CKNW Editorial
for February 2, 2001

The Canadian Alliance is hurting and hurting badly ... the only question is whether or not they can recover their balance.

There are three largely self-inflicted wounds that have caused the trouble. First, and perhaps least, involves Deborah Grey, perhaps their best frontbencher who, until now, could always be relied upon to pin a minister including the prime minister to the mat on a few seconds notice. To be able to do this one has to not be tough but seen to be tough. Once the veneer of toughness is gone, so is the effectiveness.

Ms Grey is well on record, of course, as opposing MPs pensions. In fact for years this was here shtick. Porkers she called MPs who indulged ... and Oink! Oink! was her catcall across the floor of the House. Now Ms Grey has opted back into the pension thus, in one fell swoop, destroying her real effectiveness as a critic.

Stockwell Day brings to the new parliament two near fatal images. First off, he's a loser. It is perhaps unfair to have assumed that he might pull off an election upset and it is probably also unfair to have assumed that he would take inroads into Ontario. But life isn't fair ... politics especially isn't fair.

This loser image has more to do with his own party than with the government benches for Mr. Day, while he has the outer support of his caucus and his party, is on probation and not only does he know that, it shows. There are many Liberal backbenchers who would love to see the back of Jean Chretien but they dare not even whisper that because, like him or hate him, he is a proven winner.

But what hurts Mr. Day even more is the lawsuit that was settled on his behalf which cost the government of Alberta perhaps a million dollars or more, the largest part of that being legal fees paid on Mr. Day's behalf.

And there is a parallel here between the Glen Clark Case and the Stockwell Day case in that both men incurred government paid legal fees for things they did entirely outside their job descriptions. Mr. Day publicly castigated a lawyer for taking what to Mr. Day was a distasteful case. Making observations of this sort was clearly not within the mandate of Provincial Treasurer of Alberta, the post Mr. Day held at the time just as lobbying for casino licenses for a pal was well outside the jurisdiction of the Premier of British Columbia. This hurts Mr. Day especially because he regards himself as the fiscal expert in the Alliance, given his background.

Parliamentarians can recover lost ground. Disraeli famously got stage fright in his maiden address and remarked, as he sat down in a fluster, that there would be a time when the Commons would listen. But Disraeli was a minor league backbencher when that happened and Ms Grey and Mr. Day are the cream of the Alliance's front bench. Moreover these things have enabled Joe Clark, an experienced debater in the House of Commons, to move into the vacuum created by these Canadian Alliance problems.

There is no doubt that as time passes these matters will largely pass too. But they will always linger in the background to be raised again when the right moment comes along.

The challenge facing Mr. Day ... I suppose I should say one of the challenges ... is to make a deal with the federal Tories. As Alliance MP Randy White said on this show earlier in the week, the deal won't likely be made with Joe Clark but with the party bosses in such a way that Clark can endorse the move and gracefully fade into the shadows. The trouble is the deal will be made by Mr. Day. If he appears to be ineffective - and he has been, even forgetting to deal with western alienation in his speech on the Throne Speech - it makes the amalgamation of the two parties more difficult for the simple reason that Tories will be most reluctant to accept Mr. Day's leadership. If amalgamation does happen watch for the most unusual event in Canadian history to evolve. Assuming that there is a deal and that part of that deal is an open contest to see who will lead that party, guess who might well be the favourite - Preston Manning, of course.

Mr. Manning, by his gracefulness and sportsmanship has considerable respect, some of it new, from all parts of the right wing. Moreover, the knock on Mr. Manning was that he couldn't win Ontario - well, neither could Stockwell Day. I would argue that many of the right, including both Tories and Alliance members, now think that the a fresh look at Mr. Manning makes him much more saleable, especially in Ontario. Preston Manning, no less a fundamentalist Christian that Mr. Day, manages not to scare people with his religious convictions. By reason of his behaviour over the past year he also looks much better and more statesmanlike that before.

I don't say that Preston Manning will again be the Leader of the Opposition ... I just say that as events move along and given the weakness of Mr. Day's position, that possibility will not be lost on a great many of the right who want to find a way to bind the wounds and bring the Tories and the Canadian Alliance together.