In the early days of 1994, 51 Reform Party MPs swarmed Ottawa for the first time.

Elected the previous fall, the so-called Class of 1993 were ready to shake up Ottawa with a brand of conservatism forged six years earlier out of western Canadian populism, a disdain for big government, and a need for fiscal constraint and democratic reform.

"It was very exciting. We were very naïve about how politics work, about our interactions with the media, all of that kind of thing," recalled Monte Solberg, one of the original Reformers who represented Medicine Hat, Alta., until his retirement in 2008.

He joined Deb Grey, the lone incumbent Reform MP. She was first elected to Parliament through a 1989 byelection in Beaver River, Alta.

"It was like a mission and we could hardly believe we got paid for it," she told The Hill Times. "And we were just as green as grass, all of us."

Now, 17 years after they first swept into Ottawa, only 11 of the Class of 1993 Reformers still stand in the House of Commons. All but one, Liberal MP Keith Martin (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, B.C.), have been members of the Conservative Party caucus since it was created in 2003 out of the ashes of the Reform and subsequent Canadian Alliance parties along with the Progressive Conservative Party.

The ranks are set to further dwindle to nine or fewer after the next election. Jim Abbott (Kootenay-Columbia, B.C.) announced in February he wouldn't seek re-election. Government House Leader Jay Hill (Prince George-Peace River, B.C.) did the same late last month.

"Jay is one of the people that really did carry the torch for the old Reform Party. He embodied a lot of those values in my mind," said Mr. Solberg, who went from a backbench Reform MP to serving in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) government as immigration minister and then human resources minister from 2006 to 2008. He is now a columnist for Sun Media and senior adviser with the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard in Calgary.

Only 19 of 60 Reform MPs who were elected in the high-water mark year of 1997 when the party became the official opposition, are still sitting.

While the last of the Reformers leave politics, the values they embodied linger in the Conservative Party they helped shape, commentators and former Reformers said last week. Their departure may not indicate the stark end of an era or noticeable shift in conservative politics, but a natural progression of political parties.

"It will be the end of the particular Reform era. But it wouldn't surprise me that down through the history of Parliament, there'll be new parties and new MPs and a new era," said Mr. Hill.

Ron Wood, a former journalist, party adviser to former leader Preston Manning, and author of All Roads Lead to Manyberries, agreed. "I don't see it as an end of an era. I see it as evolving," he said, noting that just as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation once evolved into the New Democratic Party, the Reform/Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties merged into today's Conservative Party.

Mr. Manning, the party's leader during its 13-year run, and now head of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, a conservative training institute and think tank told The Hill Times last week: "I don't think we ever think of it as an end. It's the completion of a chapter."

He recalled how the party started out with a handful of people set to influence the national agenda.

The party was searching for candidates. One of its founders, Short Tompkins, knew Mr. Hill—then a farmer active in provincial agriculture associations—was the right person for the job in British Columbia's northern interior. Mr. Hill "just seemed to fit with what Reform needed," coming from straight-talking, pioneer country, said Mr. Manning.

"Short drove his truck out to Jay's field and hauled him off the combine and said, 'I think you're going to be a good Member of Parliament,'" Mr. Manning said. "By golly, he's come a long, long way [from being] a young fellow that had hardly given any public speeches, hardly participated in public policy discussions, although he was interested in it."

Seven elections, and six wins, later, Mr. Hill is leaving "one of the most difficult jobs to be in," as government house leader in a minority Parliament, said Mr. Manning.

His progression as MP has mirrored the Reform Party's progression from protest movement to political party, opposition party and minority government, he said.

In some sense, the Conservative Party has grown out of its Reform roots.

"One of the things Reform brought about at the time was really a push for fiscal accountability," recalled Prof. Trevor Harrison, chair of the University of Lethbridge's sociology department and the author of the book Of Passionate Intensity: Right Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada.

The party pushed Jean Chrétien's Liberal government to cut spending in the 1990s when deficits were high, he said.

"But, of course, it's hard to see a lot of fiscal accountability now in the last few years," he said, pointing to Canada's projected $54-billion budget deficit this year.

Mr. Wood said the deep recession that caused the deficit was a wider downturn beyond the Conservatives' control.

"I still think that there is the idea ... that government should be fairly frugal," he said.

Other policies at the heart of the Reform agenda included changing the Senate into an elected body, a process Ms. Grey said is moving "at a glacial speed" now with the Conservatives.

