Читать книгу Full Circle: Death and Resurrection In Canadian Conservative Politics - Bob Plamondon - Страница 6

It was early in the morning of a crisp October day. Peter MacKay, Member of Parliament for Pictou–Antigonish– Guysborough, was alone in his modest New Glasgow constituency office. His staff had yet to arrive for the day’s work of helping constituents with the bureaucratic problems they had encountered with their government. This should have been a moment when the thirty- eight-year-old newly elected leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada could put his feet up on the desk, reflect on his success over the past year, and feel satisfied. But in the quiet of this early autumn morning what he felt most was the burden of history.

The years of work that had brought him to the position of party leader could never have prepared him for the decision he was about to make. This decision would determine not only his future, but also the fate of his party and perhaps the country.

Some five months earlier, in May 2003, when Peter MacKay won the leadership of his party, he had imagined going head-to-head in the leaders’ debates with Liberal prime minister Paul Martin and Alliance leader Stephen Harper. Confident that the voters would reject a tired and corrupt Liberal government, and hopeful that the regionally based Canadian Alliance party would falter, MacKay wanted to offer voters his vision for Canada.

The dilemma conservative voters had faced over the previous decade and more was that they had two parties from which to choose: the Progressive Conservative party, known from the earliest days of the country as “the Tories,” or the Reform–turned– Alliance party. The two were of the same mind on many issues and consequently split the conservative vote. The other federal political parties were of course delighted that conservatives were fighting among themselves. Conservative division allowed the Liberals to win three successive majority governments “without breaking a sweat.” Unless and until conservatives put an end to vote splitting, Liberal hegemony could continue indefinitely. For three elections, democracy had not functioned well. Not only did voters not have a meaningful choice in parties, but also the Opposition was weak and ineffective. This was not how Canada’s parliamentary system was supposed to work. With another election expected in the next six months, conservatives were dreading yet another futile trip to the voting booth.

Despite the conservative civil war, however, many members in the PC and Alliance caucuses liked one another. They had worked together constructively on various parliamentary committees and they shared many of the same views on public policy. There was some divergence in the area of social policy, but no more than might be expected in a broadly inclusive political party. The tougher obstacle was emotional. Many Tories remained bitter that Preston Manning and the Reform party had split the conservative family in 1993. There was, they felt, a price to be paid for their humiliating defeat in 1993 when the PC party had been reduced to just 2 seats from the 169 it had won in 1988—the worst drubbing for the Tories since Confederation.

For a time after the 2000 election, the prospect of a single conservative party seemed possible. While the Alliance party had received a record number of votes and seats in the House of Commons in 2000, a dozen of its most influential and articulate MPs later left to form the Independent Alliance Caucus. Five members soon returned to the Alliance party, but seven stayed out to form the Democratic Representative Caucus (DRC). The DRC soon joined with the PC caucus to form an entity that the Speaker of the House of Commons officially recognized as the PC-DRC. The Tories were hoping that the Alliance party was about to implode, leaving the PC party, or the PC-DRC, as the only political option for Canadian conservatives. But following the breakdown of merger talks between the PC and Alliance leaderships in 2002; most DRC members left the Tories and returned to the Alliance fold. The battle for supremacy and survival in Canadian conservative politics would wage on.

When the Alliance party was falling apart in 2002, Stephen Harper returned to partisan politics to lead and reinvigorate the party. Harper had begun his political career working for a PC member of parliament in 1985. Initially inspired to help a small-c conservative government implement sweeping economic and political reforms, Harper left Ottawa a year later, frustrated by what he saw as the brokerage politics that dominated decision making in Ottawa. A short time later Harper joined with Preston Manning to become a key figure in the creation of the Reform Party. While Harper was the policy brains behind Reform, and had been elected to Parliament in 1993, he left the world of partisan politics in 1996. The move to a right-wing advocacy group allowed Harper to articulate more freely his conservative vision for Canada. When Harper returned to partisan politics and won the Alliance leadership in 2002, he was intent on immediately seeking a merger with the PC party. However, the only thing PC leader Joe Clark then wanted was for the Alliance party to submit to his leadership.

The polls looked bleak for every party except the Liberals in 2003. Nevertheless, to virtually every political observer a merger between the PC and Alliance parties before the next election was inconceivable, for three key reasons.

First, in the summer of 2003 both the PC and Alliance parties had new leaders who had never been tested in a national campaign. It was natural for MacKay, thirty-eight, and Harper, forty-two, to want at least one opportunity to take their respective parties into a general election. For a merger to happen, one or both would have to surrender leadership, not something most politicians do willingly.

Second, in May 2003 MacKay signed a written agreement with fellow leadership candidate David Orchard. While Orchard came to the leadership convention with the support of only 25 per cent of the delegates, that was enough to determine who would win the contest. Their written agreement precluded the possibility of a merger with the Alliance party. MacKay saw the no-merger provision of the Orchard deal as innocuous, not only because it was party policy at the time, but because it was inconceivable to him that a merger with the Alliance in the near term was even a remote possibility. MacKay thought that each party would try to build national support in the coming election, and then try to starve out the other party until one died on the vine. In his mind, MacKay was in a fight to the death with Alliance. To settle this issue, an election was necessary.

