Twenty years ago, the federal Progressive Conservative (PC) Party merged with the Canadian Alliance. How did the merger impact Canadian conservatism?
First, it delivered the “conservative” brand into the hands of the Alliance’s leaders, who have used it to push their right-wing, populist agenda under the guise of mainstream conservatism.
Second, it destroyed the old federal PC party (1942-2003), which stood for moderate conservatism in Canadian politics.
And third, it allowed right-wing Alliance leaders to take control of the federal government between 2006 and 2015.
The Canadian Alliance (2000-03) was the successor to the Reform Party (1987-2000), a Western-based right-wing populist protest party founded by Preston Manning. The Reform Party included some socially reactionary elements. It was opposed to the federal PC party, in part because of its relative progressivism on social and economic issues.
The PC party’s ideological “big tent” always included elements of communitarianism and One Nation conservatism. In an effort to appeal to broader sectors of Canadian society (especially in Ontario and Quebec), the Reform Party reinvented itself as the Canadian Alliance in 2000. Three years later, in order to “unite the right” and defeat the federal Liberals, the leaders of the Canadian Alliance (Stephen Harper) and the federal PC party (Peter MacKay) merged their respective parties.
They founded the new Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) on Dec. 7, 2003.
The CPC is essentially a modified version of the Reform Party. Many of its influencers and leaders (for example, Manning, Harper, Pierre Poilievre, Andrew Scheer and Jenni Byrne) and much of its angry, resentful culture are derived from the Reform Party.
It is not healthy for Canada to have such a party as its governing alternative. If we define political moderation as the willingness to compromise, act pragmatically and take into account the aspirations of broad sectors of a society, then any functioning democracy needs both moderate conservatism and moderate liberalism to thrive. By alternating in government, moderate conservatives and moderate liberals generate a “creative friction” that helps society develop within stable parameters, eschewing extremism (for example, like the centre-right CDU and the centre-left SPD in West Germany).
Progressive conservatism is a distinctly Canadian political philosophy, more similar to traditional U.K. or European conservatism than to modern American right-wing conservatism. Progressive conservatism’s ideological roots are separate from the right-wing populism that gave birth to the Reform Party.
Progressive conservatism stood for gradual progress and rejected both radical-right and radical-left policy solutions. The PC governments led by Joe Clark (1979-80), Brian Mulroney (1984-93), and Kim Campbell (1993), while attempting to streamline the federal government and revitalize the economy, protected the large-scale social safety net programs established during the postwar era.
The CPC founded by Harper and MacKay still struggles to gain traction in urban areas and Quebec, partly because many voters fear its hard-right, populist approach to policy topics such as climate change and various hot-button social issues. As we move into 2024, we can expect Poilievre to continue using populist slogans that present simplistic solutions to complex questions, like rising housing costs. While Poilievre’s populist tone may seem innovative, at some level, it harkens back to the Reform Party’s populism. His belligerent approach toward political opponents, key public institutions and the media also represents a continuation of the political culture inherited from the Reform Party and Harper.
In 2003, many Progressive Conservatives (myself included) supported the merger because we thought it would be a pragmatic way of helping conservatives form government soon. By tying our fate to the Reformers, we ditched our progressive conservative principles and ensured that, for a whole generation, power would be wielded either by Reformers posing as conservatives (2006-15) or by Liberals (2015-present).
For right-wing reactionaries who wanted to take control of the entire centre-right in Canadian politics, the merger has been very beneficial. For traditional and moderate conservatives, the merger has been a tragedy.
Michael Huenefeld was an activist in the federal Progressive Conservative Party from 1998 to 2003. He has also been involved in Vancouver municipal politics and provincial politics in B.C. In 2022, he volunteered for former premier of Quebec Jean Charest’s Conservative Party leadership campaign. In 2002, he received an award from former prime minister Joe Clark for outstanding service to the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and its B.C. council.
A French-language version of this article has been published by Winnipeg-based newspaper La Liberté.
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Well, maybe silly people get
Well, maybe silly people get away with saying silly things because, ultimately, the silly electorate elects silly people. This could be because fewer half-way intelligent people, who also actually believe in the public good, are running for office.
I'm not sure if things have actually changed in parliament, but it does seem that we have fewer notable people there to respect and take seriously. I also get the impression that some seek the job simply to impress their peers.
As a start to fix things, I'd vote to have video cameras removed from the Commons. I'd also like to see professional development courses offered to all MPs/ Senators on parliamentary procedure (they probably have such things already but they don't appear to have been terrible effective) and, especially, debating skills.
An interesting anecdote:
An interesting anecdote: Reform and Canadian Alliance joined together in name at one point, calling them selves the Canadian Reform Alliance Party. Imagine hapless luminaries like Stockwell Day (remember him?) in the upper oblivious echelons of the CRAP opposition ... or gawd forbid, a CRAP government.
It didn't take long to go PC after much laughter echoed in newsrooms and political opponent's offices. Still, it's hard to fathom all the blaming and complaining emanating from conservative circles today after they actually had the federal government of Alberta led by one Stephen Harper for a decade. What, they need two decades of destruction now?
The best iteration of all
The best iteration of all though had to be the "Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party" though; the ponderous self-importance of conservatives is irrepressible.
In that same vein, I remind everyone of that cartoon in the Calgary Herald showing Manning standing at a crossroads sign with the caption: "We've come to a dork in the road." Far too benign an assessment in retrospect.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-party-changes-embarrassing-acronym-1....
I note in this article from 23 years ago that Manning insists this new party has broader appeal than either his Reform party or Joe Clark's Conservatives (Joe tried to call it) because it would rally the fiscal and SOCIAL conservatives in ALL provinces. That may have been the origin of the weasel term, "social conservatives" as a replacement but a dog whistle for "religious." True believers seem to feel the need to speak in code for some reason?!
Everyone jumped on that because bringing in the whole lake of fire/batshit reality of religion was deemed politically incorrect, which it still is, as I keep pointing out. Which is how these nutbar creeps have for all intents and purposes taken over Alberta, by hiding in plain sight, but still want more as the name "Take Back Alberta" indicates.
Living here has truly become unnerving; I think actual fascism is now possible. The cover of "Alberta Views" this month is "Democracy Under Threat."
Thanks for the laugh; I hadn
Thanks for the laugh; I hadn't previously been aware of that cartoon. Priceless. I'm very thankful for the terrific political cartoonists this country's political class has fertilized.
I'm not averse to considering that the lunacy in Alberta (and elsewhere, to be fair) politics may be a symptom of a last gasp strategy by the current nabobs in oil and gas, or rapacious (as opposed to non-rapacious(?)) capitalists, generally. I spent 5 years in Calgary not that long ago and know that amongst the sticky troglodytes lives a solid core of thinking people. That core may, in fact, be increasing in number.
Here's hoping!
I think you have a valid
I think you have a valid point about fascism...IF they are allowed to take Alberta further down into that pit.
This is why fascisistic tendencies need to be stood up to. Cowering in fear of "inflaming" the little horde of extremists taking over the province, overusing the words "Constitution" and "Western alienation" as cudgels to get their way is not going to work well for anyone. Appeasement is a temporary bandage on a long festering sore. That sore must be exposed, examined for what is really is, lanced, drained and treated.
Remember that the Ottawa convoy meant business, but ultimately failed as the city, sympathetic conservative police services and the Canadian public finally lost patience with the lawbreaking and shut them down in three locations across the land.
The extremists played their best hand in several urban and border blockades, and lost. One small group at the Coutts border crossing even had guns. Today all major players are not just facing long trials and jail sentences, but their core beliefs and motivation is being uncovered for what it is: political / personal unhappiness founded on the quicksand of conspiracies and religion. They don't even have a Canadian messiah.
Threats of separation used to get goodies from Ottawa worked to a point, and many mainstream journos have always councilled appeasement, not because of any legit claims, but iout of fear of the threat.
Think it through. Separation and deeper forms of "alienation" require participation of the majority of the people. Once again, standing up to 50 years of rhetoric and threats with the rhetorical question, "Are you willing to give up your Canadian citizenship?" will garner a long pause that will reveal to all, I believe, the limits to their so far largely successful narrative.
I live here, and don't
I live here, and don't appreciate the suggestion that I "think things through." Agreed that the play was made by these thugs who are now being processed under the law (like Trump) but it still had an effect on the likelihood of mandates and masking protocols as an option, and created the solidarity of martyrs for freedumb.
And the Canadian messiah could be seen as Poilievre, while here it's the home-schooled god boy David Parker.
So these guys are on the move, covertly as usual, but the NDP fundraising e-mails keep mentioning "dark money." And they're making structural changes in an attempt to bulletproof their agenda, a new thing the Liberals are also having to do.
