Is our Supreme Court less political?

[yvr girl]

I hear about cases that go before our Supreme Court, but I hear little about the individuals who comprise it.

The last time I heard about an individual Justice was when there were new appointments to the bench. What I heard was positive.

[Double T]

1. Bush Was Elected To The Presidency By The Supreme Court.....

....and NO justices have changed since then. Heavily Weighted Toward The RW.

[yvr girl]

3. Check what forum you're in

This thread is in the Canadian forum and is about the Canadian Supreme court. I agree that the US Supreme Court seems highly political.

[whistle]

2. Then when....November 2000? I think it leans strongly to the....

...right and when Rehnquist fads out of the light it will become extremely right wing conservative. The big push will be on reactionary SCOTUS decisions. Whether abortion hits the dust bin first by neo-conservative vote will be a matter of timing.

[iverglas]

4. a place to start

The Court's website:
http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/Welcome/index_e.asp

Bios of current judges:
http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/aboutcourt/judges/curjudges_e.asp
-- obviously no commentary, but you can get a rough idea of their backgrounds, and their professional focuses.

If you go here:
http://www.canlii.org/ca/cas/scc/
and click on a year, you see a list of cases decided by the Court in each month. Each one has a little summary at the top indicating what the issues in the case were. Glance at a few, and you can see the kinds of cases the Court hears, and read a few in more depth if they look interesting. (The italicized portions at the top tell you what the issues are, and that's followed by a summary of the decision ("Held), and of the reasons of the various judges if separate reasons were issued (each summary starting with "Per").

Now, those are just the facts, of course, ma'am. ;)

The way I sees it:

- the right wing attempts to paint the SCC as "activist" because it tends to impose a high standard on any government that seeks to interfere in individual rights and freedoms, and that not infrequently means striking down legislation that interferes in individual rights and freedoms without demonstrated justification, and the right wing doesn't like the outcome, regardless of how constitutionally correct that outcome is;

- the right wing makes an issue of the appointment process for SCC judges purely in order to make people think there is something wrong with the judges who are appointed, when they've never actually been able to demonstrate that there's anything wrong with them: push-polling, basically.

I wouldn't suggest that the judges who are appointed are perfect. Lebel J., for instance, is one of the judges who upheld the injunction granted to Jean-Guy Tremblay to prevent Sylvie Daigle from having an abortion:

http://www.canlii.org/ca/cas/scc/1989/1989scc96.html

LeBel J.A.'s reasoning was similar to that of Viens J. in the Superior Court. He first held that because the judgment of this Court in R. v. Morgentaler, 1988 CanLII 90 (S.C.C.), <1988> 1 S.C.R. 30 ("Morgentaler (No. 2)"), did not state that women have an absolute right to have an abortion, and, further, because the Morgentaler (No. 2) judgment did not consider the question of foetal rights, the court was not precluded from finding that foetal rights were conferred by provincial legislation. LeBel J.A. then discussed the Quebec Charter and concluded that it is difficult to deny that a foetus, and, in particular, a foetus at this stage in its development, is a "human being" and thus protected under the Quebec Charter. He added that this conclusion is in harmony with the Civil Code's recognition of the foetus as a partial juridical person. In this regard, LeBel J.A. referred to the same articles of the Code mentioned by Viens J., emphasizing the significance of art. 338.

LeBel J.A. acknowledged that the recognition of foetal rights leads to a conflict between these rights and the rights of pregnant women guaranteed under s. 7 of the Canadian Charter. After reciting the reasons for which the appellant desired an abortion, and noting the stage of development of the foetus, LeBel J.A. concluded that in this case the balance of convenience clearly favoured the rights of the foetus. In closing, LeBel J.A. said that while an injunction might be a draconian remedy it is a necessary one, and, furthermore, it is one which the respondent, as the potential father, had the necessary legal interest to request.

That's not somebody I'd pick for my Supreme Court, if I had my druthers. But he's also not likely to have much influence on that issue, since there's virtually no chance of the SCC revisiting any aspect of it in our lifetime.

Personally, I have no desire to see a US-style confirmation process undertaken. I can't think of any reason for it. I might like to see political persuasion play less of a role in appointments, but there really isn't much evidence of the SCC playing partisan politics when it considers legislation, for instance. I do think that the government (i.e. the PM, who makes the appointments) should consult more broadly when identifying and considering candidates, and that transparency can be added in that way without submitting individual nominees to politically motivated partisan scrutiny.

