Community, faith, and charitable groups - not big goverment - hold the key to solving the challenges ahead.

There is a school of thought that in good times people want to be left alone, but in times of economic downturn people want the safety of government action. Conservatives have no choice, so the argument goes, but to hike spending and hopefully peel it back when things improve. There is a better approach. Instead of asking: What is the government going to do for me? We should ask: What am I going to do for my neighbour?

By maximizing the space for the little platoons of society—charitable, faith, and community groups—Ottawa could open the door for Canadians to reengage in their communities and build a better Canada from the ground up. This is important for three reasons.

First, it is our responsibility to our neighbours. We don’t fulfill our obligations to one another simply by paying taxes; we should be a people who volunteer, vote, and donate to charity.

Second, by ignoring our obligations to one another we invite the state in. It should come as no surprise that the state provides for social needs when they go ignored elsewhere. This problem is exacerbated because state intervention crowds out private initiative.

Finally, civically engaged communities are a precondition for improving economic conditions, not a side effect. Researchers looking at education, poverty, unemployment, criminality, drug abuse, and health have discovered better outcomes in civically engaged communities.

The left is for big government. Conservatives across Canada should be for a big society, because we believe that we have a responsibility to one another that cannot be replaced by government programs, that we are capable of common decency without instruction from government authority, and that strong social institutions are the best providers of social goods.