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Why Tories Can't Win

Sorry BC. It's all about Ontario appeasing Quebec.

Rafe Mair 6 Jun 2005TheTyee.ca

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Don’t blame me, folks, I am merely the messenger, but Stephen Harper and the Tories are not going to win the next election. No way. And I ask you to destroy this after reading in case I’m wrong! But let me tell you why I think the bad old Grits will win again.

First of all, while Stephen Harper might make a great front man for a funeral parlour, he’s no political leader. He can’t control his own caucus. Losing Belinda Stronach was a big owie and it should have been avoided. If not avoidable, it was predictable, and any handling of the situation would have been better than how the Tories did it.

Moreover, Harper has looked pathetic in the Grewal mess as well.

But there are two bigger reasons Harper won’t make it and one is Ontario. Ontario sees its mission as keeping Quebec happy -- if necessary with a never ending supply of what can only be termed bribes. Since most of the money comes from Ontario they see it as no one else’s business what they do with it. In fact, Ontario has made a virtue of necessity and pays the modern version of the Danegeld cheerfully as if they actually like doing it.

The Duceppe two-step

The closer we get to, say, 2007 or 08, the closer we get to Quebec Referendum #3 with Gilles Duceppe the new premier. Duceppe has surprised many because unlike Parizeau, Levesque and to some extent Bouchard, he has tact and is able to rally troops inside Quebec without requiring that they hate Anglos, “Ethnics” and Canadians in the bargain. In short, Duceppe has a hell of a good shot at winning the next referendum. Ontario knows that and realizes that in the run-up to the vote, Canada must have people available who can speak for national unity and, by the process of elimination, that means the Federal Liberals. Granted that the Liberals are in high odour but a smelly Liberal carries more weight in Quebec than the most pristine of Tories or NDPers.

The Tories have another major problem. All across the country they are nominating or are about to nominate right wing Christians. I’ll get into why that’s a bad thing in a later column but let it be said that the right wing political agenda is not that of the average Ontarian who is not going to let gay marriages bother him too much and certainly isn’t going to return to the pre Morgenthaler days on the abortion issue.

It might be argued, I suppose, that most Canadians are a godless lot which, if true, only makes the fundamentalist Christian look even more out of place on the overall political landscape. There is something about the preachy, stiff collared, morality pest that turns off all but the farm belters. Since it’s the cities in Ontario which must be captured by the Tories, the image of new Tory campaigners with floppy hats and string ties carrying the Good Book under their arm makes them look like space invaders to city folk.

Way out West

And there is another problem for the Tories and it shows quite frequently these days. They have a deep historical division between those who see Canada as the ongoing, never ending Upper Canada/Lower Canada debate while others, from Western Canada especially, couldn’t care less about that but are after fair shares for their region regardless of how much that pisses off Quebec.

Quebeckers know what Western Canadians feel and take that into account any time a Tory politicians talks about Two Founding Nations and nonsense like that.

You read it here first. If Canada is to survive the next Quebec Referendum – and I don’t think it will - the Liberals, tarnished and disgraced though they are, will be the only ones able to speak for Canada. And Ontario knows that.

Rafe Mair, a regular columnist for The Tyee, can be heard every weekday morning from 8:30-10:30 on 600AM, His website is www.rafeonline.com  [Tyee]

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