Some of the present and recent judges have been strong advocates in their previous lives for various groups in society -- minority language communities, women, etc. -- and, in Louise Arbour's case, for instance, actively engaged in efforts to enhance the rule of law in the international community.

Yeah, they're universally from a bourgeois if not privileged background. But I don't imagine we'd actually get anything different if we had the Conservative Party vetting the nominees. ;)

I did a quickie google for "supreme court of canada" politicization. And what do we find first but an opinion piece in the National Post:

http://osgoode.yorku.ca/media2.nsf/0/deef28b2f9cea71a85256e820064aab7?OpenDocument
The National Post makes rather a habit of trying to frame the public discourse, and inventing issues where none exist.

Here are the central principles that, in our view, ought to form the basis of a reformed appointment process.

First, we agree with the Prime Minister that the ultimate power of selection must remain in the hands of the Cabinet, on recommendation of the prime minister. Successive prime ministers have made outstanding appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada and we see no reason to vest that power in the hands of another body or institution, whether composed of MPs or others.

Second, the objective of reform should be to ensure that the process whereby the prime minister and Cabinet make their selection is made more transparent and accountable. This suggests to us that any role for MPs in the process must be limited to an advisory rather than a decision-making one.

Accepting these premises, there are really two central issues that need resolution: When and how should parliamentarians be able to participate in the process whereby Supreme Court judges are appointed? ...

Hughie Segal's Institute for Research on Public Policy has a collection of relevant articles by prominent personages:
http://www.irpp.org/po/archive/po0499.htm
(the first half-dozen or so in that issue; there are abstracts farther down, and if you hate pdf docs like I do, you can put the url in google's box and read the cached html version)

Peter Hogg and his co-author of the National Post piece are represented there. Hogg represented the feds in the same-sex marriage reference ... but also bemoaned the omission of "property rights" from our constitution, so I don't necessarily look to him for guidance.

Basically, in my own humble opinion, politicizing the appointments process amounts to fixing something that ain't broken -- or, to whatever extent it actually could use a tune-up, ripping out the engine and replacing it with a bunch of hamsters in wheels. If you'll forgive the derogatory characterization of Conservative MPs. ;)

[yvr girl]

5. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about our court

I don't follow the court closely, but it doesn't seem to be a partisan body to me. They seem to be fairly independent of Parliament, and look the law and the Charter for their decisions.

It just surprises me. As you said, we don't have the same confirmation process that they have in the States. Our system also allows for one party to be in power for a long time, giving them opportunity to 'stack the deck' - but it doesn't seem to happen.

I would say, that most Americans who follow the news at all, could tell you who was a conservative, moderate or liberal justice. I could even do it with the SCOTUS. I wouldn't be able to do it with the Canadian Court though.

I don't hear from anyone in Canada worrying about how X person as PM would effect the judiciary.

[iverglas]

6. no getting got ;)

I didn't take you to be complaining, don't worry. It's just that you're right -- while people here trust the courts to protect their rights more than they trust any other individual or institution, they do tend not to know a whole lot about them.

That's not necessarily bad. I don't know how my computer works, but it seems to, and I like it just fine!

I was just trying to think of where to start to answer your question. We seem to agree that there isn't much of a problem that needs fixing. ;)

[yvr girl]

7. I just wonder why it's not a problem

You would think our system would lead to more abuse. We don't have all the checks and balances.

[Maple]

8. The Law Society

submits a list of the most qualified lawyers and judges for appointments, and then they are chosen accordingly...a certain number from Quebec or Alberta or whatever spot needs to be filled. And of course they also pick the top women, natives etc from the list.

So the people who know the field the best are the ones doing the list.

[yvr girl]

9. Yay us!

[carpetbagger]

10. I'd argue that it is stacked, and that it is vulnerable in theory.

When there is consensus regarding legal fundamentals, there will be a "nonpolitical" judiciary. I think the Supreme Court of Canada IS packed, but that is the result of consensus in Canadian society about the rights of individuals, and the role of tolerance and equality.

