Juno News - What is the legacy of Mike Harris？

00:00:00.000 The Ontarians are very, very, very familiar with a guy by the name of Mike Harris.

00:00:15.360 Mike Harris was elected Premier of Ontario just under 30 years ago, back in 1995.

00:00:21.860 And what was interesting about the Harris years is that they're held up as being by so many people in the province, especially teachers and basically just teachers, as being this great villain.

00:00:35.660 I mean, his name is a curse word, but you talk to ordinary people, you talk to conservatives, and Mike Harris is an absolute hero.

00:00:43.940 And I think Mike Harris, for a lot of the time, has not really had his story told the way it needed to be.

00:00:50.320 And by that, I mean, he revolutionized politics in Ontario.

00:00:54.120 He took a party, the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, which was always a very squishy, moderate, elite party.

00:01:01.300 And he turned it into one that was very grassroots oriented.

00:01:04.420 He had the Common Sense Revolution, a rather legendary roadmap and platform that was unafraid to tackle some very difficult challenges.

00:01:14.540 And the Common Sense Revolution turns 30 years old.

00:01:17.760 And Mike Harris's legacy is finally being put in what I think is an appropriate context here in a new book, which has been quite well hyped, which is good for a political book, called The Harris Legacy, Reflections on a Transformational Premier.

00:01:31.440 You can see it there and get it on Amazon and other places fine books are sold.

00:01:35.220 It has some fantastic contributions from a number of characters, many of whom will be familiar.

00:01:40.180 And it was edited by my favorite Alistair Campbell.

00:01:43.600 No, not that hack that works for Tony Blair, but the much superior Alistair Campbell, who joins me on the line now.

00:01:51.000 Alistair, good to talk to you.

00:01:52.060 Thanks for being with me today.

00:01:53.840 Absolute pleasure.

00:01:54.720 Thanks for the invitation.

00:01:56.200 So let's start with the why now, because Mike Harris has for decades now been out of public life.

00:02:02.160 If every now and then he may pop up in an interview, but why did you feel this was an anthology that 2023 warranted?

00:02:09.440 So I think the urgency of this maybe didn't get felt by others.

00:02:15.200 But during the period when Premier Ford named Mike Harris to be a member of the Order of Ontario, it was his mini tempest in the media teapot.

00:02:26.040 And it became very clear that the only historical legacy that the mainstream media wanted to cover was Walkerton and Ipperwash.

00:02:35.200 And I felt strongly that the real history was being kind of canceled.

00:02:41.540 And so at the side of my desk during COVID, I started recruiting different specialist authors to help me kind of write the true historical record of the time, policy area by policy area.

00:02:54.860 And I was able to recruit some fantastic talent from David Frum, through Jack Mintz, through Bill Robson.

00:03:02.840 But I didn't just kind of ask Tories.

00:03:05.320 I asked liberals.

00:03:06.540 I asked Greens.

00:03:07.520 I asked academics.

00:03:08.720 I asked journalists who were nonpartisan.

00:03:12.060 And the core takeaway is maybe the most intriguing part of this legacy.

00:03:17.060 It turns out almost nothing he did was reversed.

00:03:21.520 And so maybe all of this kind of mainstream take of, you know, Harris is a brief blip in the otherwise benign progressive trajectory of Ontario politics isn't right.

00:03:34.720 And that, in fact, through education and welfare and tax rates, all the way through municipal reform and parkland creation and protection of the Oak Ridges Moraine, just on a consistent policy area by policy area basis, what Mike did turned out to be permanent.

00:03:54.040 And we're actually living in Harris is Ontario today.

00:03:59.300 I ran as a PC candidate in the 2018 election.

00:04:03.660 And what was always so fascinating is you'd knock on doors and you'd walk up to this giant, giant, giant mansion of a house.

00:04:11.440 I'm exaggerating a little bit, but by London, Ontario standards, a mansion.

