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Unite-the-right heads for Reform Winds of Change activists say Charest has made it clear he doesn't want them Delacourt, Susan . The Globe and Mail ; Toronto, Ont. [Toronto, Ont]. 02 Sep 1996: A.4. ProQuest document link ABSTRACT (ABSTRACT) "You know what's so weird about it?" Mr. [David Frum] said. "He's acting as if he's the front-runner; as if he's got this huge lead to protect. There is this kind of disconnect from reality." FULL TEXT Winds of Change activists say Charest has made it clear he doesn't want them Unite-the-right heads for Reform Winds of Change activists say Charest has made it clear he doesn't want them Monday, September 2, 1996 Parliamentary Bureau OTTAWA -- The forces pushing to unite Canada's political right, known for their Winds of Change gathering last spring, appear to be blowing toward the Reform Party in the wake of the Progressive Conservative policy convention. David Frum, a newspaper columnist and author who has been a leading figure in the unite-the-right movement, says that Reform is beginning to look like the only feasible alternative for people with his views because of the direction in which Progressive Conservative Leader Jean Charest is taking his party. "Charest could not be more pointed about who he wants the people at Winds of Change to vote for. He's made it very clear that he doesn't want us," Mr. Frum said as he reviewed what he witnessed at the Winnipeg policy convention. "At some point, you get the hint." The Tories are losing the unite-the-right forces because of their determination to stay in the moderate, sometimes ambiguous middle -- worried more about Liberal foes than their Reform rivals, Mr. Frum says. Yes, Mr. Charest embraced a call for tax cuts as the Winds of Change conference recommended right-wing parties should do. But Mr. Frum said it was clear that neither the leader's heart nor his convictions are in that pledge. "These people are making the choice for me," Mr. Frum said. "One of the things that I was very struck by at this convention was the inability of the leading figures in the party to speak about the people who support Reform in PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 1 of 4 anything but a contemptuous way. . . . To this day, I find it incredible that they are not interested in pulling back their lost voters from Reform." But even as Mr. Frum feels himself pulled toward voting for Reform in the next election (he does intend to cast a ballot, even though he has moved to Washington), he also acknowledges that the Tory convention may have also prolonged the split in Canada's right-wing ranks. Now he's not sure, as Mr. Charest and Reform Leader Preston Manning have repeatedly said, that the next election will determine the victor of the fight for Canada's right. "The issue is not just who we are all going to vote for in the next election. . . . The Charest strategy will not work [in ending the right-wing split] but I don't think it will fail so definitively that the Conservative Party will be washed up." That's a point echoed privately by some Tory insiders who worry that the emerging Conservative election platform will be so ambiguous that it will woo Liberals and Reformers equally. If that happens, the Tories could well win enough to improve their current, two-seat standing in the House of Commons, and thus claim growth potential, but not enough to either displace the Liberal government or significantly diminish the Reform Party's presence. Michael Coren, another journalist and author involved with the unite-the-right movement, agrees that the Conservative convention affirmed the predominance of the old, Red Tory establishment in the party. But he's not so sure that will cause any huge hemorrhage of support in Reform's direction, even if people like Mr. Frum are leaning that way, and even after Mr. Manning took the unusual step of issuing an open invitation in The Globe and Mail for defections while the Winnipeg convention was going on. Mr. Charest's moderate, centrist course could simply prolong the split, Mr. Coren says, agreeing with Mr. Frum that the verdict is suspended in the wake of the Winnipeg convention. Young people have been seen as the proverbial canaries in the coal mine in this political dispute, with many political observers figuring that youth dissent would be an early indication of which party was doomed in the right- wing battle. Much attention was paid to the hard-right gang of Tory youth who attended the Winnipeg convention and tried to push the party farther from the centrist position it eventually adopted. Immediately after the convention, Tory Youth president Tasha Kheriddin boasted that Mr. Charest and the older party members had been able to construct a policy that was big enough to embrace the young people. She predicted no defections and that her constituency would be offered a role in the party that included building the platform, not just waving signs and acting as the school-spirit wing of the establishment. But Kory Teneycke, a former young Tory who bolted to Reform earlier this year and now serves in a recruiting role for similarly disaffected youth, says that he has been hearing from unhappy young Tories in the week after the Winnipeg convention. PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 2 of 4 "After the euphoria of the convention was over, some of these young Tories looked at what they achieved and realized it wasn't much," Mr. Teneycke said. Defections are inevitable, he said, but right now the future Tories-turned-Reformers are keeping their angst in low profile. Mr. Coren said the continuing confusion at the provincial level also makes it more difficult for right-wing voters to decide where to place their support in the next election. Conservative premiers such as Ontario's Mike Harris and Alberta's Ralph Klein are performing a delicate balancing act with Reform and the Tories, isolating neither one party nor the other, he points out. Few members of either of these governments were in evidence at the Winnipeg convention, and again Mr. Charest did nothing to isolate or to endear himself to his provincial cousins. "You know what's so weird about it?" Mr. Frum said. "He's acting as if he's the front-runner; as if he's got this huge lead to protect. There is this kind of disconnect from reality." Mr. Coren agrees: "The Tory party's self-deception is bizarre . . . They still believe they're a powerful, national, federal party." Over this Labour Day weekend, Mr. Frum, Mr. Coren and author William Gairdner were planning to meet and plot future strategy for the Winds of Change movement. DETAILS Publication title: The Globe and Mail; Toronto, Ont. Pages: A.4 Number of pages: 0 Publication year: 1996 Publication date: Sep 2, 1996 Dateline: Ottawa ONT Section: News Publisher: The Globe and Mail Place of publication: Toronto, Ont. Country of publication: Canada, Toronto, Ont. Publication subject: General Interest Periodicals--Canada PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 3 of 4 ISSN: 03190714 Source type: Newspaper Language of publication: English Document type: NEWSPAPER ProQuest document ID: 384888668 Document URL: https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/unite-right-heads-reform-winds-change- activists/docview/384888668/se-2?accountid=5705 Copyright: All material copyright Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved. 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