You give Harper a government for a decade, and I have no doubt you'd come away with a different court. In the states, we've had periods where this type of thing happened, and where the courts have become stacked towards a certain judicial revolution. In the 1850's, the South had power over all branches of government, and the USSC was packed with pro-slavery judges. In the 1870's, business interests dominated government, and the court was packed up until Franklin Roosevelt appointed enough judges to allow the New Deal to survive judicial review. FDR even tried to expand the size of the court. The post-1930's consensus survived, with the expansion of rights even surviving generations of republican-dominated appointments (half of the republicans serving on the USSC since Roe v. Wade have supported legalized abortion).

I'm not certain, but the Canadian judiciary is also de-politicized by the relative fluidity of the Canadian constitution, as well as the notwithstanding clause, things that would make unpopular court decisions less final. In the US, the USSC has been overruled only a few times, once by constitutional amendment (16th amendment creating a national income tax), and once by force (Jackson ignoring the court's ruling in favor of the Cherokee Indian Nation in Georgia, and sending them into exile in Oklahoma on the "Trail of Tears").

[iverglas]

12. *in theory*

Yes, it's vulnerable in theory. But it works pretty well in practice.

Ditto the notwithstanding clause, I have always maintained.

This is the pivotal point:

"You give Harper a government for a decade, and I have no doubt you'd come away with a different court."

You give Harper a government for a decade, and you might come away with World War III ... or the schools being run by Pentecostal clergy, or the hospitals being run by US corporations, or the highways being run by private developers ... or the trains being run on time ...

So ... you don't give Harper a government. There's a point to all that "parliamentary supremacy" that underlies our system.

The notwithstanding clause is the constitutional vestige of it: the conviction, that ultimately "we" were not willing to give up, that "the people" decide. It's dangerous *in theory*, just as having the Court appointed by the executive is dangerous *in theory*. But our executive branch is essentially "us" -- our executive is drawn from and formed out of our legislative branch: the PM and cabinet all have to be elected as legislators first. (The Queen replaces "god" as the immutable and impartial fairy that we pretend keeps everybody honest. *In theory*, she could appoint a Prime Minister with no majority in Parliament, and a Governor General who would do whatever the PM said, and we could have martial law and internment camps before you know it.)

If the Supreme Court got stacked, it would be because *we* had elected legislators who stacked the Court. If the notwithstanding clause got used to prohibit same-sex marriage or abortion, or outlaw the speaking of French in Alberta, or suspend Parliament, it would be because *we* had elected legislators who did all those things.

And by the time any of those things happened, we'd have a great big situation in which the prohibiting of same-sex marriage or abortion would be the least of our problems, regardless of whether there were some tame Supreme Court that allowed Parliament to do it without even using the notwithstanding clause.

That's your real problem in the US, isn't it? Somebody voted for Bush and all the rest of them.

"The post-1930's consensus survived, with the expansion of rights even surviving generations of republican-dominated appointments"

It's that *consensus* that is the important thing. The consensus that is expressed in our constitutions, that are so similar, in the great scheme of human history, as to be almost identical.

Both guarantee fundamental rights that cannot be infringed except by due process, and guarantee the equal protection of the law.

(Ours goes farther, and formally recognizes some rights that yours doesn't, and requires something more than due process, and defines equal protection more expansively. But the principles are the same.)

But at bottom, constitutions really are worth only the parchment they're written on if the people don't hold to the consensus they express. If people elect legislators (and in the US, a chief executive) who plainly intend to violate the constitution, and they appoint judges who will enable the violation, who's responsible?

Yes, of course, "the people" are in thrall to the corporate interests. But the people elected the other people who made that happen: the ones who deregulated the airwaves, etc. etc. And yes, those people were perhaps still in a state of post-traumatic distress from what the previous people they'd elected had put them through in Vietnam, and were ripe for the soft soap and white picket fences they were fed to get their votes, or whatever. And so on backwards.

My personal opinion, no offence, is that USAmericans just won't learn. ... Of course, much is done to ensure they don't learn. And so on in another backward spiral.

How to get out of it? Golly, I very much wish I knew! I guess all I can say is that I'd sure like to see a lot more people working at the grassroots and local and state levels in the US, instead of legitimizing the circuses every four years and expecting some miracle to happen this year.

"I'm not certain, but the Canadian judiciary is also de-politicized by the relative fluidity of the Canadian constitution, as well as the notwithstanding clause, things that would make unpopular court decisions less final."

