United Alternative.

They may be populist but they may also be night

Catholic Insight staff, like so many pro-lifers in the country, have been dissatisfied with the old main parties for a long time. So we asked Calgary writer Joseph Woodard to explain the United Alternative project in order to sharpen our thinking about what to do in coming elections.

Editor

Winston Churchill once quipped that "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest". Historically-minded

Catholics might disagree with that assessment, since constitutional monarchy best minors the Providential order and best protects private families. But that moot point aside, Churchill's underlying assumption still stands: politics is the realm of the urgent, the necessary and the possible. Generally speaking, democracy provides choices among the "least worst."

On the third weekend in February, 1999, more than 1,500 delegates from every Canadian province packed the Ottawa Convention Centre to deliberate upon the founding of a new political party, called in the interim "The United Alternative." The break-down of the delegates ran roughly 40% Western Reform Party members, 15% Ontario and eastern Reformers, and 45% Ontario and national Progressive Conservatives (mostly from the Ontario provincial party).

The UA Convention and the movement since then is Reform Party founder Preston Manning's attempt to transform a regional protest party--now the Official Opposition--into a truly national coalition. Despite two inevitable glitches--the refusal of the federal PC leader to cooperate and the disaffection of some regionally-minded Reformers--the initiative has gone far better than anyone could have expected.

The need for something like the UA initiative became apparent in the last two federal elections, particularly in Ontario. Especially in the 1997 election, Reform polled second to the Liberal Party in most of the Ontario ridings; and in over half of those ridings, the combined Progressive Conservative and Reform votes would have returned somebody other than a Liberal to Parliament. If the Ontario Conservatives and Reformers could have co-operated, they could have taken half or more of Ontario's 103 federal seats. The result would have been either a Reform/PC or Liberal minority government.

Would a minority government have been the disaster the ruling Liberals always claim it would be? Well, it certainly would have been more sensitive to popular pressures. It might have invoked the Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the "notwithstanding" clause, to overrule the legalization of child pornography by the B.C. Court. A minority government might have protected the Newfoundland and Quebec religious schools from dissolution. It might have reversed the court's decisions in Rosenberg (fall 1998) and M v. H (May 1999), which granted spousal status to homosexual liaisons. A minority government might have been forced by public opinion to reverse the crushing tax burden on single-income families, now paying 30-66% higher income taxes for the "privilege" of keeping a parent at home with the kids.

In short, a minority government, of whatever party, could not have been the moral and social disaster that an unaccountable Liberal government has been.

Catholics and Liberals

"Canadian Catholics vote for the Liberal Party for a number of cultural reasons, that have nothing nothing at all--to do with either the promotion of Catholic moral principles or the protection of the Catholic Church as a minority religion," says Reform Member of Parliament Jason Kenney (Calgary Centre), a Catholic and an alumnus of Notre Dame Academy, Wilcox, SK, and the Ignatius Program at the University of San Francisco.

"Since the Omnibus Bill of 1969, Canada has had a stream of Liberal prime ministers--Trudeau, Turner and Chretien, all Catholics--who have led ceaseless attacks on the sanctity of life and the prerogatives of the family," says Mr. Kenney. "They haven't merely left the courts unaccountable and unchecked. They've deliberately used the courts as 'judicial legislators', using them to push through a social revolution that they never could have passed through Parliament."

For years, genuinely faithful Catholic members of the Liberal caucus (like Toronto's Dan MacTeague) had hoped that they would be able to moderate the pagan trends of the Canadian regime more effectively from within the ranks of the ruling caucus, the Reformer continues. But they have not provided so much as a speed-bump in the path of the Cabinet's New Age express. Their only function has been to legitimate an irretrievably radical caucus, making it appear representative to their constituents.

The Tories

The other "mainline" party is no improvement. "The Progressive Conservatives are as bad as or worse than the Liberals," says Mr. Kenney. "When they had their one real opportunity in power, under the Catholic Brian Mulroney, they watched the court strike down the existing abortion law and then left the country with no restrictions whatsoever, giving us the most licentious abortion-on-demand regime in the Western world."

