Tea Party of the North? Or Reform Party of the South?

Tea Party bears marks of Reform Party influence

CNN actually has the question backward: is the American Tea Party a Reform Party model?

The parallels are, admittedly, startling: each started out as a revolt against the perceived failures of the established conservative politicians of the day, and each to confront the looming excesses of the left.

Each has faced similar challenges: a membership speckled with individuals with troubled histories, vapid accustaions of racism from a left threatened by their ideas, and limited involvement by individuals whose racial attitudes invite such suspicions.

Each has produced figures whose policies were judged to be extreme by who considered themselves to be mainstream political figures. In many cases such individuals were shocked with an unwelcome dose of reality -- that these allegedly extreme positions are actually shared by more people than share allegedly "mainstream" positions.

Most strikingly, the Tea Party has a need it shares in common with the Reform Party: a need to reach out to their fellow conservatives. Depending upon the circumstances, this can be extremely challenging.

"It's hard to reconcile them all," says Reform Party founder Preston Manning, speaking of his experience trying to unite Canadian conservatives who were divided by minor political differences. "The argument we used is that you all need each other. You do agree on a whole bunch of other things."

As Manning points out, there's a danger in allowing such minor differences to divide conservatives.

"I argued they were not philosophically incompatible," Manning explains.

Some never came around to this line of thinking. Former Prime Minister Joe Clark never did. Would-be Progressive Conservative kingmaker David Orchard most certainly didn't. Garth Turner flirted with this line of thinking just long enough to get elected as a united Conservative Party MP before being cast out of caucus.

Manning stresses that open and inclusive debate remains the key to building strong coalitions among individuals who favour differing "flavours" of conservatism. In Canada alone, conservatives need to find consensus among seven distinct sub-groups: fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, democratic populists, British tories, libertarians, progressive conservatives, and paleo-conservatives.

This makes democracy and open debate within the party especially important.

"If we can't apply democracy to reconcile these differences within the party, then why should the public believe we can do this on a larger scale?" Manning asks.

Manning suggests that political circumstance may hamper the ability of the Tea Party to affect change within American politics.

"These people are trying to build a coalition in a political culture that tends to favor polarization," he muses. "That does make it difficult, because people want to go to their corners rather than come together in the center of the ring."

Of course, this may have overlooked the detail that many of the Republican Party's leading candidates are either strongly supported by the Tea Party, or subtlely allude to policy influences from the Tea Party.

In the face of policy over-reach by the administration of President Barack Obama, the right in the United States is already uniting. A few figures, such as Senator John McCain, remain divisive for American conservatives. But Republicans don't seem to be rejecting the Tea Party out-of-hand; nor does the Tea Party movement seem to be rejecting the GOP.

If the Reform Party truly influenced the Tea Party -- and it seems clear that it has -- it isn't the first time the Reform Party influenced American politics.

In fact, Republican braintrust Newt Gingrich very publicly acknowledged Manning's influences on his own politics.

There's a reason why so many in the Canadian left seem to genuinely fear the Tea Party: in it they see the echoes of a movement whose ideas they feared, and they see an American left trying -- and failing -- to use the same culture war tactics that they resorted to, and failing.

Another Case For Uniting Ontario's Right

Ontario PCs and Reform Party dupilicating efforts

Led by Brad Harness, the Reform Party of Ontario has declared its intent to revive the Reform Party as a provincial force in the province of Ontario.

Whenever Ontario holds its next election, Harness and the Reform Party want to run candidates in half of Ontario's ridings, and be a major player in a handful.

“We want to make a real impact in 15 to 20 ridings,” Harness insists.

But the problem for Harness is that the Progressive Conservative Party Ontario is already championing many of the definitive causes of the Reform Party.

Under the guidance of MPP Steve Clark, the Tim Hudak-led Ontario Tories will explore options such as electoral recall and veto referendum legislation, to be enacted upon winning government in a future election.

“Clearly, we need to have stronger tools to put in the hands of Ontario families,” Hudak said. “I do like the notion of citizen-initiated referendum... It is an essential check on governments who often grow too arrogant and out of touch while in office.”

Clark plans to begin by exploring the kinds of options already available in BC and the US. He said his constituents are particularly aware of the options offered in BC, where a provincial legislator can be recalled after 18 months in office.

“A number of them have talked to me and emailed me since talking about what’s happening in BC and why can’t we have some citizen-led process in Ontario,” Clark explained.

In BC, petitions to remove an MLA are subject to approval by the Chief Electoral Officer. Any canvassers must be registered with Elections BC.

If Brad Harness and the Reform Party of Ontario are really serious about advancing the old Reform Party agenda, one would suggest they would be much better off by joining the efforts of the party best situated to advance that agenda -- and, indeed, has already embraced it.

Until they do, they'll simply be splitting the vote between PC and Reform candidates, for a best case scneario in which the Progressive Conservatives and a small caucus of Reform MPPs effectively duplicate each other's efforts.

What Frank Graves Is Not:

Moderate

Ever since it was revealed that EKOS President Frank Graves recommended to the Liberal Party that they start a culture war, a great deal of intellectual and rhetorical energy has been expended trying to figure out precisely what Graves is.

Very little such energy has been spent trying to elucidate what Graves is not.

So much so that Graves himself doesn't seem to know, as revealled by some of his recent comments.

“Whether or not I am a centre-moderate in my political beliefs – which I am, which I didn’t think was a matter of great shame in this country – is irrelevant to the question of whether or not I can conduct myself as a sociologist or pollster in a fair and neutral fashion,” Graves insisted.

After suggesting that the Liberal Party spark a culture war for political gain, Frank Graves has the temerity to insist that he is a moderate.

No one who would so much as dare recommend turning Canadians against one another for political gain is a moderate.

One need only look south of the border to see the divisive and destructive nature of what Graves has recommended to the Liberal Party: partisan ideologues casting vapid aspersions of racism at fellow citizens simply because they dislike and actually fear what those citizens have to say.

It takes a particularly dangerous brand of ideologue to look at that conflict and believe that we need the same in Canada, just so their political party of preference can govern.

"In reflection, it was inappropriate and I should have used more measured terms and I don’t think the Prime Minister’s racist or a homophobe, nor do I think members of his cabinet or his caucus are," Graves continued. "I do believe, and this gets more subtle, that there is a higher incidence of people who are less tolerant to homosexuals and more wary of other races, within the Conservative Party. I can demonstrate that empirically."

First off, this reminds one that Graves work is now highly suspect. Graves has revealled himself to be a consumate cultural warrior. When one is examining polling to determine whether or not it's biased, it isn't at all unreasonable to start with the evident bias of the individuals crafting the polling questions.

This becomes especially apparent when one considers the extent to which the questions asked during a poll influences the results that poll will produce -- the very same complaint that Graves levied against a recent poll commissioned by the Manning Centre.

Moreover, some Canadians may even recognize the insinuation present in Graves' words.

It's nearly precisely the same phrase Warren Kinsella wrote about Preston Manning in Web of Hate. Kinsella remarked that Manning had done a great job of removing any racial supremacists from the ranks of the Reform Party. But he continued to cast aspersions against Manning based on the number of racists that his party had attracted, despite the fact that it became clear that their beliefs were not welcome in that party.

Some of the efforts to attribute racism to the Reform Party were actually rather remarkable. In Slumming it at the Rodeo, Gordon Laird put then-Reform Party MP (now embattled and disgraced former Conservative MP) Rahim Jaffer into the spotlight with an account of alleged racism at a Reform Party Stampede barbecue that reads as if it were fictionalized.

(The account is written as if it were a first-hand account of an event that Laird makes it clear he would not be caught dead at, and declined to identify any sources who had been present.)

But this has proven to be the remarkable quality of such accusations. When one doesn't have to name any names, one can claim nearly anything. The sources referenced could be anyone... or no one.

Likewise, the "empirical evidence" that Graves cites could be conclusive or largely inconclusive.

Because Frank Graves has made his motivations perfectly clear in this matter, there is simply no reason to trust his data on this subject. Many pollsters have demonstrated, time and time again, that they can get the results they want -- both in a general and more specific sense.

After all, it's clear that Frank Graves is not at least one other thing:

An impartial pollster.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Montreal Simon - "Frank Graves and the Con Homophobes"

Officially Screwed - "Liberal Pollster Frank Graves (or Frank Graves’s) Mistake"

Lee Hamilton - "Morning Brew: 'Invoke a Culture War'"

Edmund James - "A Culture War in Canada?"

Murray Dobbin Up to More Silliness

Murray Dobbin: Canadians disagree about politics, disagree about the degree to which we disagree. Duh.

Writing in The New Canada, Preston Manning noted that former Alberta Premier William "Bible Bill" Aberhart was once a figure of some revulsion in Canada. Likewise for his father, Ernest Manning.

Yet by the time Manning was founding the Reform Party the reputations of Aberhart and the senior Manning had started to undergo a process of rehabilitation. Manning was even appointed a Senator in 1970 -- by Pierre Trudeau, no less.

