Agenda for Canada: Towards a New Liberalism

William T. Perks was Professor of Urbanism and Planning, Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary.

High-minded political treatises delivered by active politicians are rarities in Canada. Agenda for Canada is one of these. The first point to make is that John Roberts, one of six losers in the 1984 Liberal leadership campaign, has resisted the media-minding temptation of politicians to serve up anecdotes and apologias about their past careers, missed opportunities, and arrested ambitions. Moreover, unlike a number of Roberts’s contemporaries in power and too many of his confreres of the Liberal Party today, Roberts is an avowed neo-liberal. He does no pandering to neo-conservatism; he stands by classical principles of Liberalism. Roberts takes on the unkindly challenge of first re-affirming and interpreting these principles and then casting them before a bewildering, complex set of issues facing Canadian society.

The book opens with an instructive retrospective on Liberal governments and political platforms. Early Canadian Liberalism was progressive social reform — change that would favour individuals and human development over the interests of powerful economic and social institutions. More recently, “Liberalism was the politics of abundance.” Everything could be afforded, even the massive bureaucratic structures and centralized political decision-making apparatus that evolved out of Liberals in power. These institutions, Roberts notes, can no longer be comprehended or influenced by those we elect to Parliament, let alone by the common person. Acceptance of change in Canadian society has now transformed into fear of change — fear, that is, of the change wrought by international economic conditions and the technological revolution, by the uncertainties of a turbulent world, and by the doubts we ourselves have begun to feel about highly instrumental governments. From these observations Roberts proposes not withdrawal but an active government; government that at once (better) manages social costs and plans.

The kind of “planning government” that Roberts proposes is one that restores grass-roots participation in the political process and creates anew a vision of a uniquely Canadian and sovereign society. In nation-building, in “creative government,” not just in managing and regulating, lie the quintessential responsibilities of Canadian government. “Our task is to build a better and more confident society... one which builds a stronger sense of common purpose for the future... civilized in the attention it pays to the spiritual and cultural needs of its people.” Roberts boldly (and rightly) sees that economic and human development planning is a sine qua non of modern societies, capitalist and socialist alike. I say boldly, because Liberal politicians of the post-1984 era now seem to subscribe more commonly to the anti-planning orthodoxies of Conservative ideology. Moreover, the notion of a planning, creative government is faithful to Canada’s historical success story, as Roberts well argues, and which he exhorts us to emulate as we think about how to meet the future. Thus, Roberts’s idea of planning is rooted in nationalism; planning is developmental and strategic; and it “establishes a productive context” for Canada’s historical partners in success, the private and public sectors working to concerted goals. National planning would further be rooted in co-operative implementation between federal and provincial authorities.

Roberts recognizes, however, that creative government in Canada cannot be contemplated without restoring “effective citizenship” and “participatory responsibility.” Chapter 3 of Agenda deals with reforming the structures of government. His proposals range broadly: renewing ministerial responsibility; streamlining the machinery and cutting the power of the public service; lessening the paperwork of ministers so they can engage in meaningful policy debate and contact with the people; giving more power to Parliament and allowing freedom from Party discipline in House deliberations; having an elected Senate on proportional representation to restore regional “brokerage politics” — and regional balance to the country’s development; and more. As Roberts argues, the need for planning leads to the matter of open government and accountability, hence to fundamental reforms in the structures of government.

From these not-immodest beginnings, Agenda further unfolds a series of strategic discussions and policy proposals. Over five chapters Roberts examines economic strategy for Canada, including outlines and arguments for a “National Policy,” policies for human resources and employment, adapting to technological innovation, managing natural resources, and positioning national development on the selection of key economic sectors and an assertive regional development policy. A discussion of Quality of Life policies occupies two chapters of the book, and foreign policy another. One can only summarize here the character and quality of Roberts’s exhaustive treatise; the specific actions and policies he would mount on the re-constructed platform of a tattered Liberalism are too many to recount. Not only is what Roberts has to say thoughtful and cogently tied to his rich experience of political life (he held four different, major ministerial posts in Liberal governments), but Agenda is comprehensively constructed. That is, Roberts is not a serial composer of catchy political tunes; he proceeds from symptoms to causes to paradigm and then to political proposal, and he reveals the linkages and logic between one set of issues on proposals and another. The chapters on Quality of Life illustrate the cross-connectedness (and depth) of Roberts’s thinking, not to mention a certain political daring in a time when Canadians are exhorted to think only “jobs, jobs, jobs.” The sustaining thread throughout is Roberts’s passion for his country and cultural identity. He wants us to share the first and not lose the second. Refreshingly (for politician-authored books) he is surprisingly dispassionate about politics and power. He simply argues for Liberalism on its own terms and its own virtues. A special quality of the book, I believe, is his congenial sense of historical correctness. No need to contrast, criticize, or ridicule Conservative political platforms and personalities. Indeed, by the time one finishes reading Agenda for Canada, Roberts’s contention that Canada equates with Liberalism, that Canada is Liberalism personified, begins to seem plausible. Such is the strength of conviction Roberts brings to the written word.

In all, Agenda is readable in organization and style, though likely too rich and serious-minded a diet for the average Liberal Party member who most needs to read it, if only for understanding. The book is seriously engaging, not entertaining. Heck, Pierre Elliott Trudeau gets but one mention (and favourable at that!). John Maynard Keynes gets as much exposure as Mackenzie King — and Brian Mulroney, none.

There is something of a political paradox in a book of this intellectual sweep and pragmatic political intent. It will doubtless win minds, but can it win the hearts of Liberal militants and the “uncommitted”? Chances are Agenda will ultimately serve an upcoming generation of Canadian voters before the present one, whose yearning is for single-issue fixes on Canadian problems, quicker solutions than those offered by the structural reforms, attitudinal reorientations, and the culturally imaginative government leadership advocated here. One senses in a reading of Agenda that John Roberts, now teaching at Concordia University, has staked out for himself less a future as political leader and more the role of political philosopher. One would hope for the inverse — but, after all, Roberts’s book is dedicated to Isaiah Berlin, not Pierre Trudeau. Quips aside, Agenda is the best book for substance, systematic analysis, and careful thought to come from the hand of a Canadian politician in a long time.