trudeau’s attempt to impose his personal ideological vision upon Canada..Besides the work of Cooper and Bercuson, University of Calgary political scientists Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff co-wrote books and articles explaining the rise of judicial politics that resulted from the adoption of Pierre Trudeau’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. Their key books on this issue are Charter Politics, published in 1992, and The Charter Revolution and the Court Party, which was published in 2000. As they demonstrate, the political impact of Charter-based court rulings led to significant left-wing policy changes in Canada..Another University of Calgary political scientist, Tom Flanagan, played an important policy development role in the early years of the Reform Party, and subsequently wrote a ground-breaking book on the party, Waiting for the Wave: The Reform Party and Preston Manning, in 1995. A revised version of this book was later published in 2009 as, Waiting for the Wave: The Reform Party and the Conservative Movement..After surveying these materials as well as contributions made by others, Rovinsky notes, “Certainly, in reviewing the above authors, we see that a strong Alberta flavor is apparent (and southern Alberta at that) to what we are calling ‘Western’ thought.” The strong southern Alberta flavour was undoubtedly the result of the influence of the Calgary School intellectuals..The perspectives articulated by this small group of conservative Western academics had real world influence through certain political parties. As Rovinsky puts it, “Though intellectuals articulated conservative principles most clearly, the Reform Party brought them into the federal arena, and the Progressive Conservative government of Ralph Klein in Alberta brought them into public policy.”.Writing, as he was, in 1998, Rovinsky concludes that a “look at Canadian political history over the last 10 years reveals the influence that western thought has demonstrated.”.That influence can be most clearly seen in economic policy. During the 1990s, both the federal government and the Alberta government were able to successfully address the problems of run-away government spending and deficits. Although it was the Chretien Liberals who achieved the success at the federal level, they were pressured into doing so because the Reform Party had made government spending a key national issue. Furthermore, Premier Ralph Klein of Alberta vigorously reduced government spending in Alberta, providing a successful example for other jurisdictions, most notably Mike Harris’s Ontario..Not too many governments these days seem to be concerned with run-away spending and large deficits. Clearly, the kind of Western conservative intellectual influence that flourished in the 1990s is no longer prevalent. Nevertheless, the experience of the 1990s demonstrates what can be accomplished by a small number of thinkers with the best ideas. A little band of conservatives and libertarians was able to outclass a whole army of progressive intellectual clones and thereby benefit the entire country..Michael Wagner is a columnist for the Western Standard.,
