Unite the Right (Canada)
The Unite the Right movement was a Canadian political movement which existed from around the mid-1990s to 2003. The movement came into being when it became clear that neither of Canada's two main right-of-centre political parties, the Reform Party of Canada/Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, was independently capable of defeating the governing Liberal Party. The objective of the movement, therefore, was to merge the two parties into a single party. The goal of uniting the right was accomplished in December 2003 with the formation of the Conservative Party of Canada.
1987–1993: Fragmentation on the political right
The Reform Party came into being in 1987, due in part to opposition to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government that ruled Canada from 1984 to 1993. A significant number of Western Canadians had strongly disliked what they perceived as the Mulroney government's pro-Quebec approach and rampant use of patronage. They also viewed the Meech Lake Accord and Charlottetown Accord as not in the West's best interests. Other Western conservatives felt that Mulroney's government was not sufficiently neo-liberal in its fiscal taxation and federal spending policies while some social conservatives were critical of the government's failed attempts to regulate and reduce abortion in Canada.In the 1993 election, the upstart Reform Party won 52 seats in the west, and the once-powerful PCs led by newly minted Prime Minister Kim Campbell were reduced to only two seats in Parliament. Both parties were, however, almost completely shut out of Ontario and Quebec in this election, and also in the elections of 1997 and 2000. The two central Canadian provinces together represented over half the seats in the House of Commons; in the 1993, 1997 and 2000 elections, the total number of central Canadian seats held, collectively, by the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance and the PCs never rose above six, out of a total of over 170 available seats.
With two right-wing parties competing for power, it became apparent that unseating the governing Liberals would be next to impossible. In the 1997 election, both the PCs and the Reform Party respectively polled roughly 19% each in popular support. Reform emerged with 60 Western seats and Official Opposition status, while the demoralized PCs emerged from the brink of oblivion with 20 Eastern seats and regained party status. More importantly, the Liberals emerged with only a five-seat majority in the election, and many pundits suggested that the combined PC and Reform votes would have been enough to unseat the Liberals or at least reduce them to minority status.
The Liberals under Jean Chrétien had governed Canada since 1993, and were never really threatened by the divided right during the Chrétien era. Especially important in the Liberals' electoral success was the province of Ontario. From 1993 to 2004, the Liberals utterly dominated Canada's most populous province. Both Reform and the PC Party received many votes, but because of the first past the post system, this was not enough to win more than a handful of Ontario's approximately 103 seats. At the same time, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, who some suggested were kindred spirits in policy and direction to Reform and Blue Tory PCs, had formed a provincial government under Premier Mike Harris.
Barriers to a merger
There were many barriers to a merger. Polls had found that two-thirds of traditional PC voters would vote for the Liberals before endorsing a united Canadian Alliance/PC party. Some Westerners also had deep concerns that the new party would be dominated by Central Canada, much as they thought the Progressive Conservatives had been. Leadership and MPs from both sides of the division also opposed amerger out of concerns that both parties were distinct political entities and not part of a larger conservative movement.
1995–1996: Early efforts to unite the right
During the 1995 Quebec referendum, Reform leader Preston Manning implored the two sitting PC MPs, Elsie Wayne and party leader Jean Charest, to sit in Parliament with the Reform Party caucus. The combined weight of 52 Reform MPs and two PC MPs would have allowed a unified caucus to replace the 53-member separatist Bloc Québécois caucus as Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Charest, however, refused to merge and instead focused his efforts on rebuilding the shattered PC Party.In 1996, David Frum and Ezra Levant organized the "Winds of Change" conference in Calgary, an early attempt to encourage the Reform Party of Canada and Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to merge so that a united rightwing party could defeat the Liberal Party of Canada in the subsequent election. Manning and Charest were both invited to attend but declined.