Manning must have understood that one day his own reputation would need rehabilitation.

When Manning founded the Reform party, the denizens of Canada's far left essentially declared war upon him, and very few waged that war more ruthlessly than Murray Dobbin.

So it should be unsurprising that Dobbin would be chomping at the bit to take another shot at Manning. What's surprising is that he actually waited a month to do so.

In a recent column at Rabble.ca, Dobbin takes issue with a poll commissioned by the Manning Centre for Building Democracy. The poll concluded that the values of Canadians were subtly becoming more conservative.

Dobbin, naturally, takes exception to this, and complains that the poll allegedly asked the wrong questions:

"Rather than asking Canadians whether or not they thought abortion should be legal and that deciding on whether or not to have a child should be a woman's decision, the Harris Decima Manipulators asked whether people thought abortion was 'immoral.' Thus the poll claimed 75 per cent of respondents feel abortion is 'morally wrong.' Rather than ask the question about its legality directly they asked respondents if they though the government should 'regulate behaviour.' Only 21 per cent of the new centrists said yes."

Of course what Dobbin fails to recognize is that the question of whether or not abortion is morally wrong and whether it should remain legal are two separate questions, providing a better sense of the nuances of Canadian attitudes toward this issue.

Dobbin offers up the results of another poll that concluded that a majority of Canadians are pro-choice. (There is such a thing as pro-choice on abortion, but ARCC director Joyce Arthur and her cohorts are decidedly not pro-choice -- they're pro-abortion.)

Yet it apparently doesn't occur to Dobbin that Canadians could consider abortion to be morally wrong but still believe it should remain legal for cases where it is direly needed -- and most Canadians recognize that such cases do exist.

In the end, Dobbin refers to a forthcoming poll that will reach different results based on different questions -- and somehow readers are supposed to believe this discredits the Manning Centre poll.

It's a ridiculous premise: Canadians disagree on politics, disagree on the extent to which they disagree, and even disagree on the questions that should be asked.

This is no great surprise to any politically astute Canadian. Understanding of this should be considered a prerequisite for being involved in political debate in Canada. That Dobbin doesn't seem to understand this only underscores his unsuitability to participation in that debate.

Fortunately for Dobbin, we don't exclude anyone from that debate in Canada on the basis of consideirng them "unsuitable" -- despite the extent to which Dobbin would prefer otherwise.

Dobbin has long considered Preston Manning (in fact, long considered all conservatives unsuitable, as indicated by his application of a genetic fallacy argument to Manning and polster Allan Gregg). This is the reason why he's worked so hard to maintain an elaborate political mythology centred around Manning: that of the far-right extremist.

In fact, Manning is a political centrist who started the Reform Party reaching out to disgruntled members of all Canada's political parties. His brand of social conservative was not one that would be prohibitive of personal and social freedoms, but rather more of a social-ized social conservatism wherein conservatives accepted responsibility for providing for the sick and the needy.

That is why Manning has always advocated conservative reforms for social programs, rather than outright abolition of them -- something that has long escaped far-left zealots like Dobbin.

The creation of that mythology was abetted by the attraction of far-right racists and ultra-conservative zealots to the Reform Party, and somehow unrelenting in the face of the expulsion of those individuals from the party.

More pointedly, there's a reason why fringe parties even further to the political right than the Reform Party -- parties like the Christian Heritage Party -- emerged on the political landscape. Even though the Reform Party was too conservative for Murray Dobbin, it wasn't nearly conservative enough for many others.

Ever so slowly, the rehabilitation of Preston Manning's reputation has begun. Far-left zealots like Murray Dobbin may not like this -- but it is happening nonetheless.

That Canadians are slowly becoming more receptive to many of Manning's conservative ideas -- a phenomenon also chronicled by writers such as Brian Lee Crowley -- is indicative of this.

Dobbin can preach to the choir at Rabble.ca to his heart's content. Even if Canadians aren't becoming more conservative, as the Manning Centre poll indicates, it's clear that the understanding of Canadians' actually highly-nuanced political views are becoming more advanced.

Murray Dobbin may not like it -- but the majority of Canadinas will like it just fine.

Sometimes You Really Can't Go Home Again

Harper's former contemporaries unimpressed by Senate appointments

The question that has been on the minds of many Canadians since Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent appointment of nine new Senators this week, has been this:

What would his old Reform party contemporaries think of this?

In fact, that question has been on the minds of many since last December, when Harper appointed another 18 Senators to Parliament's upper chamber.

Fortunately, many of Harper's Reform party colleagues have been vocal on the subject, and they aren't entirely happy.

"It does look a little top-heavy, inside out, shall we say," said Deborah Grey, the MP for whom Harper went to work for upon her election to Parliament. "That will rankle lots of people."

"You better be ready to run for an elected seat," she added, referring to Harper's new batch of Senators.

Myron Thompson admitted to sympathizing with Harper for the position he's been in, but doesn't accept that as an excuse. "We don't like to see him go that route at all," he said. "The average strong conservative would say, 'Stay the course.'"

Former MPs Bob Mills and Ray Speaker seem much more comfortable with the appointments.

Tom Flanagan admitted that even he was taken by surprise when Harper appointed Carolyn Stewart-Olsen.

Naturally, Harper's political opponents have been quite vocal on the subject of these appointments. As Maclean's magazine writer Andrew Coyne notes, Harper's appointments may well have given them something to cry about. That may have even been the intent.

Yet the one individual who has been oddly quiet on the issue is former Reform party leader and Harper mentor Preston Manning. It was Manning's dedication to the issue of Senate reform that put, and has kept, it as a substantive issue in Canadian politics.

One would think that Manning would have something to say about Harper's Senate appointments, but has all along declined to comment.

Ever since Harper became Conservative party leader and Prime Minister, however, Manning has made a point of restraining his criticisms of Harper to those that are constructive and not damaging.

It isn't inconceivable that Manning's silence on the matter is indicative that he takes significant umbrage with it. A Manning 20 years younger may have even leaped back into the political fray over the issue.

It's all enough to make one wonder what would be said if Harper and his former colleagues sat down over a private dinner. Sometimes, one really can't go home again, and it isn't outrageous to wonder if Stephen Harper's former Reform party colleagues would welcome him as enthusiastically as once before.

Picking A Strange Hill to Die On

In a post on his blog today Warren Kinsella is promoting a strange video suggesting that Stephen Harper doesn't like Brian Mulroney very much.

Not a great secret.

Presented in the form of a storybook, replete with "The Dance of the Sugar Plum fairy" playing in the background, the video chronicles Stephen Harper's turn away from the Mulroney-era Progressive Conservatives. Harper had worked for then-Calgary West MP Jim Hawkes as a Parliamentary aide, but would quit over concerns about Mulroney's fiscal policies.

Harper would run unsuccessfully against Hawkes as a Reform party candidate in the 1988 federal election before defeating him in 1993.

After a falling out with Reform party leader Preston Manning, Harper left the party to become the President of the National Citizens Coalition. The video highlights Harper's criticisms of Mulroney and Harper's suggestion that the then-governing Liberal party not settle Mulroney's libel lawsuit out-of-court so the RCMP could continue investigating the matter.

"Not nice," the video muses, complaining that Harper has rarely been there to help Mulroney.

Yet when Kinsella's Liberal party called for a judicial inquiry into his dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber -- who promised startling revelations regarding the Airbus scandal, but only if he wasn't extradited to Germany -- Harper initially refused.

Not exactly the actions of someone pursuing a grudge against a former political opponent.

The video is an interesting exercise in branding and counter-branding. It seeks to brand Brian Mulroney as largely an innocent victim of Stephen Harper's malice and lack of niceties. Meanwhile, it tries to counter-brand Harper as a vindictive and petulant individual for whom personal hatred of Mulroney is motivating his government's actions vis a vis Mulroney, as opposed to the persistent demands of the opposition parties.

It's unsurprising that Warren Kinsella would be so eager to help promote such a piece of online tripe. The video in question banks on the short memories of its viewers, hoping that they'll separate the Oliphant inquiry from its real-world context -- the demands by then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion that Mulroney be investigated.

This is unsurprising from someone who demands that the sponsorship scandal be separated from its context. He has long railed against holding Jean Chretien responsible for the sponsorship scandal, but refuses to acknowledge the simple fact that the sponsorship program was run out of his office, by his personal staff.

Then again, Warren Kinsella has a history of pcking strange hills to die on. One recalls Kinsella's recent accusation that several conservative bloggers covertly receive paycheques from the Conservative party -- an odd accusation from an individual who has, in the past, accepted paycheques from the Liberals.

Lizzie May's Free Ride Is Ovah

Ignatieff will run Liberal candiate against Elizabeth May

Green party leader Elizabeth May's delusions of grandeur have taken another crushing blow today, as Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has announced that he plans to run a Liberal candidate against her wherever she chooses to run.

