Fraser Institute And Stephen Harper Work To Integrate Canada And The U.S.

The scene was the glitzy Imperial Ballroom of Calgary’s Hyatt Regency, where 1,200 adoring libertarians, conservatives, and reactionaries paid $300 each to hear four prominent conservative politicians—-Ralph Klein, Mike Harris, Preston Manning, and Harper-—pay tribute to the Fraser’s success in pushing political thought in Canada to the right, helping make their careers possible. Harper, the ideologue of today, would have been unthinkable as leader as recently as 1983, when Brian Mulroney won the Progressive Conservative leadership. Mulroney’s two most right-wing opponents, John Gamble and Peter Pocklington (a long-time Fraser Institute benefactor and trustee), espoused policies not very different than Harper’s. But together they received only a handful of delegate votes. In 1983, Harper wouldn’t have stood a chance. In 2003, he won handily. Credit the Fraser Institute? Harper probably thinks so. In his videotaped address to the 30th-anniversary crowd, Harper showed off his $45 Fraser Institute silk Adam Smith tie and confirmed he was a big fan of the institute. Like the Fraser, he is dedicated to the ideas of Friedrich Hayek, leader of the Austrian School of economics. Margaret Thatcher was an outspoken Hayek devotee. Hayek urged reducing government intervention in people’s social and economic lives to a bare minimum. No social programs, no environmental or consumer regulation. In Hayek’s world, government officials do not serve the public. Instead, they are self-serving empire builders. As Ronald Reagan said, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” There is no public interest, only individuals who seek freedom. Hayek, who became a Fraser Institute adviser, originated the idea of setting up fake scholarly organizations to supply authoritative studies demonstrating the superiority of markets over governments in solving all our problems. Why fake? Because a genuine academic organization would not start with a conclusion and then look for arguments and evidence to support it... Read the rest of the article at: http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=18809 [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on July 14, 2006]

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