You may remember the Canadian Reform Party. They were the populist, right-of-centre, small state, low tax, anglophone party that came from nowhere in 1993 to win 52 seats in Canada’s federal parliament.
Indeed. I remember, in particular, how the national networks pronounced Reform an electoral failure that evening – before the first returns were in from west of Ontario.
That’s because of the “if it didn’t happen in Toronto, it didn’t happen” brain-dead politicians in Eastern Canada.
I still agree with the late Peter Lougheed. Let ’em freeze in the dark!!!
The Reform revolution against status quo Ottawa big government statism (where Conservative statism became identical to Liberal big government statism) was a cathartic time in Canadian politics. We could use another reform movement now to drag the CPC back from its big government big spending big taxing habits. We could also use a “Nigel Farage” to remind Harper of his responsible, fiscal conservative, unintrusive, small government Reform roots – maybe at a leadership convention.
The problem for UKIP is that there is no West of Ontario in the UK.
I too have great respect for PMSH but he certainly does need a reminder and a push from a few million Canadian Conservatives. Nigel, Nigel, where for art thee?
It’s good that the Beeb is writing this up, but the errors in the story diminish the tale, unfortunately.
1. Reform did not “reform” the Conservative Party; it smashed the old Progressive Conservative Party, which ultimately led to the creation of the new Conservative Party (call it merger, call it “reverse take-over”, whatever). Despite being a former PC (up until Stephen Harper’s ascension to the leadership of the Canadian Alliance), the PC Party never really did it for me, although Brian Mulroney deserves a great deal of credit for a number of policies he brought forward. The article sadly diminishes the instrumental and salutary impact of Reform on Canadian political life.
2. Reform never became mainstream while Preston Manning led it. It will be interesting to see if Mr. Farage can make the transition from outsider protest vote collector to governing alternative. The article diminishes both Preston Manning’s unelectability and the role Stephen Harper played in carrying Reform into the mainstream.
3. “The Common Sense Revolution” was the name of Mike Harris’s manifesto in 1995, which William Hague copied for the 2001 British general election. Reform’s 1993 slogan was, “Now you have an alternative” (“alternative” may have been “choice” — I just can’t recall precisely).
The sad part is the Reform Party sold out for power and now we have the CPC. Just another party buying our votes with our money, running big deficits. When they are not spending our money they are making up new rules “for our own good” They are better than the Liberanos or the Dippers but still a long way from being a conservative party.
What m said . . . . in spades!
Really?
The U.K. is west of Europe. Nigel resides in the U.K. He sits in the E.U. parliament. Europe is east of the U.K. The level of corruption in Europe vs. the U.K. is analogous to the western Reform Party vs. the eastern entitlement liberals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V72mZCDwmY0
Go to 3:00 for the good stuff.
As a member of the Reform Party in 1989, in Ontario, before the party moved East, I remember it well.
I remember cramming, standing room only, into the International Centre in Toronto with 6,500 wildly cheering other citizens of Ontario to listen to Preston Manning. He received at least 10 standing ovations that night.
I knew one of the key organizers of that gathering who said that had he known the turnout would have been that large, he would have booked the Skydome because so many had been turned away.
I got home quickly to see what the “news” would say and I watched CBC’s Wendy Mess-ly interviewing 8 protesters who said that Reform was racist and all inside were the same.
6,500 inside…8 outside the Centre, and those 8 got the final say.
Thus, it began.
My recollection was that the Reform Party’s slogan was “the west wants in”
By that analogy UKIP, like Social Credit or Reform, will only be suffered to take or keep power if everyone in UKIP seriously interested in reform is bought off or silenced. Look at Jason Kenney, if you like, running from St. Johns to Vancouver kissing the rings of the leader of every pack of savages who should never have been let into Canada, just like the Grits used to do so the savages would stuff the ballot boxes every few years. What’s actually changed? Not a blasted thing. That’s how Bay Street likes it.
The City of London, as for them, make a good living laundering the money of continental kleptocrats, Russian mobsters and Muslim oil tyrants. Mass immigration permits them cheap Indian food and cheap Polish help. By the time the Islamic Republic of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is declared, their plan is to be safely in Hong Kong, and their designer children learning Chinese. Consequences are for fools and Christians.
In the meantime the EU’s an excellent racket for them, one they won’t give up if they have a choice. There’s not going to be a referendum if there’s any chance at all it will go against the bankers. The attitude of the toffs is that the Rhodies and reactionaries who want out of the EU know where Heathrow is, and that the colonies are welcome to them.
