Uniting the Right in Canada
The leaders of Canada's two small-c conservative parties have agreed to merge the parties, subject to agreement by the membership of the two parties.
The Reform Party began in 1984, founded by Preston Manning as a true grass-roots movement, with its strongest base in Alberta. When the party did not seem to be succeeding in gaining enough votes east of Manitoba to be a truly national party, Manning guided the process to change
into the Alliance party. Manning had clearly anticipated that he would once again be the leader, but he was defeated in a leadership race by Stockwell Day.
In 2000, the Alliance won far more votes in Ontario than the Progressive Conservatives (roughly 1 million vs. 642,000), but only two seats--their only seats east of Manitoba. Polls and fund-raisers are apparently unanimous that the trends were down rather than up. Day was forced out of the leadership after a short time, and was succeeded by Stephen Harper, one of the two leaders who has negotiated the new deal.
Reform was founded as a Western and grass-roots reaction against Brian Mulroney, and against Ottawa, the domination of Canadian politics by Quebec, the uncontrolled growth of the welfare state, rampant deficits, and the tendency of governments to make major decisions without consulting voters. They favoured: spending cuts and elimination of the deficit (they probably influenced the Liberal government after 1993 to adopt these policies); treating Quebec like any other province, and stating that the rest of Canada would not necessarily accept the result of a Quebec referendum on separatism (remarkably, the latter point too became Liberal policy); the use of referenda to ensure the voters decide major issues (there was a national referendum on the Charlottetown Accord on the Constitution; Mulroney lost); and some "social conservative" measures, including restricting immigration.
The Progressive Conservative party likes to say that it is as old as Canada. John A. Macdonald, the first Prime Minister after Confederation in 1867, was a Conservative, and his party dominated national politics until World War I. The conscription issue in that war painted the Tories as "anti-Quebec," and they have struggled to win seats in that province ever since. With the Liberals winning at least a good share of seats in Quebec as well as Ontario, there was a tendency for Liberals to win every federal election.
R.B. Bennett won for the Tories in 1930, and got blamed for doing nothing about the Great Depression--like Hoover in the U.S. Arthur Meighen became a great national figure as Tory leader, but campaigned against Mackenzie King almost entirely in vain. Diefenbaker won a record landslide in 1958, including most of the seats in Quebec--I don't think anyone has ever figured out why. Mulroney won a huge landslide in 1984, and another (lesser) majority in 1988.
Otherwise, except for a few short-lived minority governments, Canada has had Liberal governments.
The Liberals now dominate the scene to an extent that would have been hard to believe before 1993. The Liberals have still not won more than 50% of the vote, so the combined vote of all other parties can seem an impressive total. Yet the other parties are all confined to specific regions or pockets, which means they have hit a ceiling beyond which it is almost impossible to go. The PCs since 1993 have had far fewer seats than the Reform/Alliance (now 15 PC seats vs. 63 Alliance, out of a total of 301), and in 2000 they won far fewer votes (roughly 1.5 million for the PCs, vs. 3.3 million for Alliance; almost 13 million ballots cast in total). They are fairly strong in the few seats they won in Atlantic Canada. They won one seat in Quebec. They won Joe Clark's seat in Calgary. And that's about it.
The two parties have apparently been told that if they don't combine and cooperate, there will be few corporate donations available for either of them. Polls show both of them being decimated by the relatively right-wing Paul Martin as soon as the next federal election takes place--possibly as soon as April 2004.
In a way the marriage makes sense. Many Reformers were the country cousins in the PC Party before 1984. Many, indeed, can trace their roots to "Diefenbaker Tories"--those Tories who remained loyal to Dief after much of his national support collapsed.
On the other hand, the PC Party is not particularly right-wing--either on economic or social issues. Indeed it is difficult to think of anything in particular that it stands for. For a while when Joe Clark and then Brian Mulroney was the leader, it seemed there might be a distinct approach to Quebec and federalism--more friendly to the provinces, and to Quebec nationalism as long as it is not separatist. Unfortunately, bitter experience shows there either are no true Quebec nationalists who are not separatists, or they are people who belong in jail.
The Liberal approach: we will improve Canada, including developing bilingualism, and Quebec can take it or leave it--is actually working. It was probably toughened up a bit by adopting from Reform/Alliance, and passing the Unity Bill.
Social conservatism appears to have little political momentum in Canada. More precisely: yes, there are some rural ridings where same sex marriage is very important. But win an election over it? Not likely.
David Orchard has run for the leadership of the PC Party twice. He claims, with some justification, that in fact the party has never been consistently "right wing"--rather, it has typically been "Red Tory"--willing to adopt liberal and even socialist policies for the common good. The Macdonald government in the 19th century built a national railroad with government subsidies among other measures. There was a sense that if the country was not united east to west, it would be fragmented into distinct pieces each of which would have a north-south orientation. The Tory government of Robert Borden saved failing railroads by founding another national railroad, the CNR, which would remain publicly owned for decades. R.B. Bennett founded the CBC.
Diefenbaker was praised by George Grant for seeing that in order for Canadian identity to mean anything, it had to be preserved against the most powerful threat--which, by the 1960s, was clearly the United States. Grant said an intelligent Tory must be willing to use "socialist means" to achieve "conservative ends." This is probably the origin of the phrase "Red Tory," but most people who use it simply mean: let's not stand out from the usual intellectual liberals and social democrats. Orchard wants to question, if not reverse, free trade, and he wants some strong environmental measures.
It seems that conservatives give up on being truly conservative sooner or later. Fred Barnes has written in the Weekly Standard that Schwarzenegger's election shows that a realignment has taken place in favour of the Republicans; but this is a Republican who sounds (in more ways than one) like Bill Clinton.
The terms of the agreement to form a new party: here.
There is a reference to "progressive social policy," and the environment, but also to "freedom to pursue enlightened and legitimate self-interest within a competitive economy," "the freedom of individual Canadians to enjoy the fruits of their labour to the greatest possible extent," and the right to own property.
Colby Cosh, who has been almost alone in noting that the Alliance was quite successful, is not pleased at recent events.
The Toronto Star is on Cloud 9, practically proclaiming that with the Liberal victory in Ontario, and now this, the right is dead in Canada. B.C. and Quebec both have recently-elected governments committed to drastic cuts in taxes and spending. The Quebec Premier, Jean Charest, was federal Tory leader in 1997, when he ran a bit half-heartedly on a platform of tax cuts. Now he is seen by some as a very promising leader for the new Conservative Party.
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