FROM GREENS TO RED TORIES, AND ALL THE COLOURS IN BETWEEN — REFLECTIONS ON THE 2004 ELECTION

James Allan Evans

From a summer’s perch on the Gulf Islands off the West Coast, classics professor James Allan Evans reflects on the outcome of the 2004 election, from the relatively strong showing of the Green Party, to the election of former Conservative Bob Cadman in Vancouver as the only Independent, one who may in some circumstances hold the balance of power in a closely divided House. Why did an election that looked like a dead heat until the final days turn into a seven-point Liberal win over the Conservatives? “Was it the feral onslaught of the Liberals in the final days that turned around the campaign?” he asks. More likely, he suggests “it was probably the Conservatives themselves who gave the Liberal campaign its much needed boost” through statements of their candidates validating the exaggerated claims of Liberal attack ads, and the Conservative failure to counterattack “within the rules of rhetoric.” Next time, he concludes, “must regain the confidence of the old Progressive Conservatives who heeded Joe Clark’s warning that Harper is a dangerous right-winger.”

Depuis son perchoir d’été dans les îles du Golfe au large de la côte ouest, James Allan Evans se penche sur les résultats des élections, de la performance relativement forte du Parti vert, à l’élection à Vancouver de l’ex-Conservateur Bob Cadman qui, à titre de député indépendant, pourrait bien détenir la balance du pouvoir dans une Chambre divisée. Pourquoi une élection qui, jusqu’aux derniers jours de la campagne, semblait devoir être très serrée, s’est-elle transformée en une victoire des Libéraux par une marge de sept points devant les Conservateurs ? Les attaques sauvages des Libéraux dans les derniers jours de la campagne auraient-elles contribué à modifier la donne ?, se demande Evans. Il croit plus probable que ce sont les Conservateurs eux-mêmes qui ont donné à la campagne des Libéraux le coup de pouce dont elle avait bien besoin. La prochaine fois, dit-il, il faudra que Stephen Harper regagne la confiance des anciens Progressistes-conservateurs qui ont écouté l’avertissement qu’a donné Joe Clark lorsqu’il a déclaré que Harper était dangeureusement à droite.

he day before the June 28 federal election, I attend- which voted Reform/Alliance in the past two elections. Gary ed a rally for the Green Party at the Agricultural Hall Lunn, the M.P., a relabeled Conservative, was generally T at Miners’ Bay on Mayne Island. Mayne Island, for agreed to be a good constituency man, and a hard man to the benefit of the ninety percent of Canadian who do not beat. Nonetheless, the Green aficionados thought that if the know it, is one of the Gulf Islands between Vancouver Greens managed to elect a member anywhere, it would be Island and the mainland, and Miners’ Bay gets it name here, where Andrew Lewis, an earnest, low-key candidate because the prospectors, many of them disappointed Forty- with a B.Sc. in biology and a diploma in ecology, was the Niners from California, paused there to camp and get fresh Greens’ man. water as they made their way to the Cariboo Gold Rush in There was free coffee and cookies, and a pamphlet that 1858. Mayne is part of the Saanich-Gulf Islands riding, outlined the “Ten Key Values” of the Green Party. They

