Vancouver Province
for June 25, 1999

Ottawa June 21, 2001. Prime Minister Joe Clark was criticized today for naming only one member of Cabinet from west of the Lakehead. "What can I do", lamented the Prime Minister who was sworn in yesterday, "the voters only gave me three western MPs to work with."

Prime Minister Joe Clark in 2001? Has Mair the Mouth taken utter leave of his senses? This turkey was cooked 20 years ago!

Knowing full well the truth of the adage that a man who acts for himself has a fool for a client, let me spring to my defence, weak though it might be.

The trick in politics, indeed in life, is to suppress the tendency to think that what’s important today will still be important down the road. Good politicians know this – that’s why they’ll do outrageous things today knowing full well that they’ll either be forgotten at election time or at least their significance will be greatly reduced.

The Reform Party of Canada, P. Manning, prop., is proceeding on the basis that if his party or what it spawns, the United Alternative, can add sufficient seats in Ontario to those it gets in Western Canada it can replace the Liberals. Part of that assumption is that if the United Alternative doesn’t fly, the same object can be accomplished by combining with the Tories who, presumably, will take the anti Liberal votes in Ontario. Surely, Mr Manning reasons, if Reform and the Tories together have more seats than the Liberals and the very least they will form a coalition, minority government and perhaps even a majority government. And this is the logical combination because, after all, the Tories and the Reformers are like peas in the same pod. I am not so sure that Mr Manning is right in this assumption for the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservative Party disagree on one very fundamental point – the Tories would continue the policy of appeasing Quebec, a policy both Liberals and Tories have espoused – while the Reform Party can’t possibly compromise it’s principle of equality of all provinces. This is a very important gap and one which might just be unbridgeable.

Let us assume, for easy mathematics, a 300 seat House of Commons and a post June 2001 result something like this – Liberals 80, Conservatives 60, Reform 70, Bloc Quebecois 70 and NDP 20. Now let’s form that government. The Liberals could make a deal with the NDP but that still leaves them well short of being able to form a government. There is no way even the Liberals could make a deal with the BQ and even if they did, the government wouldn’t last six months, so count that out. If the Tories and Reform get together they probably have enough to form a minority government which the Bloc would sustain at least for a year or two. But who would be Prime Minister? These guys Clark and Manning hate each others guts from another movie and there’s no love lost between their caucuses. A Tory/Reform coalition is doable on paper but can it be done in the real world? Since neither of these two parties could, or indeed would, make a deal with the Bloc, and if they can’t make a deal themselves that leaves only one possible combination left – the Tories and the Liberals!

A fantastic notion? Why? They already made one deal with Charest going from a Federal Tory leader to a Quebec Liberal one. But there are other reasons.

The Progressive Conservative Party and the Liberal Party have been indistinguishable for years. The Conservatives, since George Drew in the fifties, have been dominated by Red Tories. They did divide badly over Free Trade but that was only because John Turner saw that as an issue he might beat Mulroney on. Traditionally Liberals have always been free traders and Jean Chretien sure as hell did nothing to upset the deal after he was elected. In my scenario, Joe Clark harrumphs that he’s on the side of Canadian unity and the only way that can be assured is if the two great traditional parties get together, blah, blah, blah.

But how does Joe Clark make this Lazarus like recover to 24 Sussex Drive?

Easy. Jean Chretien will either have been defeated in his riding or will feel compelled to retire anyway. This will mean a big Liberal leadership race. Who safer to park the leadership with in the meantime than good old Joe Who?

It could happen and you read it here first.