Conservatism ignored
Nicholls says ‘true conservatives’ will continue to be ignored
There’s a little story about me in the latest issue of the Hill Times—the Parliament Hill newspaper. Nicholls says ‘true conservatives’ will continue to be ignored
By Bea Vongdouangchanh, The Hill Times
Even if the governing minority Conservative Party wins a majority government in the next election, there will be no room in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “red populist nationalist alliance” for “free market conservatives,” who no longer have a political home, says Gerry Nicholls.
And that, he says, discourages him.
“Many conservatives say to me, ‘Wait until we win a majority government, then we will implement true conservatism.’ Well I would like to believe that, but I am dubious,”
Mr. Nicholls, a senior fellow with the Democracy Institute and a former vice president of the National Citizens Coalition, who worked closely with Mr. Harper for years when Mr. Harper headed up the NCC.
If that happened, it would give opposition parties fodder to bring up the “hidden agenda” notion and, he said, it would convince the party that they’re not really conservatives.
“They will continue to reject conservatism, so they will win another majority. The bottom line is true conservatives will continue to be ignored or taken for granted.”
Even though Mr. Nicholls came to the Conservative Party’s defence recently by saying that Elections Canada’s investigation of the Tories’ 2006 election finances was a “vendetta” against the party, there is no love-loss between him and Prime Minister Harper.
When Mr. Harper was the president of the NCC hr advocated for a free market society of less government and more individual freedom, but Mr. Nicholls says Mr. Harper is now “shunning” those deals.
For example, Mr. Nicholls notes, the government’s move to block the sale of space firm MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates to a U.S. company is a form of economic nationalism which goes against having a truly free market.
Mr. Nicholls also criticized the party’s handling of the now not-so-secret briefings with select media outlets on the “in and out” issue.
“Well, you’ve got to hand it to the crack team of political geniuses who work in the Prime Minister’s Office. They sure know how to make a terrible situation worse,” he wrote on his blog. “It’s a maxim in politics that you never want to look like a crook or a fool.
Well, thanks to the PMO’s Keystone Kops routine, the Tories now look like both. I guess that’s what happens when you hire egghead amateurs whose chief skill is that they will take a bullet for the Prime Minister.” Ouch.
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