00:04:14.720 And, you know, the person would come to the door and be like, I'm a teacher and we still haven't recovered from Mike Harris.

00:04:20.100 And you'd look at, well, you know, your husband looks like he's in the pool back there.

00:04:23.760 And, you know, this house is pretty big.

00:04:25.300 But there does seem to be this very revisionist approach that unions, public sector unions have about Mike Harris in particular, which was that, you know, he just decimated them and crippled them.

00:04:37.100 And when you say that nothing has been reversed of his legacy, I guess maybe there's a bit of truth that there is still some lingering effect in the public sector from what he did.

00:04:45.620 But where does that come from?

00:04:47.460 Because I can't think of a politician that still has as much venom 30 years after the fact.

00:04:52.980 I mean, even George Bush, I think, was viewed more favorably by people that hated him more quickly.

00:04:57.800 But Harris never really got that.

00:05:00.360 The intensity of the public sector union resistance to the changes that were implemented during the common sense revolution was visceral.

00:05:10.560 And it actually started before Harris.

00:05:13.340 The NDP government of Bob Ray tried to introduce something called the social contract,

00:05:19.140 which was an effort to save union jobs, but still control government spending.

00:05:23.400 And it ripped that party apart.

00:05:25.600 And in the course of that, I think he discovered he probably wasn't actually an NDP or himself.

00:05:30.240 So the war began before we got there.

00:05:33.480 And it just intensified when we did.

00:05:35.900 Somehow the teachers union leadership convinced themselves they were all Arthur Scargill.

00:05:40.580 And Mike was Margaret Thatcher and they were the coal miners. 0.98

00:05:44.300 And if they didn't fight back, they would be exterminated, which, of course, given the critical function of the public sector, teachers unions perform in our system is absurd.

00:05:54.380 But somehow they've managed to maintain this intensity.

00:05:58.080 The core point in Bill Robson's excellent chapter on education is, in fact, that Ontario kids' scores on exams relative to other provinces and other countries in the world improved during this time.

00:06:11.700 And what's lasted?

00:06:13.840 Standardized testing, grade three, grade six, grade nine, published results, mandatory literacy exam before you graduate.

00:06:20.360 All of that component of what was in the Harris reforms of the time, hated by the teachers or not, it's still there.

00:06:28.320 And even when the teachers got what they thought was a more benign regime and McGinty and Wynn, those things were not changed.

00:06:36.680 And nor was the centralized negotiation between the province and the unions, which was a revolutionary part of what Harris did.

00:06:44.680 But it did not go back to negotiation with 78 amateur boards of education up against the strongest and smartest and most sophisticated public sector unions in the world, I think.

00:06:56.140 There was a time, I mean, if you go back now, you know, 20, 20 some odd years where people were pushing him to move to federal politics.

00:07:04.060 And Mike Harris was being courted to run for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance.

00:07:08.540 Now, I mean, obviously, I think a lot of people were probably happy with what ended up happening, Stephen Harper winning and then eventually merging the parties.

00:07:16.440 But what was it that you think prevented him from trying to really parlay what he had done in Ontario into something bigger?

00:07:25.180 Because I think he did have an opportunity to do something.

00:07:28.380 I mean, even if he didn't end up leading the alliance, he probably could have been a federal cabinet minister and had a bit of a different trajectory than he chose to,

00:07:35.380 which was transitioning into relative obscurity after office.

00:07:39.640 Yeah, so I think a couple of thoughts there.

00:07:41.200 First of all, a key contribution of the Harris legacy was three of the most outstanding cabinet ministers of the Harper government,

00:07:49.300 Flaherty, Baird and Clement, all of whom were blooded in the revolution and made, I think, significant contributions

00:07:57.660 because they had already done big change at the government level in Ontario.

00:08:04.360 I think, honestly, people underestimated just how hard the job was of implementing that common sense revolution.