In the 2008 federal election, then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion declined to run a candidate against May. In return, May declined to run a Green candidate against Dion. The agreement, tenuously justified according to "leader's courtesy" (a measure unprecedented in a general election), was the first chapter in the story of considerable cooperation between May and Dion.

The victory May would have scored if her's and Dion's machinations were successful would have been highly symbolic -- May was running in Central Nova against Deputy Prime Minister Peter MacKay.

Speaking in Halifax, Ignatieff explained that this is merely part of his plan to run candidates in every running in the country.

"I have respect for Elizabeth May but I'm running a national party and in a national party we have candidates in 308 ridings across the country," Ignatieff insisted.

This comes as May has attempted to retake the national spotlight in order to insist that the Green party hasn't lost relevance.

With the exception of a brief episode during the Liberal party's flirtations with a coalition government in which it was suggested May would recieve a Senate seat, both May and the Green party have been largely invisible since the 2008 campaign.

"When you're in a federal election campaign, the leaders get a certain amount of attention that doesn't continue past the election if you're not either leader of the official Opposition or prime minister," May said. "That's the reality of politics."

Unfortunately for May, however, this is hardly the case.

There are plenty of ways for a developing political party to maintain visibility outside of an election. After failing to elect any candidates in the 1988 federal election, Preston Manning's Reform party successfully built its reputation by opposing the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords.

As Tom Flanagan notes in Waiting for the Wave, his far-from-disinterested analysis of the Reform party's rise, even the negative press garnered by the Reform party's campaigns against the two consitutional reform accords were successful in increasing party recognition.

For a largely-unknown party, there really may be no such thing as bad publicity.

But then again, therein lies the rub. One could very much ask the question of whether or not the Green party is a developing party at all. After all, it's been around since 1983 and has never elected an MP. Ever.

Whatever the Green party is developing into, it's clear that it isn't developing into a political contender. Now the most promising political alliance the party has ever built -- one that got the party its first MP (albeit an unelected MP), got its leader into the televised debates and got its leader a fighting chance in winning a massive upset victory -- seems to have gone the way of the Green Shift.

There is, of course, another difference between the circumstances confronting the Green party and those faced by the Reform party in 1988. Elizabeth May is spending a considerable part of her time promoting her new book, Global Warming for Dummies. In 1988 Manning was promoting a book of his own. Except that his book, The New Canada was largely about his party, and fully outlined his party's political agenda.

By contrast, May's book is yet another addition to the rapidly-growing genre of climate change apocalypticism. If Global Warming for Dummies outlined the Green party's full political agenda it would only confirm the popular perception that the party is a one-issue party.

Despite Elizabeth May's insistence that the very real struggles her party is currently facing is just "the reality of politics", the truth is much different -- her party is in desperate need of new leadership.

The free ride she's been enjoying by virtue of the Liberal party's generosity is over. The free ride she's been enjoying from the Green party should follow.


Other bloggers writing about this topic:

Far and Wide - "A New Dynamic?"

Zoe Caron - "Canadians Want Environment either a) OVER Economy, or b) AND Economy"

Stephen Harper's New Worst Nightmare

Canadian Taxpayers' Federation appoints new, familiar, director

Ever since Michael Ignatieff's abrupt ascension to the leadership of the Liberal party, many have been predicting that he's Prime Minister Stephen Harper's worst nightmare.

But one can rest well assured that Harper's nightmares are a good deal worse than Ignatieff.

Considering the deficit that his government has just budged for the coming year -- one that may increase as the government reportedly considers richening the stimulus pot -- Stephen Harper's worst nightmare is trouble in the fiscal conservative base of his party.

With the appointment of Kevin Gaudet as the new federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation, Harper's nightmares may be set to become as dark as they've been at any point of his political career.

Kevin Gaudet is best known for the "Fibber" campaign that lambasted Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty for various broken tax-related promises.

One can only wonder what Gaudet has in store for Stephen Harper. Readers of the Western Standard have already gotten a taste.

"With Mr. Harper in power, many Canadians thought they had a federal government interested in keeping its promises to control spending, balance the budget and reverse decades of overspending," Gaudet wrote in an op/ed. "They were wrong."

"In a hysterical over-reaction to calls for ‘stimulus,’ after eleven straight years of surpluses and debt reduction, the latest federal budget takes a giant leap back into deficit," Gaudet continues. "‘Stimulus’ is merely a new code word for deficit. It is used by those organizations, businesses and special interest groups with vested interests in convincing government to ratchet up spending. They succeeded."

Gaudet should be a fairly familiar face to Harper. Gaudet was the director of Opposition Research -- which Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella long ago dubbed "oppo" -- for former Reform party leader Preston Manning.

Even the National Citizens' Coalition, a group Stephen Harper used to be the director of, has pulled no punches.

“The big spending of this Conservative government will take generations to pay off,” said NCC President Peter Coleman. "The federal government has a poor track record when it comes to creating meaningful and long-lasting jobs."

Stephen Harper is likely having very dark nightmares, but Michael Ignatieff very likely couldn't be any further away from them.

Ontario Reform Party: Not-So-Giant Killers?

Ontario Reform party targeting John Tory in by-election

After the Ontario Provincial election of 2007, Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory has been weighing his political options for more than a year.

In that election, Tory lost in his riding of Don Valley West. Now, more than a year later, Tory has decided to seek election in a by-election in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock, a contest in which Premier Dalton McGuinty has (wisely) opted to delay in order for other parties to nominate candidates.

The Ontario Liberals -- who in 2005 contested the last by-election Tory won -- have yet to announce whether or not they'll contest this riding.

The Reform party of Ontario, however, has announced they'll be running a candidate against Tory. They just haven't announced who.

"We were going to run a candidate wherever John Tory was going run," announced Reform party leader Brad Harness.

That being said, one shouldn't underestimate the Reform party's desire to defeat Tory. Harness has referred to Tory as an "urbanite", and as a member of "the Canadian establishment, the moneyed establishment".

Certainly, there may be more to Harness' focus on defeating John Tory than simply that.

The Reform party of Ontario attempts to fuse Preston Manning's focus on populism with former Ontario Premier Mike Harris' fiscal conservatism. The official party doctrine appears to be a combination between Manning's "new Canada" and Harris' "common sense revolution".

Targeting John Tory is, similarly, a combination of two pages out of Preston Manning's old political playbook.

When the federal Reform party contested their first election in 1984, Manning himself attempted to defeat Clark in his riding of Yellowhead. Among the memorable events of that election was a horseback posse formed to confront Clark about his policies at the dedication of a railway museum in the riding -- a dedication that Clark wound up skipping.

The media stunt was staged complete with wanted posters accusing Clark of failing to represent the interests of his constituents.

The other strategy Harness is emulating here is in allowing a candidate nominated from within the riding to contest the by-election against Tory. Preston Manning did this when he declined to run in a 1989 by-election in Beaver River. Instead Deborah Grey -- the Reform party's first ever MP -- ran in that election and won.

It's hard to believe that Brad Harness didn't closely consider these two examples before making the decision to attempt to defeat Tory in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock.

The idea is clearly to try to establish himself as an anti-establishment figure, taking on the province's established political leaders while also establishing himself as a leader with deep faith in the grassroots of his party.

But considering the chilly reception the federal Reform party received in Ontario, it will be far more difficult for Harness to establish such credentials for himself in Ontario than it was for Preston Manning and the federal Reformers to do so in Alberta.

To make Harness' strategy further dubious is the fact that John Tory isn't nearly the political giant in Ontario that Joe Clark had established himself as in Alberta -- at least at the time. There's a difference between taking on a federal Minister and former Prime Minister and taking on a Progressive Conservative leader who can't even win his own seat.

In other words, John Tory isn't so giant, and the Ontario Reform party may not be able to 'kill' him.

Defining the Role of the Fringe

"Fringe" parties can play a vital role in Canadian politics

In an op/ed article appearing in the Winnipeg Sun, Paul Rutherford has a message for Canada's fringe political players:

Go away.

In the course of the column, Rutherford describes Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, Green Party leader Elizabeth May and Reform party founder Preston Manning as "the worst thing to happen to Canadian politics in the last 20 years".

Rutherford accuses these parties of stealing votes from "legitimate parties" and insists that "they play no role in the democratic health of our country".

Unfortunately for Rutherford, he couldn't possibly be further from the truth.

The truth is that not only are fringe parties necessary, but sometimes they're inevitable, even when one would, as Rutherford, just as soon not even have them.

Manning's Reform party and Lucien Bouchard's Bloc Quebecois may well be the greatest example of each of these two scenarios.

A common grievance held by many members of the former Progressive Conservative party elite -- among them Joe Clark -- is that the Reform party undermined conservative politics in Canada by undermining the Progressive Conservative party. Not only did the party supplant the PCs in the west, but vote-splitting between Reform and PC candidates in Eastern Canada robbed the PCs of Parliamentary seats, and allowing the Jean Chretien Liberals to come up the middle in dozens of ridings on route to forming a majority government.

