>> Montreal is becoming a major centre for public-policy institutes. But are "think tanks" taking over the political system?
Sidebar: Where Montreal's think tanks get their funding
by PHILIP PREVILLE Photos by Gunther Gamper Earlier this year, a minor frenzy was played out in Quebec's mainstream media around something called the "Quebec Model." It's a nebulous phrase that refers to Quebec's way of doing politics: a tradition of activist, social-democratic government dating back to the Quiet Revolution. The frenzy centered on Premier Lucien Bouchard's public defense of the Quebec Model. He was roundly criticized from all sides: real social democrats claimed his government was already dismantling the Quebec Model, while business interests said the Quebec Model had run its course and called Bouchard a dinosaur for defending it. The media consensus was that Quebec is ready to move on, that it's time to decide what's worth keeping and what's worth gutting from the Quiet Revolution era. Let the dismantling of the social-democratic Quebec Model begin. Bouchard has since softened his stand, most notably coming out in favour of tax cuts just last month.
It was published and publicized by Canada's newest free-market think tank, the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI). "That was a big coup for us," says Michel Kelly-Gagnon, the MEI's executive director. "It was our first publication, and it caused a stir. That's what we want to be doing."
Fraser Institute clone The MEI is only one of many Montreal-based think tanks currently gaining prominence--including the Institute for Research on Public Policy, the Business Council on the Environment, and others (see sidebar opposite page)--but it is definitely the most right-wing. The MEI bills itself as a non-partisan organization that believes in "individual liberty, entrepreneurial spirit, limited government [and] the sound application of free-market principles in the development of public policy." The MEI has actually been around since 1988, but it's had new life breathed into it thanks to a vigourous fundraising drive. Their benefactors' names are kept private, but one of the key personalities behind the drive is former CFCF owner Adrien Pouliot. The MEI also received a grant (amount undisclosed) from the Donner Foundation--the same foundation which helps bankroll Vancouver's Fraser Institute, well-known for its free-market cheerleading. Well-connected to the Reform Party, the Fraser is widely credited for helping create and popularize the balanced-budget and tax-cut agenda which now dominates Canadian politics. And just like the Fraser Institute, the MEI is a registered charity--which means businesses get tax breaks for filling the institute's coffers. Does Canada really need another Fraser Institute? Kelly-Gagnon says yes, if only because no one else in Canada publishes this kind of research in French. But Pouliot says his motivation runs deeper: he'd like to transform Quebec's entire political landscape. "There is a need in Quebec for a forum that allows people to speak their minds. In Quebec, if you don't parrot the Quebec Model dogma, if you believe in greater market influence, you're quickly stigmatized as a traitor. It stifles political debate, and that needs to change."
Policy pushers
In her book Hard Right Turn, former Concordia political science professor Brooke Jeffrey takes her criticism on the record, arguing that free-market think tanks are nothing more than special interest groups, with research providing "a veneer of credibility for the claims of Canadian neo-conversatives that they represent a sizeable proportion of the population." In 1996, UQAM professor Léo-Paul Lauzon established the Chaire d'Études Socio-économiques, an organization which, in a nutshell, is an anti-think tank: an institute devoted to debunking the slanted research produced by groups like the Fraser and MEI. "We were created to demystify economic double-speak with plain talk about economics," says researcher François Patenaude of the Chaire d'Études. "In a democracy, you have to have a choice, and that means you need options to choose from. That's our job. Other think tanks present their research as though it were the truth, when really it's ideologically loaded." When asked outright if the MEI is an ideological organization, both Pouliot and Kelly-Gagnon balk. "Someone has to put new ideas on the table and get people talking about them," Pouliot insists. "If we can influence public policy in the process, so much the better." But according to doppel-researcher Patenaude, Pouliot is hiding his real agenda. "I see this as a battle," he says. "Free-market think tanks are brainwashing organizations. As for myself, before being a researcher for a think tank, I am first and foremost a citizen. That's what it should mean to work in public policy."
The end of politics Altruistic as his motives may be, Patenaude doesn't seem to realize the ramifications of his beliefs: he sounds like a young NDP recruit, committed to the struggle against corporate capitalism. And, once upon a time, people who cared about public policy, who had a social vision they believed in and wanted to promote, joined a political party. Now, instead, they become a think tank member. "The federal government used to have its own policy think tanks which operated at arm's length," explains director Bruce Campbell of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, an Ottawa-based left-wing think tank. "Most of them, like the Economic Council of Canada and the Science Council of Canada, were victims of budget cuts. "Political parties and MPs spend virtually all their money on communications now. They have small staffs. They don't bother with policy anymore." According to Michael Cloughesy, director of the Montreal-based, business-funded Business Council on the Environment, these days parties have nothing to gain by coming up with new ideas. "It's a basic political survival reflex: if you don't stick your neck out, it won't get chopped off. It's up to policy groups to come up with the ideas and push the politicians to act." In other words, governments have no time for any bright ideas. And think tanks are the political parties of the future. Sidebar: Where Montreal's think tanks get their funding |
The people who catalyzed the entire debate could not have been happier. At the root of the entire controversy was a dense but lively academic tome by Laval University economist Jean-Luc Migué entitled Statism and the Decline of Quebec. The book is a scathing indictment of the Quebec Model, decrying everything from public monopolies to bloated government to over-regulation to cultural protectionism. Migué's book spent six weeks on Quebec's non-fiction best-seller lists--rare for an academic work.
To some, the increased prominence and credibility of these institutes is disturbing: all think tanks, whether from the right or the left of the political spectrum, are essentially ideological organizations, pushing their particular view of the world under the guise of "objective" research. The concern is particularly acute regarding privately-funded free-market think tanks, who have more money at their disposal and who receive more media coverage.