The first-ever policy convention of the Conservative Party of Canada gets underway later this week in Montreal.
In the run-up to this event, there seems to be significant debate within the party about its direction.
The Conservative Party, of course, is new political party that grew out of the merger of the largely Western Canadian-based Canadian Alliance and the central Canadian based Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Although there are many exceptions to this broad generalization, the Canadian Alliance folks tend to be more socially conservative while those from the Progressive Conservative side tend to place less emphasis on social issues such as gay rights, abortion and euthanasia.
The National Citizens Coalition, a group for which Conservative Leader Stephen Harper once worked, is criticizing the party’s drift towards the political centre, a space once occupied to some degree of electoral success in the 1980s, by the Progressive Conservatives. The NCC has taken out some newspaper ads attacking Harper and its vice-president Gerry Nicholls had an op-ed piece published in the National Post in which he said:
To date, the Conservatives have done precious little to set themselves apart from the Liberals on basic issues like taxes, government spending and health care. And on some issues, like missile defence, they are just plain confusing.
Fortunately, there is time to set things right. For starters, delegates at next weekend's convention should ignore Big Tenters' pleas and come up with a truly conservative agenda — an agenda of principles, values and ideas that challenge Liberalism instead of aping it.
“Steer clear of Liberal Lite”, by Gerry Nicholls, National Citizens Coalition
Today, a relatively new ‘grassroots’ group called the Conservative Council issued a press release to say that the suggestions made by the National Citizens Coalition would result in the Conservatives being “doomed to the Opposition benches forever.”
“…the reality is that the Canadian electorate represents a much wider and diverse group than those who are politically engaged and sign up as fully paid members of the National Citizens Coalition, or even the Conservative Council.
The reality is this: the outcome of federal elections in Canada is always decided by that middle ground of voters who are ambivalent to most of the political process but very pragmatic in their views as to who will best lead the country to a better future.”
From “Bad Advice from the National Citizens Coalition”, by Rick Peterson, Conservative Council