SHAMELESS SELF-PROMO ALERT!
California is not the only place suffering from election shennanigans right now, as true conservatives debate over whether they should support Arnold. Ontario, which is Canada’s largest province, is also going through an interesting election. In my latest Enter Stage Right column, I share why social and fiscal conservatives should not be scared to vote Family Coalition Party as an alternative to the Progressive Conservatives, even though it will likely mean splitting the right. Here’s a juicy excerpt from “Not Just For So-Cons: Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Vote Family Coalition Party in Ontario”:
In fact, one of the things I find interesting about the Family Coalition Party is that unlike many other social conservatives I come across, the party resists the temptation of paleo-conservative protectionism. According to their campaign literature, the FCP “supports the long-term removal of all measures that insulate industries, businesses, financial institutions, professions and trade unions from domestic and foreign competition.” In this sense, the FCP appears much more in tune with the global thinking of modern conservatism than the federal PCs under David Orchard.
Thus the FCP’s social conservative roots provide for solid fiscal conservative policy. The party clearly explains this correlation in their policy handbook. “The family has an important and necessary role in protecting and nurturing life,” one reads. “This role makes the family, rather than the individual, the basic building block of our society. When families are strong and prosperous, democracy and economic enterprise flourish. Strong families lessen problems in many areas of society; e.g.: marital separations, child abuse, teenage rebellion leading to alcohol and drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, runaways, school drop-outs, vandalism, theft and violence. Strong family ties and stable relationships are economically and socially beneficial, leading to fewer cases of single parents, better job stability, more productive members of society and decreased welfare costs.”
Because strong families make for a robust and free-market economy, and vice-versa, the Family Coalition Party proposes an education policy more in tune with the free market than the current status – or should I say statist? – quo. “The state should not push its own political agenda onto children in classrooms,” the policy manual states. “Choice is to education what competition is to business. It unleashes the pent-up creativity of educators, in response to consumer demands. Just as competition works to improve quality and lower prices, so taxpayers will save money when parents are allowed to choose in the education marketplace. Choice is the catalyst that will drive other school reforms — it will spark innovations in teaching, management, and learning.”
But although I am a social conservative, and believe in school choice, I’m not, by and large, a fiscal conservative. I am so disgusted by the thirst for power at all costs that all the major parties seems to display (including the alliance, which lost me early on when it started soft-selling itself to Ontario voters in order to look ‘less scary’). I’d almost made up my mind to vote FCP in the next election. But big-business politics and free-market economics both strike me as darwinistic, not family oriented. You’re making me reconsider, and now I’m running out of options!
Kate, I think the FCP’s fiscal policy could be described as family orientated “small-c” cottage capitalism, as opposed to “large-c” corporate capitalism. Case and point: less government intrusion into the family farm, which the FCP considers a staple of a family-orientated free economy.
Kate,
Thanks for your post. When we say the Family Coalition Party is fiscally conservative we mean something very different than the Conservatives do.
For us we want to spend less money in goverment becuase we want to reduce the family taxation burden as much as possible. For example, the Family Coalition party is the only party that would not charge income tax to minimum income wage earners in Ontario. We would raise the erpsonal exemption to $14,000 /yr up from the current $7,600. In addition we would create an additional income tax exemption for each dependent child to enure families get to keep more of their hard earned money. To pay for this we would reduce unecessary gvernment spending such as spending on cultural event or government advertsing. I for one could not justify taking money from a person making $6.85/hr to spend on some a cultural event.
Thsis just the beginning. For more on our policies please see http://www.familyparty.on.ca