00:08:11.660 And when Mike stepped down, when asked if he had any regrets at that final Queen's Park press conference,

00:08:18.260 and he answered yes, he should have done more faster.

00:08:20.740 But I think he was genuinely done.

00:08:23.920 I think he felt like he had come with a mission he'd executed against the plan.

00:08:28.640 As we now know in this book, what he contributed has led to the Ontario that honestly remains one of the most attractive places to move to in the world,

00:08:40.400 if you can get here.

00:08:41.200 And that's a lasting legacy.

00:08:43.820 And I don't feel like he needed to do more in his own head.

00:08:48.940 You will also see in this book two excellent contributions on what he did in federal provincial relations,

00:08:55.620 one by the late Hugh Siegel and one by a former bureaucrat, Craig McFadgen,

00:08:59.880 that shows, in fact, that Mike had a huge impact on the rebalancing of the Canadian Federation itself

00:09:05.440 after the near-facial experience of the Quebec referendum.

00:09:09.400 And that Mike had already done an awful lot on the federal stage as well,

00:09:14.140 without ever having, I think, felt the need to run himself at that level.

00:09:19.920 I know you were obviously involved heavily in the 95 campaign in particular.

00:09:25.540 Well, your bio says you were the message guy.

00:09:28.480 Everyone knows titles are always a bit murky on campaigns.

00:09:31.820 But I did want to ask you about his approach to messaging.

00:09:34.520 Because one of the criticisms that I've heard about Mike Harris,

00:09:38.400 and I don't know if you would agree with it or not,

00:09:40.240 is that he was so focused on the policy that he often didn't think about as much the messaging of it

00:09:46.620 and the packaging of that policy.

00:09:48.640 And I'm curious what your take on that was with your involvement in that campaign.

00:09:52.560 And just in general, a 30,000-foot view now that you have the benefit of hindsight on his government.

00:09:57.640 So I think the messaging of Harris was actually one of his strengths.

00:10:04.960 Somehow he radiated a kind of a sense of a normal guy who was tackling big projects

00:10:13.140 and trying to get things done and then did what he said.

00:10:17.520 But it wasn't just the shock of coming from 30 points behind in six weeks to a landslide majority in 95.

00:10:25.440 What you've got to remember was that in 99, there was effectively a second election,

00:10:30.420 which was really a referendum on the Harris-Connocence Revolution, and he won a bigger majority.

00:10:37.440 And the messaging of Harris, I think, was tight and effective.

00:10:41.740 But you're right, he was a policy premier, and that's not always the way to win.

00:10:50.340 Some people can do it with the right image or the right tone.

00:10:56.620 I think of a politician who promised sunny ways, and you can't remember much else.

00:11:01.740 And we may be all paying a price for falling for that.

00:11:05.060 But in the end, Harris had, I think, excellent messaging and strong policy.

00:11:12.340 And as we're watching the term common sense be given a new lease on life federally by the conservative leader now,

00:11:21.840 I think it's important to reflect on how the brand needs to be connected to content

00:11:29.440 in order for it to be as effective as it was when Mike Harris used it.

00:11:33.420 One of the big challenges in federal politics for the conservative party has always been the factionalism.

00:11:41.680 You have to unite Quebec Tories and Atlantic Canadians and Albertans and rural, red Tory, urban, blue Tory, all of this.

00:11:50.700 Ontario doesn't have as much factionalism.

00:11:54.280 There still is some.

00:11:55.160 And I'm curious, especially with where he came in the history of the PC party, a party that had had the much discussed dynasty

00:12:05.340 and was not really a hard line, what we would call blue Tory party.

00:12:10.460 How was he at that party unity factor?

00:12:12.620 How well did he bring his supporters and members behind what he was doing?

00:12:17.080 Well, it's probably one of the more controversial chunks of the book, but the discussion about how he unified the party by winning a one member,

00:12:25.720 one vote convention, the first of those, was actually critical.