What does Nigel Farage want? To be important like Ernest Manning, René Levesque or Stephen Harper, or to save Britain from her enemies at home and abroad? If he’s really on the side of the Queen and the British people, he needs to have bigger ambitions than turning Britain into Canada.
To me, the slogan of the Reform Party will always be “The West Wants In”
In an interview with Ezra Levant a few months ago, Manning flatly stated that it was not the intent of the Reform Party to replace the Conservatives, but to reform them.
He met with limited success.
There were many Reform supporters in Ontario, particularly in rural areas but couldn’t make any headway in the urban centers. I was one of them and was disappointed at the lack of support among so-called conservatives.
We just don’t want in…we want to drive. The spoilt kids can sit in the back and STFU while the adults save their sorry asses…
As an ex reform party member, I now sense it is beyond reform and may as well crash and burn.
Our conservatives are incremental liberals, better than the NPD & Libtards, but sadly inadequate for the crisis coming.
Look to your own and stockpile essentials.
No matter who the politicians are, the state keeps right on stealing wealth and destroying opportunity.
re: David S.
>> although Brian Mulroney deserves a great deal of credit for a number of policies he brought forward.
See, the thing is – I don’t *want* a government that brings “a number of policies forward.”
I want a government that manages the country *we* (non-government) create.
1. Laws the enforce our natural rights, and enforcement of same.
2. Defend the country.
3. Referee civil disputes & contract disputes.
And otherwise stay out of *our* business.
Correct on all counts David. The reform party motto was – “the west wants in”.
Now they are “in” and they have their PM, maybe it’s time he did what the west sent him to do – downsize government, cut taxes, reform parliament by getting rid of the non confidence vote and whips, downsize and elect the senate – and generally get Ottawa out of our pockets, our personal lives, the churches, schools, the duck blinds and shooting ranges, and stop dictating what we can and can’t say, think, do, grow, sell or make. Now add to that list putting a leash on police authoritarianism, militancy and have them adhere to the rule of law not their own made up two tiered policies.
It seems to be a repeating pattern, power corrupts the best of intentions. Which is why I believe term limits should be looked into, at least on the MP / MLA / Senate levels.
Good luck implementing real reform though.
Once on the gravy train, must be hard to get off at the next stop…
If I ever run, it will be two terms, then gone.
dwright
Agreed, and I have to add to what m and john said.
I also was an original Reform member and think the “reformers” have been taken over by the “progressives”. To be fair though, I think Harper has had to become rather pragmatic and woo the progressive side of the old Progressive Conservative Party to finally take the Conservatives from minority status to a majority.
As john says, the Conservatives have become incremental Liberals. While I appreciate the steps taken to roll back some of firearms laws, make the CWB voluntary, a few crime issues, and some other initiatives, in my opinion they have done nothing to make the size of government smaller.
You would almost think that the bureaucracy has the power in the government and calls the shots.
Oh, and good luck to Nigel Farage. He will need it, as dwright says, the corruption begins seeping in almost immediately.
1. I’m pretty sure red Tory Peter lougheed who was always an enemy of the reform party – never said “let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark”
2. The key element that farage and, frankly, Preston both overlook is that the reform and the CPC and the wildrose and the sask party’s key to ENDURING strength is the grassroots democracy that is the very core of their constitutional and policy processes. ONLY elected delegates/members get to vote. No ex officio free passes that were/are the ruination of most old-line parties.
As a result the parties above are very responsive to public sentiment and policies tend to both be well bmvetted politically and philosophically. To outsiders – particularly those who are more fundamentalist on the right this is viewed as selling out. But it was the grassroots moderation of the reform party that made it the CPC and got it into power and finally a majority.
3. This coming cpc convention in July will be a bit of a watershed – it will be the first CPC convention that will be both primarily about policy and during a period when the CPC has a majority. It will be the foundation upon which the 2015 election will be fought. The policy resolutions I have seen so far are very encouraging…
For those who are pissing and moaning about PMSH and the rate of change. I ask you this…Who better in the last 10 years? While the PM is an incremental conservative everyone else is going the other direction. Who amongst you could have done better..?..Turning a socialist ship around ain’t easy especially when the previous regime loaded the engine room with socialist saboteurs.
As far as corruption goes…never acceptable but always present. Thievery spans the political spectrum. Nail em when you catch em…
“… Who amongst you could have done better..?”
Crickets …….
MM
I first heard about Reform in 1988 and voted for Stephen Harper who was running in Calgary NW. A couple of years later I joined the Reform party and, for the first few years, it seemed that finally people like myself had some say. Unfortunately, too many Reformers, especially in Vancouver, knuckled under to the leftist criticism leveled at them. My advice to mock and destroy moonbat positions with logic didn’t seem to get very far with the Reform party members who seemed to be too sensitive to criticism.
