Calgary School
Provincial Provincial The Calgary School is a term coined by Ralph Hedlin in an article in the now defunct Alberta Report in reference to four political science professors – Tom Flanagan, Rainer Knopff, Ted Morton, and Barry F. Cooper – who became colleagues at Alberta's University of Calgary in the early 1980s.
They shared and promoted similar ideas about how political scientists could shape the rise of a particular kind of conservatism in Canada – informed by theories based on Friedrich Hayek and Leo Strauss.
The Reform Party had been established in the 1980s, in response to Western Canada's protest against the Progressive Conservative federal government of Brian Mulroney.
[2] In 2018, Mark Milke described the Calgary School by referring to its four original members, Cooper, Flanagan, Knopff and Morton, during a presentation at a 2018 Canadian Taxpayers Federation event.
[2] Milke said that the Calgary School's "driving idea" was informed by Tom Flanagan's understanding of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek.
Simpson was referring to the influence – direct and indirect – that Flanagan, Knopff, Morton, Bercuson, and Cooper had on Preston Manning's Reform Party of Canada.
In the 1990s, the Reform Party attacked Mulroney's federal government – which had been in power for nine years – for the deficit, the GST, and the Charlottetown Accord of 1992.
Bercuson was not a political scientist like Flanagan, Knopff, Morton but he co-published with Cooper because of a shared interest in military history.
[11] Stephen Harper, who had been a student at the University of Calgary, participating in discussions with members of the school and Preston Manning in the lead up to the formation of the Reform Party.
[10] Both Hayek and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, who were influential in the Chicago School of Economics, had worked together in 1947 to establish the Mont Pèlerin Society, an international forum for libertarian economists.
[18] In 2001, Flanagan was the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's director, Morton was Alberta Senator-elect, and Boessenkool was chief of staff to Premier Christy Clark.
[1] A 2004 article in The Walrus, entitled "The Man Behind Stephen Harper" said that the "Calgary School" which included Tom Flanagan, Rainer Knopff, Ted Morton, David Bercuson, and Barry Cooper, was a politically conservative group supporting "a rambunctious, Rocky Mountain brand of libertarianism" that seeks "lower taxes, less federal government, and free markets unfettered by social programs such as medicare that keep citizens from being forced to pull up their own socks.
He wrote that, while the Calgary School of political science – "Barry Cooper, Ted Morton, Rainer Knopff and I, along with our historian outrider David Bercuson" – did not cause this transformation, they had, along with their students, "played an honourable part in making it happen.
He was a "sought-after commentator in the media with a regular spot on CBC Television, and an effective Conservative political activist who had once served as Prime Minister Stephen Harper's chief of staff.
In a 2014 interview with Margaret Wente, Flanagan said that as an architect of Harper's Conservative party, he was "complicit in the cultivation of a climate of ruthlessness that put the PM into power and has kept him there".
Milke described the Calgary School's "driving idea" through the lens of Tom Flanagan's perspective, influenced by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek.
"[2] In 2020, Barry Cooper, who founded the climate change denying NGO Friends of Science in 2002,[28][29] submitted a commissioned report to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney's Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns.
[34] Faculty in the Department of Political Science condemned criticisms by Premier Jason Kenney who said their work aligned with the Alberta New Democratic Party.
[35] Trevor Tombe, a prominent member of the Department of Economics faculty supports carbon pricing as an effective method of achieving climate targets.
[36] Faculty members in the Department of Economics promote the implementation of a provincial sales tax in Alberta, as a means to prevent drastic austerity policies.
[37] The Faculty of Law has also produced two Alberta cabinet ministers under Rachel Notley's New Democratic government, Kathleen Ganley and Irfan Sabir.
