(We aren't in total agreement with this op-ed by Paul Jackson, who seems to think the Reform-Alliance movement was pro-conservative and anti-populist, but still very interesting to hear from a Western Conservative who has hinted at a future sepertist Western Alliance party if the Tories fail in their 2005 campaign - after all when was the last time Conservatives and Principles have been in the same sentence together - there is always going back to the Reform Third option right here, Paul!)
Tue, April 5, 2005
Scary scenario
Red Tories lend off-colour tint to true-blue Conservative ideals
By Paul Jackson -- Calgary Sun
Conservative leader Stephen Harper's merging of the Canadian Alliance with the Progressive Conservatives was hailed as a great stroke of his negotiating and diplomatic skills.
Yet increasingly, true Conservatives whisper they believe it allowed a 'fifth column' of 'Red Tories" to sneak into the party.
That fifth column, headed up by former PC leader Peter MacKay, and Canada's answer to Paris Hilton, heiress Belinda Stronach, are out to take over the party and move it to the wishy-washy centre again.
That means we'll have a Conservative party that is basically a "me, too" mirror image of the Liberals but with some ethics.
Don't you occasionally just wish we'd kept with Reform?
Or at least with the Alliance?
That way we'd still have a solid 100% Conservative party.
None of this talk of becoming more "inclusive."
I'm told Harper privately knows trouble is afoot, which is one reason he hasn't brought down Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government. If he did, and if his Conservatives didn't at least win their own minority government, he'd be gone as leader and the MacKay-Stronach team would replace both him and true Conservative principles.
Isn't that the frightening scenario, Stephen?
That's one reason at the party's Montreal policy convention last month, attempts were made to ensure a future convention isn't flooded overwhelmingly with Red Tory delegates.
Why, one has to ask, should a small constituency with just a handful of members -- say in Atlantic Canada or Quebec -- have as many delegates as a western constituency with hundreds and hundreds of loyal members? That hardly sounds like a sensible proposition.
And what about the question of campus organizations?
Just supposing some ingenious -- no, devious -- Red Tories went out organizing hundreds of campus organizations at universities and colleges across the country each with the authority to send just one delegates to the convention.
Those delegates could quite swamp legitimate delegates, oust a leader, and set the party back on a disastrous course.
With the suggestion some fairness, common sense and principle be put into constituency associations, the MacKay-Stronach types went ballistic.
MacKay didn't even wait for these questions to hit the conference floor before going to the news media warning that any interference in constituency make-up could tear the party apart.
The Nova Scotia MPs murmurings were Page One news. Attempts to tighten up the rules were overturned. Strike one success for the Red Tories, one defeat for true Conservatives.
But let's face it, when you're dealing with "Pipsqueak Pete," you are dealing with a political operator with some cunning.
Recall how he grabbed the PC leadership by conning anti-free trade advocate David Orchard to back him.
Considering the free trade pact with the U.S. and Mexico was the greatest achievement of Brian Mulroney's eight-year reign, to clasp to your bosom an individual who has fought to demolish the pact with all the vigour he can muster indeed makes for strange bedfellows.
Yet, how did MacKay reward Orchard for his support?
By merging his small rump with the Canadian Alliance -- a party Orchard rightfully, for his philosophy, detests -- in reality Mackay knifed Orchard in the back.
If the scene is becoming clearer to you, that's all for the good. If you've been blinded by the supposed camaraderie of the merger, naively believing all is well, you've been taken in.
What's really holding this unholy alliance -- if I can use that word -- together for the moment is hope that come the next election the party can actually win power.
If spats break out now the Lib-Left news media and Martin's Liberals would make mincemeat out of the Conservatives.
Jonathan Denis, a Calgary lawyer and longtime conservative activist, who was a delegate at the conference, remarks "voters are not looking for a second Liberal party whose agenda is power as opposed to principle."
Sadly, it looks like we could get what Denis and true conservatives fear most.
Yet the unfolding picture could look like this: Harper wins the next election and then as prime minister, he can clean house of the MacKay-Stronach Red Tory types.
