59 Replies to “Andrew Coyne’s Speech to Conservatives”

  2. What a pile of crap.Easy to make speeches about deficits when all you have to worry about is a cup of coffee in the morning and maybe a cigarette.Try putting 2 or 3 million people out of work and destroying Canada,s auto industry for a start because you would not spend the money to keep their jobs.Andrew is probably very lucky PM Harper showed leadership and spent this money on projects to keep the jobs and auto industry in Canada or he wouldn’t have a job ,as no one could afford to waste money on his rag of a paper.A recession is not funny Andrew,so quit your BS columns and we do not give a S— what you have to say.And his column is not worth a read.

  3. Coyne voted Liberal in the last election and supports Kyoto works for the CBC and thinks Robocall is Nixonian
    In fact since he started at the NP the paper is starting to suck
    Just sayin

  4. Does Coyne really believe this? Please! This was the guy that wanted to single-handedly take on the Conservatives because they were opposed to democracy for the prorogation of parliament. Coyne is just another MSM liberal in conservative drag.

  5. Well worth a read so that we understand what liberals expect us to be.
    Coyne has too much baggage to be a voice for Conservatives or conservatism. He is openly a Liberal and that must be accounted for.
    There has been a need for Conservatives to work within the framework of what Canada has become.
    The Conservative party did have to do a stimulus program to maintain power. The best we could hope for in a minority parliament was to keep it as low as possible. That has to now change.
    The Conservatives have undeniably been shifting things to the right. Right enough? Certainly not for most of us.
    We expect some payoff which on the right means implementing conservative policies. We are correct to expect and demand this. We also must be vocal about it.
    We should not listen to Liberals such as Coyne who will be happy to jump on us no matter what Conservatives do.

  7. The Conservatives have undeniably been shifting things to the right. Right enough? Certainly not for most of us.
    Nope. Fiscal policy is to the left of the ’90s Liberals now.
    I love hearing about what a damn Liberal Coyne, as if that invalidated any of what he said. Fact is, he’s right. Coyne is to the right of the CPC on most issues.
    In fact since he started at the NP the paper is starting to suck
    The NP started to suck a while back when Frum returned post-banishment from the US and Kay became is chief concern troll. Coyne is a large improvement.

  8. Well worth the scan. I agree. I think Harper should drop the Cry, Bitch and Complain network, force the pipeline to the coast, cut the federal government by 50% and like Switzerland have a public private health care system.
    Some how I think Mr Coyne would piss his pants if we did that.

  9. “We should not listen to Liberals such as Coyne who will be happy to jump on us no matter what Conservatives do.”
    I disagree,Coyne makes some good points,some of which I’ve been asking myself. Doesn’t matter what Coyne’s politics are,and they are Liberal, if he’s right on many points.
    Harper has made inroads into socialist/Liberal Canada, but still has a long way to go. He can continue on the right path by getting rid of Marketing boards,and getting government the hell OUT of the airline and broadcasting industries.
    Then he can try a flat tax rate, equalize EI across Canada,and allow a Health Care system with options for the consumers.
    Get rid of C-68, HR section 13,and elect the Senate. Then we can call them Conservatives and get few arguments.

  10. @FORDPERFECT
    You have made several brilliant comments on here I enjoy reading them as I think the same as you.
    Keep up the common sence approach to Canadian politics it goes a lot further than the feel good policies of the left.