Preston Manning was the best leader the Reform had and I wanted enough to see him speak in Vancouver that I managed to get up at 06:00 in order to get to his morning speech. When the CA was created I began to have my doubts, especially after the poor reception that Keith Martin got in the leadership race. I suspect that Keith Martin would have done substantially better than Stockwell Day. I’ve met Stockwell Day and was glad to find he shared my views on C68. Keith Martin needed a bit of education about the evil of firearms laws, but a few of us back then who were supporting him did fill him in on the issue.
When Stockwell Day came out in support of the anti-terrorist legislation in 2001, I tore up my CA card and mailed it back to him. I still have my original Reform Party membership card. I was close to quitting the party when it supported the Lieberals regarding legislation regarding child p@rn and never did get a reply back to my letter regarding the stupidity of making certain byte sequences illegal and turning 16 year old couples with digital cameras into criminals.
After witnessing the failure of Reform to make it, I’m now a political nihilist and have no intention of every joining another political party. Marc Emery almost had me convinced to run as a Marijuana party candidate but a few physician friends talked me out of this. I vote for Libertarian or BC Marijuana Party candidates in local elections and refuse to give any money to the sellout Conservative party; when I do donate money to politicians it’s to people like Gary Breitkreuz as the money stays primarily with the local riding association.
I, like you, have a strong libertarian streak. That said…I’m a realist. You don’t undo decades of indoctrination by next Tuesday. PMSH’s incremental approach is the most effective way…IMHO.
Harper is the pick of the litter in Ottawa. His one major mistake in my opinion was not cleaning out the stables. A mighty task no doubt given that the Liberals and Progressives of one sort or another have been in power for over 100 years. He should fire and retire heads of the civil service as fast he can. He should be selling off as many Crowns as he can. And we need an end to useless programs. Ottawa is now involved in over 700 programs of one sort or another. Time is running out, but regardless the job must be done. TAXES are consuming the average Canadian. Take your pick Harper or Shiny Pony, Angry Tom, or Buffalo Wallow Woman Ma Green.
What did you expect? Preston Manning wanted power and a personality cult like his father had, not reform. Ernest was rewarded for purging the Alberta Social Credit party of social crediters and stabbing the federal party in the back with a Senate seat and an appointment to the board of a Toronto bank.
Preston, too, has had his reward, his own thinktank, a chance to write op-eds for Toronto papers and a standing invitation to the best Ottawa cocktail parties for life. Not bad for a kid who couldn’t get himself elected as a Socred in Alberta in 1965, and his father party leader and premier of Alberta.
“The West wants in,” my auntie. Preston wanted in, and he wasn’t going to rest till he got in and could look his old man in the eye. It pleased the Lord to give Preston what he thought he wanted, and Preston is in. Good for him. The plain people of Canada are still waiting.
check
syncro…rite on, I was going to post that PMH governs ALL of Canada, and not just those who voted for him
PMSH’s incremental approach is the most effective way…IMHO.
Yeah, he’s sure no Maggie Thatcher or Ronald Reagan…only the pussy approach nowadays.
Reagan worked incrementally and Thatcher defined her tenure by breaking the miners union…the public service union fight in Canada is yet to come…Methinks you know as much about pussy as that kid at Waterloo…
“…a small, insurgent, west coast party”???
“…The problem for UKIP is that there is no West of Ontario in the UK…”
Jeez, after Redford’s win in Alberta, I’m no sure if there’s a ‘West of Ontario’ in Canada either. 😉
Reagan worked incrementally…blah, blah
The UN and leftists are incremental, Reagan and Thatcher were instrumental in breaking the USSR. They knew how to get a job done, by carrying the bigger stick.
These latter day pussies can’t even break a few domestic leftists. None of them have worked in the real world, therefore have no idea how to get a job done.
That’s the strategic equivalent of “Get off my lawn”…
Yeah, not much of that going on among the effeminate.
‘let the eastern bastards—-‘ was a bumper sticker.
I threw in the towel after the mulrooney years. I realized that in Canada conservative is only a word -not a Canadian word. Remember moving the CF18 contract from WPG to PQ? Mulrooney was just another frenchman from PQ.
As for PMSH. A long time ago, probably after he went to Ottawa as a Reform MP he recognized that running a true Conservative government is not an electable option in Canada. Canada is the land of tommy douglas…socialist.
Harper is a pragmatist who is doing what he can. Our options sit on the opposition bench. That is the choice in Canada.
