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Small-c conservatives say Harper has "betrayed" their principles
David Akin and Andrew Mayeda, Canwest News Service
Published: Sunday, September 28, 2008

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/decisioncanada/story.html?id=48f7f1b5-4d5e-49f2-99fe-791cf25cc9de

OTTAWA -- Ten years ago, Hans Zurcher penned a kind of personal manifesto about the urgent need to cut the national debt and delivered it to someone he thought could help, the head of the National Citizens Coalition, Stephen Harper.

Zurcher, a former Reform party member, still thinks big government is a big problem and so, last week in Edmonton, he printed out that manifesto once again so he could deliver it to someone he thought could help, Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"I'd like to give it to him again tonight, but I'm not sure I'll be able to get close enough," Zurcher said at a Harper rally that attracted about 1,000 supporters. "I have a saying that a good government stays as small as possible. Out of sight and out of mind."

For Zurcher and the tens of thousands of Reformers that first propelled Harper to Ottawa, the movement was all about direct democracy, about showing up, speaking your mind and seeing grassroots input make a difference in the nation's capital.

But now, as Reform's successor party, The Conservative Party of Canada, appears to be on the verge of winning a majority government, some old-time Reformers remain a bit wistful for those days when their input made a difference.

"Alberta's voice is heard and heeded now," said Raymond Pallard, another old-time Reformer at the Edmonton rally. "But one of the prices we have to pay for success is that we have to take into account a lot of the other views of people across the country. You have to argue for what you believe here and sell it to the country. I think the country in some ways has come to us, and in the same way, we have gone to the country. It's like the old historical idea that the conquerors militarily have become almost like the conquered."

Most of those, such as Zurcher and Pallard, will vote for the Conservative candidate in their riding on Oct. 14.

But there are others who cut their political teeth with Harper who say he's abandoned "principled conservatism", that his government has let spending run out of control and broke his word on fixed election dates - just like the Liberal governments before him.

"There's a real sense of disappointment among the small-c grassroots conservative Reformers that are out there," said Gerry Nicholls, who worked with Harper at the National Citizens Coalition and is now a columnist and frequent critic of his old boss. "Harper's betrayed the principles that he once stood for."

These aren't the so-called social conservatives, though they too are disappointed Harper, as prime minister, has not done more to roll back abortion access rights or repeal same-sex marriage laws. These are the philosophical small-c conservatives who wanted a government in Ottawa that would address judicial activism, turn the Senate upside down, introduce free-market principles for health care delivery, but most of all, lower income taxes by slashing government spending.

Harper, in this campaign, has said nothing about any of those issues and, though his spending promises are more modest, small-c conservatives note that he's still promising to spend more, not less.

"The way we win a majority government is acting like Liberals and spending lots of money," Nicholls said despondently.

Consider this:_The last Liberal government budget was for the fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2006. In that budget, government spending, excluding payments on the debt, grew by $22.7 billion or about 16 per cent compared to the fiscal year ending in 2003.

The next three budgets were Harper's. Using the same three-year comparison, program spending under the Harper's Conservatives is up $46.8 billion or about 29 per cent.

"He's spending more money than Paul Martin did! That's not a conservative way to do business," said Howard Galganov who is putting his money where his mouth is, so to speak, and running as an Independent candidate in the eastern Ontario riding of Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry where he is facing off a Conservative incumbent.

"I don't need a government spending money as if they're drunken sailors or as if they won it in a lottery."

When Reform's successor party, the Harper-led Canadian Alliance, merged with the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, old Reformers compromised on some key principles in order to make the marriage work.

Most notably, they gave up on the principle of "one person, one vote" when it came to key party and policy matters.

Those from the PC side of the party, who were vastly outnumbered by the Alliance side, thought they'd get swamped unless party and policy control was a modified system of "one riding, one vote."

Now, some Reformers say the PC side of the party has won the day and co-opted Harper.
"The party now seems to be captured by the Red Tory element," Nicholls said. "It's almost like we're back to the Mulroney days."

And that, to some frustrated conservatives, means a return to top-down control of the party.

Charles Conn, a former Progressive Conservative candidate in southern Ontario, had signed up for the new Conservative party and was on the board of a riding association near Toronto. He and other board members quit in protest when the party's head office refused to listen to local wishes and started parachuting candidates into their ridings.

