Harper Tories: Party of protectionism?

We all remember reading about the 1911 general election and how Liberal Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier would ultimately turn that election into a referendum on free trade in hopes Canadian voters would finally embrace reciprocity. Well, we all know how that worked out for the great statesman from Saint-Lin, Quebec.

Well, according to Maclean's scribbler Andrew Coyne, those days of federal Liberals fighting for free trade, lower taxes and individual liberty may well be back (as he sees an emerging political trend):

For fifty years or more, conservatives have also said that prices are the vital signaling device of a market economy, informing consumers, workers, investors and businesses as to the costs of different choices. But now, suddenly, they’re irrelevant. Subsidies — sorry, investments — are the new Tory orthodoxy.

We may be witnessing one of those historic exchanges in which the parties sometimes engage, where each takes on the ideological position that the other used to occupy. Just as the Liberals were once the party of free trade, and the Tories the party of protectionism, only to see those positions reversed in the 1980s, can it be that the Liberals are about to become the party of markets and tax cuts, while the Tories embrace regulations and subsidies?

It makes one wonder if we'll ever see the day when there is a true conservative party in this country. There hasn't been one yet. Geesh!