  11. Once again Coyne is a Liberal
    As a conservative I don’t care what Liberals have to say about shi$
    PLease spare me his words of wisdom he supports Kyoto for fu$& sakes
    He can give liberals all the advice he wants
    He was out for Dinner with Maher Roboballs last night schemeing the next PPG bogus scandal
    Coyne can kiss my blah
    p

  12. I suggest that Coyne is making the same error as the commenter Bill Stewart makes (albeit he’s supporting Marxism).
    This is the error of insisting that the actual, expressed in hard reality must copy the conceptual, expressed in words.
    Is Coyne serious? Does he really think that just because Harper has a majority that he can instantly in the first year, reform or ditch the CBC, Via Rail, Canada Post etc – which are all entrenched Liberal/NDP bastions of Canada?
    The Canadian bureaucracy is a giant dinasaur of leftism, located in the Ottawa-Montreal corridor, and you can’t move in and reform this infrastructure in a few months or even years.
    Harper has already moved to get rid of the Wheat Board, the Gun Registry, reform immigration rules, gotten rid of the taxpayer subsidization of political parties, refused to rejoin Kyoto, reformed the House by alloting more seats to the West, refocused the Canadian identity into a sense of an historic past rather than adversarial identity blocs within multiculturalism, focused on expanding trade beyond a dependency on the US..etc..and yet, Coyne ignores every single one of these accomplishments, and focuses on others.
    Does Coyne ignore that Canadians have been brought up and educated in a climate of liberal leftism, and that the govt, which happens to be the Conservative party, must act as the government of all Canadians – which include many who are not conservative. Harper’s govt therefore has no mandate from the people, much as he might like, to get rid of the CBC, reduce govt spending on entitlements and so on.
    I think that Harper’s slow, incremental strategy is excellent; this includes introducing changes bit by bit, allowing people to see that these are functional, and, acknowledging that the govt must acknowledge the people, as they are, rather than ooperate within an ideology.

  13. A few years ago the United Church of Canada decided it should look for advice from an avowed atheist. The atheist gave them all kinds of advice which the UCC accepted and implemented. The result was the reverse of what the UCC ostensibly wanted. Membership dropped instead of increased as the atheist advice drove believers to seek other places where their input would be valued. Should any Conservative heed the advise of a Liberal like Coyne they run the risk of falling into the same trap as the UCC. Personally I am in favour of the slow and steady approach to transforming Canada from a socialist state to a state where individualism is valued. While I don’t want a Liberal in drag like Joe Clark or Brian Mulroney I equally don’t want PM Harper to lose the support of his party and Canadians because he decided that only doctrinaire Conservatives should have a say in the running of the country.

  14. Yes to Bertie Jay and ET. incrementalism is key. We can’t terrify Canadians, it’s all about building trust. Canadians shy away from radical change.

  15. [Quote]Does he really think that just because Harper has a majority that he can instantly in the first year, reform or ditch the CBC, Via Rail, Canada Post etc – which are all entrenched Liberal/NDP bastions of Canada?[/quote] ET
    Well why not!…I can give Obama credit for doing what was not wise… He just up and did it…I guess that he should have hide his true intent. Not likely that he can say he didn’t try everything in the Communist play book.. Like him or not he did push his agenda regardless of the numerous violations of the Constitution. That is what a leader does..
    Why does Harper think he needs to wait for a Sign?

  16. Canadians shy away from radical change.
    Yeah that’s why Ernie Eves did so much better than Mike Harris…oh wait.

  17. Who gives a crap what Coyne has to say about Conservatism ? Really… since when is Coyne an expert on this subject ? I’m not sure if getting a Trudovian “Liberal” point of view regarding Conservatism is all that crucial. Coyne the “Liberal” voter is usually shitting his pants about “Robogate”, or as he prefers, “Robocon”, or how the Conservatives need to be “punished” for such affronts to democracy like “Porogugegate” or “censusgate”… Coyne’s irrelevancy is colossal, just another “Liberal” media drone exercising his ability to speak out of both sides of his mouth.

  18. Slap Shot – I presume you are joking when you define Obama as a leader and leadership as violating the Constitution.

  20. We have 40 years of inertia to overcome. Obamas radical changes will have horrible consequences. This is not the roadmap for conservatives and is quite the opposite of the meaning of conservative.
    We have a large country with a very disparate population. This cannot be a one off election or everything will just be erased after the next election. We have to balance what we want with how we go about it and take into account both short and long range goals.
    I do not want to listen to Coyne because he is full of it. I do not believe he has Conservative or conservative interests at heart. Listen and follow at your own risk because he will only lead you away from success. He is the same as the ones pushing Redford and Clark and Eves and Hudak.
    Our guy has come through for us so far. We have had change, I see change happening and so far Harper has been running rings around the lefties. Trust Coyne? Give me a break.

