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

Journal of Canadian Studies, Spring 2004 by Weinroth, Michelle

I raise these questions not only to explore how a form of modern propaganda won over 55% of Canadians, but also to chart the rhetoric of an ideological project whose target audience was far from benighted. With a more enlightened and distrustful citizenry, today's politicians are faced with enormous challenges. They must confront the "gnawing critique" of mounting cynics who are quick to dismiss the viability and integrity of contemporary political leadership. Simultaneously, political actors are also blessed, for citizens are never permanently, nor exclusively, rational in their appraisal of governing forces. They often forgive and forget the vagaries of those who have betrayed them. Consistency in the conduct of political leaders is not the exclusive matrix upon which popular consensus is wrought. An array of other, often irrational, contingencies may underpin voting patterns as well. Personality, charisma, and the imminent tide of some great peril can wash away the flaws in government policy and leadership, obscuring those misdemeanours under an ambience of pressure and urgency. Thus, modern governments can survive a growing phenomenon of complacency and cynicism; they are even revitalized periodically when a national emergency induces citizens to restore faith in the political process. For the human will to believe and to hope remains quasi indomitable, so long as society sustains its relative cohesion through networks of social trust. Indeed, faith is deeply ingrained in our culture, from childhood experience to eschatology; hope is bred through various forms of secular promises, oaths, and tacit accords. In many ways, these links of trust harness and define the public's thinking (Hyde 1997, 10-15; Govier 1997, 3-8; 190-95), acting as catalysts of social control and consensus building even now, in an age of religious and political disillusionment.

If in 1994 the Liberals broke their electoral promise to cure Canada of the blight of unemployment, they would begin their journey to regain, if not solidify, trust by portraying their anti-deficit project as a cause of great magnitude, implicitly "grander" than combatting poverty; furore over the fiscal question would be amplified so as to drown out the "grumbling" of those who would "stubbornly" hold the newly elected government to its pre-electoral commitment (e.g., CCPA, Barlow and Campbell). Writing for the Globe and Mail's Report on Business, Ron Graham revealed that within his own circles, "what frustrated [Paul Martin] most were those Finance officials who insisted on treating the Liberals' 112-page election manifesto known as the Red Book, which Martin and party policy adviser Chaviva Hosek had co-authored, the way that fundamentalists treat the Bible. Time and again, in order to get them to think beyond it, Martin was heard to yell, 'Screw the Red Book!'" (1995, 34).

Such outbursts would not impress the public; expletives and desecrations of electoral oaths would thus remain behind closed doors. On the outside, an energetic campaign to reduce the deficit would be presented as an overwhelming "necessity"; it would swell into an all-embracing discourse exalted by the exigencies of "national survival." Meanwhile, the Red Book's rhetorical overtures, which stressed the class-based but divisive issues of unemployment, poverty, and social programs (Liberal Party of Canada 1993, 9-16), would peter out and become the exclusive concerns of "special interest" groups (e.g., the National Action Committee for the Status of Women, trade unions, NAPO, and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives). In the transition from the pre-electoral to the post-electoral moment, the Liberals' discourse shifted from addressing the needs of class (the poor and unemployed) to the strategies of nation-building. Whether consciously intended by its authors or not, this shift in rhetoric would strengthen the government's legitimacy; for the language of nationhood, even within an era of rampant globalization, remains one of the most powerful expedients for bolstering a governing body. Fortunately for the Liberals, the fiscal question could be rendered a national question, and in this, it could furnish the most propitious conditions for capturing popular sentiment and guaranteeing a successful campaign. To answer the central query of this article-How did the Liberals rise from the ashes of public disenchantment, dispel the contradictions of their political turn-around, and win majority approval despite their altered policies?-it is not enough to identify the antideficit idiom as a rhetoric of nation-building; it is also necessary to probe the internal workings of such propaganda and to reflect on the makings of a Canadian nationalist discourse in economic disguise.