If Preston Manning had never founded the Reform party, many of them reason, Kim Campbell could have fended off near annihilation, and possibly even won.

This would almost seem reasonable. One very well could assume that the 19% of Canadian voters who supported the Reform party would support the Progressive Conservatives over the Liberals. But that would be making a fatal assumption in assuming that those voters -- particularly in the west -- would have been willing to continue supporting the PCs.

Many of them would just have likely stayed home on election day.

Many western voters had long tired of holding their noses and voting for a party that, all too often, didn't represent their interests. The 1984 election of Brian Mulroney via what Chantale Hebert describes as an Alberta-Quebec coalition turned out to be a rude awakening for many western conservatives.

Disillusioned with numerous episodes of the Mulroney government -- most notably the Meech Lake Accord, Charlottetown Accord and the F-18 Maintenance Contract fiasco -- western conservatives were ready to support a new option. They held on just long enough to help Brian Mulroney secure a victory in the 1988 election (on the strength of their desire to see NAFTA negotiated), then promptly elected a Reform candidate -- Beaver River MP Deborah Grey -- at their next opportunity.

The lesson for politicians was a simple one, but one that many politicians did not understand: voters expect their elected representatives to represent them. It's the same lesson re-played in the recent reelection of former Conservative MP Bill Casey.

The leadership of the Progressive Conservative party had lost sight of a political tradition in western Canada: the tradition of populism. Particularly on the prairies, populism was at the root of nearly every political movement to emerge out of western Canada: Social Credit, Tommy Douglas' CCF (later the NDP), the Progressives and Preston Manning's Reform party were all born out of this tradition.

The PC leadership, meanwhile, had turned their back on this tradition when they attempted twice to ram through constitutional special treatment for Quebec that western Canadians overwhelmingly opposed.

With the rise of the Reform party in the 1993 election and the crash of the Progressive Conservative party, Brian Mulroney's chickens came home to roost. Unfortunately, Mulroney himself had vacated the party leadership, and never had to fully face up to the consequences of his actions.

Western Canadians weren't prepared to support the PCs any longer. Whether one dismisses the Reform party as a protest party or not, the Reform party forced the PCs to eventually get back in touch with that forgotten tradition -- the tradition previously honoured by leaders such as John Diefenbaker.

Until the PCs did so -- which they did, via a merger with the Canadian Alliance, the successor party to Reform, which had been forged out of a coalition with provincial Progressive Conservative parties in Alberta and Ontario -- it was not, and could not be, whole.

In merging with the Canadian Alliance, the Conservative party finally reconciled its party elite with grassroots conservatism.

Some accuse Preston Manning of destroying Canadian conservatism for 11 years. The truth is quite different. Canadian conservatism had already long been on a course toward its own self-destruction. If anything, Preston Manning put Canadian conservatism on the road to what it needed most desperately -- renewal.

And just as fringe political parties can be instrumental to such political renewal within a party, they can be instrumental renewal across Canadian politics as a whole.

Sometimes, the development of a fringe party reminds us of the breadth and depth of a political problem. Such was the case with the Bloc Quebecois.

Formed as a party intent on serving the cause of Quebec sovereingtism at the federal level, the Bloc has been equally a Quebecois protest party and a disruptive force in Canadian politics (how else could one legitimately regard a party formed with the intention of separating a region of the country from within that country's own federal legislature?).

The Bloc, like the Reform party, emerged out of disillusionment over the Mulroney government's constitutional misadventures. The Bloc, however, emerged out of protest of the rejection of the Meech Lake Accord -- a feat accomplished very narrowly through the noncompliance of Manitoba MLA Elijah Harper and Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells.

Many Quebeckers interpreted the rejection of the Meech Lake Accord as a rejection of Quebec itself. This perceived rejection would lend strength to the sovereigntist movement for the next 20 years.

Bouchard himself had actually left Mulroney's government -- in which he had served as Minister of the Environment -- after a commission chaired by Jean Charest suggested changes to the accord that Bouchard couldn't accept.

The rise of the Bloc Quebecois, and its continuing existence, should only continue to remind to remind Canadians that the puzzle of Quebec's place in confederation has yet to be solved. Until it is solved, Canada's leaders cannot be content to rest on the laurels of two referendum victories.

Some commentators argue that the days of the Bloc Quebecois -- and its provincial counterpart, the Parti Quebecois -- are numbered. They frequently cite the rapidly diversifying Quebec population, the aging of the pure laine Quebecois population, and strengthening sentiments in favour of Canada as evidence that the BQ is already on its way into the long night.

They point to Stephane Dion's Clarity Act as having handcuffed the Pequiste leadership from posing the sovereignty question to Quebeckers under deceptive terms.

This may well be so. But it doesn't solve the problems underlying Quebec separatism, and the existence of the Bloc Quebecois stands as a reminder that, despite the near cataclysm that resulted from Mulroney's attempts to renegotiate the Constitution, some Canadian leader will eventually need to be brave enough to try once more.

The very existence of fringe parties speaks to us, if we listen closely enough. These parties are all too often riding the edge of a wave of pervasive discontents. Ignoring such discontents does a disservice to Canadians everywhere, as it allows these problems to fester.

Once, ignorance of these problems destroyed one of Canada's traditional political parties. On another occasion, it almost destroyed the country.

Paul Rutherford may be content so simply wish these problems away by wishing away their political representatives.

Those of us with an eye on the bigger picture, however, know much, much better.

So Cozy...

Alberta and Saskatchewawn natural bedfellows

When Alberta premier Ed Stelmach and Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall teamed up to oppose a proposed inter-provincial cap-and-trade scheme on greenhouse gas emissions it became apparent that a potent new political coalition had been formed.

The article, written by Murray Mandryk and published in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix and Regina-Leader Post, asks an interesting question: how did Alberta and Saskatchewan become so cozy in the first place?

"Here's one of the more intriguing "chicken or the egg" type of argument you'll hear on coffee row:

"Did this province elect a Saskatchewan Party government because we were already becoming more like Alberta, or has the election of a Saskatchewan Party government made this province more like Alberta?"

Regardless of which side of he debate you support, what's indisputable is the premise is that Saskatchewan has become more like Alberta."

Some residents of Saskatchewan may find the very premise to be alarming. In the same vein as Canadians who cry foul every time Canada inches too close to our southern neighbours for their liking, many of those who feel Saskatchewan's unique character -- as it were -- is threatened by too closely associating with the cowboys west of Lloydminster, they'll insist that too closely associating with Alberta somehow diminishes Saskatchewan.

Of course, there are some traits that Saskatchewan shouldn't be so eager to share with Alberta.

"More like it, mind you. Not exactly alike.

The outcome of elections in Saskatchewan, after all, are still not a foregone conclusion and will remain so for some time. This province also still has significantly deeper agricultural and small-town roots and significantly less urban pull than does Alberta (or any other province, for that matter)."

Indeed, democracy in Saskatchewan is much healthier than in Alberta.

During the 2007 provincial election, 76% of eligible voters reported to the polls, compared to the absolutely dismal figure of 41% in Alberta's 2008 election.

Saskatchewan does maintain a largely rural character, but a newfound determination to develop the province's considerable energy resources -- including oil sand reserves that may rival those in Alberta will inevitably change that. The kind of building projects necessary to support such development will require increased manufacturing capacity throughout Saskatchewan, particularly in the urban centers.

"Most significantly, Saskatchewan is the birthplace of the CCF-NDP and its social democratic influence isn't about to disappear anytime soon. Even at one of its historically low ebbs, the NDP still has 20 seats in the legislature and something close to 40 per cent of public support.

But it's also telling that on the very week that the NDP is celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Regina Manifesto, which urged the eradication of capitalism, the most exciting speculation within New Democratic ranks is the possibility of the return of a conservative-minded capitalist such as Dwain Lingenfelter to lead the party."

Certainly, being defeated after 16 years in power must certainly be deflating for the provincial NDP. Likewise, the party's federal prospects in the province are less than encouraging.

"That Saskatchewan's affinity for Alberta actually might have started under an NDP administration is more than a little ironic.

It was under former NDP premier Roy Romanow that deficit control, a curtailing of public investments and even income tax cuts really began. Romanow's successor as NDP leader and premier, Lorne Calvert, extended this agenda with cuts to the province's sales, business and corporate taxes."

Certainly, this would seem ironic if it weren't entirely in line with the political trends of the time.

Consider that Jean Chretien, one considered a stalwart of the liberal wing of the Liberal party, led a government that reduced the country's deficit drastically, and posted some of the only surpluses of the day in the Western World.

Chretien was responding to pressures being exerted upon his government by Preston Manning's Reform party, just as Roy Romanow -- and Lorne Calvert after him -- were responding to pressure being exerted by the upstart Saskatchewan party.

