OTTAWA – Former agriculture minister Charlie Mayer says there is still life in the old Progressive Conservative party, despite its near-destruction in 1993.
“You don’t write off a party or organization that has been around as long as we have after just one defeat,” he said last week from his farm at Carberry, Man. “I see some excellent people involved in the rebuilding.”
However, his own involvement in the rebuilding attempt will be in a background role.
Asked if he plans to run again for Parliament, Mayer chuckled as if he had been asked whether he had plans to sky dive on his 100th birthday.
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“No,” he said quickly. “I was in it for 15 years. When you get beat as bad as I did, it’s time to lie down.”
In the 1993 election, the longtime Lisgar-Marquette Conservative MP joined 293 fellow Conservative candidates in losing, running third.
But he insisted the party, which plans a major policy convention in Winnipeg this August, is on the way back in Western Canada.
Party leader Jean Charest has been in the West recently promoting the same message.
Policies intended
In Edmonton, he told a party gathering the PCs will leave the Winnipeg convention with policies that call for a legislated balanced budget, support of national medi-care and pensions, an end to “institutionalized multiculturalism” and a council of first ministers to handle federal-provincial relations.
But his main task in recent months has been to disavow any plan to amalgamate the PC party with the Reform party – an idea being promoted by some former Conservatives as the only way to “unite the right.”
Reform leader Preston Manning has issued an invitation for PC members to join Reform if they want to present a unified right wing challenge to the governing Liberals.
In Edmonton, before a constituency meeting audience, Charest vowed to fight Reform, as well as the Liberals.
“I would like to make this very clear,” he said. “I am not interested in considering, exploring or negotiating a merger, agreement, understanding or any kind of co-operative arrangement with Preston Manning and the Reform party. The party I lead is not for sale, rent or hire for someone else’s gain.”
Charest said the two right-of-centre parties do not share the same vision of the country. He accused Reformers of promoting “faded ideology and simplistic solutions” in their search for votes.
Don’t assume distrust
“Unlike Reform, we Progressive Conservatives do not instinctively view the state with distrust and suspicion or seek to bring government to an end,” said Charest. “We regard government as the highest expression of our collective will as citizens.”
He said the party is winning support, which is helping to cut its post-election debt in half to less than $3 million. It plans to cut the remainder in half by the end of 1996.
Last year, 16,000 individuals and 2,250 companies contributed to party finances, according to the PC party 1995 financial report.
