Unable to shake the stench of scandal, the federal Liberals were doomed to defeat in last January’s election. Even so, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives mustered only a weak minority, revealing how tepid public support is for Harper and his ideas.

Nonetheless, right wingers are now trying to mould this narrow victory into evidence the country has undergone some fundamental change.

Accordingly, Rudyard Griffiths of the Dominion Institute argued in a recent column in The Star that Harper’s win can be seen as “the beginnings of a dramatic shift in the mood of the country” as Canadians give up on “previously comfortable and well-worn notions of what the country stood for.”

“If we are not what we were, what now defines us as a nation?” he continued. “(W)hat new national touchstones do we want to forge together to replace, say, universal public health care or peacekeeping?”

Now hold on just a minute there!

Who says we’re ready to give up on universal public health care or peacekeeping, two policies that have been central to our sense of identity, along with our support for equality, inclusiveness and the rule of law?

It should be remembered that Harper’s Conservatives got only 36 per cent of the popular vote. And it seems unlikely that they won even this low level of support because of their policies.

In a post-election Environics poll, 91 per cent of respondents said they believed voters had been motivated by a dissatisfaction with the Liberals or a general feeling that it was time for a change. Only five per cent attributed the Conservative victory to support for the Conservative platform or policies. Even among Conservative supporters, only seven per cent attributed the party’s victory to its platform or policies — hardly evidence of a groundswell toward the right.

If anything, these numbers suggest Canadians are lukewarm to the right’s ideas, despite the massive resources that right-wing think-tanks and business organizations have pumped into peddling neo-conservative ideology in recent years.

Even Harper himself — a conservative ideologue long active in right-wing movements — was at pains during the campaign to present himself as a moderate who had “evolved.”

So it’s a stretch to suggest Canadians are abandoning their traditional values. “There’s no evidence we’re moving to the right,” says Keith Neuman, vice-president of Environics, which has been polling Canadians for years on their social values. If anything, Neuman said, Canadians have been becoming more “progressive.”

For years, right wingers have denigrated Canadian values in order to convince us to embrace a more market-driven, U.S.-style capitalism.

So they’re delighted with the opportunity to portray Harper’s victory as evidence we’re already on this path, that the values we’ve long held are part of yesterday’s story, that the future lies to the right.

But a squeak-through Conservative victory, when the Liberals were knee-deep in scandal, is hardly a harbinger of a new right-wing Canada, much as the right might wish it to be so.

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...