  21. Jay, you’re entirely right. Politics, as I’ve said repeatedly, is the art of the possible. How could Harper undertake anything of significance with five years of minority governments?
    All of this is a bit rich coming from Coyne. Had Harper come out with this stuff as his budgets and legislation in 2006, we’d have Steffi or Mikey as Prime Minister right now. And the federal fiscal deficit wouldn’t be %50 billion, it would be somewhere around $80 billion.
    Slapshot, that’s just plain silly. How much do you think can be pushed through at once? Harper’s only had one legislative session to introduce anything, and the Parliamentary agenda was stuffed full at the end of last September.
    Yes, LAS, Canadians do generally dislike radical change. That’s why Ernie Eves inherited all the animosity that Mike Harris had built up. Eves was unlucky enough to be in place when some of the more egregious policies of the Harris government collapsed, ie breaking up Ontario Hydro and the fiasco of Ontario’s electricity “open” market. Eves was the one who was there to inherit all of the rage of the Ontario public sector unions. Eves failed because Harris didn’t the job properly of breaking those unions first.

  22. The thing about this lecture from Coyne is that it is the SAME one he has been giving about conservatives for the last 10 years.
    He has precious little to contribute to any serious discussion except for posing the question … Why can’t conservatives ACT like conservatives?
    Which really means … Why can’t conservatives act the way I THINK they should?
    He’s not the only old school liberal who thinks this way … including a few bloggers that are represented in the blogging Tories.
    I can answer THE question though …. Conservatives have yet to define the political ground they hold sway over. This is due in part to people like Coyne who invariably hold the conservative in disdain for whatever they do or do not.
    The damned if you do and dammned if you don’t scenario created by a simpering passive aggressive behaviour of a liberal pretending to be something else.
    If it walks like a liberal (Coyne does) and it quacks like a liberal (Coyne does) …. then it IS a liberal. The only thing I care about what any liberal says is to understand the nature and scope of the bullshit they are uttering at the moment.
    Coyne even describes himself as being “classical” liberal …

  23. Our guy has come through for us so far. We have had change, I see change happening
    Yes. Government has been expanded. Great job!
    That’s why Ernie Eves inherited all the animosity that Mike Harris had built up.
    I’m sorry I couldn’t copy-paste more of your narrative but my cursor broke under the weight of the BS you are shovelling at us. Even after the E. coli fiasco, Harris had poll numbers something like lower 40s for approval or so. That’s not bad. That’s at least as good as Harper.
    You guys are so friggin predictable it’s boring. When Harper caves, it’s because he has the minority government/TEH KOALITION. When he caves again, wax on about how in order to change something, you have to take forever about it and never actually get it done(when has this ever worked?). When Harper blows his term on tepid cuts to the public service while failing to balance a budget, he’ll go the way of all the other center-right governments that do the same, like in Slovakia. And you’ll all whine and cry and moan that the media did him in while not taking any responsibility, just like you are doing with Coyne.

  24. You have to do it incrementally and that is what is being done. Look at the heads exploding over the wheat board and the LGR. If the conservatives has made big moves like a 10% budget cut or small moves like LGR and wheat board they would have been booted from office when they were in a minority parliament. It going to take years to turn this country around.

  25. I agree with ET, cgh and James. Coyne is ridiculously unrealistic.
    To top it off, like many others have noted, Coyne is supposed to be “conservative”, yet he was the first to throw the Conservatives under the bus last election, before the Conservatives had a majority and could even start imposing changes. None of the changes listed by EBD would have come about if Coyne had his way. So it would be worse. Coyne is the last person that Conservatives should be listening to right now.

