Merger of Canadian right brings joy, bitterness to Reform party heartland
http://www.canada.com/national/features/unitetheright/story.html?id=E52804C3-A8D0-4827-8B71-3C8A35CC0EAE
DARCY HENTON  
Canadian Press 
 
EDMONTON - There was joy in the heart of Reform country Thursday at the news that the long-awaited political unification of the right wing was at hand - but there was bitterness, too.

Grassroots members agreed that the tentative merger of the Tories and the Canadian Alliance meant pragmatism had won out over ideology and that the quest to empower the West gave way to a more immediate partnership to stop the Paul Martin juggernaut that threatened to wipe them out. But it was a sad day for those still stuck on a dream that Canadian politics is in desperate need of Reform.

"It seems no matter what you do, you don't have a voice," lamented Lily Sims, a former central Alberta Reform party executive.

"There are a lot of people who aren't supporting this."

George Bears, a Calgarian who supported the Canadian Alliance, said it just came down to the two right-wing parties finally facing reality.

"The fundamental question is: If we truly have a conservative alternative we'd better get our act together and figure out a way to co-operate and to put out a real threat to Paul Martin mania," said Bears. "We better get our heads together and our game book together."

Roger Gibbins, who heads the Canada West Foundation, said it was time to choose a new road.

"The whole Reform-Alliance strategy came up short and we've thrown in the towel on that and I am not too dismayed," he said. "We were kind of boxed in on this and beating our head against the stump and the stump wasn't moving."

"I am optimistic that whatever this new Conservative party is, western Canadians will play an influential role in it. On balance, I think it's probably a good news story for the West."

Mike Burns, a former Tory who ran the Alliance campaign in British Columbia last election, called it a "great day."

He said the process of merging the defunct Reform party into the Canadian Alliance resolved a lot of the policy differences.

"There was a hell of a lot of Tory policy jammed into the Alliance," he said. "I am quite encouraged. I think they have finally found the key to the door."

But Faron Ellis, a professor of political science at Lethbridge Community College, said the deal turns back the clock to the Trudeau-Pearson era.

"We're back to saying: Once these guys get into power, the West will get its due. I am not at all optimistic that will take place."

He doesn't hold out much hope for the new party to form government anytime soon because even if it won a chunk of Ontario it doesn't have a foot in Quebec.

Another failure to get in the door will just intensify feelings of western alienation and could breed a new separatist movement, he said.

Warren Vickery, a former Alliance party executive in Edmonton, said he sees nothing in the merger that will address those feelings of alienation.

"Western Canadian separation and western Canadian alienation, I think, is going to grow," he said.

"Remember the big battle cry: The West wants in? The West still wants in, but it is getting to the point that they realize they never will be. The West has really lost the war. It is not going to get in."

Sims said she is not buying Paul Martin's pitch that he will run a government that is more sensitive to the West.

"I don't know if it will change with Martin. I have to see it before I believe it . . . They all say that."

Bert Brown, one of two men who were elected as senators in Alberta but never appointed to the upper house, said the merger was a financial necessity.

He said the people who finance the two parties have been threatening to withhold financial support if they couldn't get together.

Brown said the merger made sense to him.

He remains convinced that the newly minted party, the Conservative Party of Canada, will press ahead with his campaign for Senate reform.