…not there’s anything wrong with that…
Harper is a pragmatist who is doing what he can.
Besides, self-defining the possible deflects the charge of cowardice.
Sheesh…unaware of the obvious eh..?..Is that a mole?
Boiling a frog is the surest way of re instating an acountable government in this country.
As well as having a Mount Royal vigina man as opponent.
Carry on…
Cowards always see the obvious…
Satire is dead…you idiots done broke it…
I was one of the first members in SW Sask. I still think if we would have hung in there, we`d be the gov today!!
syncro @ 8:27 p.m.:
“I, like you, have a strong libertarian streak. That said…I’m a realist. You don’t undo decades of indoctrination by next Tuesday. PMSH’s incremental approach is the most effective way…IMHO.”
This mirrors my own thinking. However, Harper has been PM for seven years, nearly two with a majority, and even under incrementalism I would argue things should be moving along more quickly than they are.
There are some things that should have been addressed immediately, incrementalism be damned: tax code streamlining, elimination of business subsidies and cutting off “activist groups” from any tax funding they might have scammed.
But there are some things that cannot be addressed right away, such as reform of the welfare state.
There has been the occasional stroke of genius, such as killing the mandatory long-form census, in order to deprive the “social engineers” of their precious information needed to self-justify their parasitic government jobs.
Harper is certainly better than the alternatives, all of whom are ridiculous. But he could be doing more.
I had a lot more faith in SH before he became PM. Yes, we’ve gotten rid of the rifle registry, but we still have the criminal code being a minor appendix to C68. This is a major failure on the part of PMSH as when I heard him say he was going to get rid of the firearms registry I assumed this meant repeal of the statist legislation of C68. I don’t want to be charged with “unsafe storage of ammunition” just because my house happens to be the only lockable container large enough to store the ammo I have (I’ve finally arranged it so that I’m no longer constantly tripping over ammo boxes).
Also, if PMSH had wanted to increase the Conservative share of votes in BC, he would have decriminalized cannabis. As it is, we now have more totalitarian legislation when it comes to the unwinable war on (some) drugs. I’m also not pleased that the medical marijuana program has now been placed squarely in the hands of physicians. I have as much interest in prescribing cannabis as I have in prescribing wine as I don’t think that’s an appropriate role for physicians. Being one of the few local physicians who will do medical marijuana certificates if the patients medical condition meets some fairly rigid criteria, I’m not looking forward to every pothead in town wanting their “medical” pot from me.
Yes, I realize that PMSH has to deal with an entrenched statist bureaucracy and a population that has a very high proportion of moonbats and parasites. I also note that he’s thinking 10 steps ahead of moonbat politicians and maybe he will start trimming the snivel service in the near future. However, the pace of change is far too slow and what I want is to get the state out of the lives of citizens to as great a degree as possible and to cut the snivel service by about 10%/year until government reaches a manageable size (military excepted as given the trends in the USSA, we’ll need a lot larger military to deal with potential threats).
Agreed…
What a lot of sniveling going on here. So let me ask you lot (and you know who you are) these three little questions.
Is Canada moving in the right direction or the wrong direction?
Will ANY of the political choices on offer improve that?
Is ANY other country remotely as well governed as Canada is right now?
For anyone answering anything other than Yes, No, No, I await your reasons with anticipation.
Fewer PMO Palace guards here than I expected. But they always come, like the Nazgul looking for Frodo.
PMSH’s incremental approach is the most effective way
1) Incremental socialism 2) ??? 3) Freedom!
Yeah pretty stupid. Incrementalism has NEVER rolled back government. It’s either done with great diligence or not at all. I’d ask you for evidence that incrementalism will bring us to the promised land, but I know you have none. Reality is not the partisan’s Forte.
Is Canada moving in the right direction or the wrong direction?
Wrong direction. Canada is getting less free and more governmenty.
Will ANY of the political choices on offer improve that?
Aside from Bernier and Findlay and the Libertarian party, no.
Is ANY other country remotely as well governed as Canada is right now?
Hmmm…Chile is better governed. Canada was better governed in year 2000 than it is now that’s indisputable.
Are you listening Farage? Here’s what you should learn from Reform: even a very flawed political insurrection with a worse leader can have an extremely positive effect on a country’s body politic. Reform offered more good in opposition through its influence than the CPC ever will with its ‘power’ to be what it claims to oppose. Reject shortcuts to power. Reject short-termist thinking along the lines of ‘we just need to cut a corner here…there’. Reject policies that make it easy to push you down, like illogical anti-immigration stances. Just be competent, don’t be too ‘clever’ or ‘modern’.
Got ya thinking eh kid..?…