Western Producer Staff
It is an odd, tense time in Ottawa for the Reform Party. Recent weeks featured the unseemly sight of Reform MPs debating publicly whether or not the party is too “extreme” in its positions to represent modern Canada.
It was not the kind of message welcomed by a party trying to be national and mainstream in the lead-up to this week’s six federal byelections, in which Reform hoped to win at least one new House of Commons seat.
Nor was the controversy generated by Calgary MP Art Hanger’s interest in going to Singapore to study its use of caning as a criminal punishment.
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By March 18, Hanger had announced he would not go because of “concerns that the media attention generated by his trip would draw public focus away from Reform’s larger message of criminal justice reform, national unity, parliamentary reform, economic growth and Reform’s vision of a New Canada.”
Too late. The image of Reform as a party of floggers and paddlers already had entered the world of Canadian comedy skits and parliamentary heckling. Through it all, leader Preston Manning continued to insist the problem was not party policy but the public perception of party policy.
Like generations of politicians before him, Manning seems to believe unpopularity flows from improper communication, rather than from improper policy tendencies.
This ignores minor uproars, like the controversy generated by Manitoba Reform MP Jake Hoeppner in his continuing campaign against the Canadian Wheat Board by suggesting they are out to get him and that late commissioner Bill Smith may have been killed because of something he knew.
And it ignores potentially major uproars like last week’s news that at least one leader of the gun lobby on the Prairies has been bragging on the Internet that gun owners have infiltrated the Reform Party, made it the party of the gun lobby and more should join because only Reform defended their right to bear arms.
Whoops! Isn’t this the party opposed to political parties catering to special interests? Reform representatives quickly insisted they receive no money from the gun lobby and are not captive.
All this comes as Reform is struggling to keep its deficit-reduction focus in the face of typical Liberal success at stealing their conservative ideas and their deficit-cutting priorities.
Meanwhile, in one of the byelections in Labrador, Reform has been criticizing Ottawa for not spending millions of dollars to build a better road system in that sparsely populated region.
It does not require a high-priced public relations spin-doctor to figure out how to compare that complaint against Reform demands to cut spending in areas such as social programs, welfare and unemployment insurance.
Next June, Reformers meet in Vancouver for their final policy conference before the next election.
It will be, it seems now, a search for the real soul of Reform – mainstream or “extreme,” populist or just another political party.
They should sell tickets.
