Canada balkanized

National Review, June 30, 1997 by Kevin Michael Grace

Preston Manning had love on his mind. The leader of Canada's Reform Party related that his wife, Sandra, sometimes asks why he doesn't tell her he loves her. Manning replied: Isn't it better to say it with deeds than with words? The 2,500 supporters in an Edmonton stadium on May 27 might have thought they had wandered into a John Bradshaw workshop by mistake. Could this be the "bigot" whose "divisive" message had provoked fears of civil war? But when the votes were counted on June 2, Canada had to ponder what Manning's tough love might mean for a fractured country.

Though Prime Minister Jean Chretien was re-elected, his Liberal Party took only 38 per cent of the popular vote. Against a splintered opposition, that was enough for 155 seats -- a slim majority out of a total of 301. The separatist Bloc Quebecois took 44 of Quebec's 75 seats, and the socialist New Democrats took 21 seats.

But the real story was the continuing realignment on the Right. Manning's Reform Party took 60 seats with 19 per cent of the vote, and became the offi- cial Opposition. The Progressive Conservatives -- Canada's traditional alternative to the Liberals -- rebounded to 18 per cent and 20 seats, up from 2 in 1993. Yet the PCs seem finished. Leader Jean Charest attempted to woo soft separatists in Quebec, yet won only 4 seats there. In their historic stronghold of western Canada, the PCs have been displaced completely by Reform. And in Ontario -- the most populous province, where elections are won or lost -- they took only a single seat. Their gains were made in Atlantic Canada, where Charest excoriated the Liberals from the Left for cutting income transfers.

Like George Bush and Bob Dole, the PCs have learned that the wages of prag- matism are death. Yet the touchy-feely Manning is himself an odd kind of prag- matist. Less a conservative than a prairie populist, he says MPs exist solely to express the will of the electorate; if constituents support abortion, or euthanasia, their representatives are duty bound to vote in favor, or resign.

But if Manning is not conservative, Reform voters are. Reform's bedrock sup- port is disaffected Conservatives in western Canada. The party once reflected this by calling for policies such as lower immigration. Manning abandoned this position years ago. Yet the party still opposes Canada's official multi- culturalist policy -- and to the deputy prime minister (and the media), this was enough to make Manning "Canada's David Duke."

In the last few years the 54-year-old Manning has set about transforming both his own and his party's image. He capped his teeth, had laser surgery on his eyes, dyed his hair, and took lessons to lower his voice -- which, alas, still resembles a parrot's strangled cry. In a new wardrobe of casual European clothes, spouting talk of how Sandra persuaded him to "express" himself, Man- ning has gone from policy wonk to New Age Sensitive Guy.

His party was a harder proposition. Reform voters have long been traduced as old, white, and angry. So Manning's strategy was to show that his party had become young, multicultural, and party-hearty. Thirty candidates under thirty years of age were nominated, and a discomfited Manning suffered through an interview on MuchMusic (Canada's equivalent of MTV) by a hostile 17-year-old.

Courting the immigrant vote, Manning selected immigrant candidates, but these turned out to be something of an embarrassment. One, a Sikh, was reported to have been an advisor to Liberian dictator Samuel Doe. Unimpressed, immigrants, now 16 per cent of the Canadian population, continued to vote Liberal. And indeed, it was immigrant enclaves in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal that nailed down the Liberal victory.

As the campaign began, the new non-threatening Reform and its immaculately coifed leader were leaving the voters cold. The Liberals enjoyed a 25-point lead in April, and Reform's support had fallen precipitously even in the West. Yet the Liberals were obviously vulnerable. At his opening press conference, Chretien came down with a case of Ted Kennedyitis -- he was unable to give a single reason why an election was needed 18 months before his mandate expired. And though Chretien had been widely praised for his reduction of Canada's once formidable deficit, unemployment remained near 10 per cent.

Just as his party was being written off, Manning proved to be more Pete Wilson than Bob Dole. His survival instinct rose and he played the "national unity" card. During the leadership debate he scolded Chretien, reminding voters that he had sleepwalked through the 1995 Quebec referendum, which the separatists lost by a whisker: "You almost blew it, sir."

Then Reform scandalized polite opinion by daring to suggest in an allegedly "American-style" attack ad that it was time for an English-Canadian prime min- ister. Only 25 per cent of Canada's population lives in Quebec, yet for 27 of the last 29 years, Quebeckers have been prime minister. The kicker: of Man- ning's opponents, Chretien, Charest, and Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe were all Francophone natives of Quebec -- a province that could soon depart.