"This change under NDP governance happened at the same time that Saskatchewan's economic interests became more closely tied to the oil economy. The prospect of oil at nearly $100 a barrel was something that even an NDP government from this province could share eagerly with the Progressive Conservative government in Alberta.

It can be argued that Saskatchewan grew that much closer to Alberta with each dollar that a barrel of oil increased in price over the past four years. What's been bad for everyone else's economy has been great for ours, especially since the Saskatchewan Party's election win last November that has coincided with the price hike in a barrel of oil by $50."

It should be considered only natural that Saskatchewan and Alberta would grow closer considering the number of interests they hold in common. Both economies have constantly strengthened with the increasing value of oil and gas. Thus, as goes oil and gas will go the economies of Alberta and Saskatchewan -- although with some creative government and appropriate investment, this need not always be so -- and as goes the economy of Alberta or Saskatchewan will almost inevitably go the other.

"That said, Saskatchewan and Alberta today appear to be as closely bonded by political ties as economic ones. At least that's what some recent developments suggest.

The first ministers meeting in Quebec last week, where Premier Brad Wall and Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach found themselves at odds with their counterparts who were promoting cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions, was only the latest evidence of this emerging alliance.

We saw pretty much the same reaction from the two provinces to federal Liberal Leader Stephane Dion' Green Shift strategy, which takes square aim at Alberta and Saskatchewan's energy resources.

Stuck in the same foxhole and dodging bullets from eastern critics eager to portray Alberta and Saskatchewan as greedy, selfish and environmentally irresponsible, it's only natural that the two provinces would become that much closer.

That said, it's highly unlikely that an NDP government in Saskatchewan would have jumped into that same foxhole on the Green Shift or perhaps even on a cap-and-trade scheme."

Of course not.

It's easy to get along with your neighbours when you see eye-to-eye. And it would simply be less than reasonable to expect a Progressive Conservative government -- particularly one led by an individual like Ralph Klein -- to see eye-to-eye with an NDP government.

Likewise, there's nothing like an external threat -- say, that posed by a federal party with a history of confiscatory tax policies and a habit of breaking its promises -- to bring two provinces even closer together.

"The latest evidence of the bi-provincial political link came Monday with the Saskatchewan Party government signing on to Pacific North West Economic Region (PNWER) -- something the New Democrats of this province not only wouldn't do but would vigorously oppose, because they see it as precursor to joining the Trade and Investment Mobility Agreement reached by Alberta and British Columbia."

Then again, considering the vehemence of the NDP's opposition to NAFTA, it should be considered unsurprising that the NDP would decline to join an organization such as PNWER.

It's also less than surprising that a Saskatchewan party government -- considering that the Saskatchewan party was founded out of a coalition Progressive Conservatives and conservative-minded Liberals -- would be so eager to join.

It's also less than surprising that Alberta -- looking for any dance partner it can find in an effort to resist a potential replay of the infamous National Energy Policy -- would be so eager to get Saskatchewan on board.

"Lest there be any doubt about this newfound closeness, consider what deputy Alberta premier Ron Stevens said about sponsoring Saskatchewan's application to join the private-sector organization his province helped to create:

"I can tell you, as a neighbouring sister province, (Alberta has) seen under Premier Wall a change in attitude," Stevens said during Monday's PNWER press conference.

"The province now has a outward looking, engaging, active attitude and I think that Saskatchewan is going to be a robust, full member of this organization. We are all going to be beneficiaries of that."

Maybe the close bond with Alberta wasn't forged quite overnight. But make no mistake that Alberta and Saskatchewan have become closer than they've been in decades."

Certainly, Alberta and Saskatchewan have grown closer -- more than simply economically or politically.

Numerous residents of either province have migrated to the other over the past numerous years. In particular, there has been a strong trend of Albertans moving to Saskatchewan. And anywhere Albertans are moving in such numbers is almost inevitably due for a conservative resurgence.

In other words, it's no surprise that Alberta and Saskatchewan have become so cozy. Furthermore, it's about time.

Dion Digging for the Wrong Dirt

Worse things than largely benign Reform policy afoot

In his naivete, Stephane Dion probably imagines he's finally hit that home run he's been itching for.

In debate over controversial new immigration rules contained, of all places, in the 2008 federal budget, Stephane Dion drug some old Reform party immigration policies back from history.

How far in history? About 20 years.

The document, written by Stephen Harper while he was still serving as the policy chief for the then-fledgling Reform party, outlined the party's immigration policy.

"[This] may look like an attempt to deliver promises made by the Reform party 20 years ago," Dion insisted.

Yet, then one has to look more closely at the "smoking gun" that Dion seems to think he's uncovered.

"Immigration should not be based on race or creed, as it has in the past; nor should it be explicitly designed to radically or suddenly alter the ethnic makeup of Canada, as it increasingly seems to be," the document outlines.

The policy called for a number of changes to immigration policy, none of which are terribly malignant. It called for immigrants to have the necessary skills and training required by the job market. It insisted that immigration should serve an economic purpose. It suggested that family sponorships should be restricted to spouses and children under the age of 18 (parents, grandparents and extended family should be required to apply through regular channels). It also insisted that genuine refugees -- those who had legitimate cause to fear oppression -- be admitted to Canada.

The document also noted that the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution may have needed to be invoked in order to deal with illegal immigrants already landed in Canada -- something the government should be doing regardless.

The simple fact of the matter is that, whether supporters of the current government like to admit it or not, the current immigration bill is a failure of the big promise that the Conservative party campaigned on: accountability. More specifically, accountability's handmaiden, transparency.

One could not possibly argue that smuggling an immigration bill into a budget bill that anyone who's being paying attention over the past few months simply knew the Official Opposition wouldn't vote against represents anything even resembling transparency.

In all likelihood, one would have to expect the move was calculated in an attempt to avoid the criticism being directed at the party now.

It wasn't a wise decision. If anything, it only gives more ammunition to demagogues who want to insist the Conservative party has a hidden agenda. After all, it certainly looks that way.

It should be the lack of accountability and transparency that Dion is outraged about. Accusing a government that more than 400,000 foreigners into the country of having an anti-immigrant bias is simply too far off the mark.

This Just In: Garth Turner Still Doesn't Get It

Turner continues his obsessive feud with Preston Manning's ghost

When Garth Turner was expelled from the governing Conservative caucus just over a year ago, he feigned confusion over the matter -- even outrage.

At the end of the day, however, all too many Canadians knew precisely why he had been kicked out of caucus: that he engineered his own expulsion both by disregarding caucus rules and by helping foster a state of continuing conflict between himself as his ex-Reform party/Canadian Alliance colleagues.

At stake in the latter was his known disdain for what he had labeled HAH (Hats-and-Horses) Conservatives.

Now, unable to swallow his pride and his intellectual vanity, he sits on the other side of the aisle, banished to opposition benches with little hope of ever returning to government. In all likelihood, he will serve out the remainder of his career as an opposition blowhard.

One would think that perhaps Turner would, at some point, reevaluate where that vanity has led him.

But don't count on it. In a recent post at his blog Turner has proven himself all too eager to continue his Ahab-esque battle with the Great White political whale that has already taken his hand:

"Some suggest disgruntled Libs voted Green in this week’s by-elections to protest their own party. Be more aggressive, they urge. Kick Conservative ass.

Others decry a brief comment made here two days ago, chiding many people for simply staying home. Bad voters, I said, use it or lose it. The response: there’s nobody worth voting for.

In my mailbag, this letter from a voter, Ian, in Eastern Ontario. Not atypical of a few I’m getting:

"Dear Garth:

I recently became a new member of the Liberal Party. Sometimes I wonder why. Watching their performance in The House leaves a lot to be desired – skipping votes. I have been voting for the Liberal Party for nearly 60 years. My wife and I are among the many who lost in the Trust Unit fiasco. So much for Harper promises.

The main reason for this e-mail is The Finance Minister travelling about the Country advising Ontario is not the place to invest due to high taxes in the corporate field. Harper is now singing from the same song sheet. Moreover, Harper is merely a mouthpiece for Tom Flanagan. Small govenment, lower taxes, limited Govenment surplus, is the Flanagan manifesto. The Conservative (Reform-Alliance) Party objective to divide the Country. Much of the population cannot see this and do not care.

I do not know Stephane Dion. The information, I gather, is that he is a clever academic. I do, however, fear for his ability to lead the Party to a majority/minority Government. The Liberal Party has to get a more forceful message regarding exactly what is happening with our present governing power. I do appreciate in general the media coverage are not helpful towards Mr. Dion. Coverage from CTV (Conservative Television) including Duffy, Fife, Oliver et al.

Question Period in the House is disgraceful. The Speaker appears to have no control. The failure to answer questions, lying and insults are disgusting.

Again, I fear Mr. Dion’s ability to lead to a Liberal success are about as hopeful as the “South will rise again”!!!!!!"

Dear Ian. I’m glad you wrote. I’m glad you joined the party. Now you have a voice in changing it. As you decide how, let me give you a couple of thoughts from a guy who is also a new member – just over a year now.

The Liberals formed government for thirteen years and did much good, mostly (to my mind) turning a $40 billion deficit into a $14 billion surplus, taking inflation and interest rates to new lows and paving the way for an economic boom. Even as a PC during that time, I applauded the results.

Politically, well, another story. Face it – getting Libs into power was not rocket science while the PCs disintegrated, thanks to the efforts of the wingnuts in the Reform Party, which was basically unelectable. Given that, Liberals stopped being hungry, stopped being aggressive, stopped being insanely partisan, and concentrated on governing."

Sadly, this is a fairly predictable response among many disgruntled former Progressive Conservatives. Much like Liberals can't take responsibility for their own defeats, instead blaming the NDP essentially for existing, Turner, Joe Clark and his merry band of embittered demagogues blame the Reform party for their 1993 defeat -- more or less because they existed.

But it's funny how, even 15 years after that ignominious defeat, Turner can't accept responsibility for the fact that the Progressive Conservatives, through their utterly unapologetic attempts to placate Quebec at the expense of the rest of the country, in many ways made it utterly impossible for conservative-minded Canadians in many parts of the country to continue to support them.

Somehow, in Garth Turner's mind, the plebes in Western Canada were wrong to seek out and support political candidates who shared their vision of what Canada's future should be. Instead, they should have swallowed their principles and continued to vote for a party that no longer embodied them.

"Meanwhile, Conservatives (which is what those Reformers are now called), evolved in an opposite direction. Unburdened with power, they spent every moment plotting how to get it. They organized the shorts off their membership. They learned how to communicate effectively. They got very good at spin, attack, derision, debate, character assassination, smear, media relations, innuendo, tactics, tour and messaging. They set up a killer data system. They hired a mess of political field operatives. They honed a platform. They learned retail politics. They probed the many weaknesses of the guys in office. They hired tough nuts like Doug Finley and Ian Brodie to run the back shop. They lived and ate and drank and slept and breathed and peed politics. And they won."

"Spin, attack, derision, debate, character assassination, smear, media relations, innendo, tactics, tour and messaging."

Sounds an awful lot like the lot that Turner has thrown in with.

It's ironic that Turner would complain that the Conservative party -- or in his words, Reform party 3.0 -- has become adept at character assassination considering that the party to which he currently belongs actually mastered the act.

For proof of this, one really need look no further than the mass character assassination carried out against Preston Manning and the Reform party. Repeated insinuations of racism against the party -- often carried out through proxies and in open defiance of the fact that Manning acted decisively to rid the party of racists -- made the Reform party unelectable in many parts of the country.

Which was precisely how Garth Turner liked it at the time, and he's almost certainly longing for those good ol' days.

"Today Stephen Harper is therefore not only prime minister, but in charge of a bare-knuckle brigade of streetfighters who still dream nightly of standing over the torn-asunder carcasses of Liberals, holding aloft their still-beating hearts. Or close. You get my drift, Ian?

Thus, you might imagine the work I’ve been doing for the last few months as a special advisor to Stephane Dion. Feeding him raw steak. Hormone injections. Weights. Anger training. New glasses with hidden electrodes. Bought him a Harley. The works. When the House resumes March 31st, I’ll have the guy so hepped up he’ll rip out his desk during QP and crush Stephen Harper with it like a western pine beetle. Let the Speaker look irritated and call, “Order, order!” Bug juice on the mace. Bug bits everywhere.

Oops. Sorry Ian, forgive me. I had a CPC moment there."

The poor attempts at humour aside, Turner then indulges himself in a moment of comfortable delusions:

"Truth be told, Libs suck at political viciousness. Many of my colleagues are content to wait until the great pendulum of common sense swings back into their column, at which time they will continue to govern. They feel Mr. Harper and his knuckle-draggers will expose themselves for all the world to see. In due course, they reason, natural justice will prevail."

There you go again, Garth -- making friends with your former colleagues.

All joking aside, does Turner really not consider this ad, in which the Liberal party suggested that Stephen Harper is a jack-booted fascist in the making, politically vicious?

But don't ask Turner about that one. Turner's only concerned with Conservative attack ads.

"Those who actually know Stephane Dion never stop being impressed. They see a guy driven not by a naked quest for power, but by ideas and principles and the passion to pursue them. Even when sand is being kicked in his face. Even when not a day passes when the prime minister and the entire Government of Canada is obsessed with destroying him. Even when people who have never shaken his hand, and never will, pronounce him from their armchairs, brandishing remotes, as gutless.

Dion is anything but. It amazes me a guy of his background, morality and intellect would put up with this crap. After all, he could still be in the world of academia, applauded daily by his students, courted by premiers and prime ministers for his advice, adding to our collective wisdom and having a nice life with Janine and Kyoto.

So, we’re all better off that he perseveres. He stands for environmental rescue, social justice, economic sanity and the big ideas the rest of us miss. Mostly, he represents hope.

Not hope that he’ll be as mindlessly partisan, brutally aggressive or unashamedly ambitious as Mr. Harper, but rather, Ian, that he will never."

Indeed, Turner's obsessive attempts to settle the score with his alleged Reform party protagonists has led him into a realm of sheer fantasy.

Stephane Dion stands for environmental rescue: not when he had the opportunity.

Stephane Dion stands for social justice: when he trots out a 40-year-old unkept Liberal campaign promise.

Stephane Dion stands for economic sanity: when he suggests we should handcuff our economy with a carbon tax that will do little to curb climate change.

Since receiving the boot from the government caucus, Garth Turner really does seem to have slowly lost his grip on reality. Sadly, a good deal of that stems from his own political vanity -- the same vanity shared by Joe Clark, David Orchard and Danny Williams. He's not merely a conservative, he's a progressive conservative, they add with a wink.

He, like Orchard, still hasn't come to grips with why Canada's Progressive Conservative party wound up in the predicament it did: because so-called progressive conservatives lost touch with their supporters. Because they lost the faith.

He, like Clark, still hasn't recognized that in order for conservatism to remain a viable, potent political force in Canada, people like himself need to work with conservatives who don't share all of his views, instead of insisting that they be banished to the political fringe so that he never need dirty his hands working with them.

Brian Mulroney swallowed his pride. So did Peter MacKay. The day that Garth Turner can find it in himself to do the same, maybe he'll finally start taking responsibility for his own failings. Maybe he'll even convince Stephane Dion to do likewise.

But in the meantime, Turner just doesn't get it. And he probably won't get it any time in the near future.

Alberta InDecision '08: The Long and Short of Negative Campaigning

May be little wonder why Albertans didn't vote

In a recent post at his new blog, Bruce Stewart seems to have formulated what is at least a partial explanation for why so few voters (41% in 2008) bother reporting to the ballot box.

"All the incessant posturing, pre-electioneering, shouting, etc. that is modern politics in the age of the twenty-four hour news cycle, the spinmeisters, political consultants, and so on — all of which is focused on hard, fast, negative sound-bites — has alienated the electorate. The parallel to this, for those of us who have worked in and around the computer industry, was the late 1980s, when then “no one ever got fired for buying” giant IBM was almost universally disliked, mistrusted, yet (when a decision needed to be made) rewarded, for lack of an alternative. Alternatives are not a substitution of one company for another; they are a shift in the paradigm of use. When it came — with LANs, Windows 3.1, and the client/server computing model in and around 1992 — an earthquake occurred. IBM was rocked and spent years reinventing itself. (There are those who think this is about to happen to Microsoft in turn. We shall see.)

What this means is that the problem with politics has practically nothing to do with who the leaders are! The Liberals, for instance, will see no real gain by dumping Stéphane Dion for another leadership choice. Alberta PCs may be led by a less than stellar leader in Ed Stelmach — I expect the negative comments about him and his actions to begin again immediately — but that’s not the point.When the problem is the way we handle politics in the public arena, leaders are irrelevant."

While it seems counter-intuitive (in fact, Canadian politics seem to be obsessed with party leaders) a quick overview of recent Canadian political history actually demonstrates precisely the opposite.

Consider, in particular, the federal Conservative party. Then consider the criticisms directed at Preston Manning when he was leader of the Reform party, and Stockwell Day when he was leader of the Canadian Alliance. The criticisms directed against the three are essentially the same: "too right-wing, too religious, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-French and will dismantle our cherished social programs".

This despite the fact that Harper and Day both speak fluent French, all three led the most diverse caucuses in Parliament of their time, and Preston Manning once paid for an African immigrant's wedding -- after helping him find his plane to Edmonton (he almost accidentally boarded a plane to Winnipeg instead).

Yet none of that mattered. Racism, sexism, homophobia and religion (there are still a number of ideologues about who throw a shit fit if Stephen Harper so much as says "god bless Canada") remain the tired old predictable epithets hurled at conservative leaders in Canada.

During this week's elections in Alberta, the predictable negative campaigning model was predictably at the forefront.

Albertan opposition groups have refined negative campaigning down to an art. Consider the following ads:



The idea, apparently, is that the now-defunct Albertans for Change spoke to every Albertan in the province, and found that none of them trust Ed Stelmach.

And if you believe that, the same people probably have a house in Fort McMurray they'd like to sell you -- a real bargain, too.



Likewise, it's funny that a group calling itself "Albertans for Change" would criticize Stelmach's plan for wanting to change too much. They really should have called themselves "Albertans for Change... not so much".

Previous ads for the group (seemingly no longer available via YouTube) actually went a step even further and seemed to suggest that oil and gas royalties were not merely uncollected, but had "gone missing" (read: were stolen).

Add all of this to the ludicrous episode in which a former U of A Student's Union executive misappropriated Stelmach's name in order to promote his blog, and the prevalence of negative political campaigning and political stunting in Alberta becomes prevalent.

But then compare that to the criticisms of Stelmach's predecessor, Ralph Klein: he, too, was accused of having no plan.

Different leaders, same criticism. Then again, having invested so much time and effort in formulating these criticisms in the first place, why would these individuals want to go back to the drawing board?

But the inherent laziness of these individuals does more than simply save them the trouble of matching a new criticism to a new leader. It also results in stale politics, wherein the same old, same old campaign is continually trotted out, just with some new window dressing.

Maybe Albertans aren't voting out of sheer boredom with the process.

Clearly, something new is needed. Bruce Stewart elaborates:

"I sometimes think the Green Party has it precisely backward (and I speak of them here because Green is as much a movement beyond normal politics as it is an attempt to enter the fray in the chambers of government). It’s not that we need another party. Instead we need a new politics. Part of the mania for Barack Obama that we see south of the border — and the original Tony Blair in Britain — and recently, Nicholas Sarkozy in France — and ever (malheursement) Pierre Trudeau in 1968 — is that they didn’t need to campaign from the sound-bite, negative, “my opponent est un gros enmerdement” point of view. They could strike out positively and say nothing about their opponents. (”Vote for us because of a, b & c” is so much more appealing than “Vote for us because we’re not those lying, cheating, stealing cretins”. So is treating the electorate as thinking, rational adults who are capable of responding to a sense of history, of vision and of direction rather than scaring them into taking action to avoid their fate.) That’s not to say that at various points in the campaign the experts didn’t create negative views, and the sniping didn’t begin — clearly it has — nor that the public is fooled with the leader keeping to high road while his or her entourage gets down in the mud (it is not; merde can be smelled even when the front-man’s shoes don’t stink)."

Of course, a lot of this helps dispel a myth regarding politics: that once upon a time politics was about ideas, and that voters were treated as adults. Politicians campaigned based on ideas, principles and policy, and refrained from smearing their opponents.

Of course, a brief study of history reveals the precise opposite. Politics used to be even dirtier than they are today. Giving voters free whiskey was once perfectly acceptable.

The old politics, however, are often mythologized as more refined and more mature, and the new politics as dirty, vicious affairs wrought with muckraking.

So what it turns out that what we really have is a bizarre vicious cycle in which the old politics masquerading as the new politics, making us long idealistically for the old politics.

Stewart is precisely right: what we really need is newer politics which, ironically, would finally be the new politics.

Politicians who deliver us this new political paradigm should almost certainly be rewarded -- if the electorate still cares enough to reward them when they finally come along.

And in Canada, we need this rather badly. The Alberta election may just turn out to be the greatest evidence of we have seen of this in a long time:

"Periodically institutions need reform. This is because, as Thomas Langan showed in his book Tradition and Authenticity in the Search for Ecumenic Wisdom, the institution takes on a life of its own separate from the tradition that gave it life. The faith yields the Church, and by so doing people in charge of the churches have interests in their roles separate from those required of them by the faith. The desire for societal self-government yields parliaments and assemblies, and those who sit in them have interests (for their factions, as the first American President, George Washington, noted) that diverge from what the process of governance requires of them. So it goes, everywhere.

Our political institutions are in advanced decay. They have been subordinated to parties, and those who cling to the apron-strings of power these represent.

What this electorate — and I care little whether we speak of your municipal government, your provincial government or institutional Ottawa — is most waiting for is the person who will come to politics to reform the system. Reform, in this sense, need not mean “a new political faction”: it could come just as easily by working within an existing party. But it would be a reform, indeed, of how politics is conducted. They would take the Kinsellas with their “ass-kicking”, and the Carvilles and Morrises with their “triangulation” and “it’s (just) the economy, stupids”, and others of their kind and boot them overboard. They would stop playing to the polls, or even worrying about them — pollsters need not apply for work here. They would treat their counter-parts with respect and speak firmly but quietly about matters of import rather than seizing upon the “issue of the day” or seek to blow up the scandal du jour (really, what’s the difference between that and the pumping and dumping which our Securities Laws say is illegal around the stock market?) in their place. They would assume in everything they do that their potential voters are capable of following complex issues with complex argumentation and rational (i.e. not simplistic) solutions on offer.

They would, in other words, offer an adult in place of the schoolyard bullies we must listen to today."

Unfortunately, even those who have the acumen to offer us such change can all too often go astray. As, sadly, was the case with Preston Manning:

"Would they win at first? Oh, heavens, no! — for staying the course is part of proving that this is reform and not merely a dash of lipstick on the same old street-walking. But there comes a tipping point, and then the whole structure from before comes tumbling down. When they do, it will wipe much of the past out of existence.

This is what Preston Manning didn’t know and lost sight of (and why I could not support his Reform Party). This is what is yet to be born. This is why Albertans told pollsters they wanted change and then voted for more of the same. This is why Federal politics remains deadlocked; why BC’s politics are frozen almost to the point where Gordon Campbell could do anything and not fear returning to the other side of the House; why Dalton McGuinty exists in the face of Caledonia, incredibly bad economic management and the destruction of a province and why, in the face of everything, Vancouver will probably return Sam Sullivan and Toronto David Miller to continue their reigns of error."

Manning, with his demotic political philosophy -- the belief that all disagreements can be amicably resolved if only the common sense of the common people is trusted -- was willing to offer a bridge between left-wing and right-wing ideologies in Canada. He offered precisely the kind of alternative that Canadian politics desperately needs.

But in time, the carrot and stick of Canadian politics, power, and the ability to enact his agenda turned Manning away from this path. At the end of the day, Manning all too often appeared to be an ordinary run-of-the-mill politician.

Bruce Stewart is precisely right: when Canadians are finally provided an alternative to the old-as-new politics, the results will be undeniable.

Alberta could prove to be an ideal testing ground for such an alternative, but the question remains: is anybody willing to take the risk of offering it?

Speaking of Scary...

Jack Layton wants a referendum on Senate abolition: Who really has a hidden agenda?

Jack Layon and the NDP want to abolish Canada's Senate. This is not a secret.

However, the impetus behind their desire to abolish it, as well as Layton's recent suggestion that a referendum be held on Senate abolition, just may have something to do with the best-unkept secret in Canadian politics.

"It's a 19th-century institution that has no place in a modern democracy in the 21st century," Layton announced. "It's undemocratic because [senators] are appointed by prime ministers who then are turfed out of office. But these senators end up leaving a long shadow of their continued presence in the legislative context."

Which is all true. But there are plenty of proposals on the board -- virtually all them posited by either the Conservative party under Stephen Harper, or by the Reform party under Preston Manning -- that would address precisely these concerns. The NDP could help fix these problems by supporting Senate reform.

So why abolish the Senate?

For Layton, a good deal of this comes down to his support for proportional representation -- which ironically was recently rejected via referendum in Ontario.

"Mr. Harper shows no interest in compromise with any other party," Layon says. "Certainly not ours. We were successful in getting language into the speech from the throne saying there would be continued work towards democratic reform, in particular, proportional representation. But the moment the speech was finished being read that was the last we heard of it. We've continued to press the government to take action but they've shown zero interest."

"We believe that on a piecemeal basis, electing senators while leaving a whole bunch of appointed senators there for however many more years makes no sense whatsoever. In fact it gives more potential legitimacy to an illegitimate entity from two centuries ago."

"What we should do is bring in proportional representation that allows every vote to count," Layton insists. That will also mean that the need for more representation "from British Columbia- given its growth in population- can be honored, and it doesn't have to be at the expense of Prince Edward Island. Nobody's saying they have to have fewer seats."

It has long been speculated that proportional representation would alter the Canadian political landscape by virtually eliminating the possibility of majority governments (not necessarily the greatest loss) and nearly guarantee a governing hegemon of left-leaning political parties. Such commentators point toward the proclivity of most Canadians to vote in favour of either outright left-wing parties (the NDP), left-leaning parties (the Liberal party), or allegedly left-wing parties (the Bloc Quebecois).

