Western Producer staff
Larry Maguire figures he is one of the lucky Tory survivors of the 1993 election-night massacre. In his first run for Parliament in Brandon-Souris, Maguire came third.
Like 292 other Conservative losers that night, he watched Canada’s Grand Old Party almost disappear under the weight of an unpopular leader, hints of scandal and public contempt for the Tories after nine years in power.
Still, Maguire could see some positives.
He polled more than most Prairie Conservatives that night, more even than his mentor Charlie Mayer in next-door Lisgar-Marquette.
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He had his Elgin, Man., farm to go back to. And his defeat gave him a chance to become more involved in farm politics at a time when the fundamental rules of the farm policy game are being changed by the Liberal government.
As president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, Maguire will be deeply involved in trying to negotiate new rules in a less-regulated grain handling and transportation system.
“I figure I can play a much more effective role in this debate than I would had I won and was sitting as one of three Conservative MPs in the House,” he said during the recent national Conservative convention in Hull.
In a way, the Manitoba farmer is exactly the type of Tory partisan that leader Jean Charest is counting on to rebuild the shattered party. He comes with credentials and constituency and he was not tainted by involvement in the Mulroney government.
“When I ran, I did not run for the status quo,” said Maguire. “I was running for change and the future.”
Throughout the convention, that was an important undercurrent.
“I think it is fair to say people were unhappy and they let us know in spades,” said former agriculture minister Charlie Mayer. “When we rebuild, we will have to look forward, not backward.”
The question now facing the party is – look forward to what?
The Hull convention proved beyond a doubt that the party has an organization, still can raise money, still can attract several thousand partisans to a convention and still can attract a sizable cadre of right-wing young people.
But can it find a policy position somewhere between the broad conservative middle, now straddled by the Liberals, and the pure right wing, represented by Reform?
But the party will need more than a new organization and new policy before Canadians really believe it learned the lesson of October, 1993. It will have to prove that it has developed a new attitude – less smug, less arrogant.
One of the enduring images of the Mulroney years happened several years ago, when the federal PCs were at the peak of their power and abrasiveness.
They gathered in their smugness in Toronto to celebrate.
While they basked in the glow, unemployed workers demonstrated outside. Young Tories watched them through pane glass windows, some shouting “get a job.”
In their arrogance, they had no idea how close the Tories themselves were to the long-term unemployment line.
