The reforming of the Reform Party has an Orwellian slant | THERE ARE lots of laughs going around, and one of the biggest is what’s happening in the Reform Party under Preston Manning. Here I am breaking a rule. After the dust had settled in the Capilano-Howe Sound fiasco in which Manning vetoed 2 nomina- tion (mine) thar had been backed by about 1,000 people I resolved not to write about Reform mat- ters. Sour grapes are not on my menu. Besides, but for him I might have been knocking my head against stone walls in Ot- tawa. As it is, I have time for Spud Island. But sleeping dogs and Dougs sometimes have cause to growl, and | am uttering a few growls today because Manning keeps causing my name to pop up. It has popped up recently in the Vancouver Sun, the Globe & Mail, and B.C. Report magazine. The Collins affair refuses to expire, it seems. And now it has led to a bizarre plan by Manning and his crew to keep Wimpland safe for wimps by putting can- didates through an Orwellian kind of screening. The plan has been denounced in the Alberta media as ‘‘an invasion of privacy, a program for elitist intimidation within the party, and a violation of the party’s populist spirit.” nting that, and while doing . 2xcuse the matter, B.C. : razine had to admit . »an is ‘a startling depar- . «tra. established procedure.’ ‘ne startling departure involves a massive questionnaire on which candidates are supposed to expose their credit ratings, say whether they were ever drunks or druggies, give their views on abortion and Canada-U.S. relations, say what their wives think, and report almost everything else about themselves except whether they had chickenpox when they were kids. Manning told the Globe & Mail he hoped the questionnaire would avoid an embarrassing repeat of the 1988 incident in which he vetoed your humble servant’s nomination. What a joke. For, what that means is that if a candidate doesn’t echo his master’s voice, just as Mary Col- lins and all those Tory sheep echo Mulroney’s voice, down he goes. The Reform-friendly B.C. Report left little doubt about that. “When Mr. Manning overturn- ed the nomination of outspoken Vancouver newspaper columnist Doug Collins he was vilified for betraying the democratic princi- ples of his party,”’ it stated. It then wrote that ‘the recruitment package would tend to weed out undesirables at the grassroots level, thus preventing a recurrence of the so-called Collins affair.’* This undesirable would like to ) x Visit to int'l: Rose Test ‘Garden’ Can. $797.00 sharing twin Discover Your World Travel - 980-4526: Doug Coliins ON THE OTHER HAND say a word about the grassroots level. If ordinary people had any say, this country would be a better place than it is. The polls prove that. And it was to support them that ] joined the Reform Party. The mistake was to believe that Manning also believed in the grassroots. But as a prominent Reformer told me the other day, “Manning no more believes in the grassroots than my cat does.’” You may recall that he vetoed the Collins nomination without even consulting his national exec- utive, let alone the grassroots, and in doing so murdered much- proclaimed party policy. Then, when the party rumble became a roar, he said he would agree to the nomination provided I signed a paper promising to be a good boy. | told him to stuff it. What we need in Ottawa is not good boys but bad boys. Ques- tioning boys, awkward boys. Good boys have put this country on the road to ruin. Could Manning's silly screening process stop a Collins and thus defeat the grassroots? Only by having the party brass get into the act or by having a more rigid par- ty discipline at the constituency fevel than even the NDP, Tories, or Liberals have. Another laugh is that Manning has written to members saying the party wants rrustworthy can- didates. Well, no one could have been more trustworthy than your man Doug. His trouble was that he was too trustworthy. We now see what Manning means by reform. He wants to reform the Reform Party so that it’s a party like the others, only worse. He’s even backing away from referendums. Doesn’t want them in the party. What a dan- gerous democratic inconvenience! P.S. The B.C. Report headline contained a funny double mean- ing. It read: ‘‘The Reform Party purges its prospects.’” How true! a : VINYL | SIDING 20%-30%-40% | ON ALL OF YOUR VINYL SIDING NEEDS! (Limited time only) REMODELLING LTD S'CALL. TODAY: 469-1319; ati Aryl Siding Exper . Wednesday, March 13, 1991 - North Shore News ~ 9 Vogue, Simplicity, “Butterick, McCalls, New 4 € “ ; , (dotais - HOME. DECOF ‘Buy 1 get 2 FREE. ot Fabriiond) Great-setection of dtapety trim, \ . sateen prints, curtaining.and m : . “Buy im'get 2M FREE | wo ). 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