Politics & Power Quote by John Bracken

Bracken’s line is the polite Canadian way of saying: the sacred cows are aging badly. By anchoring the claim in “two thirds of a century ago,” he turns time into an argument. The phrase does double duty: it invokes institutional memory (we’ve been here a while, we know what we’re doing) while also quietly indicting complacency (we’ve been doing this a while, and that’s the problem). He doesn’t name the policy, because naming would trigger tribal defenses; “a national policy” is both specific enough to carry historical weight and vague enough to invite consensus around the need for review.

The real pressure point is in the second sentence: “made to fit the conditions of the day.” That’s not nostalgia; it’s a reset button. Bracken frames policy as tailoring, not scripture. If it was designed, it can be redesigned. The subtext is a warning against treating yesterday’s fix as today’s identity, especially in a country where federal bargains and economic frameworks often get mythologized into permanence.

Context matters: Bracken, a prairie-based Conservative leader and former Manitoba premier, was speaking from a region that frequently felt the “National Policy” tradition (tariffs, industrial favoritism, central Canadian priorities) as something imposed rather than shared. His intent is reformist without sounding radical: he’s asking listeners to accept change as continuity’s responsible partner. The rhetorical move is managerial, even understated, but it carries consequence: legitimacy comes not from age, but from fit.