This is an excerpt from Donald Gutstein’s new book Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his Think Tank Colleagues Have Transformed Canada.

Neoliberalism came later to Canada than to Britain and the United States because of the re-election of Pierre Trudeau in 1980. But after the 1984 federal election, the Progressive Conservative Mulroney government adopted neoliberalism as its guiding light, throwing open the country to foreign investment, eliminating the National Energy Program, transforming the Foreign Investment Review Agency into Investment Canada, bringing in the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and signing the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Neoliberalism became entrenched under the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, who accepted the ideology as their own policy orientation, as Chrétien signed NAFTA and Chrétien-Martin brought in an era of privatization and fiscal restraint. These policies are properly called neoliberal because, in contrast to libertarians who want a small, powerless state that leaves people alone, neoliberals require a strong state that uses its power to create and enforce markets, and prop them up when they fail, as happened after the 2007-08 financial meltdown. By the time Stephen Harper took over the reins of government, neoliberalism was normalized as the accepted way of running the country. That was Harper’s starting point. He earns the “ism” label because of his unique way of furthering neoliberalism, as the book documents.

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s initiatives — and Mulroney’s — were mostly high-profile, garnering heated support and provoking fierce opposition. Harper’s moves, in contrast, are subtle, low-key, incremental, hidden from view, although three files — promoting bitumen pipelines, bypassing First Nations organizations and downgrading government science — have engendered opposition. Incrementalism is both practice and theory for Harper. He was forced to move slowly during his years of minority government to stay in office. He continues to deploy this strategy with a majority because it works. “Any other approach will certainly fail,” he told the 2003 conference of the Civitas Society, the secretive association — secretive because it allows no public access to its website — of three hundred conservative academics, politicians, journalists and think-tank functionaries who meet annually, free from media oversight, to debate issues important to conservatives.

(Harper was ruling out another method of policy change, the “blitzkrieg” or lightning strike. This strategy also involves “a policy goal radically different from the existing configuration,” but is “attained in a short period following a surprise announcement and a very rapid implementation.”)

Reaganism and Thatcherism are not just about economic policy. Underlying the success of each political leader is a unique blend of neoliberalism and socially conservative family and cultural values. Harper, who was then head of the Canadian Alliance, laid out his version of the program in his 2003 Civitas address. He claimed that the ideas of the economic conservatives had already been adopted by government. As a result of the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions, Harper argued, both “(s)ocialists and liberals began to stand for balanced budgeting, the superiority of markets, welfare reversal, free trade and some privatization.”

Of course, much more needs to be done, he reassured them. “We do need deeper and broader tax cuts, further reductions in debt, further deregulation and privatization, and especially the elimination of corporate subsidies and industrial-development schemes” that distort the market. But the arguments for this program “have already been won,” he declared. The task was now to bring social conservatives of various stripes into the Conservative tent. There aren’t enough economic conservatives to win a majority government, so alliances must be formed with ethnic and immigrant communities, who historically vote Liberal but espouse “strong traditional views of values and family.”

Thatcher and Reagan had “ism” appended to their names because their influence extended beyond their administrations. They have been accorded status as doctrines or systems of beliefs. Thatcherism was promoted even more vigorously by the succeeding New Labour government of Tony Blair. And in the United States, Democratic president Bill Clinton furthered Reaganism through policies such as “ending welfare as we know it” after Reagan had targeted “welfare queens” as the enemy.

Harper has fundamentally modified the relationship between state and society. The theme is simple: we must remove obstacles to the attainment of a state governed, not by duly elected officials, but by market transactions, because the market and economic freedom are more fundamental than democracy and political freedom.

Is Harper deserving of an ism? I believe he is and hope to demonstrate in this book that Harper’s program will outlast his years as prime minister. The combined firepower of neoliberal think tanks over forty years has reshaped the Canadian climate of ideas to such an extent that it will take years — perhaps decades — for those views to change again. On top of these ideological underpinnings, Harper has fundamentally modified the relationship between state and society. The theme is simple: we must remove obstacles to the attainment of a state governed, not by duly elected officials, but by market transactions, because the market and economic freedom are more fundamental than democracy and political freedom. This will not be easily undone no matter who follows. Future Canadian prime ministers, like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton before them, cannot ignore the dominant influences of Harperism and neoliberalism. They must find their space to operate within these frames.

As of this writing in mid-2014, a tightly knit, smoothly operating neoliberal propaganda system has been installed in Canada. The foundations of wealthy businessmen, corporations, and individuals are investing more than $26 million a year in neoliberal think-tanks and single-issue advocacy organizations. (This figure doesn’t include Calgary’s School of Public Policy, whose financial statements are buried within the university’s accounts.) The long-term goal is to discredit government as a vital institution and to champion market alternatives.

