Vancouver Province
for February 28, 1999

What are we, the poor unwashed, to make of all this United Alternative bit? I mean what really happened last weekend?

Like many Canadians I’d like to see the back of the Liberals but is whatever-the-new-party’s-name is going to do the job?

I shall at once unmask myself. I was a Liberal until Trudeau discovered that he could win elections with a handout to Quebec and Ontario and a finger up to British Columbia. I voted Tory from 1972-1993 – holding my nose in suitable gesture of my temporary loss of sanity – and Reform since.

But I must quickly tell you that I’m not a natural born Reformer. In fact they often give me the creeps, reinforcing my hope that a party will happen along which is both middle of the road politically and opposed to appeasing Quebec. But I have voted Reform twice – there’s no getting away from that. Now what’s a chap to do?

If ever I needed reminding what the Liberal party has become I need only observe how Lou "the outspoken" Sikora became Lou "the silent" upon joining the Liberal caucus. I’d sooner vote for my Chocolate Labrador Clancy than a Liberal – at least he barks when things go wrong. The NDP is also out of the question. I know how hard Alexa is trying to do a "Tony Blair" and re-configure the NDP but she has absolutely no chance of breaking the Trade Union stranglehold on the party and so will continue to despair for the disadvantaged without any hope of doing anything for them.

How on earth could anyone vote for anything – with the possible exception of a Boy Scout troop – led by Joe Clark? He’s the oldest 59-year-old in the country - in fact he’s always been 59 so far as I can tell.

The Tories in British Columbia were traditionally protesters or people who had sworn to their dying father on his deathbed that they would continue the old tradition of voting Conservative. The protesters to a person went Reform in 1993 and leaving the Tories with a tattered signed picture of Sir John A, a faded Union Jack and the sheet music for the old version of Oh Canada that said "at Britain’s side, whate’er betide", and not much else. (The Conservatives do have one thing going - they don’t give off that feeling of nastiness that Reform does. My sense of the Reform Party is that not only will they change the government but that we sinners are in for a bit of force fed reform ourselves.)

But back to the question – what really happened last weekend?

Well, I don’t believe that Premier Ralph Klein’s mild rebuke about Reform’s use of the word "equality" in constitutional matters was any accident. Nor was the appearance of Jean Allaire and Rodrigue Biron, two noted separatists –oops! I mean sovereigntists – who spoke and received standing ovations. I believe we’ve missed the point - all of this plus Preston Manning’s careful tiptoeing around the unity issue means that he has clicked to a great Canadian truism – the Right cannot win in this country unless it is an amalgam of western protesters and Quebec sovereigntists. That’s how Diefenbaker and Mulroney got their big majorities, that’s why Joe Clark only lasted for 7 months.

I believe that the attention of us political observers, having very limited attention spans at best, has been diverted. All along we thought that this United Alternative business was only about getting Ontario into the Reform fold. Of course Ontario matters a great deal but Manning needs Quebec support to win. Why not, then, make a virtue of necessity and cuddle up to the Bloc?

Unthinkable! Not at all. If in 1979 Joe Clark had blown a kiss the way of Real Caouette, the Creditiste leader, we’d never have seen Trudeau return to power for yet another four years.

Preston Manning knows that he must have seats in both Ontario and Quebec. He can’t win anything in Quebec on his own but he can accomplish his ends if he makes a deal, if only "nudge, nudge, wink, wink", with the Bloc Quebecois. So it turns out that Preston Manning is a political bigamist, so to speak, for he’s wooing two brides at once. All he need do is convince his Reform colleagues that this menage-a-trois can work.

The sniff of power is all that’s needed for that to happen.