Friday, January 4, 2002
Where did they go right? - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- When Stockwell Day resigned a few weeks ago, the story made barely a blip on the news screens and print pages across this country. It’s been a long and well travelled road for one Stock Day and it’s sort of sad to see him go, but really it looks like he’s coming back for more. (The rumour mill says Montreal, this Monday is where to look.)
These last two years have been nothing more than eventful. The politico who had, as Allan Fotheringham said, the attention of a hummingbird, was treasurer of Alberta in Ralph Klein’s cabinet. He delivered an entire budget without notes and wowed Canadians. He appeared at a United Alternative convention to support the Reform Party’s morphing into the Canadian Alliance, showing off his kung fu skill, busting pieces of wood sans shirt. Canadians were fascinated by a guy who appeared to be the 21st Century’s Pierre Trudeau sans the intellect.
He took on Reform’s founder Preston Manning for the leadership of the new Canadian Alliance, which looked like a possible contender to the Liberals federally. Alas Stockwell Day did win, but screwed up somewhere. The road from the summer of 2000 when he coveted the Alliance leadership was bumpy and full of hiccups. Jean Chrétien called an election in the fall and Day was doomed. From attacks from the Liberals and its house organ, the CBC, Day didn’t penetrate Ontario and thus the Alliance were no better than the Reform Party. There were missteps and loose lips from Day who tried to do politics different, but ended up getting mauled by members of his own caucus because of his own utter incompetence.
I once was a member of the Canadian Alliance. I detested (and still do) the leadership of Jean Chrétien and the Liberals, thus duly joined the Alliance to support a party that had the best shot at upstaging the Liberals. Stockwell Day’s leadership was key to gaining support in Ontario and thus I supported him by joining the party and subsequently voting for him. I have come to regret that choice, but then again hindsight is always 20/20. (I regret being part of the cabal that threw Preston Manning, a most honourable of people, out. But really, Day seemed the best choice at the time.) A new leadership contest will be held in March and as promised to quell the haemorrhaging of his caucus of this past year, Day did step aside and thus the leadership race is on.
Stephen Harper, the right-wing Albertan who helped found Reform only to flee it to head up the conservative National Citizen’s Coalition, was the first to throw his hat into the race. His platform is to head the Alliance and stifle all calls for union or coalition with the Progressive Conservatives. He’s a good candidate, but to select him as leader would be counter-productive to the whole end of defeating the Liberals. Harper would be good to have on the team, but defiantly not to head it. Stockwell Day couldn’t bring a feasible coalition with the Tories, but at least he’s willing to now. Harper is belligerent at best, and selecting him would give us more of the soft dictatorship of Jean Chrétien and his Liberals.
Diane Ablonczy -- an Albertan MP who was vociferous in her criticism of the bungling at Human Resources Development and its Minister, Jane Stewart -- is another candidate in the race and she’s running on a platform of hooking up with the Tories. She wasn’t one of the dissident Alliance MPs that fled this summer to the Joe Clark Tories, but she was also not muted in her criticism of Stockwell Day.
Dr. Grant Hill, who served as Day’s lieutenant in the House, has entered the race and he too is going for a union with the Tories. His candidature is noteworthy, because he remained most loyal to Day while the Alliance was in-fighting, and Hill is earning favour from the party’s more right-wing types.
And of course awaiting Stockwell Day’s own entrance in the race to succeed himself, there is the candidacy of Enza (Supermodel) Anderson, a Torontonian trans-gendered character who wants to add some colour to the race, I guess. Anderson, ran third in Toronto’s mayoralty race and he/she wants to be the token Ontarian candidate. I humbly ask, whatever happened to Tom Long?
Anyways, if Day enters the race we’ll have five candidates. No possible Ontarian candidate seems to be lurking in the wings and that’s got to hurt. (Prior to the holidays, I made a phone call to a fellow named Don Drysdale. Drysdale, a city councillor out in Langley, was touted as a possible leadership candidate in the summer. I called because I wanted to know what his plans were, and whether he’d be running. Drysdale, was billed as a unifying candidate who was bilingual and who would understand Central Canada’s concerns, even though he was based here. Suffice to say, he will not be running. He did tell me that he had hoped an Ontarian candidate would have emerged.) The point of the Alliance was to get Ontario’s support, but besides this freak Anderson, all the candidates are from Alberta. (Okay, Day’s a BC MP, but he’s an Albertan boy through and through.) The absence of a plausible candidate from Ontario (Mike Harris won’t probably) means that the Alliance remains a Western Canadian phenomenon and thus a conciliatory candidate who’s willing to work with Joe Clark and the Tories, has got to be selected. Day, whose record heretofore has been antagonist towards the Tories and Clark has been sparse, shouldn’t win. Plus he’s proved a boob at the job. Harper, however is totally on the party’s right and will set the Alliance back in terms of attracting Ontario support.
I had a lot of hope in Stockwell Day, and really in politics unless you’re Joe Clark, you shouldn’t get a second chance. Day squandered his chance. Too damned bad, because he could have been a greater leader. This fractiousness in Canada’s opposition dismays me. I think it is a pity that democracy isn’t served by having a soft (or as Jeffery Simpson says, ‘friendly’) and impenetrable dictatorship in the form of the Liberal Party of Canada.
The Alliance is dead. The blood letting of the past year has done nothing but drive away core Reform stalwarts like Deb Grey. Stockwell Day’s left, and he looks like he’ll come back. It’s back to square one. The only option left is for Day, upon retaining the leadership, to move to bridging the gulf between the Alliance and the Tories. That will be most difficult, and I don’t think possible. But what is perfectly clear is that the friendly, soft or impenetrable dictatorship of the Liberals is here to stay. If all goes well, the Grits will be in government well into the next century. They have every reason to gloat, the bastards.
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