Vancouver Courier
for January 10, 1999

It was a week of amazing contrasts. One the one hand we saw the United Alternative notion moving forward while Prime Minister Chretien sets up a Liberal Committee on the "West". The United Alternative steering Committee, by dividing their group into five regions, at least show they understand something about the make-up of the country. Chretien, on the other hand, sends our beloved Senator Ross Fitzpatrick (hands up any who have any idea who he is) and Lou (The Silent) Sekora to come into what he lamentably still believes is a homogeneous lump of Canada west of the Lakehead called "the west."

You have to wonder just what the hell it takes to shake up that party of Ontario and Quebec. Do they not know that Winnipeg, now a very central city, is as unlike Regina or Saskatoon as chalk and cheese? Have they not seen what has happened to Alberta which hosts most of Canada’s head offices now? Have they never read Jean Barman’s wonderful book The West Beyond The West and seen how by every criterion – history, geography, demography, economy, lifestyle, you name it, is very different from other provinces west of Ontario? How in the hell with only two years to go until the next millennium can the governing party of Canada still see the country as Central Canada with some occasionally troublesome provinces to the east and west?

You don’t need to ask how much attention Chretien gives his B.C. MPs, our seven local lickspittles – either they can’t get their message through the to the dinosaur’s pea size brain or they have no influence. One suspects the latter. When Chretien, in December 1995, dusted off the old "four region" veto formula it took Brian Tobin, a Newfoundland cabinet minister to convince him that B.C. was not part of "the west."

The problem is obvious – Liberal Prime Ministers seldom come to B.C. and when they do, confine themselves to fund raising bun tosses amongst the faithful. They listen to people like Liberal insider and chairman of the CNR David Maclean who thought right to the end that the Charlottetown referendum would pass. The Liberals are like the Bourbons – they’ve learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

The United Alternative, stumbling as it is, at least recognizes what we’re dealing with here – a badly divided country that has to be pulled together. It’s problems are not outside the Reform Party but within.

The guru and father of the Reform Party, Ted Byfield, is the biggest stumbling block and he has many adherents. Byfield worries about the purity of the party being diluted by compromises made with the huge bloc of voters that must be attracted if any alternative to the Liberals is to succeed. Ted stands for Christianity, Family, and Free Enterprise all of which are fine terms when taken in their ordinary meaning but which are political code words for White Anglo-Saxon Protestants who stay married no matter what and who don’t join unions. Unhappily for Ted, this is not a very large group any more.

The United Alternative is also having problems with Quebec separatists who – I believe at any rate – see a new party on the right as a useful vehicle to help on the way to separatism. This is a real worry when one remembers what happened to Brian Mulroney when he co-opted separatists in 1983 as his way to defeating the Liberals.

I believe that one way or another, the February 19 convention in Ottawa of the United Alternative will be the political event of the year. For the notion to work, not only must Ted Byfield and the Quebec separatists be dealt with, the convention must find a way to cut the Gordian Knot of national unity.

The Progressive Conservative Party has, under Joe Clark, become the direct heir of Meech and Charlottetown. This notion just won’t sell in much of Canada, especially Alberta and British Columbia. (Which accounts for Joe Clark getting fewer leadership votes in B.C. than the socialist David Orchard.) The Reform Party, because it believes in equality of provinces with no special deals for any province, has had trouble crashing the Central Canadian market. How this thorny issue is dealt with will determine whether or not the United Alternative moves to the next step, a real political party.

I find myself in a quandary. The Byfield fringe of the Reform Party gives me the willies. On the other hand I want my country to stay together and that to me means equality. I suspect that there are many in the same boat.

The Liberals may, if the United Alternative fails, continue in power for the foreseeable future meaning that the points of alienation in the country will be aggravated.

If we want to build a new Canada based on the principle of equality, we’d better hope that something non-Liberals can live with comes out of this Ottawa conference next month.