Author: Monte Solberg

Former federal Conservative cabinet minister Monte Solberg understood from a young age that there was something different about his family. It was unusual enough to have a father who read widely, cared passionately and participated actively in politics. But this was Rosetown, Saskatchewan, in the 1960s, where socialists had ruled for decades, and his father’s politics were conservative. Like father, like son: when the Reform Party was born 20 years later, Monte caught the wave that carried it to Ottawa.

In this article Monte Solberg argues that Canadian conservatives are missing an important opportunity to dramatically improve the effectiveness of well over half of current government spending and to dramatically improve their political popularity at the same time. But doing this requires the government to define and communicate their idea of a conservative vision of social justice. Solberg looks at the rise of this idea in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom.