by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
July 2, 2004
When the federal Liberals were elected with large majorities in 1997 and 2000, Canadian conservatives intensified the call to "unite the right". There were several ridings across the country where the total votes obtained by the PCs and the Canadian alliance exceeded that of the successful Liberal candidate. The thinking was at the time that if the two parties were merged, their votes could be simply added together and the result would be a conservative government at best, a healthy democracy at least.
While Canadian democracy is healthier now than it was before the June 28 election, fewer votes were received by the new Conservative Party than were previously garnered by the two predecessor parties. The merger may not have been a good idea after all.
The notion of "uniting the right" presupposed that the Canadian alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party were both right wing parties. While the Reform Party that later became the alliance were both fiscally and socially conservative, the same cannot be said of the PCs. There was never any philosophical or practical distinction between the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals other than the fact that the PCs appeared to be just a little bit more fiscally prudent, at least in theory. The party of Sir John a. MacDonald was much more progressive than conservative. This was especially true after many of the social conservative Westerners left the party in the late 1980s to join the new Reform Party.
The main function of the old Progressive Conservative Party was to serve as a credible alternative to the Liberals when the country, because of the arrogance or tired policies of the Natural Governing Party, simply desired to "throw the bums out". The PCs were able to provide decent government until the Liberals were able to regroup in opposition, hold a policy conference or two and come back with a fresh mandate. This all changed in 1993 when the PCs were knocked down to two seats and seemed destined for oblivion. The voters decided to punish Brian Mulroney who, despite having a reputation as a leading world figure, was perhaps the most hated prime minister in history. and the party wasn’t helped when Mulroney was succeeded by Kim Campbell whose most memorable moment was when she said that an election campaign was no time to discuss serious policy issues. It was hard to take Campbell seriously.
after the Progressive Conservatives were nearly wiped out, conservatives looked upon the Reform Party and then the Canadian alliance as the way to defeat the Liberals. and when the PCs increased the number of seats that they held during the elections of 1997 and 2000, merger and an attempt to end the vote splitting appeared to be the way to go. It now looks like that might have been the wrong way.
There is no doubt that the Progressive Conservatives would have been able to increase their clout in the Canadian political scene. as the election of 1993 receded into the background, the Tories were stalled more by weak leadership than they were by the spectre of Brian Mulroney. When Joe Clark regained control of the party, he simply couldn’t face reality. Clark thought that his party was still back in the glory days when John Diefenbaker and Brian Mulroney headed a major political party and won huge majorities. Clark scoffed at the Reform/alliance and looked down on them as if they were just a bunch of inferior malcontents.
The problem with the merged party is that the vast majority of Canadians will never accept the social conservatism of the some of the previous members of the Canadian alliance. Paul Martin’s portrayal of Stephen Harper as scary and dangerous during the last election campaign notwithstanding, as long as social conservatives play such a prominent role in the new Conservative Party, that party will never be an acceptable alternative for Canadians to the Liberals. This explains the poor showing of the Conservatives in Ontario at a time when voter-anger against the Liberals because of adscam and the McGuinty budget was at an optimum.
The only sure fire way to bring down the Liberals would have been to keep the two parties separate. allow the Progressive Conservatives, under new leadership, to go back to their pre-1993 prominence. and the Canadian alliance, with its social conservatism would have ended up as the NDP of the right--a party that can play a vital role in Canada’s governance without ever attaining power.
although it’s easy to be a Monday-morning quarterback, the two parties should never have merged.