The Cdn constitution is "a living tree"; I was amused once to see the US Republican website proudly proclaiming that the US constitution is *not* a living tree. We tell time by a stopped clock, and we're damned proud of it!

The Cdn Supreme Court can consider, and certainly does consider, modern ideas. If anyone were to start quoting what Sir John A. had to say about what our constitution means -- our 1867 constitution still governs a large part of our political arrangements -- people would point and laugh. We're proud of what was accomplished in 1867 as the foundation for a society in which minority rights are so well protected, but we don't really care whether the boys at Charlottetown in 1864 would have liked what we get up to now.

But actually, this makes the court's activities potentially much *more* political, in the "judicial activism" sense. It sets up a situation in which the court can say that it knows better than Parliament what the fundamental consensus in Canada is, because the specifics of that consensus can indeed change, and the constitution can indeed embrace those changes. Section 15 may not name "sexual orientation" as one of the enumerated prohibited grounds of discrimination, that legislatures may not use to differentiate among individuals (for the purpose of the equal protection and benefit of the law). But the list isn't exhaustive, and if someone presents the court with reasons why it should be read as including citizenship (as has been done), sexual orientation, marital status, or anything else, the court can find that the government has discriminated unconstitutionally. The initiative comes from "the people" always -- the people of today.

In the US, the USSC has been overruled only a few times, once by constitutional amendment ... and once by force ...

In a similar situation, the Cdn constitution was amended a few decades ago to give the federal govt jurisdiction over unemployment insurance, something the framers of the 1867 constitution hadn't dreamed of, and that the courts found to fall within provincial jurisdiction over "property and civil rights in the province". ("Civil rights" in its original sense, of course, not in the sense of today's "fundamental" or "human" rights.)

A government that overruled a Supreme Court interpretation of the constitution by invoking the notwithstanding clause -- the polite equivalent of doing it by force ;) -- would look just as bad as a govt that did it by force, if there were no proper circumstances present, like some sort of national emergency, to justify it. In that case, it would invoke the clause first, before the Court said anything about it. If it simply waited for the Court's decision and *then* invoked the clause, then unless the Court's decision was somehow completely perverse, or was going to bankrupt the country or completely change the face of Cdn society, it would look, well, un-Canadian.

There's a case before the Court right now, in which decision has been reserved, that a lot of people don't know about, but that could in fact completely change the face of Cdn society. Two nutjobs in Quebec have challenged the provincial health system, demanding to be permitted to buy private insurance, and claiming that the prohibition on private insurance violates their right to life. (What happens if they need an air ambulance and the govt machine is busy?) If the Court finds that they're right, it can find that the violation is "demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society"; if it doesn't, and govts abide by its decision, the health care system is thrown into disarray and in come the big US insurance corps and out goes equal access to health care, and ultimately we can say goodbye to the whole Cdn system.

This one is going to be a really good test of how the Court sees the Cdn "consensus": whether the rights violation is justified in *this* free and democratic society. And if it says no, then it's back over to the people's elected representatives, who are free to say that because *we* believe that it is justified, then the health care system will stand as is notwithstanding the unconstitutionality. But they have to come out and say that, and stake their electoral chances on it.

As I guess your President Jackson did. Would he get away with it -- get re-elected -- today? (There's a reason *not* to have term limits: hold 'em responsible for what they do while in office!)

If so, then it never really mattered what the constitution said. That's the whole thing.

If Canadians elected Harper on a platform of stopping same-sex marriage no matter what, for instance, and he had to invoke the notwithstanding clause to do it, then it would never have mattered what the constitution said. The consensus, that everyone is entitled to the equal benefit and protection of the law, would have been abandoned already.

That's what sometimes appears to have happened in the US, essentially. The entire concept of individuals' right to equal treatment just isn't holding. People who support outlawing abortion obviously don't belong to the consensus that everyone, even pregnant women, has fundamental rights that cannot be violated unless someone proves that there is justification for doing it. Ditto people who oppose same-sex marriage. What there is in the US is a culture of death. Everybody else gets to stay alive if and only if "we" approve of them.

It's the culture, not the judges. We like to think we have a "culture of rights" up here. What that means is respecting other people's rights, not just defending yer own. You can defend your rights all you like, but if nobody else respects 'em, you've lost before you start. And it won't really matter what's in the constitution and who's on the court.