Given the extreme unlikelihood that any potential governing party would ever get into bed with a party that primarily wants to break the country up, this scenario virtually guarantees the NDP the perks that come with continually playing the role of the kingmaker. No wonder they're so excited about proportional representation.

This being said, one has to wonder why Jack Layton and the NDP are so eager to do away with Canada's "house of sober second thought".

Frankly, it makes one suspect that maybe, just maybe, there are some unpleasant surprises stuffed into the NDP's vision for Canada, just outside the party's platform, and away from public view.

Not only does the NDP support an electoral system that would potentially allow them to ram such a hidden agenda through, but they also support the abolition of anyone who could stand in their way.

Throughout its history, the NDP has been in favour the nationalization of various industries, and the withdrawal of Canada from various military alliances and mutual defense agreements, like NATO and NORAD. If given a free hand to try and force the government to withdraw from these arrangements, and slash-and-burn several free trade agreements, the NDP could drastically change Canada's position on the world stage -- and not for the better.

Especially if there were no one or nothing to stand in their way.

And these are merely things that we know the party supports. An NDP empowered to govern Canada through proportional representation could prove an excellent platform for varying extremist groups known to exist within the NDP to carry out their programs of social engineering, with almost certainly destructive results.

And no one to stop them.

However, such are the risks of adopting a unicameral legislature, a feature that typically exists only in small, ethnically heterogenous democracies such as New Zealand and Greece.

Layton also overlooks the protection the Senate is meant to provide to regional groups.

"One of the most important roles of the second chamber, in all countries with bicameral legislatures, is to provide regional representation and genuine protection for minorities, thus minimizing the risk of what can be called the tyranny of the majority," writes Progressive Conservative senator Serge Joyal.

Naturally, this has broken down before, as was the case with Pierre Trudeau's National Energy Program. But one also has to wonder what kind of plans Jack Layton would have for traditionally-Conservative-voting Alberta if all he needed to do was outvote the opposition in parliament.

Last but not least, considering that the Senate would actually be the preferable venue for proportional representation (as is the case in France), Layton's insistence that it should be abolished becomes very suspcious, indeed.

There is more to Jack Layton and the NDP's desire to abolish the senate than contempt for so-called "obselete" institutions of governance.

There's something he isn't telling us, and it just might have something to do with the pack of left-wing extremists just barely contained behind the NDP's back curtain.

What Is It With Warren Kinsella and Racism?

Kinsella falls back on old standby in campaign against John Tory

If there's any accusation against conservative political candidates that has become predictable in Canada over the last 15 years, its racism.

All one need do is consider a recent accusation levied against Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory by Canada's king of the hatchet job, Warren Kinsella. In an 18 July post, Kinsella posts a picture of Tory meeting PC candidate Randy Hillier, who Kinsella describes as "anti-gay, anti-native, anti-urban".

Gotcha.

We said we’d get a photo of anti-gay, anti-native, anti-urban Randy Hillier with his leader, John Tory. And we did.

(And check out the sign. That's Tory about to speak to, or having just spoken to, a rabidly far-right-wing group. It means these two have been pals for a long time. Interesting, no?)

Reproduced here, for the readers' benefit is the photograph in question.



Now, the fact that the photo seems to feature the back of Hillier's alleged head notwithstanding (the individual presumed to be Hillier is wearing red suspenders, just as in the other photo), the banner that Kinsella refers to actually promotes the Ontario Landowner's Association, a group that promotes property rights.

While indulging themselves in gloomy talk about all sorts of injustices ,whether real or imagined, ("Throughout human History there are eras when every society experiences the darkness of injustice and the long shadows of oppression blanket the landscape...") the allegedly "rabidly far-right-wing group" is really nothing more than a group of farmers standing up for their own interests, many of which are directly linked to the land on which they earn their living, and depend upon for their livelihood.

What is most intriguing is Kinsella's accusations of racism, particularly Hillier being allegedly "anti-native". Yet, Hillier's actual comments on natives are much more revealing:

"The owner or direct user is the one who knows best on how to take care of their property, land and how to solve a problem.

Example... An example is our native North Americans, who have for over 5000 years trapped and fished as a way of surviving. Then some bureaucrats in Ottawa or Toronto suggest that they knew better, and imposed rules and regulations as to hunting and trapping without consequence to the bureaucrats but certainly to the aboriginals.

The aboriginal who hunts and fishes everyday to survive is a far more knowledgeable than a bureaucrat who does not."

Seems much more pro-native and anti-bureaucrat than anything.

Yet, accusations of racism have been very typical of Kinsella.

Consider, for example, his very worthwhile book, Web of Hate. While mostly a very valuable source of information about racial extremists in Canada, Kinsella often goes out of his way to use the book to lob accusations of racism at the then-premier opposition to the then-governing Liberal party, the Reform party.

P.243 Along with an anti-Semitic column by former Texas KKK Grand Dragon Louis Beam Jr., the August 1992 issue [of Up Front] carried a lengthy account of Wolfgang Droege's involvement with the Reform party. In late February 1991, Bill Dunphy exposed in the Sun the fact that Droege and four other Heritage Front activists maintained memberships in Toronto-area riding associations. Immediately after, Reform leader Preston Manning ordered the group expelled. (The following year, Manning also expelled Northern Foundation president Ann Hartmann for her racist views.) Two of the racists had been appointed to the executive of the party's Beaches-Woodbine riding association; one of these, Alan Overfield, had acted as security at various Heritage Front rallies and--as police learned in November 1992 when they raided his home--maintained a huge stockpile of weapons. ...Overfield had hired Droege to act as bodyguard for Manning at at least two Reform Party rallies in Toronto. Also involved in the riding association were Heritage Front members James Dawson and Nicola Polinuk, Don Andrews' estranged wife.

The expulsions enraged the Heritage Front, which saw the Reform Party's policies as very similar to, if not indistinguishable from, its own. How could a party that went on record opposing immigration policies that "radically alter" Canada's ethnic make-up turn around and shun a group like the Heritage Front, Droege asked, when the Heritage Front supports the very same approach?

...In a lengthy article about the Reform Party controversy, Up Front stated that Manning and his followers were a pro-white organization that lacked the courage of its convictions. 'The Heritage Front threatened the cozy power position of the establishment which Preston Manning and his sycophants now enjoy.' The article featured a cartoon of a smiling Droege beating Preston Manning in a boxing ring."

Kinsella's loaded musings in this passage ignore a number of fundamental facts. Consider the following passage, from Preston Manning's The New Canada, referring to the resolutions reached by the party's April 1991 Assembly:

P. 273 (The New Canada):"The party had already committed itself to a "balanced and positive immigration policy," which rejected the use of racial criteria designed to maintain a French-English ethnic balance in Canada. At Saskatoon, delegates made clear their disapproval of any appeal to race or creed in setting immigration policy. They also declared their support of a policy "accepting the settlement of genuine refugees who find their way to Canada. (A "genuine refugee" was defined as "one who has a well-founded fear of persecution and qualifies under the requirements of the United Nations Convention.")

It should be noted that the racial immigration policies the party rejected were actually originally drafted by Kinsella's own party, by the pen of Clifford Sifton.

However the Heritage Front could have drawn the conclusions they claimed to have drawn should be beyond anyone familiar with Reform party policy (actual Reform party policy, not the fictional Reform party policy hysterically concocted by its critics).

Yet, Web of Hate's commentary took an absurd turn in the book's conclusion:

P. 351 "Also joining the ranks of haters are a few members of ostensibly mainstream political organizations such as the Reform Party, some of whose activists are inreasingly associated with extreme expressions of bigotry and intolerance. To his credit, Reform Party leader Preston Manning expels these individuals whenever the media bring their existence to his attention. But the question Manning has yet to answer, of course, is this: if this party is not racist, why are so many racists attracted to it?"

Kinsella works very hard to turn this passage of the book addressing Manning's efforts to rid the Reform party of racism into a partisan attack. Kinsella refuses to allow Manning's efforts to demonstrate a lack of tolerance for racism.

It's a simple credo for Kinsella: the opposition can do no right, no matter what.

While not only overlooking his own party's many instances of racism--Sifton's being the best historical example--Kinsella overlooks the fact that subverting new political organizations has always been a key tactic of far-right racists. Whether or not the Reform party held any direct appeal for racists, racists would have tried to hijack the party nonetheless. Kinsella's accusations of racism are not so well founded, and are merely partisan.

Which is unsurprising, considering that he devoted an entire section in his book Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics to narcissitically grading his fellow media commentators, giving those who best criticized opponents of the Liberal party As, and those who criticized the Liberals poor grades.

Kinsella has refined the accusation of racism into a mere political tactic. By reducing it so, he only degrades the import of racism to all Canadians. Kinsella should remember that, as all of Canada's political parties have produced racist incidents, racism is not a political issue--it's a social issue.

If Kinsella were really so concerned about racism, he wouldn't work so hard to use a political party leader meeting one of his candidates--how unthinkable!--as ill-defined proof of racism that doesn't seem to really exist.