Posted on 06/26/2003 9:14:56 AM PDT by knighthawk
Many years ago, when I was barely a teenager, I stood at the back of a crowded hockey arena and listened to John Diefenbaker. In full oratorical flight the Chief was a sight to behold, his crinkly silver mane flying, his jowls shaking, his index finger pointing. "Give 'em hell, John," someone in the audience cried out; quick as a flash came Dief's response: "No, Sir, I don't give 'em hell; I just tell the truth, and to Liberals today it sounds like hell."
Maybe it was just immaturity, but back in that small town hockey arena I could believe that there was a realistic Conservative alternative, that the Liberals were not preordained to govern Canada forever. Is that hope possible today?
Rod Love, Stockwell Day's sometime campaign manager, doesn't think so. He predicted recently that the Liberals under Paul Martin will win about 220 seats in the next federal election; the handful of seats left over will be split about evenly between the NDP and the Alliance. The federal PCs, Love says, will be wiped out.
On the provincial level, Ontario Conservatives likewise confront a bleak future. Premier Ernie Eves, for reasons known only to himself, systematically set about dismantling the tax-cutting, deregulating policies of his predecessor, Mike Harris. Now with a provincial election imminent, the Eves Tories have released a platform (The Road Ahead). It is comprised of slogans ("The people of Ontario will decide where and how they want to live." Come again?); teacher-bashing (a dusted off and unworkable proposal to ban teachers' strikes during the school year); and vote-buying gimmicks (mortgage interest deductibility, a proposal requiring renters to subsidize home-owners -- as such one that should be anathema to any true conservative).
We must face the fact that the Common Sense Revolution died with Mike Harris; Ernie Eves is not carrying it forward. Unlike Mark Antony, Eves has not come even to praise, only to bury.
And so we return to the party of John Diefenbaker and, now, of Peter MacKay. Is there hope there?
The platform that MacKay ran on, called Charting a New Conservative Course, gave little reason for optimism. He asserted that the PCs are " ... based on a set of reinforcing conservative principles, values and beliefs," but none of these were in evidence during the leadership convention. Long on cliché, short on specifics, one is left with the impression that whatever these "principles, values and beliefs" are, they would be equally acceptable to Messrs. Paul Martin and Jack Layton.
Oh yes, there was much convention talk about "a broad tent," about a "new generation of leadership," about how to build "this great country," but there was nothing that indicated any recognition of Canada's actual decline -- of how pathetic a banana republic we have become -- still less any notion of radically changing things. And the manner of MacKay's victory -- by brokering a deal with anti-free trade activist David Orchard -- is likely to continue to haunt the Tories.
The line that consistently won the most fervent delegate applause at the convention was the promise (made by all of the candidates) to oppose any merger with the Canadian Alliance. The MacKay-Orchard deal may have entrenched this sentiment. If so, conservatives will resemble a dying patient, willing to try any crackbrained therapy, except the one treatment that might offer any hope of a cure. It is true that -- lately -- Peter MacKay has sounded more conciliatory, but in the face of the Orchard commitment to run a PC candidate in every riding, MacKay's room to manoeuvre would seem very circumscribed.
So what are Canadian conservatives to do? Two political parties: the Alliance, with ideas, but sliding in support; the Tories rising, but with only a fresh face on offer. Call me pessimistic, but I can't remember a lonelier, more hopeless, time to be a conservative in Canada.
To conservatives this may sound like hell but maybe, as Dief said, it's just the truth.
Ian Hunter is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario.
Ain't it the truth. I'm starting to lose hope with every day that passes.
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