Joe Clark should have known better

If Joe Clark had been in Jean ChrÃ©tien's shoes last year, Canada would have joined the United States in Iraq. The former Tory leader started off in the anti-war camp but by the time the debate came to a head, he had changed his mind. Brian Mulroney's public campaign to pressure Canada into supporting the White House on Iraq may have gone a long way to forcing Clark's hand. Still, once he converted to his predecessor's views, he did not limit himself to paying lip service to the war, even when it meant arguing against some of the very notions he had been defending only a few weeks earlier. In the days that followed ChrÃ©tien's decision, Clark said the Prime Minister was pandering to Quebec, where opposition to the war ran higher than anywhere else and where an election was in the offing that would pit Jean Charest's federalist troops against the Parti QuÃ©bÃ©cois. In the early days of the Iraq debate, Canada came closer to splitting along language lines than at any other time since the 1995 referendum. In the circumstances, if someone like Preston Manning or Stephen Harper had uttered Clark's comments, he would have been accused of fanning French-English tensions just to score a hit on ChrÃ©tien. Because Clark was a former prime minister, he got away with his reductionist statement. But, for the same reason, he should also have known better. At around the same time, one of the main contenders to succeed him was forcefully advocating two-tier health care. Scott Brison -- who has presumably changed his mind since he crossed over to the Liberals -- was never rebuked publicly by his leader; nor did Clark even hint that the party would be navigating in dangerous waters, should it elect Brison as leader. In fact, in the lead-up to the last federal election, Clark supported Alberta's Bill 11 -- legislation meant to allow for more private, for-profit input in the health-care system. The bill was vigorously opposed by both the NDP and the Liberals who used it to portray Premier Ralph Klein as the Number One enemy of medicare. In the same kindred spirit with Alberta, in the fall of 2002, Clark and the Tories joined the Canadian Alliance in its opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. Overall, the former Tory leader has always been a champion of provincial rights, a view that has earned him the kind of Liberal hits he is now inflicting on the new Conservative party. Shortly after Clark passed the torch to Peter MacKay last year, MPs were seized with an Alliance motion opposing same-sex marriage. Only a few Tories voted against it. While Clark was among them, MacKay was not. If the former leader felt his successor was sending the wrong signals, he kept his peace. Watching Clark now describe Harper as a dangerous leader who harbours secret plans to renege on the federal role in the environment, promote more two-tier health care, walk away from social activism and gay rights and model his agenda on that of the Bush administration, one can only marvel at the contortions involved in the exercise. The point of the substance of Clark's warnings is well-taken: The Conservative party is not merely a blue version of the current Liberal government. Nor is it a perfect clone of the old Tory party. If elected, it would make different choices on a host of sensitive issues. Some of those choices could turn out to be wildly out of sync with the Canadian mainstream although, over the past decade, key Reform tenets such as deficit elimination, tax cuts and the Clarity Act on Quebec secession went on to become policy jewels of the Liberal crown. The fundamental problem with Clark's denunciation of the Conservative party is that he is warning voters against potential choices he himself made or tolerated as Tory leader. What was acceptable policy under his leadership is a threat to Canada's fabric under Harper. According to Clark, Canadians are faced with dismal choices in the next election. In his view, neither Prime Minister Paul Martin nor Harper has much to offer, although he feels the former is by far the lesser evil. That may be. But, for all their faults, both Martin and Harper are articulate, thoughtful leaders who can at least be expected to argue their respective cases on the basis of solid arguments. Looking back on the last federal election and on ChrÃ©tien and Stockwell Day, that seems to be a modest step up from the previous campaign. In those days, of course, Clark was bent on running a competing party to the Alliance, one that ended up parroting the latter's positions on most major issues. Because of the split in the conservative movement, voters would not necessarily have qualified their 2000 options as "dismal" because they did not even have the luxury of a real choice when it came to selecting a government. Chantal HÃ©bert is a national affairs writer for The Toronto Star. This column originally ran on April 28. chebert@thestar.ca. The Hill Times

Inside Politics I

Joe Clark should have known better

But because Clark is a former prime minister, he got away with his reductionist statement

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Inside Politics I

Joe Clark should have known better

But because Clark is a former prime minister, he got away with his reductionist statement

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