38 OPTIONS POLITIQUES SEPTEMBRE 2004 From Greens to Red Tories, and all the colours in between — reflections on the 2004 election included Non-Violence, Personal and Conservative. The reason why it isn’t showed the Conservatives ahead of Global Responsibility, Ecological is an admonitory tale of ethnic poli- ’s Liberals by slightly more Wisdom and seven other desirable tics. Chuck Cadman was the than two points. On election eve, qualities. One of the great advantages Conservative member for the Surrey another EKOS poll reversed the stand- of a party with no chance of winning North riding in Vancouver’s urban ing, but still the two parties stood at the election is that it can stand for gen- sprawl, and justice critic for his party. 32.6 percent for the Liberals and 31.8 eralized virtue, and no one can exam- He intended to run again in 2004, but for the Conservatives, with the NDP ine its past record and demand to at the nomination meeting a newcom- taking 19 percent. A COMPAS poll of know when it had been converted. The er from the East Indian community, June 25 gave the Liberals 34 percent, Greens wanted only enough votes to Jasbir Singh Cheema, turned up with the Conservatives 33, the NDP 15 and the Bloc Québécois 13. Like the Chrétien government in the 2000 election, the Ipsos-Reid projected more Martin government turned its guns on the whole province seats for the Conservatives than the Liberals: 117 to of Alberta. So it poisoned the political atmosphere. So what? 101. In the end, the What was important was to win a majority; the campaign’s Liberals took 36.7 percent pepper spray could be cleaned up after the election. As it of the vote. If the polls turned out, the Liberals did not win a majority, which will were as accurate as they claim to be, the make it more difficult to deal with the envenomed Conservatives could have atmosphere they created. formed a minority govern- ment if the election had qualify for the federal funding of $1.75 some 1,500 instant members and taken place a couple weeks before it per vote, and they succeeded. In the grabbed the Conservative nomination did. It was the final days that doomed next federal election they will make instead. A coup by a herd of instant them. more noise, and filch votes from both members at a nomination meeting is a Was it the feral onslaught of the the NDP and Liberals. Political parties not uncommon scenario in Liberals in the final days that turned do not have to elect candidates to Vancouver’s ethnic politics. The script around the campaign? Faced with pos- exert influence, and even if no Green calls for the candidate who has been sible defeat, the Liberals notched up candidate wins, the Green presence routed by the instant membership the temperature, and Paul Martin will be felt. horde to accept his defeat gracefully, or underwent a transformation into a When the voting was over and the be labeled a racist if he does not. tough and gritty campaigner. counting done, the showing of the Cadman did not play the game. He The attack on the Conservatives Greens was respectable. In Calgary, chose to run as an Independent. The became ferocious. It painted Stephen where almost 61 percent of the popu- Conservative Party revoked his mem- Harper as the Prince of Darkness and lar vote went to the Conservatives, the bership, and told him he would not be alleged that the Conservatives had a Greens garnered a share of 7.5 percent. welcomed back into the fold. Even his hidden agenda and spoke in code. In Edmonton where three-quarters of health worked against him, for he dis- Behind their mask, they were a coven the voters cast ballots for the covered a lump in his groin and the of religious, right-wing extremists. Like Conservatives, the Greens took nearly diagnosis was cancer. While the other the Chrétien government in the 2000 six percent. They took their highest candidates were campaigning, he was election, the Martin government percentile in Victoria where their share undergoing surgery. But when the turned its guns on the whole province crept up to nearly 12 percent. In results were in, he topped the polls, far of Alberta. So it poisoned the political Québec City they were less than one ahead of his nearest rival, the NDP atmosphere. So what? What was percent behind the NDP. The cam- candidate. The voters in important was to win a majority; the paign manager for the Greens on had risen in a grassroots revolt against campaign’s pepper spray could be Mayne Island was elated by the result. the ethnic political game, and the cleaned up after the election. As it In the end, the Liberals captured Conservatives are now left to ponder turned out, the Liberals did not win a twenty seats short of a majority. The their folly. majority, which will make it more dif- NDP, which will support a Liberal gov- ficult to deal with the envenomed ernment until its campaign chest is hat went wrong? Up to the last atmosphere they created. replenished, took nineteen seats. That W minute, the polls predicted a In the end, however, it was prob- leaves a Liberal-NDP informal alliance dead heat between the Liberals and the ably the Conservatives themselves one seat short of a majority and that Conservatives. An EKOS poll taken who gave the Liberal campaign its one seat could have been after the leaders’ debates in mid-June much-needed boost in the final days

POLICY OPTIONS 39 SEPTEMBER 2004 James Allan Evans

CP Photo The principal antagonists in the minority 38th Parliament — (L to R), Conservative Stephen Harper, the Bloc’s Gilles Duceppe, the NDP’s Jack Layton and Liberal Paul Martin, shake hands at the June leaders’ debate. When the bell rings next month in Parliament, they’ll all come out swinging.

of the campaign. The Moncton Times filmmaker in May that a Conservative a smoke-screen tactic called tu quoque, and Transcript reported that Scott government should use the notwith- meaning “you do what you’re accus- Reid, running for the Tories in the standing clause in the constitution to ing me of doing.” It highlights your Ottawa region, intimated that a Tory checkmate activist judges and upset opponent’s hypocrisy, and although government would reduce bilingual court decisions on social issues — not hypocrisy is not one of the seven services in some areas of the country. just the definition of marriage, either. deadly sins, it makes a good talking Harper’s damage control was swift, The film was to be released in August, point. Paul Steckle provided a splen- but the remark was grist for the but a “third party,” a.k.a. a mole, did opening for a tu quoque defence. It Liberal mill. The Western Catholic delivered a copy to a Vancouver didn’t happen. Reporter carried a story about an anti- newspaper. Harper told a Vancouver abortion rally on Parliament Hill radio station that White’s views were he lowercase “c” conservatives, the where Cheryl Gallant, who had cap- his own. But he launched no counter- T backbone of the old Progressive tured a seat for the Alliance in attack. For instance, Liberal MP Paul Conservative Party, failed to rally to the in 2000, drew a comparison Steckle attended the same anti-abor- new Conservatives of Stephen Harper. between the recent beheading of an tion rally as Cheryl Gallant, where he It did not help that Joe Clark exited American man in Iraq and abortion. said — so it was reported — that politics, grumbling that Harper was a Harper did not reprimand Gallant, Canada would have 3.5 million more dangerous man and endorsing Paul but he said that abortion was here to people now if it were not for the abor- Martin. Harper failed to blunt the sus- stay. He would not outlaw it. tions of the past thirty-five years. The picion that the - Conservative MP Randy White from rules of rhetoric that the lawyers of Progressive Conservative union was told a documentary ancient Rome had to master included really an Alliance takeover, and that