Health care is the focus here at the moment, and it's quite alarming because we all know about the "shock doctrine." Deena Hinshaw was summarily fired by Smith right off the bat, went to B.C. for awhile and then was hired by Indigenous Wellness Core here after the usual procedures, only to be blocked by "AHS." Health care is being divided and conquered and legislation has been passed where the cabinet now makes decisions formerly made by a public health officer. The much respected Dr. Tailfeathers resigned over the blocking but the "ethics commissioner" just cleared it within the financial focus of her narrow inquiry but Tailfeathers says "that doesn't absolve the government."
The health minister is a woefully ignorant pro-life Catholic woman with 7 children who, when asked about getting vaccinated, echoed Smith's proud declaration of having a good immune system, so a NO to that question.
And there's been an NDP motion to make any referendum "binding" that was refused. Not to mention using selective wording on the referendum itself to skew it.
We also all know that fascism creeps in the back or side door, and there's 3 years left to infiltrate at all levels, capturing all levels, stopping all checks and balances.
Thinking it through...not
Thinking it through...not meant for you, Tris, one who has clearly been thinking it through very deeply and who is outspoken.
It's a general comment to those who cower from hollow threats about separation/alienation. The threat makers really don't have a clue what real sovereignty entails, or the constraints. And today, have yet to reach Canada's line in the sand on fascism, another concept founded in a terrible history they never learned.
I lived in Alberta for nearly a quarter century and visited my large extended family there several times a year in the years since moving to the coast. I pay attention and listen to various views on Alberta. I love my family there and the Alberta landscapes, but don't love the leadership. They might as well be from Mars, for their monolithic view of Alberta is so alien to the diverse reality they are so keen to convert to their views. Oil wealth has corrupted that leadership so much that it's become invisible, but exerts great influence on the electorate, of which about a third is actually progressive.
The great challenge that leadership has to face probably before 2030 is the international erosion of oil demand by cleaner and cheaper energy, like a single basket rotting out while carrying all the eggs. It's time to ignore the longstanding narrative and start making more baskets. A courageous new narrative is well overdue. Courageous because the vested interests and the angry crowd placed their identities on the increasingly discredited old story tainted with toxic hubris.
Appreciate that Alex, thank
Appreciate that Alex, thank you. 8 years ago we moved back here after a 10 year sojourn in Comox and Victoria because of two new granddaughters, so right after the NDP won, to our great surprise and delight. But in more than usual misogynist Alberduh that just rallied all the boys in the jacked-up black trucks big time. So when Rachel completely blew the last election, hers to lose, by not even MENTIONING climate chhange WHILE the north burned, a new leader is needed. David Climenhaga says he's heard she's planning to; we'll see. But this iteration of the United Clown Posse is at a whole other level. All this talk of the health system collapsing? We may be the first to explore what that could really look like, but there are many very good people involved regardless of the government and I do have some hope that Smith is SO stupid that the media will keep on her.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-party-changes-embarrassing-acronym-1....
The real culprit in all of
The real culprit in all of this is Brian Mulroney. In his quest to unseat the Liberals under John Turner after 16 years in power, with the brief interregnum of Joe Clark, he made a deal with the devil - more or less. Knowing that any party wanting to form government needs to carry a significant number of seats he did the calculus. He couldn't recruit from the ranks of the sitting government Quebec Liberals. The Union Nationale was a spent force. That left supporters of the Parti Quebecois. They allowed him to take advantage of Liberal fatigue while knowing that a ham sandwich labeled "Conservative" could win anywhere west of Ontario and east of the Rockies.
Shortly after winning the 1984 election, a number of issues arose where Westerners assumed that it was now their turn at the federal trough. Most notable was the decision on where to award the contract for maintaining the newly acquired fleet of CF-18 fighter aircraft. The choice was between Montreal and Winnipeg. When Mulroney bowed to the political reality that the keys to 24 Sussex depended on keeping voters in Quebec happy, the outrage on the Prairies was palpable. And someone was sitting in the wings, ready to seize his chance at the prize - Preston Manning.
The newly hatched Reform Party would never have had a chance without the choices Mulroney made. It took until the 1993 election for the Progressive Conservatives to completely implode, but it couldn't have been clearer than - as one comic put it - their move to new quarters in a "Two Tory building".
The rest - as always - is history.
