John Robson: Principle, Not Polling, Should Guide Canada’s Military Policy

Commentary

When an audience applauded him, Plutarch tells us, the Athenian statesman Phocion asked a friend whether he had just said something foolish. Where will we find his like today?

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, some in-house Privy Council research found that Canadians massively oppose hiking defence spending to 5 percent of GDP. Arguably, the PCO should have let this sleeping dog lie unless they had some plan for dealing with a conflict between what they were resolved to do and what people wanted them to do. But now that it’s awake, how shall we feed it?

The Carney administration seems determined that it will swallow a big military pill, which I applaud for two reasons. First, every country has an army in it, so the real choice is between yours and someone else’s. Second, our closest and indispensable, if sometimes disquieting, American ally has utterly had it with Canada and other Western nations free-riding on security.

How the government will misspend the extra cash in practice is a depressing subject for another day. But in principle, what should a politician or group of same do when they realize something they really think is necessary turns out to be unpopular?

One view, with the apparent virtue of consistency, is to change their policy pronto. OK, two views. There’s a hyper-cynical vision in which no cunning practitioner of political dark arts ever lets conviction hamper career. But there’s also the philosophically-grounded Rousseauian view that the meaning and purpose of democracy is to incarnate the “popular will.”

Both have given nations fits, and worse, in practice because popular opinion is prone to instability, inconsistency,  even ferocity. During the “Articles of Confederation” period, most American states, fearing executive power, created “convention governments” where almighty legislatures flipped and flopped with the public mood on, for instance, honouring and repudiating debts until everyone was ruined by chaos worse even than a consistent tyranny of the majority.

Elsewhere, say Revolutionary France, the popular will was at least periodically bloodthirsty in ways as disgraceful as unstable. And always the key structural flaw, if not the most immediately objectionable feature, was an inconsistency beneath the consistency: The populace wanted a certain thing a certain way, and when it turned out you couldn’t get that thing that way, the system was paralyzed.

Hence, the wise prefer institutions that constitute, as the U.S. Constitution famously should, “an appeal from the people drunk to the people sober.” Including politicians who present coherent options, warts and all, between which we can choose.

In his once-famous 1774 “Speech to the Electors of Bristol,” Edmund Burke answered a populist adversary: “Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; … It is his duty … to prefer their interest to his own. But … Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

Did Burke, then, advocate enlightened despotism? Not remotely. “My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent.” The ballot box ends the debate. But, “government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion”? Thus, like Phocion, “Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish for.”

Actually they did, and voted Burke out at the next opportunity. So if politicians now pander about “Latin American Heritage Month” or the “Mid-Autumn Festival” instead of rebuking us for raiding the treasury while neglecting the ramparts, we helped bring it on ourselves. And it’s dead simple to rubbish the appointed senator who called the job a “huge burden” and opposed cutting senators’ office budgets. But if we want legislators to function, we must give them the wherewithal, including research budgets so they can offer informed choices. And respect, when they say things we didn’t want to hear.

Speaking of fatuous public views, many Canadians reject having a real army for “a greater focus … on efforts to de-escalate geopolitical tensions rather than increasing military spending,” the PCO report said. If they see such pablum as a practical Canadian policy option, blame politicians who feed us mush. And us, who won’t eat solid food.

So, Prime Minister, please contradict us. Make a stern case for shifting money from other purposes to defence or, also consistently, borrowing and taxing to accommodate both. Do not jettison prudence and principle for partisan advantage of no use since you won’t then be able to govern properly.

Hearing no applause, I conclude that I just said something wise.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.