CKNW Editorial
for May 8, 2001

I don’t know what everyone’s upset about – the Reform Party cum Canadian Alliance is doing just what was expected of it. Don’t you remember? This was to be the party of the grassroots, the one that let it all hang out. The problem with the Canadian political scene was party discipline – the sort of ironclad discipline shown by the detested Liberals. By the lord Harry, things were going to change and for the better. Leaders would be at the sufferance of the members. Most important of all, MPs would be able to speak their minds without fear of any retribution from above.

Well, as the man said, you made me what I am today, I hope you’re satisfied.

In fact, those days of the mid eighties did give people hope that perhaps a real grassroots movement could carry the day and that voters would become attached to their politicians, perhaps connected is a better word. But it didn’t happen. The system of which the national media is a huge part just wouldn’t let it happen.

When Mr Manning decided that each portfolio would have three critics, the media ate him alive. When he refused, as

Leader of the Opposition, to move into Stornoway the media gave him hell then gave him twice as much when he moved in. When Reform MPs spoke their minds, the media gave Reform hell … when they did as they were told, they gave ‘em hell again. They truly were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.

But though the media must take its share of blame for the Alliance’s difficulties the party has mostly itself to blame. Formed to fight the system it ended up half fighting it and half joining it. It encouraged its members to speak out then disciplined them if they discomfited the leader by so doing. Instead of continuing on the course they had set, the Reform Party then the Alliance buckled. Instead of being the party of protest for Western Canada – which is why they became the Official Opposition in the first place, they yielded to Bay Street and reached out to Ontarians annoying everyone in the bargain. What the Alliance may have done is revive the Progressive Conservative Party, a revival in the nature of a Biblical miracle.

After the last election, even given the Alliance’s disappointing showing, it still looked like the party around which the right would have to unite. But suddenly, lurch after lurch, the Alliance made Joe Clark look good. In fairness to Mr Clark he has done an outstanding job but no one would have noticed if there had been a real Leader of the Opposition.

Now we have yet another MP, Gary Lunn, turfed out of caucus. Where will it end?

As I mentioned last week, this gang that can’t shoot straight cannot even hold a proper palace revolt. History is very clear on the subject of overthrowing leaders – the rebels must themselves have a leader and the venture must be assured of success. In this case I suspect that the rebels thought they had a leader in Preston Manning but they forgot to check that out with him. While in politics a week is an eternity, I think we can safely assume that if Mr Manning does harbour any thoughts of a comeback he has not vouchsafed those ambitions to any members of the Alliance caucus. It could be that I’m being naïve here. Perhaps this is all a plot by Preston Manning who knows that, like that famous village in Viet Nam, the party must be destroyed so that it can be saved. But I don’t think so. This mess doesn’t have the earmarks of that kind of treachery, a treachery that, again perhaps naively, I don’t think Mr Manning is capable of.

What now?

I’m damned if I know. It’s not often you see a party big enough to be the Official Opposition commit suicide. What seems certain is that Mr Lunn is not the end of the defections.

I know that there are plenty of you that think I’m a constitutional nut and you’re probably right. But I think the problem goes back to the roots of the two parties and because of that there can never be a successful amalgamation … and that because of this, the disintegration of the Alliance was inevitable.

Joe Clark and the Tories can’t live down the 1992 Referendum. Not yet and not for a long time to come. They were then seen, rightly in my view, as the party of appeasement of Quebec … the party of – and Joe Clark coined the phrase – asymmetrical federalism … in other words a federalism where all provinces were not equal. It follows from that that he cannot bring his troops into a party that preaches equality of all provinces before the law. It follows equally that the Alliance cannot join the Tories.

What seems likely is that the Alliance will stumble along, unfocussed and for all intents and purposes leaderless. Joe Clark will continue to play the valiant Horatio at the Bridge but will never lead a united party of the right.

And the Liberals, only needing part of Quebec and most of Ontario, or the other way around plus a sprinkling from the Atlantic provinces will continue to govern far into the future.

When all is said and done, that is the legacy of both the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance with each trying to lay the entire blame on the other.