Like it or not, the Conservatives finally have a policy agenda

Old Age Security, free trade, immigration policy and EI reform are on the table

It is becoming more difficult to accuse the federal government of having a hidden agenda. While it remains as obtuse as ever about its intentions, the signs of an agenda are by now unmistakable. Where before it had attitudes, or at best stances, it is beginning to sprout what look remarkably like policies.

To be sure, they are modest, even piecemeal. They are often poorly communicated, where the Conservatives deign to communicate them at all. More often they are simply dropped on the unsuspecting public without consultation, or jammed through Parliament with little debate or scrutiny, quite apart from monstrosities such as the omnibus budget bill.

But put them together and they have all the markings of an agenda:

• Reform of Old Age Security, not only raising the age of eligibility by two years ( starting in 2023, and phased in over six years) but offering higher benefits to those willing to keep working past the standard retirement age.

• Free- trade agreements, now being negotiated with virtually everything that moves: Europe, India, Japan, the trans- Pacific Partnership, the ASEAN group.

• Reform of immigration policy, across every category: skilled immigrants, refugees, investors, entrepreneurs, with an emphasis on recruiting immigrants with demonstrable economic prospects.

• Reform of employment insurance, announced this week, to give repeat users, in particular, fewer excuses to refuse available work.

• Moreover, the government is at last beginning to implement the Red Wilson report on productivity, four years after it was delivered, with recent reforms opening the door to foreign takeovers in the telecommunications sector ( for companies with less than 10 per cent of the market), and raising the threshold asset value for automatic review of foreign takeovers to $ 1 billion.

All this, and mild restraint in spending, too! And, lurking just over the horizon, the promised tax rewards for balancing the budget: income- splitting for couples with children, and the doubling of the amount that can be sheltered in tax- free savings accounts.

Much of this was foreshadowed by the prime minister’s Davos speech near the start of the year, and all of it can be tied together as a response to the problem of population aging, with the grim future it implies: lots of costly codgers, with fewer people of working age to pay for them. The government’s agenda thus has three broad objectives:

• One, curb ( somewhat) the growth in transfers to the elderly, whether for pensions or, via federal transfers to the provinces, for health care.

• Two, increase the supply of labour. Bring in more immigrants, encourage people to work longer, be less tolerant of idling.

• Three, raise productivity, mostly by putting more competitive heat on business — that is to say, by opening the borders to competition from without — but also by raising national savings, providing the wherewithal for productive investment. Hence the cuts in taxes on savings, and hence, again, the greater openness to foreign investment.

Not only does this show signs of unaccustomed coherence in this government, but it represents a marked shift in emphasis. In the minority government years, and in the first months of the majority, the Conservatives preferred to cast themselves in the “guardian” role: strong on defence, tough on crime, vigilant against threats to public security or national sovereignty. For a variety of reasons, those messages have tended to have less resonance of late, or at any rate have been downplayed.

The continuing F- 35 fiasco has made expensive purchases of military hardware a less appealing talking point. Indeed, after the rapid military buildup of recent years, the government has begun to cut defence spending, in line with its general policy of restraint. The government’s latest turn on Afghanistan — no troops after 2014, for any purpose — may have been conditioned by this reality; so, perhaps, is its recent reluctance to splash out for so- called Arctic sovereignty initiatives, such as the Radarsat satellite program.

Likewise, the recent budget was at pains to note the government would not be building any more new jails, notwithstanding the crime bills’ expected contribution to the prison population. And, of course, the crime bills are now passed into law. For as long as they were in play ( repeated prorogations didn’t help), it suited the Conservatives to keep them front and centre. But you can only pass the same bills so many times. Meanwhile, Bill C- 30, the Internet snooping legislation, gives every sign of having been withdrawn.

For all these reasons, the emphasis has shifted, from guardianship to the economy. A government that looked adrift earlier this year, beset by scandal and buffeted by events, is building a greater sense of direction and purpose. Though courting controversy with each of these reforms, it is setting the agenda rather than passively reacting to others’. Governments can afford to make a few enemies. What they cannot afford is inertia.

Not that this lets it off the hook for any of its alleged misdeeds. The F- 35 purchase remains deeply troubling, as much for the initial failures of oversight as the parade of lies that followed. The questions raised by the robocalls affair are even more disturbing, and unlikely to be resolved soon. And the packaging of so many disparate pieces of legislation into one omnibus budget bill is as disgraceful as ever: an assault on Parliament and an abuse of power, or rather another in a long line of such abuses.

The Conservatives are as accountable for these as they were before. But it is harder now to say that that is all their government amounts to.