I remember being attracted to the Reform Party's stance on free trade and what I knew of its language policy in its time, but hesitated to vote for my local Reform candidate for two reasons. For one thing, I still voted for the party and not the candidate, and so considered the party.
Another drawback was the party's public image. It seemed to attract bigots as exemplified by one candidate who along with his supporters decided to trample a Quebec flag on national TV. Though I did not know much about my local candidate, I had dropped into his campaign office once only to hear one of the volunteers ranting about Quebec!
In the end I'd ended up voting for the NDP candidate because of its support for the UN. Reform's apparent militarism had been somewhat of a turn off too.
All these years later I wonder if I should have voted for the Reform candidate in that election in spite of the differences on a few points. In the end though, bad PR prevailed.
Possibly the closest party I can see to the Reform Party today is the Libertarian Party, Reform really being a mix of that and the present Conservative Party.
So what can the present Libertarian Party learn from Reform's mistakes? Preston Manning himself was quite possibly more open than even the NDP, LPC, and the PCP in some respects. He was quick to dismiss his flag-stomping candidate, and as I'd learnt recently to my surprise, he was even open to allowing Federal offices in the prairies to operate bilingually in Ukrainian where numbers warranted. He'd also explicitly opposed the idea of "two founding races" as expressed by the B&B Commission. He'd also supported unilingually French offices in predominantly French-speaking communities, something the PQ has requested many times before.
I think though that he might have underestimated how much his opposition to official bilingualism would attract francophobic biggots into his party's ranks en masse.
Flash forward to today, and I've come across francophobes turning to the Libertarian Party of Canada as possibly the only party that opposes official bilingualism. Learning from Reform's mistakes, if the Libertarian Party wants any chance for growth, it must make very clear why it opposes official bilingualism and that it's members fully embrace French speakers. It does have some advantages over the old Reform Party in that it has French speaking candidates in parts of Quebec, and some of its former leaders have been French Canadians, but that won't be enough. What strategies would a party that opposes official bilingualism need to implement to keep the bigots out of its ranksand not repeat the PR mistakes of the Reform Party?
Another drawback was the party's public image. It seemed to attract bigots as exemplified by one candidate who along with his supporters decided to trample a Quebec flag on national TV. Though I did not know much about my local candidate, I had dropped into his campaign office once only to hear one of the volunteers ranting about Quebec!
In the end I'd ended up voting for the NDP candidate because of its support for the UN. Reform's apparent militarism had been somewhat of a turn off too.
All these years later I wonder if I should have voted for the Reform candidate in that election in spite of the differences on a few points. In the end though, bad PR prevailed.
Possibly the closest party I can see to the Reform Party today is the Libertarian Party, Reform really being a mix of that and the present Conservative Party.
So what can the present Libertarian Party learn from Reform's mistakes? Preston Manning himself was quite possibly more open than even the NDP, LPC, and the PCP in some respects. He was quick to dismiss his flag-stomping candidate, and as I'd learnt recently to my surprise, he was even open to allowing Federal offices in the prairies to operate bilingually in Ukrainian where numbers warranted. He'd also explicitly opposed the idea of "two founding races" as expressed by the B&B Commission. He'd also supported unilingually French offices in predominantly French-speaking communities, something the PQ has requested many times before.
I think though that he might have underestimated how much his opposition to official bilingualism would attract francophobic biggots into his party's ranks en masse.
Flash forward to today, and I've come across francophobes turning to the Libertarian Party of Canada as possibly the only party that opposes official bilingualism. Learning from Reform's mistakes, if the Libertarian Party wants any chance for growth, it must make very clear why it opposes official bilingualism and that it's members fully embrace French speakers. It does have some advantages over the old Reform Party in that it has French speaking candidates in parts of Quebec, and some of its former leaders have been French Canadians, but that won't be enough. What strategies would a party that opposes official bilingualism need to implement to keep the bigots out of its ranksand not repeat the PR mistakes of the Reform Party?