  26. Ah yes, that famous center-right slovakian government.
    Let’s just drop 50 years of Canadian socialism. Instantly. Dream on LAS. It aint gonna happen overnight.

  28. The Christian way is moderation in all things. Wise advice. Slow and steady, the turtle wins the race.
    The instant gratification folks will just have to learn patience.

  29. LAS, I’m surprised your peddling so much Liberal propaganda tonight. The Ontario public well understood that the Walkerton outbreak had everything to do with two idiots running the water system and nothing to do with the provincial government, despite efforts of the Red Star and the Communist Broadcasting Corporation to make it so.
    Do try to stop listening to enemy propaganda for a change.
    As for the rest of your post, you got it right for once. It’s a steaming pile.

  30. ET, Joe and cgh say it well. It took decades for Canada to get into this semi-Marxist mess and it can not be changed over night and hopefully Harper will not betray freedom like Mulroney did.

  31. Our PM wrote a hockey book over a period of 8 years, 15 minutes per day. Coyne’s comments are good, in that pressure needs to stay on the conservatives to aggressively decommunize Canada – but I’ve not entirely given up faith in the leadership quite yet. As others have pointed out, he’s an incremental kind of guy.

  32. Are we sure Andrew actually wrote this? He must of woke up on the wrong side of his bed and decided to be a conservative for one day.

  33. I value what people like Coyne have to say about conservatism as much as I do what David Frum does, which is sweet F.A.

  34. Harper was handcuffed by the minority government BS, let’s hope he recovers his fiscal conservative senses instead of worrying about what will happen in three years at the next election.
    Somewhere someone has got to quit spending more than they bring in.

  35. ‘If it walks like a liberal (Coyne does) and it quacks like a liberal (Coyne does) …. then it IS a liberal. The only thing I care about what any liberal says is to understand the nature and scope of the bullshit they are uttering at the moment.
    Coyne even describes himself as being “classical” liberal …’
    Posted by: OMMAG at March 11, 2012 9:07 PM’
    Well said OMMAG! Coyne is not a ‘classical’ anything , he is a ‘classless’ man who has no credibility at all. He is a mealy mouthed, back stabbing, nasty wee wimp, IMO.
    I agree with everyone here who thinks that Andy coin’s thoughts are not worth the paper they are printed on; I really wish I had not followed that link because he will think that someone cares about what he is rattling around in his thick head.

  37. I was never aware Coyne was a conservative, I always thought he was an establishment piece of furniture that wore red or blue paint depending on what color presented the least ripples to the pretentious nattering class.
    Far from questioning Harper’s Conservative economic principles, we should be asking how we allowed an unelected bureaucracy to grow so large and powerful even the government is intimidated by it and shies away from downsizing it. If they won’t do it we will have to do the job ourselves – If you want to get a parasite to drop off you cut off its food supply. Tax revolt? General strike? (by the productive class)

  38. This incremental-ism you keep talking about…where is it? The LGR and Wheat Board? Does not outweigh the massive spending increases and auto bailouts by the CPCs.
    This incremental-ism you keep talking about…when has it ever worked? When has it ever ‘turned things around’ outside of Sweden?

  39. By financial standards Canada is outperforming any othet G8 player. Not a high standard, but with Ontario already complaining of the high C$, there is little incentive to do better.
    I think Coyne’s job was to set the stage for spending cuts in the budget. “Even the Liberals say we’re spending too much money!” will be the pitch.

  40. Massive spending and auto bailouts.
    Minority government.
    LGR, wheatboard, dropped Kyoto, dropped subsidization of political parties, adding more non Quebec seats to House.
    Majority government.
    Sweden, famous for ikea, blondes and incrementalism?
    What’s next, the post incrementalist, center right government of Krygyzstan?