Or, he loses the election, the Red Tories take over, the party splits, and we go back to our roots and rebuild the Reform/Alliance movement.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Calgary/Paul_Jackson/2005/04/05/982937.html
(If you want to throw around words - the Conservative Party of Canada is the ultra, extreme, radical right wing party that holds the hard-core fiscal and social conservatives whose agenda is to slash, cut and burn all social services, push their moral beliefs upon each and every Canadian then take away any kind of democratic reform like referenda, recall and real responsible representative via all-party free votes out of the House of Commons. Take the Same-Sex Marriage issue for example, your average top-down CPC Blue Tory fis-con/so-con wants to make it illegal without the people's consent by referendum while your average elitist CPC Red Tory fis-con/so-con wants to make it legal without the people's consent by referendum. Do you want to know how a populist Reform government would solve this issue? We would give it to the people to decide via a bottom-up citizen's inititative referendum as to commit to voting any consensus of their constituents on such controversial issues regardless of their own personal views - now how is the centrist Reform middle ground an extreme view that has been long gone!)
Extreme views are long gone, Tories argue
Even some Liberals quietly admit the old Reform party has managed to swing to the mainstream
Norma Greenaway
The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Conservative Faron Ellis applauds the day the old Reform Party was finally put to rest, and it wasn't all that long ago.
He says it happened just last month at the new Conservative Party's first policy convention in Montreal. With a show of hands, delegates at a morning workshop on March 17 rapidly killed the once-sacred populist Reform policies to allow citizens to recall MPs and initiate referendums.
When the voting was over, Mr. Ellis, a onetime Reformer and member of the new party, leaned over to a fellow delegate and said, "Well, there you have it. If you didn't believe it before, the old Reform Party is dead and buried."
Mr. Ellis, a political scientist from Lethbridge, Alta., who is writing a book on the history of Reform, says the party did the smart thing in Montreal.
He says the new Conservative Party's hopes of winning power would have evaporated if delegates hadn't jettisoned the "populist trap" that its political foes used as ammunition in the last election to scare voters into thinking a government led by Stephen Harper would use referendums to make policy on everything from abortion to bilingualism.
The shift away from populism is one of many recent moves made by the merged party that are aimed at tempering its image before Canadian voters go to the polls again, possibly as early as June.
Liberals publicly pooh-pooh the makeover as a mirage. And with election fever swirling on Parliament Hill, they are already, once again, hurling the "hidden-agenda" charge at the party.
Some Liberals privately concede, however, the fledgling party will not be the easy target it was in last June's campaign when it had not held a policy convention.
Political scientist David Taras says the party, a blend of supporters of the old Progressive Conservative and Reform/Canadian Alliance parties, has finally reached the stage where it is starting to act like a government-in-waiting.
"It's gone from being a cause and a crusade to being a political party contending for power," Mr. Taras says.
Policies adopted at the convention endorsing such things as bilingualism, gender equity and a publicly funded health system, combined with Mr. Harper's pledge that a Conservative government would not introduce legislation to regulate abortion, nudge the party closer to the political centre, he says.
And though delegates handily approved a policy resolution committing a Conservative government to supporting legislation defining marriage as a union of one man and one women, fully 25 per cent of delegates voted against it. Mr. Taras cites that vote split as a healthy sign for the party.
For his part, Mr. Harper has pointedly portrayed the party's policies as "moderate" and "mainstream."
Preston Manning, who founded the Reform Party, says the merged party is in better shape to fight the Liberals. It's got stronger representation in each part of the country, and is better disciplined after having gone through "a war together," Mr. Manning said, referring to the last election.
More importantly, he said, the party is large and broad enough that its opponents will no longer be able to latch on to the "extreme" views of a few MPs to successfully contend they represent the real character of the party.
"The bigger and broader tent helps mitigate against those extraneous, extreme elements," Mr. Manning said in an interview.
Mr. Taras says the party's new look is partly a product of a natural evolution, the passing of a generation. Many of the faces associated with the old Reform Party are already gone, or on their way out the door before the next election.
"Some were elected in '93," says Mr. Taras. "They came in with Preston Manning. They went through the turmoil with Stockwell Day, and the transformation to the Alliance. Now, to some degree, it's time to go."
Already gone are Mr. Manning, Deborah Grey (the "first lady" of Reform), MPs Ted White, Val Meredith, Grant Hill and Larry Spencer, who landed in the headlines and lost his job as Canadian Alliance family values critic after an anti-gay tirade.