[SidDithers]

20. Great post, iverglas...

thanks for collating the info.

Sid

[applegrove]

11. Much less political. Canadians are all small L liberals. The NDP

governs as small L. Don't know what would happen in the neocons got into power.

[iverglas]

13. I wish you wouldn't say things like that!

"Canadians are all small L liberals."

I am not a small "l" liberal. My co-vivant is not a small "l" liberal. My siblings are not small "l" liberals, etc. etc. etc.

We're all "libertarian" on what are often (to my mind wrongly) called "social" issues -- as opposed to authoritarian.

But we are *not* "liberal" economically. We are not worshippers of the free market.

Those things called "social" issues are largely irrelevant in Canada. Any politician who tries to use abortion, or gay/lesbian rights, or crime/punishment issues as a wedge to drive between distinguishable blocs of the Canadian electorate will just get splinters.

So there's just no point in talking about "liberal on social issues" here. There just isn't any politics in it. The nasty old women in my mother's senior cits' building (I say women, because they outnumber the men enormously) who natter about that awful same-sex marriage business aren't going to vote Conservative because of that, they're going to vote Conservative because they've voted Conservative all their lives and that's all there is too it. If the NDP promised to overrule any judicial decision requiring same-sex marriage, they would still not vote NDP. Ever.

(And that's obviously the case in the US as well. Those people who claim to be voting "values", against abortion and against gun control and against same-sex marriage and on and on and on, have just been given a handy hook to hang their filthy hats on.)

Trying to apply the small "l" liberal word in Canada will just lead us down the same twisted path that has been taken in the US. No one talks about politics, and everybody natters about labels.

On real social policy -- health care, minority rights, cultural diversity, language policy, workers' rights, education ... -- Canadians are, as a broad trend, social democrats. Our broad policies in those areas may be called "liberal" in the United States, but they simply have never been called that here, let alone anywhere else in the world.

The NDP doesn't govern "like small 'l' liberals", although it does tend to govern like small "f" free-marketers, partly because the right wing of the party tends to be in control when it's in government and of course largely because it would have a hard time doing anything else in any province in isolation. The Liberals govern like small "ndp" social democrats, to the extent that, and purely because, they have to in order retain power.

[CHIMO]

14. god

Thank god for people that can bring logic back into discussions.

Please, please, very pretty please get a column in the Star or some other publication that will bring real points of discussion back into to forefront.(Not restricting it to Canadian publications)

You have my vote.

[iverglas]

15. if only you

... well, and a few thousand of your friends ... had lived in my riding. ;) Or if only I'd been ambitious enough to go for a better riding ...

As far as columns -- in my absence, I'll recommend Heather Mallick. She usually manages to say what needs saying.

Did you read much of Doug Saunders' stuff from Europe in recent weeks of the Globe? I've grown rather fond of him too. I found his piece about trade unions in Italy, and "liberal" as it is applied (or not) to the RC church outside the US, quite interesting.

Well, if you missed it, you can always buy it:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v4/sub/MarketingPage?user_URL=http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2FArticleNews%2FTPStory%2FLAC%2F20050409%2FDOUG09%2FFocus%2F%3Fquery%3Ditaly%2Bunions%2Bpope%2Babortion%2Bliberal&ord=43543633&brand=theglobeandmail&redirect_reason=2&denial_reasons=none&force_login=false

In Italy, a 'progressive' pope doesn't mean what you think
By DOUG SAUNDERS
Saturday, April 9, 2005, Page F3

ROME -- When I walked up the weather-beaten marble stairs into the Rome headquarters of ACLI <an RC workers' organization> this week, I could have been standing in the offices of any militant union or left-wing lobby group. There on the walls were statements of solidarity with peasant coffee-pickers, yellowed posters calling for a general strike and rainbow-coloured banners demanding an end to the Iraq war.

Heh, I stand corrected. "Progressive", not "liberal". The point was that Italian workers don't judge their popes by their stand on birth control (they don't really give a flip what their stand on birth control is, and do what they want). They judge them by their stands on social issues, like the exploitation of workers. Too bad they so misjudged that Karol Wojtyla guy on that score, of course ...

But hey, you weren't poking a stick at me, were ya?

