a3 other hand

WHITHER the
Reform party?

My guess is that it stands
no chance of keeping its pre-
sent 5] seats, let alone adding
to them.

I hope I am wrong, but
fear I am right.

The resignation of
Capilano-Howe Sound MP
Herb Grubel is a portent.
Being a gentleman, he has
made all the right noises but
it is obvious he sees no future
in sweating away for a party
that is not making the grade.

Stephen Harper is quit-
ting, too, and he’s one of
Reform’s brightest lights.
Jack Frazer, a Vancouver
Island Reform MP, is also
quitting. Randy White took
over a month to decide he
would hang on.

Disillusion grips Reform
and you only have to look at
the top to see why. Preston
Manning is bent on being
“respectable.”

He has failed to inspire.
He has also failed to grasp
the nettles that would have
rolled Reform up the
Parliamentary hill into gov-
ernment. ;

_ He’s too concerned about

getting pats on the head from
the establishment media and
thinks that if he gets a kind
word from the Globe Mail
he’s doing OK.

Ifyou read B.C. Report
magazine's Ted Byfield you
will know that disappoint-
ment has been the order of
the day in Reform.

Bytield was in on the
beginnings of the party. But
for about a year — until the
“fresh start” program was
announced — he was critical
of it. In my view, though,
that program will not undo
the damage that has been
done.

Manning is afraid of being
seen as a radical, which these
days means being politically
incorrect. Among other
things he has a rwo-tongued
approach to the homosexual
issue and walks in dread of
being seen as an “extremist,”
forgetting that he will be
damned as one no matter
what he does.

He had to be dragged —
by Harper — into opposing
the Charlottetown Accord
with all its favors to Quebec.
The elite were for it, natural-
ly. Only the people were
against it.

The “fresh start” program
has some good points. But it
wasn’t really what Canadians
wanted to hear. Sure, he
promised lower taxes and
since then has come out for a
referendum concerning abor-
tion on demand. But that is
not a clarion call for nation-
hood.

He didn’t tell the political-
ly correct to get lost. He did-

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—

Dy,

n’t damn the lunatic human
rights commissions, Scared of
being called racist, he has
failed to tackle the gut immi-
gration iss at its roots and
went so far as to dump Art
Hanger, the best immigration
critic the country had had in
40 years.

When MIs Bob Ringma
and Dave Chatters made a
couple of contentious state-
ments he acted as if someone
had poured poison down his
throat and suspended them
from caucus for two months.

He blamed them for the
party’s low count in the polls.
But everyone 1 spoke to was
aghast that he had made
them into scapegoats. Most
people thought the MPs were
right rather than wrong.

It was immediately after
that little farce that Reform
fetched up fourth in the
Hamilton byelection. Yet in
the last general election it had
come in second, And second,
too, in more than 50 other
Ontario constituencics.

Manning has a habit of
ditching anyone who steps
out of line and his “screen-
ing” process for candidates
reads like something the FBI
might have written.

He nixed the candidacy of
John Gamble, a former Tory
MP. He warned Reformers
not to have William Gairdner
address their meetings. Yet
Gairdner is a distinguished
man whose book The Trouble
With Canada is a master-

piece.

Reformers were told they
could not be on the local exee-
utives of The Alliance For the
Protection of English in
Canada (APEC) and at the
same time on Reform con-
stituency boards.

Grubel’s disappointment
started early. Two years ago
he said publicly that he didn’t
understand Manning and that
he feared the leader was drift-
ing away from his right-wing
base. Grubel wanted Reform
to be “a truly conservative
party.”

I have seen nothing to
indicate that that opinion was
wrong.

— The North Shore News
believes strongly in freedom of
speech and the right of all sides
ina debate to be heard, The
columnists published in the
News present differing points
of view, but those views are not
necessarily those of the newspa-
per itself:

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