40 OPTIONS POLITIQUES SEPTEMBRE 2004 From Greens to Red Tories, and all the colours in between — reflections on the 2004 election the tail that would wag to new Canadian voters looked on the biggest erosion of Tory support was in Conservative dog was a rump of neo- Canadian subsidiary of the US neo- British Columbia and in Harper’s conservatives from his home town. conservative crowd, which had adopted home province of Alberta. In The nexus of Canadian neoconser- embraced Stephen Harper, and B.C., Alliance and Progressive vatism is Calgary, where a new biweek- Harper suffered for it. Conservative voters together num- ly, the Western Standard (does that title bered 947,132 in 2000; in 2004, the remind you of the Weekly Standard, the o commentator, as far as I know, Conservatives got 625,071 votes. In neoconservative organ from N has remarked on the Iraq effect Alberta, the Progressive Conservative Washington DC?) appeared at the end on Conservative fortunes. However and Alliance total was 908,607 in 2000 of last year. The issue that appeared on the Iraq invasion turns out in the end, and 783,379 in 2004. In Ontario, the eve of the election contained a for the immediate future it has dimin- Progressive Conservatives and Alliance hagiography of Stephen Harper by Ted ished US prestige in the Middle East together took 1,693,647 votes in 2000 Byfield, the founder of the now- and increased the rift between Islam and the amalgamated Tories took only defunct Alberta Report, which was the and the Western world. By June 2004, 100,923 fewer in 2004, a loss that is voice of the Right in Alberta. Byfield as the election campaign neared its less than in Alberta and British wrote that Harper was a leader Columbia in absolute terms, right-wingers should heed, even Liberal MP Paul Steckle attended and markedly less in relative though his drawl might put you terms. to sleep. “The Right has finally the same anti-abortion rally as The voting scoreboard had found a winner,” he concluded. Cheryl Gallant, where he said — so one other surprise, to me, at it was reported — that Canada least. The Conservatives fared he neoconservative would have 3.5 million more poorly in the big cities. T embrace must have Canada’s multi-cultural cities reminded that if people now if it were not for the may have plenty of small “c” Harper had been prime minister abortions of the past thirty-five conservatives, but neoconser- when the imperial call to arms years. The rules of rhetoric that the vatism has no great appeal. The against Saddam Hussein came lawyers of ancient Rome had to cities which were the excep- from Washington, Ottawa tions to the rule were Calgary would have responded “Aye, master included a smoke-screen and Edmonton; in the latter, ready!” Iraq’s W.M.D.’s were a tactic called tu quoque, meaning the Tories took 75 percent of fantasy of the American neo- “you do what you’re accusing me the popular vote. But Calgary conservatives, though to be just, of doing.” It highlights your and Edmonton are in Alberta it was a fantasy that was widely and Alberta marched to a dif- shared in Washington. The neo- opponent’s hypocrisy, and although ferent drummer. Alberta is the conservative Paul Wolfowitz hypocrisy is not one of the seven home of western alienation. predicted with the complete deadly sins, it makes a good talking confidence which is a mark of point. Paul Steckle provided a estern alienation is neoconservatism that the Iraqis W descended from a long would greet the American splendid opening for a tu quoque line of grievances. A century invaders with flowers, and the defence. It didn’t happen. and a half ago, rural Upper young troops who are recruited Canada hated smug Toronto largely from the lower-income groups conclusion, the Bush administration’s which was expert at protecting its own in the United States were unprepared to Iraq policies were looking more and interests. When Britain gave Rupert’s find themselves greeted with bombs more like a series of blunders, and Land to the new Dominion of Canada rather than blossoms. Stephen Harper had supported them. in 1870, the demonized portrayal of When the Chrétien government How competent would Harper’s Toronto moved west with the settlers would not join the “Coalition of the Conservatives be if the direction of from Ontario. The CPR may have Willing,” there was an outburst of neo- Canadian foreign affairs were in their bound the dominion together from conservative expostulation in the hands? It was a question that must sea to sea, but it gave the West a new National Post, which lamented what it have occurred to Progressive grievance. Freight rates. When I fancied was endemic anti-American- Conservatives of Ontario whose confi- moved to Vancouver in 1972, freight ism in Canada. dence Harper had to capture in the lit- rates explained why merchandise was But the Iraq adventure of George tle time available if he was to win. more expensive in the West than in W. Bush and the neoconservatives of In the end, however, the great sur- the East. Once the Vancouver market- the Pentagon did affect the way prise of the election was that the place became more competitive, the

