Gabrielle Taylor, July 11, 2001, 8:57am
The whole idea of the Canadian Alliance was to Unite-the-Right, that is, attract those who would have supported the Conservative Party had it not run its election campaign so badly in 1992. Nationwide, in 1992, the Tories won two seats of a potential three hundred; this was largely and quite seriously attributed to their American campaign managers. This caused the party, which has been around since Canada was formed in 1867, to lose official party status, which meant no government funding or offices or access to the supply closet with all the good pens -- even though, as a sidenote, it received about two million votes and the Liberal party, with only twice as many votes, scooped up one hundred times as many seats.
A powerbase of over 120 years doesn't dissolve overnight, the Reform party reasoned, and we can assimilate them, thus marrying the cachet and old money with our brash young ambition. The Tories demurred and brought back Joe Clark, the only Tory PM in the last 25 years not voted "most hated Prime Minister" -- though he was only PM for a few months and that was mostly to teach Trudeau that we could leave him any time we liked.
The Reform party laughed at Joe, the media laughed at Joe, my card buddies laughed at Joe. Joe projects that he's the kind of guy you'd like in your family but maybe not running the country. He's too gosh darn nice, and there's just too much temptation to bully him.
Meanwhile, the Reform party held a convention, at which their founder and leader, Preston Manning, wanted a 66% confirmation at his leadership review, got 64%, said that wasn't good enough so he wanted a second ballot, and the party turfed him. (The same thing happened to Joe Clark in the late 70s. Moral: 64% is in fact good enough.)
Preston, who has since retired from politics, was replaced with ex-preacher Stockwell Day, and the Reform party was renamed the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance until a few hours later when the media pointed out that if they appended "Party" the acronym was CCRAP. Undaunted, they renamed themselves again to the Canadian Alliance and set forth under Stock. Stock gave a great big ex-preacher smile and waved for the Tories to come on over. A bunch of them, particularly high level Quebec caucus members, did. Joe shrugged. The Alliance numbers went startlingly high. The media made fun of Joe some more. Eventually they got tired of that, plus Stock was proving he was, to condense an eight-letter profanity, an even bigger duck.
Stock proposed, for instance, that there should be referendums on any question for which 3% of the Canadian voting population would sign a petition. The "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" program got over a million signatures proposing the federal government require Stockwell Day change his name to Doris. Stock suggested that "maybe a higher number would be better"; Rick Mercer said "You tell us what dumb made up number we have to reach and we'll meet it!"
Stock also got sued for libel, lost, had to apologize in public, and the taxpayers (who, after all, were dumb enough to elect him) had to pay both his legal costs and damages, running to almost $800,000. Stock promptly offered to mortgage his house to kick in $60,000 of it. As that settled, the RCMP started investigating whether the previous owner of his riding had sold it to him for $50,000. Not to mention the ongoing Alliance links to white supremacists and monoculturalists, or that during the last federal election the Alliance spent vastly more money than in the previous election and that the Liberal party still scored 170 seats of a possible 301.
Alliance numbers are now exceedingly poor (Stock having a 16% approval rating), whereas Tory numbers are climbing reliably. Joe amuses himself in public by commenting that he refuses to comment on how big an idiot Stock is, but he says he's willing to take any Alliance guys that come over and are willing to talk sense. He has an approval rating -- today at least -- of a whopping 60%. The new Tory platform is atypically left wing: tax breaks for students, a substantial increase in base pre-tax income, commitment to environmental cleanup. Joe's probably the only politician in Canada that people trust at all to not screw us over: the fear is more that he'll screw up. But, given what the Liberals have been doing to us, even uncharismatic-but-nice Joe is starting to look awfully good.
Now, I was asked about the state of the right in Canada on Friday, July 8, 2001. Saturday I started writing this essay. Saturday Stock proposed that the Alliance have a party-wide referendum on uniting the right. Stock's executive told him just to shut his damn mouth. Thirteen MPs have split off from Stock's leadership within the last few months, including Deborah Grey, who, combined with her father, occasional Deputy PM, occasional House Leader, Herb Grey, has somewhere around a hundred years political experience.
On Sunday, Stock offered to take a leave of absence if he could pick his successor and if the now-dubbed Rebel Alliance MPs would get their little asses back in caucus. The Rebels indicated they'd do no such thing, and by Sunday night, Stock decided he wasn't going to stop being leader after all, so nyah. On Monday, the Alliance president and the primary Alliance fundraiser quit, with the chief fundraiser saying "We don't see a high standard of honesty, integrity, ethics or competence". Yesterday Stock spoke at what was scheduled to be an Alliance rally, at which an audience member said -- but affectionately -- "He's made a mess on the floor and I'm afraid he's going to slip in it if he's not careful". Today word is the Alliance national council is considering a vote of non-confidence in the Rebels -- that Stock's only staying for the cash -- a cabal within the party is seeking an early leadership review to force Stock out -- and the party's about three million dollars in debt and nobody seems interested in giving them any more cash. But, it's not even 9am Atlantic time yet today, so anything can happen.