WHILE he was packing up the memorabilia of 15 years on Parliament Hill as Reform/Alliance/Conservative MP for Alberta’s Wild Rose, retiring Myron Thompson stopped to chat with one of those big city reporters that had so much fun with him over the years.
His Stetson, plain language and strong conservative views on crime, guns and gays made him something of a poster boy over the years for the Reform agenda, a template for what big city easterners saw as the rural Alberta agenda that led to creation of Reform.
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So what do you wish you could have done during your 15 years that you didn’t get done? asked the reporter.
The issues Thompson mentioned were not surprising, being at the core of his political agenda since he arrived on Parliament Hill in late 1993.
What was surprising was that of all the unfinished issues he could have raised, these were the two he chose.
“Two major issues still have not been resolved and won’t get resolved under a minority government,” he said. “One is the gun registry. We’ve got to scrap that. That is a wasted program. The other is the Canadian Wheat Board, which constantly interferes with the farmers in the West getting decent markets for their barley.”
There is little doubt both will be on Stephen Harper’s to-do list if he wins a majority.
But it is equally true that these two issues will not be top of mind in a majority Conservative caucus because such a caucus would be populated by increased numbers of Quebec and suburban Ontario MPs with little interest in or knowledge of the CWB and for whom the gun registry issue is not a high priority.
In fact, Thompson’s retirement is something of a symbol of the changing Conservative party.
He joins other originals Monte Solberg, Art Hanger and Bob Mills in hanging up his political skates.
Almost all the original 52 MPs elected in 1993 are gone. The handful left includes Leon Benoit, Jay Hill, Chuck Strahl and Diane Ablonczy.
Harper, also one of the originals, although he left early and came back, has been moving the party to the centre in search of a new status as a national party that includes a diverse coalition of interests.
In the process, many of the original rural western issues have of necessity been diluted, toned down or even shunted aside.
For folks like Thompson and Hanger, the fact that a Conservative government has decided not to legislate on abortion or same-sex marriage must stick in the craw.
For folks who joined the Reform movement in part because of attempts by former prime minister Brian Mulroney to give Quebec what they saw as special status, being told to vote for a resolution recognizing the Québécois as a ‘nation’ must have stuck in the craw.
For fiscal Conservatives forced to watch a government spend money like drunken Liberals, it must stick in the craw.
So maybe that’s why Thompson highlighted the wheat board and the gun registry.
For a more urban-dominated majority government, they would be side issues that could be accomplished without undermining the national agenda.
The Reform craw must be getting full.
