IT IS HARD to find any politically aware Canadian who does not have a strong opinion about David Frum. Frum can almost serve as an ideological barometer; how one feels about him (and how strongly) pinpoints one's place on the right or left side of the spectrum. With the publication of What's Right, a collection of columns and articles he has written over the past ten years, both sides will find even more to become aroused about. They will find much to think about as well, if they choose to. The potential is certainly there.
Some will assume they know exactly where Frum stands and decide not to open the book, or at least not open their minds. That's a pity. The test of political commentary should not be whether one agrees or disagrees with it, but whether one can learn something from it. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the opinions expressed in What's Right, there is much to be learned from them.
Too many collections of columns are just that, collections with no clear objective. In What's Right, the objective is clear from the outset: to take on the notion that there is "something inherently un-Canadian about conservatism." As Frum views it, we are seeing an end to the days when Canadian political discourse was dominated by a semi-official dogma, one that saw Canada as a fragile political entity held together by big governments dispensing subsidies and social programs, and populated by people whose values stand in stark contrast to those of our U.S. neighbours. He puts it this way:
"Doubters who wondered whether it really made sense to build railways to nowhere, to regulate the songs radio stations could play, to outlaw private medicine, to invite fishermen and loggers to spend three-quarters of the year on unemployment insurance, were dismissed as reactionary skinflints, unwilling to pay the necessary `price of being Canadian.'"
In What's Right, Frum examines what that price is and what it should be. He sets the tone in the first article, an op-ed piece originally published in the Wall Street Journal, in which he seeks to shape a conservative answer to the question of which social welfare programs the state should support, and which it should not, putting forward the principle that government should protect people only from risks against which they cannot easily protect themselves (such as catastrophic illness, natural disasters, and unemployment). It is a good example of a column that makes you think, even if you don't agree with it.
Personally, I am left unconvinced that we should abandon many programs that allowed the middle-class to flourish (student aid, medicare, old age pensions). But I am also left impressed by the clarity and originality of the thinking. It has become trite to oppose government help for those who can take care of themselves; it is far more clearcut and original (not to mention honest) to call for "no government help for those who could have taken care of themselves." Rather than reject this standard out of hand, liberals might be wiser to apply it to conservative policies: for example, what about cuts in provincial government funding for education of autistic children, or services for disabled persons? Such programs deal with needs that could not easily have been avoided. Do they pass the Frum test?
Whatever one thinks about the opinions expressed in this book, they are not easily stereotyped. Anyone looking for a rant against welfare might be surprised to find that some of Frum's toughest words are reserved for corporate welfare-including government subsidies for "corporate welfare queens" such as the U.S. agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. Eight months after the Republicans formed a majority in the U.S. Congress, Frum had this to say:
"The business interests that dominate the great spending committees.have already learned to pay their protection money to Republicans rather than Democrats, and the well-regarded House committee chairmen of the 104th Congress are transfusing cash from the taxpayers to favoured industries and firms almost as enthusiastically as the committee chairmen of the 103rd."
Coming from a liberal, these would be strong words. Coming from a conservative, they are good reason to sit up and take notice.
That is the strength of What's Right. It gets you thinking. And it gives you a lot of facts to help the thinking process (including some that would surprise many, such as the fact that the U.S. middle class is getting smaller mainly because so many families are moving upward out of the middle-class, not downward).
But a Canadian policy wonk of any ideological pedigree might wish for more Canadian material to chew on, given that the book is subtitled The New Conservatism and What It Means for Canada. There is a great deal about the new conservatism, somewhat less about what it means for Canada. Many of the best pieces-including iconoclastic assessments of Harry Truman, Colin Powell, Newt Gingrich, and the Republican Congress-are focused on U.S. personalities and issues.
Of course, good political writing is good political writing, and Frum writing about the United States is worth reading. A good example is "General Failure", in which Frum takes his fellow conservatives to task for following Colin Powell's style of leadership which emphasizes trust in the individual rather than commitment to a clear philosophy. Similarly, the contrarian assessment of the Truman presidency ("Not So Wild About Harry") is not just a fresh look at an almost deified figure, it offers insights into the motivations of many who have been doing the deifying (Republicans as well as Democrats). It even provides a rarely heard defence of the so-called "Do Nothing" Congress, in which a majority of Republicans voted down many of Truman's more grandiose domestic programs. As a strong Truman admirer, I found a lot to learn here.
But, to borrow the book's subtitle: What does it mean for Canada? In some cases, it means quite a lot. The chapter on "What To Do About Health Care" offers a prescription that Canadian conservatives might want to dispense. "Consumption Tax Follies" not only argues that tax cuts must be accompanied by spending cuts; surprisingly, coming from a conservative, it provides a critique of consumption taxes. These are issues that are relevant on both sides of the border.
There are solid pieces on Ontario's Common Sense Revolution-both before and after Premier Mike Harris's election victory-and Frum's views on what conservatives must do to succeed in the federal arena. But when one reads his tough critique of the Republican Congress, and a thorough article on U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, one wishes for the same kind of examination of Ralph Klein's government, or Frank McKenna's, or of Preston Manning. Frum has a huge file of relevant columns from Canadian publications to draw from; I wish he had drawn more from them.
Obviously Canadians shouldn't check their minds at the 49th parallel. And we shouldn't even quibble if Frum seems to save some of his best stuff for American issues and U.S. publications. Whether What's Right provides a guide as to what the new conservatism means for Canada depends largely on how well Frum supports his central message, that Canadian politics has been dominated by a semi-official-and very liberal-national ideology that is now giving way to a more conservative view of the world, the economy, and ourselves. Here is where he fires on all cylinders. It is the differences, primarily cultural, between what he calls the "official Canada" and a more conservative "actual Canada" that seem to really motivate him. The most pointed and effective sections about Canadian politics come not so much when Frum is criticizing specific policies or putting forward specific alternatives as when he is highlighting the differences between the way Canadian media and other opinion leaders portray us, and the way he believes we actually are-differences that he sees as "something close to national schizophrenia." Right off the bat, in the introduction, he draws a line in the sand between these two Canadas. In his view:
"Canada is a big, rich, North American nation, where people live in suburbs, drive to work, shop in malls, invest their money in mutual funds, listen to country music, and resent paying taxes. But watch a Canadian movie, read a Canadian novel, flip through most Canadian magazines, or turn on the news, and you'll see a different country: a poor struggling hinterland of the American empire, where people live in outports, work for the government if they work at all, collect groceries from food banks, listen to folk singers, and enjoy paying taxes."
Frum argues that national self-recognition received a major boost in the 1988 federal election, when Canadians voted for the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. One of the strongest sections of What's Right is a lengthy essay first published in Saturday Night shortly after that campaign. Frum maintains that result was not just a rejection of the nationalist notion that the agreement threatened to reduce Canadian wages, eliminate pensions and medicare, weaken environmental regulations, and rob us of our drinking water. He argues that, more importantly, the results also tore at the cultural roots of the nationalist case: the view that Canada's achievements are based on a continental European collectivism and social democracy, rather than North American individualism and economic opportunity.
That was seven years ago. Instead of simply giving this book a thumbs-down, liberals might want to look back on the past few years and assess the impact of the changes Frum describes. And rather than simply giving it a thumbs-up, conservatives might also want to think about those changes, and determine what impact they should have on the future of conservatism in this country.

Allan Golombek is a Toronto speechwriter and communications consultant. He has been a senior aide to a premier of Ontario, David Peterson, and an adviser to several Liberal politicians.