[CHIMO]

16. No Stick In Hand

And I am serious.

Even with all the Spanish leftovers from the inquisitions and other secret societies, I am serious.
You can stand on your feet and if I think of N. Klein in politics, well it just doesn't work. The politicians are led by the opinion makers.

And my statement of "god" was an expression of "get up of your ass and do what you are capable of".
I would if I could. At least I think I would.
Anyway, I love your posts.

[applegrove]

17. If you study or read about the politics of the world - we are all actually

considered liberal democracies. Except for Cuba and a few other places. In the past, the conservative party in Canada was more liberal that the Democrats in the United States. And the NDP do rule provincially as somewhat fiscal conservatives - it is just the trend and the rules all Western nations play by in these days.

We are liberal. And I defy anyone to steal that word from me (the small l word). I know haw the neocons covet it! Because liberal means trade and open to the world. But liberal is a word that applies to all Canadian parties who have actually gotten into power. As to the neocon Harperites - it seems most Canadians think they are pretend liberals.

[iverglas]

18. well, yes, I do, and I do

If you study or read about the politics of the world - we are all actually considered liberal democracies.

I tend to have an eye to a little more nuance, though, and to keep an eye on development and evolution. And I've noticed social democracies in at least nascent forms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Classification in a consistent manner is made difficult by the tendency of the dominant strain of liberalism in a region to refer to itself simply as "liberalism" and reject that identification for other minority positions. Since the word "liberalism" can not only refer to a variety of distinct political positions in different countries but can also range from being highly complimentary to being a term of abuse, the connotations of the word in different languages can be starkly different.

That is still the first thing to keep in mind. When Phil Ochs sang "Love Me, I'm a Liberal", he certainly wasn't a liberal, but he also wasn't siding with any Coulter or O'Reilly of his day. That was the 60s in the US, when "liberal" was indeed a dirty word -- because it meant smarmy and self-interested and fundamentally *not* progressive.

Everything shifted rightward in the US, leftists/progressives became nearly extinct, and suddenly "liberal" was the far left end of the USAmerican political spectrum. That is NOT the case out here in the rest of the world.

Later, as more radical philosophies articulated themselves in the course of the French Revolution and through the nineteenth century, liberalism equally defined itself in contrast to socialism and communism, although some adherents of liberalism sympathize with some of the aims and methods of social democracy.

Some "liberals" in the US do indeed. My own impression is that they're in a minority, even at DU.

Up here, we have genuine social-democratic ideas, and quite a number of genuine social-democratic policies and programs, and there is simply no need to redefine them as "liberal".

In much of the West <post WWII>, expressly liberal parties were caught between "conservative" parties on one hand, and "labor" or social democratic parties on the other hand. For example, the UK Liberal Party became a minor party. The same process occurred in a number of other countries, as the social democratic parties took the leading role in the Left, while pro-business conservative parties took the leading role in the Right.

This never happened in the US. Social democratic ideas and movements simply never emerged. But it *has* happened in Canada. And rather than be marginalized, the Liberal Party in Canada adapted, largely by becoming highly adaptable. When the times are right, it can return to its (economically) "conservative", i.e. pro-business, roots and ways. When the times call for it, it can clothe itself in the social-democratic policies and programs that have become increasingly embedded into the very fabric of Canadian society and the very heart of the Canadian consensus.

Liberals also typically believe in a free market and free trade, but they differ in the degree of limited government intervention in the economy which they advocate. In general, government responsibility for health, education and alleviating poverty fits into the policies of most liberal parties. But all of them, even American liberals, tend to believe in a far smaller role for the state than would be supported by most social democrats, let alone socialists or communists.

There you have it. Canadians overall simply *do* believe in -- and demand -- a far larger role for the state in regulating the economy and other behaviours and in providing public services and supporting individuals in need. Our image of "the state" goes considerably beyond any image that fits with a "liberal" ideology, and in fact well beyond what the vast majority of "liberals" in the US would call for or even agree to.