  41. Best Comment:
    i love how he said the liberals wanted to lower spending… they -forced- billions and billions of extra spending on the budget , to give us the “Stimulus program” It was in the news for weeks, so i’d have to say he’s being deliberately misleading
    from the google archives:
    On November 27, 2008, Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty provided the House of Commons with a fiscal update, within which were plans to cut government spending, suspend the ability of civil servants to strike until 2011, sell off some Crown assets to raise capital, and eliminate the existing CAD$1.95 per vote subsidy parties garner in an election. The opposition parties criticized the fiscal update, and announced they would not support it because it contained no stimulus money to spur Canada’s economy and protect workers during the economic crisis. With the Conservative Party only holding a minority of the seats in the House of Commons the government would be defeated if the opposition parties voted against the fiscal update. With the Conservatives unwilling to budge on the proposals outlined in the fiscal update the Liberals and NDP signed an agreement to form a coalition government, with a written pledge of support from the Bloc Québécois. Under the terms of the agreement Dion would be sworn in as Prime Minister, however he would only serve in the position until the next Liberal leader was chosen. Dion contacted Governor General Michaëlle Jean and advised her that he had the confidence of the House of Commons if Prime Minister Harper’s government was to fall. However before the fiscal update could be voted on in the House of Commons Prime Minister Harper requested the Governor General to prorogue parliament till January 26, 2009, which she accepted.

  42. …”On May 2nd, I’m voting Liberal”…
    This pompous declaration says everything you need to know about that pretentious imposter. He’s paid by the Toronto Liberal establishment to dupe Conservatives with his laughable siren call.

  43. Canada did not move from a conservative nation (free people, low taxes)overnight. Nor did it get to where we are during a single Parliament or a single decade. It occurred incrementally over decades. Why? To jump from Canada circa 1950 to Canada circa 2010 would have been rejected by the voters as too radical. To move back and reverse the bad policies of the last 50+ years require incremental steps. Any other method will be viewed by voters as too radical and will be rejected.
    Voters often have short memories. I have met a number of senior citizens who claimed they paid into CPP every year of their working lives even thouh they worked for 20+ years before CPP existed! In five years they will forget there ever was a Wheat Board (heck, most urban Canadians NEVER knew there was a CWB prior to 2011!). If the CBC was reduced to a low rent radio network, within ten years most folks will forget CBC was a television network.
    Would I like the Hrper government move faster on conservative issues? You bet! However, politics is the art of the possible. I’d rather have them move slow and succeed than move fast and fail.

  44. Last week I caught Andrew Coyne fibbing about the Conservative party. He claimed in a column that the Conservatives said OAS was in imminent danger of “collapse”. I called BS, he acknowledged the error (but didn’t correct it, as per standard Canadian media practice). See my Twitter timeline for details.
    The Conservatives came to power Jan 23 2006. The fiscal year ends March 31. The last fiscal year of Liberal government ending March 31 2006 saw spending of $220.5 billion dollars (www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/govt48b-eng.htm). The most the Harper government spent in one year was in fiscal 2011: $274 billion (www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/reports-rapports/cp-rc/2009-2010/cp-rc02-eng.asp). Spending has come down since then and will come in this year at about $250 billion.
    274 billion minus 220 billion is 54 billion. Harper increased spending by this much at most; how does Coyne report it? “having increased spending by nearly $70-billion since taking office.” That’s a pretty big error for a London School of Economics grad to make. Worse, Canada’s population growth and inflation under Harper make Coyne’s fib even bigger.
    Coyne claims the Conservatives added “$150-billion to the national debt”. The real number is about $75 billion, see http://www.debtclock.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=45&Itemid=42 . There are somewhat understandable (but still unpalatable) reasons why the Conservatives did that but it’s beyond the scope of this comment.
    Coyne said that the Conservatives raised spending by 7% a year. If that were the case they’d be spending well over $300 billion annually after 6 years in power. In fact, spending this year will be $250 billion.
    Coyne pulls numbers and quotes out of his ass to bash the Conservatives and he does it on a consistent basis. The Rule of Coyne is divide whatever he says by 2 to get the real number.
    Harper and company have in fact increased spending by far too much and there is no need to make up facts to prove that point.

