Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was greeted by a full and enthusiastic crowd for his keynote address on the opening night of the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference on Wednesday.
Harper opened his speech by noting that this year is the 30th anniversary of the election of 52 MPs (himself included) to the House of Commons as the Reform Party of Canada, which he says was a critical element of the formation of the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada.
He then moved on to the main topic of populism. He said the word populist "has taken on a number of imprecise and often negative meanings."
"For instance, if you were to read liberal media around the world, which of course you should not do," he joked, continuing, "there will find that any election result that they like is 'democratic,' any election result they don't like is 'populist.'"
He described how the original populists "sought to represent the broad interests of great mass of local people. Those people were overwhelmingly small-hold farmers and modest-income labourers."
He said that what united their movements "was the belief that the bulk of the populations shared common interests and values that the elites who controlled the system simply ignored."
He went on to describe how Canada and other nations in the democratic world have "implemented the economic policies of the 1970s, and as a consequence we are getting the economic results of the 1970s."
He continued: "And by the way, this looks like the 1970s in other ways as well. Back then, democracies were suffering from profound internal social and political divisions, and in the world democracy itself was in retreat, and authoritarianism—especially soviet communism—was on the rise. But then we had a new generation of conservative leaders—Raegan, Thatcher, and others. They contradicted all the established wisdom of the elites, and things changed for the better."
He said the Reform Party was in part a product of that era, advocating for "very orthodox economic policy while at the same time being portrayed as radical by the media and rejected by the elites. The way, by the way to be blunt, that Pierre Poilievre is today."
He describes how the Reform Party's economic policies were eventually adopted mostly by the Liberal Party in the '90s, and Canada "which was becoming an economic basket case by the time Pierre Trudeau left office gradually turned around."
"Democracies, if we're honest, rarely get things exactly right at any point in time," Harper said, "but democracies are adaptable and resilient, and over time when it becomes obvious that countries are on the wrong path, democracies have a way of correcting error, changing course, and revitalizing themselves."
"So, populist conservatism that I talk about is a belief, both in free markets and in democracy."
He described some of the challenges that the Reform Party faced in its early days and that in such an environment it was essential for the party "to figure out pretty quickly how to become a populist in the sense of responding to the actual concerns of our members and supporters who were ordinary middle-class and working-class people.
"And THAT kind of populism is a very good thing."
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