EDMONTON – For a staunch fiscal conservative like new Canadian Alliance
leader Stephen Harper, it is an embarrassment.
He has inherited a party $2.3 million in debt after a year of
leadership turmoil under Stockwell Day that kept donors away in droves.
“Indebtedness is inconsistent with the values of our party,
inconsistent with the spirit that saw this party in the 1990s lead the
charge in Canada for fiscal responsibilities and balanced budgets,”
Harper said April 6 during his first major speech to the party since
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winning the leadership over Day two weeks earlier.
His speech wrapped up a three-day Alliance policy convention that was
haunted by the party’s enormous debt and threats from Ontario business
donors that money will stay in their pockets until Alliance and
Progressive Conservatives get together. It was philosophically
offensive and politically limiting.
“We will pay down this debt as part of our preparations for the next
election,” Harper said.
“We will run this party the way we should be running the country –
debt free.”
Delegates responded by pledging $1.1 million during the convention in
loans or grants from constituency associations.
West-central Saskatchewan MP Gerry Ritz, for example, announced that
even though the farm economy in his Battlefords-Lloydminster area is in
bad shape, Alliance members found a way to pledge $15,000.
Southeastern Saskatchewan MP Roy Bailey pledged $1,000 of his own money.
