A legacy of liberty
After 30 years of supplying conservatives ammunition to win the war of ideas, Michael Walker is stepping down
Ezra Levant - May 16, 2005
Dr. Michael Walker, the executive director of the Fraser Institute for more than 30 years, is retiring. It is hard to think of a Canadian in our generation who has made a greater or more lasting contribution to the cause of liberty.
Certainly no politician has had a more beneficial effect. Those rare conservatives who actually win high office in Canada usually end up adding more tentacles to the octopus of the state, even if they came into office pledging to cut some off.
The strength of Michael Walker and the Fraser Institute he led so ably is that neither of them worried about getting re-elected; they took principled stands opposing the conventional wisdom of the day. That's a dangerous task no politician would do, but it was practically the mission statement when they conceived the Fraser Institute.
When the Institute was founded, in 1974, with Walker at its helm, conventional wisdom had it that government was the most moral and most effective orderer of human life. Canada's hurtle through Trudeau socialism was still gaining speed, and the question was not would freedom be eroded, but, rather, how quickly and deeply. Government intervention was seen as the universal solution to problems.
That misunderstanding of economics, prosperity and human nature wasn't any truer then than it is now, but there were awfully few voices trying to refute it and a lack of arguments and facts with which to do so. There weren't a lot of guns, and not a lot of ammo, either.
Walker set out to provide that ammo--not to be the policy-maker, but to provide policy-makers with empirically sound economic analysis that could stand harsh scrutiny. Simply measuring the effect of government policy was one of Walker's greatest legacies--a plaque in the Fraser Institute's office reads, "If it matters, measure it."
From Walker came the calculation of Canada's Tax Freedom Day--the date when the average Canadian has worked long enough to pay off the year's taxes, and can start working for himself. That concept soon became a staple in the media's calendar and an important tool for those arguing for tax relief. Another important measurement begun by Walker was the report of health care waiting times, tracking the millions of days Canadians spend each year languishing without care in our government-run health care system. One of the most popular measurements is the annual ranking of schools by performance of its students--something no provincial department of education dared to do, but which gives information desperately valued by parents.
The institute flourished under Walker by any measure. He leaves it with a staff of 45, a $7-million budget, an average of two conferences a week and nearly 5,000 media mentions a year (including regular mentions in the Western Standard).
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