The PCs also bankrolled the UN's Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), International Planned Parenthood, radical domestic lobbies like NAG-SOW (the National Action Committee on the Status of Women), and subversive federal bureaucracies like the Court Challenges Program, he charges. "And they preserved the same anti-family tax regime begun by the Liberals."

The current PC leader, Joe Clark, who reigned as prime minister for nine months in 1979, is also a Catholic. However, as a "Red Tory," he is fully supportive of abortion rights, and his wife, "bioethicist" Maureen McTeer, served for many years on the board of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League (CARAL).

The Progressive Conservatives' problem, Mr. Kenney suggests, is that they are committed to the cultural and constitutional status quo, even if it perpetually locks them into opposition. The PC leadership would prefer to have an unaccountable rule by the Prime Minister's Office and Liberal Cabinet, rather than risk loosening the authority of the party leader and the ties of party discipline. "No matter what Reformers have tried in the House, the defence of marriage, reinstating the child pornography law, or repairing the Young Offenders Act, the Conservatives have always condemned it as populist, fundamentalist grandstanding," he adds.

"And you never hear religious bigotry like the vitriolic attacks on Christians from Red Tories like Ron Ghitter or Marjory LeBreton. The Liberals at least put some restraint on their anti-Christian rhetoric--if not their policies. The PCs don't bother to hide their bigotry.

United Alternative

The delegates at the UA Ottawa Convention began their efforts by debating the platform of the potential party, beginning with typically Reform proposals: balanced budgets, lower taxes, renewed federalism, Senate reform, a loosening of party discipline in the House, recall, and referenda. But more happened during these two days of deliberation.

"All human beings possess the fundamental human rights of life, freedom, and the right to own and enjoy property," read one amendment to the platform that passed on the floor. In another amendment, the participants stated that they "recognize the family as the essential building block for a healthy society."

Some of the Ontario PC delegates could be heard to grouse about the "antiabortion" and "anti-gay" intention of these clauses. And the pro-life, pro-family delegates recognized that these words did little more than keep the debate open within the new party. But they still passed overwhelmingly on the floor of the convention.

"Catholics seem to have an aversion to Reform, because of what they perceive to be its 'unqualified populism'," says Reformer Kenney. "But our populism is not unqualified. We all recognize that majorities are often wrong; that's why minorities need constitutional protections. It was only Reformers who voted against the dissolution of the Newfoundland and Quebec religious schools, on the grounds that it's unjust to remove a protection from a minority without their consent."

What's more, he adds, Reformers make up three-quarters of the membership of the Parliamentary Pro-life Caucus, a fact often ignored by pro-life, pro-family groups, possibly because they fear losing some imaginary "influence" with the ruling Liberals.

Reform

Reform MP Eric Lowther (Calgary Centre), the party's Children and Families critic and an evangelical Christian, is mystified why his party doesn't get more credit for its stands on life and family issues. He engineered last year's "fair family taxes" and "defence of marriage" motions on the floor of the House. He also shamed the government into adopting his private member's bill, restraining convicted pedophiles from applying for jobs or positions of responsibility over children. And he has been at the forefront of Reform's resistance to the UN's anti-family, population-control agenda.

"This party is committed to holding referenda on the crucial moral issues, because we recognize the need for a popular debate on them," says Mr. Lowther. For example, "it's not good enough to legislate an end to abortion from the top down"--a tactic, he says, that could lead only to another unenforceable Prohibition--the Prohibition of alcohol in the nineteen thirties. "You have to get out among the people and make a persuasive appeal to the Culture of Life. You have to get the mainstream of the population behind the issue. That seems scary, but it's the only way to get it done."

Mr. Lowther sees the United Alternative movement as sifting the wheat from the chaff within the Reform Party. "It's been separating out the members whose primary concern is the health of the country, from those whose primary concern was regional protest," he says. "The platform is a good one, but it's still only words. Implementing those policies is going to require having the right people behind the words."

Last June, Reform's membership gave a 61 per cent approval for continuing on with the United Alternative process. As more federal and Ontario PCs come over to the UA, a "Re-founding Convention" is increasingly likely for some time next spring. That will be followed very shortly by a leadership convention, possibly in Ontario. And this new party should be in place as the Official Opposition and ready to fight the next federal election by next summer.

Joseph Woodard is a freelance writer from Calgary, AB.