He says the party's head office hobbled the Conservative cause in the Ontario riding of Halton - where maverick MP Garth Turner is running for the Liberals - when head office overrode local wishes and appointed Lisa Raitt as their candidate.

Conn says the riding association didn't want Raitt and the now the local party is in turmoil.

"It's a natural Tory stronghold and the Tories are doing everything they can to hand it over to the Liberals," Conn said.

In Toronto Centre, the Conservative war room dropped their candidate, Chris Reid, after some blog comments surfaced that made him sound just little too right-wing. After getting punted, Reid, in an interview with the right-wing online journal The Western Standard, lamented the shift by Harper's Conservatives to the centre.

"No one else-not the media, nor a political party-will stand up for principled conservatism. It is up to us as individuals to stand up and take liberal ideology head-on, with the facts, and optimism towards the future," Reid said.

All of of those complaints might be addressed at a party convention, to be held later this year in Winnipeg, regardless of the election's outcome.

But what can't be fixed at a convention, says Galganov, is a leader who says one thing and then does another.

Galganov is "enormously frustrated" by Harper's broken promises, reneging on his commitment to abide by his own fixed election date law and by flip-flopping on his 2006 campaign pledge not to tax income trusts.

"A lot of us conservatives expect their politicians to do what they promise to do."

FACT BOX

One litmus test for small-c conservatives is government spending.

They believe it should be shrinking. But during Harper's first three budgets, spending grew faster than the last three Liberal budgets.

Government spending excluding debt charges:

Change ($ Billion) / Per cent change

Last three Liberal Budgets / +22.7 / +16 per cent
First three Tory Budgets / +46.8 / +29 per cent

Posted: 09/ 28/ 08 5:42 pm Post subject:

BUMP - it seems the media is starting to get it as well that all is not well.

Posted: 09/ 28/ 08 6:25 pm Post subject:

Posted: 09/ 28/ 08 6:39 pm Post subject:

Posted: 09/ 28/ 08 7:57 pm Post subject:

I'll agree that the election fixed date issue is overdone, in a minority situation there has to be flexibility beyond whatever is implied in the three year clause they adopted.

However, there is more than a grain of truth in the rest of the arguments. Too bad a clearer description of the major issue, freedom of speech, didn't emerge from this story.

We are all willing to cut Harper some slack, I am sure, but this past two and a half years should be taken as a lesson about not going too far off the promised path, these tendencies have to be replaced by more consistent promise and delivery, or the party will fracture (again).

The free speech issue will be a very important test for the sincerity of the next government, assuming they win the election. I hope nobody within the party makes the false assumption that things can continue in the same way as we've seen since 2006, pragmatism has its limits before the party actually changes to something different, and we are very close to that boundary now if not already across it.

Everyone knows it, too, so let's get real and have a little reality check on both sides, not just the base but also the party itself, both sides have to face up to this challenge. The support base as a whole does not want a Red Tory centrist platform in perpetuity.

Posted: 09/ 28/ 08 8:02 pm Post subject:

The real problem is that nobody even knows what real freedom looks like anymore.

When people accept government hand-outs of ANY kind, they set themselves up to be harnessed. They are on the road to slavery. To where there is NO choice about ANYthing.

Wake. Up.

Posted: 09/ 28/ 08 8:04 pm Post subject:

Posted: 09/ 28/ 08 8:23 pm Post subject:

Posted: 09/ 28/ 08 8:45 pm Post subject:

Posted: 09/ 28/ 08 9:40 pm Post subject:

FisCons are an untrustworthy lot anyway. The worst excesses of libertarian capitalism without the social values of the socons.

Posted: 09/ 28/ 08 9:42 pm Post subject:

Posted: 09/ 28/ 08 11:40 pm Post subject:

They should legislate where its needed, not just to have a day in the papers and hope that a few people will not notice the wasted money.

IE holding contraband cigars(no mandated health warning), while talking that legislating flavours will cause less kids to smoke cigarettes; while they don't know where kids get the tobacco.

Posted: 09/ 29/ 08 12:12 am Post subject:

Posted: 09/ 29/ 08 1:04 am Post subject:

mmm thanks for the straw man, but your politics are crap.

Posted: 09/ 29/ 08 1:11 am Post subject:

	The time now is 02/ 09/ 10 11:11 am
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