Conservatives plan for their own alternative
CAMPBELL CLARK--With a report from Paul Adams
Saturday, January 20, 2001 --Globe and Mail--
OTTAWA -- The federal Tories are holding a strategy session this weekend aimed at coming up with ways to push their own version of the united alternative.
The participants will look for ideas to help the Progressive Conservatives seize the initiative from the Canadian Alliance on forming a single, strong opposition to the governing Liberals, says one Tory MP who will attend.
It is the Tories' first effort to find ways to put its new talk of joining forces into action -- and also, according to some, a strategic attempt to push ahead while the Alliance squabbles over its election performance and its leader, Stockwell Day.
Tory Leader Joe Clark has said the party will join forces with the Alliance only on its own terms.
The two-day strategy session, held in Ottawa and led by election campaign manager John Laschinger, brings together members of the Tories' management committee, its caucus of MPs and senators, and key strategists.
"We're looking to set the agenda during this interim period, rather than the Alliance, which did that the last time around," New Brunswick MP John Herron said.
Mr. Herron said the Tories appeared to be modestly on the rise in 1999, especially in Ontario, but lost ground in the united-alternative process that resulted in the formation of the Alliance.
He stressed the weekend strategy session is only a first step aimed at coming up with options, which must then be approved by the party's management committee, its caucus, and its leader.
Those options could include holding policy workshops on issues such as fiscal policy, to which small-c conservatives, not just Tories, would be invited, or moving the Progressive Conservative policy conference to later this year, rather than 2002 or 2003, in an attempt to invite fiscal conservatives to rebuild the party's policies.
A leadership race to succeed Joe Clark, who has hinted he will probably leave in two years, could also be touted as a chance to remake the party's image so that it can also draw in Alliance members and conservative-minded Liberals, several senior Tories say.
Mr. Herron said a key to the Tory strategy is not only winning over Alliance supporters or forming a dialogue about joining forces, but also winning so-called "Martin conservatives," Ontario voters who vote for the Tories provincially but for the Liberals federally because they support Paul Martin.
He said most Tories still believe a party-to-party merger with the Alliance is almost impossible, but "nothing is off the table."
Yesterday, Tory Senator Dave Tkachuk issued an open letter to "small-c conservatives" in which he criticized his own party and the Canadian Alliance for failing to present a truly conservative message in the last election.
He said that under Mr. Clark's leadership, the Tories had not been open to so-called social conservatives, concerned with issues such as abortion and homosexuality.
Mr. Tkachuk said merger talks need to begin right away. |