The system hinges on the writings of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stiglitz, James Buchanan and other members of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) that provide neoliberal doctrine. Think-tanks transform the doctrine into research; sympathetic academics provide research studies compatible with the think tank’s goals; corporate executives and the foundations of wealthy businessmen finance the research; and sympathetic media owners and commentators disseminate the research to target audiences. It’s a package deal. Canada’s neoliberal think tanks rarely discuss the connection, but they operate comfortably within the MPS orbit.

Most Canadian policy entrepreneurs — Brian Lee Crowley at the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies and then the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Michel Kelly-Gagnon at the Montreal Economic Institute, Peter Holle at the Frontier Centre, and Michael Walker at the Fraser Institute — are MPS members. They’ve also been president or a director of Civitas. Two generations of Canadians — the Fraser Institute celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2014 — have been exposed to neoliberal ideas. The repetition of these ideas, especially through the vehicle of annual indexes, has been effective in incorporating them into the common-sense understanding of the world held by Canadians of all political stripes.

As a result of the massing on the right, the political space is crowded with a seemingly endless flow of studies, reports and commentaries supporting neoliberal perspectives. Of course, people are not automatons who blindly internalize these messages. But gradually, and especially as a result of constant repetition, some ideas rise to prominence, while others fade away. People are presented with a changing set of ideas from which they must make selections to make sense of their world: economic freedom and school choice are unqualified good things; the tax burden is burdensome and requires relief; government is inefficient because it harbours bloated bureaucracies and overpaid public employees; the private sector is hobbled by red tape; and so on.

The success of the Fraser Institute’s school report card exemplifies the strategy. To advance Milton Friedman’s doctrine that competition in education is the only way to improve it, with Weston Foundation funding, the institute has ranked schools in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario annually for over a decade. It created a research technique that purports to demonstrate that a school itself — its administration, teaching and counselling — is the key factor in student achievement. The methodology is flawed because the indicators the institute selects and the weightings it gives them, “exaggerates the differences between schools and school systems,” writes retired teacher Dietmar Waber, and makes the school into the factor being measured and ranked.

Neoliberalism largely supports the Harper government, but that’s not its main purpose. Its role is to change the climate of ideas to such an extent that it doesn’t matter who forms the government.

To appear to do this the institute ignores information about socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, disability, ESL and school location in determining its rankings. To create seemingly large differences among schools it magnifies small differences in test results by double-counting them. Nonetheless, the rankings are an unqualified success, as real-estate agents tout properties near high-ranking schools, mothers-to-be discuss where to buy houses, and divorcing parents fight over child custody based on which parent lives closer to a higher-ranking school. The Fraser Institute brought choice and competition into the public education system; there’s no going back.

Neoliberalism largely supports the Harper government, but that’s not its main purpose. Its role is to change the climate of ideas to such an extent that it doesn’t matter who forms the government. Of course, its ultimate goal is to see the election of a Margaret Thatcher, a Ronald Reagan, or a Stephen Harper, who can then use state power to accelerate the transition to a market state. Harper has used that power assiduously, as if he was born for the job, creating a philosophy of government that will outlast his administration.

He’s hobbled government’s long-standing social-democratic obligations by slashing revenues to their lowest levels — in relation to the size of the economy — they’ve been at in fifty years, when the state first implemented its major social programs. One estimate pegs Harper’s tax cuts at $45 billion a year in foregone revenues. With total revenues at about $250 billion, that’s nearly a 20 per cent cut. Call it privatization by default. If there’s not enough money in the public coffers to finance health care, post-secondary education and rising old age security needs, they will have to be provided by the private or voluntary sectors or by individuals.

Brian Lee Crowley comments that there’s “basically a strong political consensus now” for a smaller government and lower government revenues and expenditures. Both Liberals and New Democrats have indicated they will not stray far from the economic consensus. The New Democrats’ Tom Mulcair pledged to not raise personal income tax nor the sales tax, and to increase corporate taxes only for large corporations. Justin Trudeau of the Liberals says “we are not going to be raising taxes.” They’ve accepted Harperism — the new reality.

But Harperism is more than fiscal conservatism. While he’s cut government’s ability to look after its citizens, Harper has inched forward in his quest to remove obstacles to the market state: replacing scientific understanding of the environment with market signals, weakening the role of trade unions in the labour market, bringing private property rights to First Nation reserves, and undermining the effectiveness of non-profit organizations critical of business and the market. The opposition parties may not even be aware of the extent to which the changed climate of ideas will constrain their actions.

Donald Gutstein writes for The Tyee, Georgia Straight and rabble.ca. he is an adjunct professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and co-director of NewsWatch Canada.

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