POLICY OPTIONS 41 SEPTEMBER 2004 James Allan Evans

price differential disappeared, which Credit government in 1935 to fight Conservatives won 99 seats; they left me with the suspicion that the Eastern control of their economy and would have broken into three figures freight rates were never the whole rea- remedy the Great Depression with a had it not been for the debacle in son. Yet Toronto remained a nexus of mixture of religious fundamentalism Surrey North where the Conservative evil. My colleagues at the University and radical monetary theory. The Chuck Cadman was elected, but as an of British Columbia hastened to Albertan soul was already wrathful Independent. By the next election, enlighten me of that fact as soon as I against Ottawa when Pierre Trudeau’s they can become a realistic alternative arrived. Anyone bearing the Toronto Liberal government brought in its to the Liberals. taint was a special case who had no National Energy Program in 1980. To do so, Harper must gain the right to the same treatment as new- Brian Mulroney buried the NEP but his confidence of the old Progressive comers to the faculty from other parts courtship of Quebec nationalists drove Conservatives who heeded Joe of the world. An associate dean from home the perception that the West did Clark’s warning that Harper is a dan- gerous right-winger. The great surprise of the election was that the biggest erosion Canadians do not like extremists. Harper should of Tory support was in British Columbia and in Harper’s push Peter MacKay into a adopted home province of Alberta. In BC, Alliance and more prominent position, Progressive Conservative voters together numbered 947, 132 for he, if anyone, will be in 2000; in 2004, the Conservatives got 625,071 votes. In able to prove to the Progressive Conservatives Alberta, the Progressive Conservative and Alliance total was that the Alliance has not 908,607 in 2000 and 783,379 in 2004. hijacked their party, but rather that the amalgama- the mini-empire of the Dean of Arts not matter. What mattered was the tion was a meeting of minds. opened a conversation with me once political quadrille between English and And Western alienation? Since I on the evils of Toronto as he sat beside French that has gone on ever since have spent most of my academic life as me at a luncheon. When I protested Britain introduced representative gov- a historian of ancient Greece and that I did not come from Toronto and ernment in Lower and Upper Canada Rome, allow me to point to a lesson had no connection with it apart from in 1791. But the West has examined from classical Athens. The fifth centu- a B.A. from U of T, he demanded to the present-day demography of the ry BC ended with a long, expensive know where I came from. I admitted country, and realized that the West struggle between tough, reactionary to a birthplace which is now just does matter if it can only find a politi- Sparta and Athens which was both a beyond the outer border of the cal vehicle to bring its influence to democracy and an imperial power. penumbra of Toronto’s urban sprawl. bear. Preston Manning’s Reform Party Athens had to tax themselves to pay “Same thing,” said he. was a first effort. for the costs of war, and it was the The conversation lapsed. The late wealthy Athenians whose pocketbooks Professor Frank Underhill who taught he trouble was that Reform’s plat- were emptied most. They became an Canadian history at the University of T form was an incoherent mish- alienated group which included some Toronto until 1955 used to say that mash. It was as if a number of high-powered intellects, and when the abomination of Toronto was the one disparate political groups threw their war ended with the defeat of Athens, a great common denominator of wish lists into a melting pot, where camarilla of them seized power. They Canadians. However, I learned to tune they failed to melt. Reform became began as reformers and rapidly earned in, and in due time could pass for a Canadian Alliance led by Stockwell the label of “The Thirty Tyrants.” Their standard western alienation wonk in Day, whose 2000 election campaign is leader was a relative of the philosopher mixed company. remembered now for the date he Plato who is much admired by neo- But modern western alienation assigned to the age of the dinosaurs. conservative political scientists. The has nothing to do with freight rates. But with Stephen Harper and Peter moral of the tale is: Beware of alienat- Alberta has taken it over, and Alberta is MacKay, the amalgamated PC and ed political groups that want power. different — different even from Alliance parties have found leaders They do not have the common good Saskatchewan, though the two who can give some coherence and dis- in mind. provinces shared a date of creation, cipline to a resurrected Conservative 1905, and Ottawa retained control of Party. The Liberals rushed the election James Allan Evans is a professor emeri- crown lands in both until 1930, partly to deny them enough time to do tus at University of British Columbia, though only Alberta continues to it, and under the circumstances, they and author of The Emperor Justinian resent it. Albertans elected a Social did remarkably well. The and the Byzantine Empire.

42 OPTIONS POLITIQUES SEPTEMBRE 2004