United States: The primary use of the term liberal is at some variance with European and even British usage. The common meaning of liberal has evolved over time. ... However, more than in other countries, United States liberals adopted in the 20th century an agenda in which individuals have a right, as members of the community, to expect that the community will regulate and influence the economy as a means to achieve social justice. This was a consequence of the choice of American liberals for Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, influenced by the ideas of British economist John Maynard Keynes, therefore leading liberalism to be identified with the so-called "welfare state". The absence of social democratic forces and the necessity to prevent social unrest strengthened this development. After World War II, the term "liberal" was expanded to include all left-of-center (but anti-Communist) politics, particularly new liberalism. As McCarthyism made the terms socialism and even social democracy anathema in the U.S., the former New Dealers and others to the left of center adopted the name liberal. To distinguish themselves from these, those in the U.S. who were closer to classical liberalism, adopted the name libertarians. ...

Like I wuz saying. The USAmerican usage of "liberal" is idiosyncratic, and when applied outside the US simply muddies the waters.

The fundamental difference between liberalism and social democracy, besides the fact that they have very different origins, lies in their views regarding the role of the state in the economy. Social democracy seeks to achieve a certain extent of equality of outcomes, and upholds egalitarianism as the source of its moral values. Social democrats support a large public sector and the nationalization of utilities such as gas and electricity in order to avoid private monopolies, achieve social justice, and raise living standards for all. Liberalism, on the other hand, prefers much more minor state intervention, for example in the form of subsidies, and believes that major industries should be regulated, but not state-owned. Social democracy is also generally believed to place more of an importance to a positive conception of rights and liberties, as opposed to a more strictly (though by no means completely) negative one more commonly associated with liberalism. Beyond that, however, liberalism shares many of the same basic goals as social democracy.

There is simply no other way to describe something like the Canadian health care system: it seeks to achieve a certain equality of outcome. It doesn't just seek to ensure that no one is discriminated against in obtaining health care based on the colour of his/her money, as it were. As a general trend, this is true of our attitude toward education and a whole range of essential goods and services, which we have supported increasingly generously (relative to the US, though not necessarily to more complete social democracies, and subject to the 1990s' fallbacks) through subsidies for housing, support to post-secondary students, subsidized child care, generous parental leave, etc.

It should be noted that, in the 1990s, many social democratic parties adopted neoliberal economic policies such as extensive privatizations and open markets, much to the dismay of their own voters. This has led these parties to become de facto neoliberal, and often resulted in a drastic loss of their popular support. For example, critics to the left of the German Social Democratic Party and the British Labour Party accuse them of pursuing neoliberal policies.

And the criticism can apply, to a degree, to some provincial NDP govts as well.

That article is a pretty darned good synthesis, all in all.

I would also commend to you the words of Lacordaire, one of those early French liberals:
http://encyclopedie.snyke.com/articles/henri_lacordaire.html

Entre le fort et le faible, entre le riche et le pauvre, entre le maître et le serviteur, c'est la liberté qui opprime et la loi qui affranchit.

My translation: Between the strong and the weak, between the rich and the poor, between employer and employee, it is liberty that oppresses and the law that sets free.

"Liberals" just aren't quite as willing to go quite as far to counter exploitation and oppression as social democrats are. Liberals will accept some limitations on their liberties in other people's interests, but social democrats will not accept situations in which one person's liberty means another person's ill health or illiteracy or hunger or homelessness.

http://www.ocap.ca/songs/lovemeim.html

Love Me, I'm A Liberal

by Phil Ochs

I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I read New republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

There just is not any need to apply a term to Canadian values and policies that admits of so many different meanings, particularly when the real meaning just is not consistent with Canadian values and policies.

One of liberal democracy's biggest fans is Francis Fukuyama, after all.

[iverglas]

19. I've found the T-shirt for me ;)

(I occasionally have a look around to see where new iverglas fan clubs might have sprung up. Like others, I've been loved at conservativeunderground and freerepublic, but has anyone else here been so memorialized at freedominion?)

Well, actually, the shirt being advertised doesn't seem to have anything to do with Canada or Liberals, but I could appropriate that line for my own shirt.

And then wear it to dinner parties with my good friend's boyfriend, the Liberal backroom boy. The one who kept trying to get us to join the party for the last leadership race -- to get a say in picking who our PM would be, you see, you need to join the Liberal Party and get a say in picking its leader.

Finally had to almost grab him by the lapels and get him to read my lips: I don't care who the Liberal Party's leader is! The Liberal Party is not Canada!!!

Just because I'm a Canadian does not mean I am a Liberal. ;)