Among those retiring before the next election, are B.C. MPs Randy White, John Reynolds and Werner Schmidt. Mr. White, one of the most outspoken and socially conservative of the original Reformers, told the Vancouver Province he does not favour the party "drifting towards the centre to get votes."
Mr. White's remarks denigrating the power of Canada's courts, and questioning the value of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, handed the Liberals a gift in the final days of last June's campaign, and, according to some Conservatives, did the party serious damage in Ontario.
"It is a different party," Mr. Taras said. "It's not the Reform Party. And so the old Reformers have a choice. You either wear new clothes, or take the train back to the West."
Alberta MP Myron Thompson is among the original Reformers who vows to stay on and fight another election. He says it's hard to let go of MP recall and citizens' initiatives, but the membership has spoken. Besides, he says he's tired of being on the Opposition benches.
"I've worked 12 hard years here," he said in an interview.
"And I want to get on the right side of the House. I'm going to see this party take control."
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=bb387bd5-e288-4751-b16a-2d96c45cefd6
(How do you deal with Canada's democratic deficit unless Triple E Senate, which 72% of Ontarians want, is immediately implemented - without it Liberal Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin's reform ideals are worthless!)
Wed, March 30, 2005
Senate reform is dead
By Janet L. Jackson -- Calgary Sun
Prime Minister Paul Martin thumbed his nose at Albertans by ignoring our elected senators.
After promising to deal with Canada's democratic deficit, Martin gets away with ridiculous doublespeak: "I don't believe in reforming the Senate piecemeal," knowing that reform only comes "piecemeal," otherwise it is called revolution.
Just as surely as Florida's Terri Schiavo is being starved to death, Martin has intentionally killed Senate reform.
In so doing Martin has killed Albertans last vestiges of hope of ever reforming a corrupt and over-centralized Ottawa.
Say what you will about past prime minister Pierre Trudeau, unlike Martin, he at least had the decency to acknowledge the West's existence, even if he acknowledged it by giving us the finger.
It appears Martin is sounding Senate reform's death knell just when Canadians are most receptive to the idea.
Since its inception more then 20 years ago over Alberta kitchen coffee tables, the idea of the Triple-E Senate -- equal, elected and effective --has travelled across Canada, primarily by word of mouth, until academics and even Maritime premiers realize Canada desperately needs the Triple-E.
According to a survey by the Canada West Foundation last fall, 87% of Albertans support the Triple-E, and supposedly where the Triple-E is a "hard sell" --Ontario, an incredible 72% want a Senate that is both elected and equal.
But it isn't just the Liberals. The Conservatives also have stuck their knives into Senate reform. The new Conservative party and even previous Reform-Alliance gave up the ghost of actually reforming the Senate a long time ago, by discreetly dropping any mention of the Triple-E Senate from their policy books.
At the recent Conservative convention, Stephen Harper did mention Senate reform in his keynote speech, but again Triple-E was avoided.
Unelected Tory Senator David Angus revealed his "sophistication" in the pages of the Western Standard earlier this year, when he predicted naive westerners would achieve sophistication equal to his own by spending more time in Montreal.
Some may recall Peter MacKay's tantrum fairly early during the Conservative convention. He was worried grassroots numbers might prevail, but he need not have fretted, Angus' Liberal-Tory, same-old-story Montreal sophistication did indeed rub off on Conservative party delegates.
After a weekend in Montreal, not only did Conservatives drop the Triple-E, they also dumped the Alliance tradition of deciding the leader through one- member, one-vote, as well as deciding their own chamber of sober thought -- the national council -- the same way.
There are a handful of senators, such as Senator Anne Cools, who crossed the floor from the Liberals to the Conservatives last June, who remain courageous in actually providing sober second thought.
But generally speaking, the Senate is where good social-liberals are put out to pasture. So, like Tory Senator David Angus says, I guess we need to get with the patronage program.
Become a good social-liberal. Join the right religion -- secularism. Espouse the pre-approved Liberal doctrine: "Group rights good, individual rights bad."
Follow the formula and you too just might make the senatorial "Liberal Idol" short list -- next time around.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Calgary/Janet_L_Jackson/2005/03/30/976208.html