Pierre "Skippy" Poilievre may call himself a Consrvative, but that is a flag of convenience. He is, and always will be, the leader of the Reform Party of Canada. And watch out if voters forget that come the next election
I think the overt history of
I think the overt history of the modern Conservatives, with the roots all in the Reform party, miss an important element--the influence on Canadian politics, and especially right wing Canadian politics, of the United States. It is huge, at all levels from the backroom dealings of the top elected Conservative politicians and the American campaign firms they hire, to the massive US influence on Canadian right wing churches and the US sources of Canadian alt-right social media.
Poilievre is more the leader of the Republican party of Canada than of the Reform party.
This is an interesting
This is an interesting article and I agree with much of the description of what happened. But I do want to note that I very much disagree with the political philosophy mentioned, that a polity needs to alternate between centre-right and centre-left politics because both are needed blah blah.
No, they aren't. The right has always been wrong, ever since such a thing as right and left have existed. They represent oligarchy, and all the bromides they have invented to sell oligarchy are false. We'd be a lot better off if the "Overton Window" moved waaaay to the left until the political discussion was mainly between something like the NDP at the rightmost end, arguing with more serious sort of "70s Sweden" social democrats at the "centre", with some socialists and social anarchists towards the left. (And the whole spectrum should be green)
Yeah, that'd be nice but I
Yeah, that'd be nice but I think politics will always be basically binary because of that permanently contrarian segment of society that unfortunately PERSISTS and is proudly, permanently pissy on principle due to the fact that in the context of democracy it's been repeatedly shown (and happily; it's what we cling to) to NOT be the majority.
This is exemplified most recently by the persistence of UCP's ridiculous bid to leave the CPP and/or Canada itself, despite it being something the majority clearly does NOT want, just like they DO want something done about climate change, and DO want a functional government enough to accept it growing larger when necessary, like now.
I see this pissy segment as having reached maximum toxicity of late because of circumstances and social media emboldening what is apparently the right wing's inherent oppositional defiance disorder, unwittingly sanctioned by both the left's refusal to call a spade a spade AND our own insistence on the status quo. (After all, "one party rule" conjures the entrenched, extreme idea of communism/socialism, warped though that is.)
But within that status quo, an "oppositional" political party is deemed essential to "hold the government to account." The respect for that concept is similar to the "sober second thought" idea of the senate, but bad faith rogue actors have upended that completely, thereby making a mockery of the whole system. Which is their compulsion.
Since this is absolutely unprecedented HERE, despite it having already happened right in our faces to our nearest neighbour, no one seems to know what the hell to do.
Again, what DO you do when one side of this system of parliamentary democracy that has always been able to assume BOTH sides are integral AND that both would follow the same basic principles has essentially staged (good word) a coup? Bill Maher has been calling it a "slow-moving coup" for years now.
I'd say the first thing to do is acknowledge what is actually happening so we can reclaim our democracy, and our secularism. Because the majority also does NOT want a theocracy EITHER.
Progressive conservatives owe
Progressive conservatives owe their party's demise very largely to our country's electoral system. In the three successive elections preceding the merger ('93, '97, and '00), the PC's finished a solid third in the popular vote but dead last in seats.
First past the post was especially cruel to the PC's in 1993, when despite winning more votes than the Bloc Québécois and more than twice as many as the NDP, the party was awarded only 2 seats to the Bloc's 54 and the NDP's 9.
Joe Clark correctly noted that in real terms the party was in much better shape than its seat count suggested, counselling patience and continued attentiveness to the needs of Canadians, but by late 2003 he'd exhausted his stock. With the FPTP table so badly slanted against them, the party was ready to gamble away its identity on a merger with the Alliance. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Your logic rings true. As
Your logic rings true. As long as FPTP reigns, then under the same logic a Liberal Democratic coalition makes sense and offers a genuinely effective counterweight to the CPC coalition.
The main problem is that party executives don't often operate on logic. Irrationality makes minor cross-party differences into chasms so deep and wide that consensus building is deemed impossible.
A coalition among moderates and progressives would, in my view, be a powerful force. I also believe the party identity most Liberals and NDPers hold close to their hearts need not be sacrificed. The current Lib-NDP agreement could be tinkered with and honed onto a true coalition with a best before date, say three years, and an automatic review process built in just before the expiry date. Three years could extend to another three years of Lib +
NDP cabinet ministers record much success in government policy they can agree on.
A dream? Perhaps. But one that's possible.
The first rendition of the
The first rendition of the combined party's new name was the most appropriate but for obvious reasons didn't last very long: Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party. The acronym "CCRAP", pronounced ",See Crap" fit perfectly, thought\.
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