CKNW Editorial
for July 14, 2000

It is hard to believe but Joe Clark is an even bigger horse’s ass this week than he was last week … and it seems that, even more unbelievably, there’s room for even more deterioration. The polls have made it clear that Mr Clark couldn’t win a single seat in Canada, much less in his home province of Alberta. Some people are born losers and he’s one. Apart from the fluke in the 1976 leadership race and hanging on to win a minority government he ought to have won outright in 1979 Joe Clark is one loss after another. He’s going on 61 now – an age when a person ought to be at his peak politically and he’s dead meat. Now Ralph Klein is talking about rolling the Alberta Conservative party into the federal Canadian Alliance party. That’s because Mr Klein knows something that Mr Clark doesn’t – the Alliance Party is where the Conservative, large and small "c", voters are. Joe Clark couldn’t handle the job of dog catcher in a no dog town and he’s the only one in the country that doesn’t know this.

It’s a pity – because if the Tories were to hold a leadership convention now, the winner would almost certainly be Peter McKay of Nova Scotia whose father Elmer was the man who stepped aside to make a seat available for Brian Mulroney in 1983 and was suitably rewarded with cabinet positions after he returned to the Commons.

Young Peter is bright, articulate and attractive – especially as he is compared with any alternatives in the Conservative party. He wouldn’t take a seat in the far West but he would in Atlantic Canada and might do some damage in Ontario.

Then take a look at the Liberals. Jean Chretien isn’t going anywhere because he and those around him believe the current polls. For some reason they’ve never understood that between elections voters always park their votes with the Liberals until all the options are available. Mr Chretien ought to phone up John Turner who knows all about this. But supposing Mr Chretien takes a brisk walk as his hero Pierre Trudeau did, and decides that he’s had enough. And let’s suppose the Liberals have enough brains to anoint Brian Tobin, not Paul Martin who’s the next John Turner waiting to happen. Now we’d have quite a horse race on our hands. We could see an utterly split parliament with the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois holding down Quebec, all three major forces being competitive in Ontario with the Alliance much depending on Mike Harris and the Big Blue Machine, Atlantic Canada splitting between the Liberals and the Tories, Manitoba and Saskatchewan probably splitting their few seats three ways and the Alliance taking virtually all the seats in British Columbia and Alberta.

I predicted the other day that the Alliance would win a minority government in the next election. Though the odds would be good, I think that’s not a bad bet. All bets are off, however, if the Tories and the Liberals have enough sense to dump their aging timber and go for young attractive leaders to go up against the young, attractive Stockwell Day.