Common Sense Revolution
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The phrase Common Sense Revolution was used as a political slogan to describe common sense conservative platforms in New Jersey, Ontario and Australia in the 1990s.
The Common Sense Revolution (often called the "CSR") was the name given to the political movement and policy document advocated by former Ontario Premier and Progressive Conservative Party Leader Mike Harris.
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Origin of the CSR
The CSR cannot be understood without briefly mentioning the political culture of the province of Ontario.
The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party was in power between 1943 and 1985 (the 42 year streak ending with the fall of premier Frank Miller's government to an alliance between David Peterson's Liberals and Bob Rae's NDP). After the fall of Miller's government the party found itself in the political wilderness. Known for decades as competent managers with a left-leaning tendency towards building up Ontario social programs (such as Health Care and Education), they found themselves losing this ground to the Liberals and their charismatic leader, Peterson. Sticking to their policy status quo, the party was trounced in the 1987 election that gave Peterson a majority government. Faced with massive debt and public disinterest in their leader and policies, the party needed a new angle.
In 1990 an upstart junior cabinet minister from Miller's former government named Mike Harris won the leadership of the party. This was widely interpreted as a move to the political right, as Harris defeated the more centrist Dianne Cunningham.
Harris immediately set about crafting a new image for himself and the party. In his first election in 1990 he branded himself "the tax fighter". Despite his party's third place showing in the election (which was won by NDP leader Bob Rae) Harris had managed to improve the party standing in the legislature and bring some attention to his cause.
After the 1990 election Harris and his advisors (including prominent Ontario Tories Tony Clement, then President of the party, and Tom Long) set to work creating a more comprehensive reform package to present to the province. The result was the CSR.
Content of the CSR
The CSR reform package was markedly neo-conservative in nature, closely mirroring the platforms of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
Philosophically it was aligned with the theories of prominent 20th century economist and political theorist Friedrich A. von Hayek. (In fact, during Harris' time in office political staff at Queen's Park - the provincial seat of government - were known to keep copies of Hayek's seminal work Road to Serfdom on hand in their offices).
The central foci of the CSR were: tax reduction, balancing the budget, reducing the size and role of government and an emphasis on individual economic responsibility (often summarized by an opposition to government "hand-outs"). Among other things Harris promised to reduce personal income tax rates by 30% and balance the provincial budget at the same time (which had reached a record $10 Billion deficit under the NDP).
The CSR was specifically tailored as a reform document. It was presented as a radical change to the status quo of provincial government business, which was widely seen to be poorly managed and inefficient. Indeed, the opening words of the document were "The people of Ontario have a message for their politicians -- government isn't working anymore. The system is broken."
The 1995 Election
When Bob Rae called the 1995 election most political commentators were sure that Liberal leader Lyn McLeod would end up taking the premier's job. However, this prediction was rather premature.
Sticking to the contents of the CSR Harris fought a campaign focused on simple, easily communicated messages. Specifically, he consistently hammered home the party's promises to lower taxes and reduce the number of people on welfare (Ontario's social assistance program).
The turning point in the election is often considered to be Harris' performance in the televised leader's debate. Rather than get caught up in the debate between McLeod and Rae, Harris used his camera time to speak directly to the camera to convey CSR points, virtually ignoring all questions asked of him by his opponents.
Harris and the CSR wound up getting a strong mandate in the election as the PCs took 82 of the province's 130 seats.
For more information on the 1995 Election and Mike Harris' first term in office see the respective wikipedia article.
Impact on cities
While many suburban municipalities grew rapidly during 1995-1999 the net effect of many CSR policies was a simple transfer of wealth from urban to suburban areas and a refocusing of services to commuters and suburbs. The former city of Toronto was forced to merge with four surrounding cities to form a new "megacity", over serious objections and a referendum in which 4/5 of the population of all of the cities voted against it. The Harris government saw this as a cost-cutting measure against all urbanists' advice, who knew that cities of 750,000 or less were an optimal size for service delivery.
Successor of the CSR
Attempting to build on the success of the CSR content and messaging strategy for the 1999 election, Harris and the Ontario Tories branded their new policy document the Blueprint. (Blue being the official colour of the party).
The Blueprint followed the same theoretical framework as its predecessor, yet was tempered for a much different political environment. In 1995 the message had been "reform" and "revolution", but after 4 years of conservative government, the message became a balance between stability and emphasizing that there was still "much left to do".
Though not as successful as the CSR, the Blueprint nonetheless earned Harris re-election with another majority government (defeating new Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty).
Failings of both the CSR and the Blueprint became obvious in the second term. By 2003 the Toronto merger had failed to deliver any savings whatsoever. A process of suburban colonization commenced of which the primary obvious beneficiary was Mel Lastman who had become Mayor of the new megacity, but was unable to manage it easily. The province under Harris transferred tax funds to suburbs at the same time as downtown services were cut, reducing the city's quality of life and triggering riots, notably by Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) in 2000. There was an irreconcilable gap between city and suburban regions in Toronto and this contributed to the eventual defeat of Ernie Eves in the Ontario general election, 2003.
Retrospect
Opinion on the CSR legacy is far from unanimous today. Supporters of Harris praise the movement as the main reason behind Ontario's massive economic turnaround in the mid-late nineties. They maintain that the clarity of the CSR messages, the soundness of its' economic policies, and Harris' perseverance in "doing what he said he would do" ensure the CSR is seen in a positive light today. Indeed, many Ontario conservatives attribute Ernie Eves' defeat in 2003 to his abandonment of CSR principles, though the obvious failure of the Toronto merger and plain hatred of Harris in Toronto (evident from a wide variety of sources) had become increasingly evident even by 2000.
Opponents of Harris see the CSR in a much more negative light - attributing the deterioration of social programs to its tenets. They perceive Eves' defeat to be a rejection of 8 years of conservative rule under CSR policies, and of cities being ruled by their suburbs.
The dispute may not be settled until the Ontario general election, 2007 or beyond, but what is agreed upon by both its supporters and opponents is that the CSR resulted in far-reaching changes in the provincial government. Some have even argued that the impact of the CSR approach was so profound as to actually cause a right-ward shift in Ontario's political culture. An example of this shift can be seen in the contemporary dialogue used by political leaders of all parties in the province.
Today, the CSR themes of keeping taxes low, budgets balanced and people off social assistance are used by even the Conservatives' opponents. In fact, a key plank in the McGuinty Liberals' platform in their 2003 election victory was to criticize Eves for failing to ensure a balanced budget, and promising to do so themselves. Another key plank was to hold the line on provincial taxes.
Meanwhile, however, Conservative leader John Tory, himself from Toronto and a contender for the Mayor's job there in 2003 (he lost to David Miller who had championed the concept for a 'Province of Toronto' - as to provide more autonomy for the city), preached a return to the "Red Tory" tradition of Bill Davis and his moderate centrist governance approach of the 1970s by which the Ontario Progressive Conservatives had ruled Ontario for the decades after World War II with comfortable majorities.
See also
- Mike Harris
- Ipperwash Crisis - An incident shortly after the 1995 election that saw a Native protester (Dudley George) shot dead by police sent in by Mike Harris (claimed)
- International Socialists (Canada) - a group that frequently (and violently) protested against the 'Common Sense Revolution' in the 1990's.