Vancouver Courier
for May 17, 1998

Henry Kissinger once remarked that the reason university politics were so viciously contended was that the issues were so inconsequential. This being so, the race for the Tory leadership should be a hot one because the result is of no importance that I can see.

Why write about it then? Because Toronto media outlets (which include, of course, the Vancouver Sun and Province) are making it a very big deal. Almost every day the race - which hasn't even begun yet - makes the front section of the Toronto Globe and Mail and is often theme of political columnists and op-ed contributors. Surely, then, the fact that there's one lonely voice way out in the western hinterland who says "who cares?" merits a few words.

Why do I say the issues are trivial?

Because the political reality of the country makes it utterly impossible for the delegates, even though they may come from B.C. or Alberta, to speak for the views of people in those provinces.

The gut issue is the constitution - yes, that dreaded "c" word again. There's no denying it. And the Tories will permit only one view of this issue namely that of Central Canada.

While I don't wish to get into this here, it's worth noting that Jean Charest is a committed "Meechkin" who devoutly believes in special status for Quebec and a veto by which they can prevent constitutional change. He led, under that banner, the 1997 election campaign which brought the Tories back as an official party in the Commons. Joe Clark and Hugh Segal are both Meechkins too. For the Tories there's no going back to the time they collected the far west's protest vote.

The convention won't even hear any real arguments on this subject. Such references as are made to national unity willnot be way of comparing alternatives but in carefully crafted cotton candy. Lots of stuff about renewing the federation and platitudes such as how the whole is greater than all of its parts but the views of most British Columbians won't be part of the process. Joe Clark may try to play the "westerner" card but everyone knows that he's now an easterner through and through.

What always has to be remembered is that both Segal and Clark are Mulroneyites - albeit not by choice for Mr Clark - and their undying support for Meech and Charlottetown are well recorded.

But there is another factor which makes Alberta and B.C. irrelevant to the Tories - Preston Manning.

Nobody comes back from the dead more often or more quickly than Mr Manning. In April, Ralph Klein was going to take over the Federal Tories and exterminate the moribund Reform Party. A couple of weeks later, Reform and Mr Manning personally made asses of themselves over the silly flag debate costing them the Coquitlam-Port Moody by-election making obvious the schism between the B.C. and Ontario wings of the party. Reform looked awful.

But Preston Manning understands the game. He knows that neither Harris nor Klein would be acceptable to Quebec. Mr Klein and Mr Harris recognized that too. So Mr Manning designed his own strategy called the proposed "New Canada Act" which spells out plans for far ranging and radical changes to the way we govern ourselves. He has clearly thrown down the gauntlet in front of the Tories saying - you try the old way and I'll try the new way and let's see how it all turns out.

Jean Chretien doesn't want this debate of course because it will show his policies to be the same of those of Charest and the two main Tory leadership contenders. Mr Clark and Mr Segal will try to avoid the debate but will soon have to accept that the Tories, by reason of this issue, has been marginalized in the far west.

And for all their rejection of the Reform position, the Tories are by no means certain to capture Ontario next time. Many in Ontario are coming to the view that the far west is as important to Canada as Quebec. It remains for Reform to captilize on this and the Tories are helping mightily.

There'll be some perfunctory efforts made amongst B.C. Tories to cast the party on side with British Columbians but they will fail to be any more convincing than was 1997 Tory candidate Geoff Chutter when he tried to explain to me the distinction between the Liberals' notions of unity policy and those of the Conservatives. There may have been a distinction somewhere but there sure as hell wasn't any difference.

So, the regionalization of Canadian politics not only continues but hardens. The Tories, once the bastion of Central Canada who became, during the Trudeau years, the party of western protest are now firmly back in Bay Street where they belong. Who wins the party leadership is inconsequential indeed to Canadians west of the Lakehead and especially to British Columbians who don't share the Mulroney/Clark/Segal view of the nation.