00:12:31.060 He went into that first election in 1990, barely survived, picked up a handful more seats, but was still in third place.

00:12:38.840 But because he had won in a one member, one vote system, he actually had the full support of the party.

00:12:44.580 He did a masterful job between 1990 and 1995 in bridging the different factions of the party by bringing the top talent from across the different factions into his campaign team.

00:12:56.500 And then I think allowing that team to create a strategy that worked for his personality, met his demand for policy content,

00:13:09.440 and then allowed the campaign to focus on things that unified conservatives, lower taxes, balancing the budget. 0.94

00:13:19.660 Significant welfare reform, significant education reform, pretty meaty content, but stuff that as conservatives, it spoke to everyone.

00:13:32.860 And then there were some surprises in that that people forget.

00:13:35.800 Now we swept the 905.

00:13:38.800 It turned out that, you know, mandatory work for welfare was incredibly powerful policy in new immigrant Hindu Muslim Sikh communities

00:13:48.720 that I honestly, I'm not sure we'd pulled accurately on that before, because it spoke to their community values in the same way that it spoke to Ontario's community values.

00:13:58.120 And what Harris was able to achieve in bringing a whole Ontario together and a whole party together by focusing on stuff that actually works for everyone,

00:14:10.480 except perhaps some teachers, was pretty potent and actually can and will work again.

00:14:16.840 I was in school during the Harris years, and I remember the teacher just seething as they were handing out those,

00:14:26.940 what were they called, the My Ontario books, these little books that the Harris government had printed to give to every student.

00:14:32.780 And in retro, as a kid, I didn't really care one way or another.

00:14:35.340 It was just, you know, 10 minutes out of class that we had to do this.

00:14:37.840 But I recall that was, again, one of the other things the teachers really didn't like.

00:14:41.400 But again, a way to go directly to the people, which is something that we see politicians doing more of now, bypassing the media.

00:14:48.140 Here's a book about our province.

00:14:50.200 And I think that what we achieved right from the start, putting out the platform a year in advance,

00:14:57.180 we printed two and a half million copies of that platform.

00:15:00.220 So, you know, everybody could read it for themselves, do the math, kick the tires, look under the hood and decide whether they liked it or not.

00:15:07.840 And when he held it up at that debate in 1995 and says, I will resign if I do not keep the promises in this platform.

00:15:14.680 It was incredibly powerful.

00:15:16.540 And it resonated because there was this kind of deep, visceral distrust of politicians.

00:15:21.620 And here was one saying, I actually believe this stuff.

00:15:26.420 I will really do this stuff.

00:15:28.600 And if you don't like it afterwards, you can vote me out.

00:15:31.820 And in fact, in 99, many of the people who voted to reelect him didn't like all of what he had done.

00:15:38.340 But they really liked a politician who honored their vote by doing exactly what he promised.

00:15:47.660 And that was, I mean, yeah, I mean, even from critics of him, that was one thing I've heard, you know, going back to his years.

00:15:54.300 Say, well, he did what he said he was going to do.

00:15:56.720 And that's the thing.

00:15:57.700 He had been remarkably transparent about his agenda.

00:16:00.300 Ontarians gave him a mandate and he very much did it.

00:16:03.020 Well, it was a very, I'll say in the canon of Ontario politics, your book, which you edited, was a tremendously refreshing read.

00:16:10.540 And I know it delves into the policy at times, which for people like me is good, but it's important, I think.

00:16:15.260 So the book is The Harris Legacy.

00:16:17.940 You can see it up on your screen in a second there.

00:16:19.680 Reflections on a transformational premiere edited by Alistair Campbell.

00:16:24.260 Alistair, thank you so much.

00:16:25.760 Really appreciate it and well done on this.

00:16:27.800 Thanks.

00:16:28.260 I appreciate the opportunity to chat.

00:16:30.140 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:16:32.480 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - December 24, 2023

What is the legacy of Mike Harris？

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