Rituals of Rhetoric and Nationhood: The Liberal Anti-Deficit Campaign (1994-1998)

Journal of Canadian Studies, Spring 2004 by Weinroth, Michelle

In 1993, the Liberals came to power on a platform of job creation. Yet soon after their ascendancy, their election promise to invest in more jobs faded; deficit reduction became their foremost preoccupation. In spite of their altered political priorities, and in spite of their announcement that deep cuts in government expenditures were imminent, the Liberals won substantial public support for their fiscal actions. Like all moments of crisis, Canada's accruing debt in 1994/1995 was potentially double edged; it could well have incurred a political disaster for the Liberals. Instead, it was exploited as an opportunity. The deficit crisis of the 1990s became a significant moment of Canadian consensus-building in which the Liberal Party, once known for its Keynesian posture, sought to redefine the national economic psyche in function of a rising monetarist trend. This essay seeks to account for the success of this ideological venture, and argues that the Liberals' "marketing strategy" can be analysed in terms of a symbolic language of nationalism-a discourse whose persuasive power resides in its archetypal narrative of sacrifice and redemption.

En 1993, les Liberaux gagnerent le pouvoir en promulguant la creation d'emplois. Mais peu apres leur ascension, leur promesse electorale d'investir dans les emplois s'estompa pour etre remplacee par l'objectif de reduire le deficit. Malgre cette modification de leurs priorites politiques et malgre leur proclamation que de grosses coupures des depenses gouvernementales etaient imminentes, les Liberaux recurent un appui important du public pour leurs mesures fiscales. Comme dans tous les moments de crise, la dette accumulee du Canada pouvait representer, en 1994-1995, une epee a double tranchant. On aurait pu assister a un desastre politique pour les Liberaux. Toutefois cette situation fut plutot exploitee comme une possibilite. La crise du deficit des annees 90 est devenue un moment important pour Ia creation d'un consensus canadien dans le cadre duquel le Parti Liberal, autrefois renomme pour son attitude keynesienne, a essaye de redefinir la mentalite economique nationale en fonction d'une tendance monetariste a la hausse. Le present article veut expliquer le succes de ce programme ideologique et avance que la « strategie de commercialisation » des Liberaux peut etre analysee en termes de langage symbolique du nationalisme-un discours dont les pouvoirs de persuasion resident dans son expose archetype des faits associes au sacrifice et a la redemption.

The deficit crisis of 1994-1995-the episode that gripped the nation for a meteoric moment-marked a watershed in Canadian history. It crystallized at the end of nine years of Conservative government in which the gross federal debt grew from $243.8 billion to $548.1 billion, according to the Department of Finance in 1995 (quoted in Klein 1996, 22). This was the balance sheet that the Liberal Party confronted in 1993 when it came to power. The gravity of the situation and solutions for managing it spawned rife discussion between Keynesians (e.g., Harold Chorney, Gideon Rosenbluth, Mario seccareccia, John hotson, Jim Stanford) and monetarists (e.g., Thomas Courchene, Thomas E. Kierans, Michael Walker, William M. Scarth, William B.P. Robson). Notably for economists and political scientists, the salient and divisive questions arising out of the fiscal scenario revolved around the "true" magnitude of the debt itself,1 the factors which precipitated its sprawl,2 and its true scope: whether it portended economic disaster short of massive cuts in public spending, or whether it was a normal and manageable development within public finance.3 While the problem of the debt has lent itself to extensive controversy and to vying economic analyses, the subject of this essay concerns a different approach. I propose a cultural study of the 1994-1995 deficit crisis as a site of ideological production in which the Liberal government sought to justify its commitment to greater economic laissez-faire by bringing public opinion4 under its sway through a discursive "culture of debt" (Martin and Savidan 1994, 11-20) and fiscal restraint.

With the ascendancy of the Liberal Party in 1993 and the beginning of an intensive government campaign of deficit reduction, terms such as debt and deficit developed into quasi-household words. The routine procedure of "balancing the books"5 became subjectively charged, overlaid with popular perceptions that linked deficits with personal bankruptcy and material uncertainty. Without a doubt, the debt discourse did not surface suddenly. It was intrinsic to the corporate agenda of neo-liberals and neo-conservatives of the Mulroney era when the notion of zero-deficit "was made to ring through the air waves and inundate the print press" (Katz 2003). In 1993, Ralph Klein blazed a path of antideficit policies that others, such as Bob Rae in Ontario, would also pursue (Laxer 1995, 101-17; Cooper and Neu 1995, 163-81). By the mid-1990s, think-tanks and lobby groups such as the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI), and the C.D. Howe and Fraser Institutes had turned the national debt into a cautionary tale warning of potential economic disaster. The result was a mood of public anxiety that gave the Liberals the occasion to justify a "new architecture for ... the economy ..." (Martin 1994, 1). According to Paul Martin, the economic crisis marked an opportunity for national energy and initiative; worry over fiscal calamity turned into a high-powered mission to redress Canada's economic situation (Martin 1994, 1). With this nation-building rhetoric,6 the government convinced 55% of Canadians that heavy cuts to the public sector were the necessary, indeed, morally imperative solution to an untenable crisis (Angus Reid 1994, 2-3).