"Is it fast enough for me as an old Reformer? Of course not. But they're doing something about it. And in a minority government situation, a lot of those changes are really hard to bring forward," she said.

Many rookie Reformers who swept into power in 1993 as an independent-minded, protest movement committed to change are now firmly planted at the heart of government as Cabinet ministers, including Mr. Harper, Minister of State for Seniors Diane Ablonczy (Calgary-Nose Hill, Alta.), Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl (Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon, B.C.), and Mr. Hill. Members elected in 1997 include Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, Alta.), Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz (Battlefords-Lloydminster, Sask.) and Minister of State for Sport Gary Lunn (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.).

"Clearly, you can't be a protest party when you're in government, because you're now in government. The main thing that you were protesting is no longer there," said Mr. Solberg. "But you can keep up that spirit and not yield to the status quo .... I think that's what Reform did. And I think that, at times, [is] what this government does."

He pointed to some of the current government's actions that "sound pretty Reformish," including the instinct behind the decision to scrap the mandatory long-form census as an invasion of people's private lives, and the determination to strengthen the Canadian Forces.

For Mr. Manning, the Reform Party's impact shines through Parliament on a broader level. The party's success shows that the tools of democracy, such as freedom of speech, can be harnessed to work. Secondly, the West is more strongly represented in Ottawa, he said.

Lastly, Mr. Manning said, "There's not a government in the country today that doesn't agree that balancing your budget should be an objective. ... When we started out, you would get all kinds of people, particularly Liberals, that would dispute that balancing budgets should even be a public policy objective at all. So that's passed."

The evolution of Reform is evident in other areas such as foreign policy where the party wasn't able to turn ground, but the maturing Conservatives have filled the gap, said Mr. Manning. Mr. Harper's hosting of G8 and G20 leaders in June, for instance, showed the strides the party has made internationally.

While the Reform Party may have evolved into the Conservative Party, the two don't look much alike, said Richard Jenkins, an Ottawa-based market researcher who has studied the Reform Party's 1993 sweep. The Conservatives have attempted to move more to the political centre and court Quebec, a province Reform had been accused of rubbing against.

And unlike the Reform Party, which only ever gained one seat east of Manitoba, the Conservative Party has countrywide support, although its intensity varies by region.

"What is true is that this Conservative Party is committed to neo-conservative policy positions. And, certainly, lots of people in the Reform shared those views. There's no coincidence that the Conservative Party is based in the West and the Reform Party was based in the West," said Mr. Jenkins.

The fact that Conservatives and Reformers share some of the same views on crime and immigration for instance, said Mr. Jenkins, may not be because of Reform Party influences but because of the ideological tendencies of MPs most likely to get elected in Western Canada.

But, Mr. Solberg said there is an electorate still hungry for Reform-era ideas. "It's the end of an era, in a sense, only because the old Reform Party Members of Parliament will, at some point in the not too distant future, leave the House of Commons. But I'm not convinced that those ideas and ethics [they brought to the fore] aren't there permanently," he said. "I think people in the West still believe the same ideas that Reform was elected on in 1993."

So although Reform died in name in 2000 with the creation of the Canadian Alliance, and its former original members will one day soon all be out of the House of Commons, Reform elements still reside in the party it's evolved into, the Conservative Party, Mr. Wood said.

Mr. Solberg even sees some Reform spirit alive in Conservative MPs who didn't start as Reformers, such as David Anderson (Cypress Hills-Grasslands, Sask.), Kevin Sorenson (Crowfoot, Alta.) and Chris Warkentin (Peace River, Alta.)

As they fill the ranks of the Conservative Party, who will be the last-standing Reformer is anyone's guess.

It could depend on the outcome of the next election, said Prof. Harrison. If Mr. Harper loses his grip on government or fails to gain a majority, his exit as leader, and presumably as MP as well, could follow.

Other Class of 1993 Reform MPs could reasonably stand to join Mr. Hill and Mr. Abbott then too, he said.

"I think there's a number of those old Reformers who probably would look twice rather than be sitting in opposition again," he said.

But Mr. Manning is hoping it won't come to that.

"There's still one more jump. The goal in '87 was to get a Reform-oriented majority government by 2000. We're 10 years too late, but we're still no majority. The next step is to get those additional seats," he said.

kshane@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times