I’d like to expand on one of the points I raised yesterday about Canadian social conservatives and the sorts of things they can expect from Andrew Scheer, because I think the Canadian approach to “family values” conservatism is desperately under-theorized.
Yesterday I claimed that the main way that Harper pushed so-called family values was through economic incentives to have a 1950s-style nuclear family. Both income splitting and the Universal Child Care Benefit were designed to make it more feasible to have a single income family.
This is a radically different tack than taken by American family values candidates, who primarily exercise their beliefs by banning sex education, fighting against gay marriage and adoption, and restricting access to abortion1. The American approach attempts to close off all alternatives but a heterosexual, monogamous, child-producing marriage. The Canadian approach is to bribe people into this (and to drop the heterosexual part).
The cynical explanation for the policies pushed by Harper is that they represent a tax break for the favoured constituencies of the Conservatives. But this strikes me both as deeply uncharitable and uncorroborated by statements made by members of the Conservative Party.
At the Conservative Leadership Convention, the party devoted as much time to thanking J.P. Veitch (Rona Ambrose’s fiancé) as they did to thanking Rona Ambrose. They thanked J.P. for putting Rona’s career aspirations above his own and for his tireless support of her in her role as interim party leader.
Can you imagine the Liberals taking the time to thank Sophie Grégoire Trudeau for her work supporting her husband? The liberal individualistic notion of liberation tends to gloss over and thereby systemically devalue the work that supportive spouses do. To liberals (even many socialist liberals), work is where people go for self-actualization. Self-actualization can’t exist in the home.
There are sound reasons for this emphasis. While the Conservative tax breaks are gender neutral (and apply even to gay marriages), no one believes that the majority of stay at home spouses will be men. There certainly won’t be no men staying home – I consider myself generally more likely to stay home with kids than any partner I’m plausibly going to have – but they’ll be a minority.
As a free choice, the home is a reasonable option for many people. But as a prescribed social role, being stay-at-home mothers made many women incredibly miserable. Emancipation through work as the default seems to me as a not-unreasonable reaction to this trauma. But conservatives have ideological reasons to oppose the social structures that make dual-income families possible.
In Rona Ambrose’s farewell speech, she clearly articulated the core disagreement between Canadian liberals and conservatives. “Liberals believe in government”, she said, “but we believe in people”. I’d rephrase this slightly – liberals believe in institutions, while conservatives believe in individuals.
Viewed through this lens, it makes sense that Conservatives wish to return child-rearing to the sphere of the domestic. Key policies planks of Canadian leftists – like all day Kindergarten and $15 a day daycare – instead seek to further remove child-rearing from individual parents and move it into a formalized institutional system.
Both of these approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. It is beginning to look like starting school early may lead to inattention and hyperactivity. If daycare is like school, then proposals like $15 a day daycare have the potential to be incredibly damaging. With income splitting and child tax benefits, we could be encouraging parents to delay formal schooling, thereby avoiding the negative consequences associated with an early school start.
On the other hand, it’s uncommon, even with income splitting and child tax benefits, for one spouse to have an income that could plausibly support their entire family. $15 dollar a day daycare would be a boon to low-income families that are caught in the dual-income trap.
There’s no prescription here. I think some parts of the family values platform threaten to turn back important progress. I think other parts hint at a potential for better outcomes than we currently have. I will point out that it seems almost as if Canadian conservatives listened to liberals who pointed out that if they really cared about reducing abortion rates, they’d cover prenatal healthcare, maternity leave, and make it less expensive to raise a child.
I’d much rather have a political conversation about the amount of tax benefits we should give to people with children than I would about women’s right to choose, so I can’t help but be thankful that the Canadian Overton window is what it is. With Andrew Scheer elected as conservative leader and signalling no intention to wade into the debate over abortion, I think we really can call the Overton Window settled in its current configuration2. This leaves all Canadians with a question. How much do you think the government should subsidize nuclear families?
I’m not yet sure of the answer myself.
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I want to be clear that I’m talking about execution here, not beliefs. Canadian social conservatives believe many of the same things as American so-cons and vote remarkably similarly to their American counterparts when they’re in opposition. The key difference is how they behave when they’re in power. Nine years of Conservative governments (four of which saw the Conservatives as the majority party) brought no change in the legal status of gay rights or abortion in Canada. That would be unprecedented in America. ↩
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On Facebook, I said: “If the trend is that Liberals/NDP push [our] social policies of choice and the Cons don’t roll them back, then we still win in the long run.” I stand by that statement. I would prefer that Conservatives were as enthusiastic about pushing for positive social change as I am. Given that I don’t live in that world, I’ll settle for one where conservative politicians don’t to push back. ↩