1997–2000: The United Alternative / Canadian Alliance
After the second Liberal win in 1997, it became increasingly obvious that having two right-of-centre parties was splitting the vote and ensuring further Liberal majorities. Reform leader Manning was criticized by some members in his own party and by Western media for not "broadening the popular base of Reform." Manning had originally suggested that the Reform Party was meant to be a new party, a third way as a populist alternative that could replace the complacent Liberals and PCs as a new national movement, but this hope was clearly not materializing beyond the Manitoba-Ontario border. There was some hope for cooperation from the PCs when Charest stepped down as leader in 1998. Several credible political figures, including Manitoba Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Brian Pallister, Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, former Reform MP Stephen Harper, and the former Alberta treasurer Jim Dinning were all encouraged to run as Unite the Right candidates by both sides of the conservative divide in the 1998 Progressive Conservative leadership convention. But the two candidates on the final ballot, Prairie anti- free-trade activist David Orchard and former prime minister Joe Clark, were both opposed to a merger. Clark was re-elected leader of the PC Party and insisted that the only way to unite the right would be for Reformers to join the PCs under the "big tent" of the Progressive Conservatives Party.Reformers were convinced that a union would have to involve the creation of a new party, as opposed to one party being enveloped by the other. Therefore, the Reform Party launched a number of efforts to convince like-minded PCs to join with them in creating a new united right-of-centre movement for Canada regardless of the agenda of the PC leadership. A secondary goal of the movement was to at least have the current parties agree not to run two right-of-centre candidates in the same ridings in the next federal election. A series of informal conferences and mini-conventions were staged under the auspices of Manning and the Reform Party on the benefits of a "United Alternative."
While the United Alternative movement was focused on creating a broader coalition for conservative voters, it had to compete with social conservatives who wanted the Reform Party to shift further to the right, as opposed to the moderate centre and Red Toryism. These members believed that the Reform Party could become a political opposite to the New Democratic Party by only running candidates in the West. In times of minority, the NDP has influenced left-leaning tendencies in the Liberal Party's social policies. Many Reformers argued that the Reform Party could influence the Progressive Conservative Party's social policies in a similar manner by forcing the PCs to adopt more right-wing solutions in order to obtain support from Western Reform MPs in future minority PC governments.
In 1998, under the auspices of 1993 Reform Party candidate and ardent social conservative Craig Chandler, a controversial "Unite the Right" conference was held in Toronto, Ontario. The conference attracted a great deal of negative media attention for not just including MPs and delegates from the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties, but also leadership officials from the right-wing social conservative Christian Heritage Party, Social Credit Party, the Confederation of Regions Party, Family Coalition Party of Ontario and delegates from the Freedom Party of Ontario. After this conference, polls were conducted that suggested that many Progressive Conservative supporters would rather vote Liberal than vote for a new merged Reform/PC political entity.
The efforts to create a United Alternative did not sit well with the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives. The PC Party eventually passed an amendment to the party's constitution stating that the party had to run a candidate in every federal riding in the next election. Having been rebuffed by PC leader Joe Clark, Manning urged the Reform Party membership to "Think Big" and eventually a real "United Right" effort was launched. In early 2000, the Reform Party held two national conventions in Ottawa that culminated in its demise and the creation of the "Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance", or CCRA. However, a number of pundits pointed out that if the word "party" was added on to the end of the name, the acronym would actually be CCRAP. Consequentially, the name was changed to the "Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance", more commonly known as the Canadian Alliance.
Not all Reformers were in favour of the creation of a new right-wing political party. Some Reformers were actually populists who did not necessarily aspire to right-wing solutions for government in Canada. Led by Reform MPs Darrel Stinson and Myron Thompson, a protest movement was launched known as "Grassroots United Against Reform's Demise" or GUARD. The movement sent letters and e-mails to party members and officials urging them to not vote in favour of a new party.
Ultimately, Manning's bid to create a new party was successful, although the personal consequences for his initiative would be high. The Canadian Alliance leadership race was expected to be a pro forma contest in which Manning's leadership would be easily reconfirmed. However, the race quickly became a contest. Many CA members felt that a new party needed a new leader. Eventually Manning's bid for the CA leadership was defeated by Alberta Member of the Legislative Assembly and Provincial Treasurer Stockwell Day. While the party was seen by some as a happy union of former Reformers and Blue Tory PCs who were disaffected with Joe Clark's Red Tory leadership, the Canadian Alliance was still seen by many as merely the Reform Party in new clothes. Furthermore, many Reformers became disaffected with the CA due to Manning's ouster as the movement's leader.