  45. bertie at March 11, 2012 6:42 PM
    Close your eyes, put your hand over your ears, and yell: Nya, Nya, Nya na-nah! I can’t hear you!
    That will make it all go away.
    Show me a guy with a “C” tattooed on his arse, and I’ll show you as big a dickhead as the fellow with a tattooed “L”.

  46. You know, whenever somebody from the Media Party like Coyne comes up with some scold of the CPC for not being Conservative! enough, all you have to do is a little brain check to see what they’re about.
    Public sector employment at all levels of government, federal provincial and town/city/county sums to well over 10% and is likely nearing 20% of ALL employment in Canada. Federal alone is 10%, 3.4 million.
    Can the CPC fire half of them next year? Dump a million and a half middle class seat polishers on the job market in a global recession? Not. So Mr. Coyne doth protest too much, you ask me.
    Plus, he’s wrong. I happen to know through personal contacts that the Federal Mandarinate is -extremely- uncomfortable right now. People with 25 years in are seeing the handwriting on the wall and taking early retirement. There are also news stories about it. Federal bureaucracy’s salad days are over. Its no longer a growth industry. From here on is going to be a long, slow decline.
    Federal employee count didn’t get over 3.4 million in a year. Its not going to get back to a reasonable number like 100K in a year either.

  47. Coyne is not a conservative I agree. But we should resist the temptation to shoot the messenger.
    I was a strong Conservative supporter in the last election, always have been a Conservative supporter, likely always will be. But I would be lying if I said I was very enthusiastic about the party at the moment.
    The excuse that “you can only change the course of the ship slowly” is starting to wear thin. We’ll never see income splitting from the Cons for example, even though they know that’s a treasured conservative idea. And at this point I’m convinced they are not going to touch the CBC, except for perhaps a bit of a nip to the budget. If they were worried it would have been too risky to kill the beast off, they could have made useful reforms to it. We’ll probably also be in Afghanistan forever, wasting money and lives propping up a barbarian regime.

  48. *Note to Andy.
    As you can see – the jig is up, the wool is off, not even some of the people some of the time. Get over it.

  49. Printed for later reading.
    But from a quick skim, off the top, the dreaded “markets are not infallible” meme. Uh, oh! And government intervention is?
    Humans are not infallible. The market is a human institution. “Markets are not infallible” is a jejune, self-evident agenda-hiding observation.
    The market can’t FAIL any more than WEATHER can fail. There are pleasant and unpleasant outcomes for various players but no failure. Some people actually love rain.
    All market “failures” are at bottom the result of some kind of government intervention in the near or distant past.

  50. TJ said: “The excuse that “you can only change the course of the ship slowly” is starting to wear thin.”
    TJ, if all they did was stop the rate of increase in federal spending it would be a turn-it-on-a-dime reversal of SEVENTY FREAKIN’ YEARS of public policy. Three generations of steady expansion, my friend.
    There are entire industries based on the steady, inevitable growth of government machinery. The dislocation of people and money is going to be -large- if they do anything sudden. Large enough that both TJ and The Phantom would get caught in the gears and pinched harshly.
    Put it another way, the rabid Left is rioting presently when things are good and everyone down to the poorest crack-head in Vancouver is well fed. Imagine the rioting if they start going even a little bit hungry.
    Therefore it behooves the thinking man to consider what a safe application of the brakes would be on a machine that big. A machine that is manned by three million four hundred thousand people is not the kind of thing you’re going to do a Bat-turn with. Its not a frickin’ race car, right?
    So ask yourself if the CPC is stepping on the brakes or stepping on the gas, and then ask yourself what your alternative is. You think Boob Rae is going to reduce the size of government better-faster-cheaper than Steven Harper?
    Doubt it.

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