Third, the election was expected in the spring of 2004. In the summer and fall of 2003 it was unimaginable that the emotional, organizational, and policy gulfs that remained between the two parties could be bridged before the next election. While MacKay and Harper knew that a single mainstream national conservative party would emerge from the divided quagmire that had become the conservative movement, nothing hinted that a merger was possible in the foreseeable future. Beyond the intentions and actions of the party leaders, for a merger to happen an agreement would have to be ratified by the membership of both parties. In the case of the PC party, approval was required by two-thirds of the membership. MacKay knew that the 25 per cent of the party members drawn to David Orchard would definitely be opposed, as would many other long- time Tories.

Despite these formidable challenges, however, MacKay and Harper launched a process in the summer of 2003 aimed at exploring methods of co-operation between the parties. Stunningly, what began with modest goals of co-operation and, optimistically, an agreement to find a formula to end vote splitting then eclipsed even the wildest expectation. A full-scale merger was on the table. Most surprising to

MacKay, the proposed agreement included virtually every element that was central to the beliefs and values of a Progressive Conservative. In fact, the aims and principles proposed for the new party were lifted word for word from the PC party constitution. The legacies from the Reform party and Alliance constitutions were virtually unrecognizable in the proposed agreement.

By Thanksgiving weekend, there was only one main area where agreement could not be reached: how to select the party leader. Stephen Harper wanted a simple and democratic one-member one- vote system. MacKay wanted every member to have a vote; but he also wanted each riding to be given the same weight when the votes were tallied. The one-member one-vote system would naturally encourage candidates to spend their time and energy where the party was strong. MacKay feared that very small riding associations, located in regions where it was difficult to sign up party members, would be ignored, thereby hampering the party’s ability to build a truly national base of support. However, this was not a purely academic question related to governance. The political imperative was that one method favoured Harper’s chances of winning the leader- ship of the new party, and the other favoured MacKay’s.

Harper and MacKay had drawn their lines in the sand on the leadership selection issue. Despite a successful negotiation on every other front, MacKay was not prepared to compromise on this final issue. Walking away from the negotiations on this point of principle would have been easy, if not a relief, for MacKay. But Harper was convinced a merger was the only way the Conservatives could defeat the Liberals. He came to this conclusion in the spring of 2003 when, despite his best efforts, the Tories won a key by-election in a rural Ontario riding. The Alliance came in a very distant and disappointing third. After the by-election defeat, Harper was inclined to agree to almost every condition MacKay imposed, so long as the country ended up with one conservative party and there would be a leader- ship contest.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Harper assessed the risks and then agreed to the equality of riding condition. It was not an easy decision. He was risking his position as leader, and there was also a legacy of democratic populism in the Reform and Alliance parties that was not evident, at least on paper, in the new party. By merging under MacKay’s conditions, Harper was also equating his 66 MPs with the twelve-member PC caucus.

MacKay had a far tougher decision to make. His was the party with the legacy from Confederation. His was the party that had roots and appeal in all parts of Canada. His was the party with the deep emotional scars, and for which ratification of a deal was anything but certain. His was the party with momentum, with polls showing 17 per cent for PCs and only 11 per cent for the Alliance. Even though Harper had given in to every one of MacKay’s demands, and there was nothing left that MacKay could ask for, it was still a gut- wrenching decision.

During his six years as a federal politician, life and events had seemed to come at MacKay at full speed. There were few moments when the world slowed down long enough to allow focus on a solitary issue. But this quiet October morning in his constituency office was one of those moments.

MacKay felt burdened by the history of his party. Tory contributions had been woven into the fabric of the nation, and MacKay could not be certain that a new conservative party would connect to the legacy with which he had been entrusted. MacKay was worried about whether this new entity would even be called the “Tory” party. Would it be the party of Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Robert Borden, R.B. Bennett, John Diefenbaker, and Brian Mulroney? Or would it become the party of Preston Manning? Every time MacKay walked past the busts of former PC prime ministers at PC party headquarters he could sense accusatory eyes watching him. MacKay wondered if these men would applaud his moves, or would they be spinning in their graves?

MacKay took comfort in the counsel that was available to him from former prime minister Brian Mulroney. MacKay understood that, as well as advice, Mulroney had enough sway in the party to defeat a proposed merger if such was his will. But Mulroney was supportive of the merger. And then there was MacKay’s father. Elmer MacKay was an elder statesman of the party, elected to the House of Commons on seven occasions and serving in the cabinets of two prime ministers. It was Elmer MacKay who resigned his seat in 1983 so that Mulroney could enter the House of Commons through a by-election as the member for Central Nova in Nova Scotia. In retirement, however, Elmer MacKay still felt the scars from the battles with the Reform party in 1993. The elder MacKay initially opposed the merger.

MacKay knew that among the senior people in the party, some would support the merger and some would oppose it. Some of his twelve-member caucus had already spoken out against a merger after news of the negotiations had been leaked to the press. MacKay realized he would never get unanimity on the issue. He was going to be criticized no matter what he decided. This was not a time for consultation and persuasion; this was a time for leadership. But if he signed the agreement, MacKay’s leadership would be finished. If party members voted yes, the merger would proceed and he would no longer be leader. If they voted no, his leadership would be in ruins and he would have to resign.

MacKay removed short-term political consequences from his decision criteria. Party financing, the recent polls, and the dynamic of Paul Martin’s likely advent as leader of the Liberal party were not on his mind. Even his own leadership and agreement with David Orchard were not factors in this decision. This decision was more important than the career of Peter MacKay.

His mind was drawn to both the history and the future of Canada. What was right for his party? What would Sir John A. Macdonald want him to do? Most important, what was right for Canada?