Stephen Harper calls for Liberals, Conservatives to come together in the face of Trump, separatist threats
'We must make any sacrifice necessary' to protect Canada's independence and unity, says former PM
Former prime minister Stephen Harper urged the Liberal and Conservative parties to take on the challenges of our time together as the country stares down two potentially existential threats to its sovereignty: an imperialist president to the south and separatist movements in Alberta and Quebec.
Speaking at an event Tuesday where his official prime ministerial portrait was unveiled on Parliament Hill, Harper said while the two major parties may differ on some matters of policy, those issues should be secondary to keeping the country together.
"In these perilous times both parties, whatever their other differences, must come together against external forces that threaten our independence and against domestic policies that threaten our unity.
"We must preserve Canada, this country handed down to us by providence preserved by our ancestors and held in trust for our descendants. We must make any sacrifice necessary to preserve the independence and the unity of this blessed land," he said.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper unveils his official portraitIn his own remarks to the crowd assembled for the unveiling, a who's who of Canadian politics past and present, Prime Minister Mark Carney praised his predecessor for always being mindful of regional cleavages.
On Harper's watch, popular support for a Quebec referendum on independence was at its lowest point in decades and western alienation was a marginal issue.
"Prime Minister Harper consistently understood that Canada's strength has always come from holding together a country that stretches from coast to coast to coast," Carney said.
"He spoke directly to Western Canada's sense of contribution — the responsibility not as a region to be managed, but as a core pillar of our national project," he said.
Harper calls parties to come together 'in these perilous times' for Canada's independence, unityOn Monday, Harper and former prime minister Jean Chrétien jointly called for a revival of Canadian patriotism and a greater focus on national unity.
Speaking together at an event marking 20 years since Harper formed government, Chrétien said it's clear Trump looks at Canada and "would like to take it over."
"But we stand on guard, don't worry," he said.
Chrétien said Trump's erratic foreign policy is the sign of "a big shift."
"Beginning of the end of the American empire and it has to come — all empires change — now it's accelerating," Chrétien said. "We're in a very good position because we have the land, the best educated people in the world."
Harper gestures to the artist after he unveiled his official portrait on Tuesday. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)While there are separatist movements in both Alberta and Quebec, Chrétien said the country has faced such unity crises before and can prevail again, especially because the Clarity Act is in place — federal legislation his government passed that makes it more difficult for any province to secede.
"We have managed quite well to survive and, at this moment, our friend from the south has created a movement that Canadians have never been so proud to be Canadian," he said.
FULL SPEECH | Stephen Harper speaks at his official portrait unveiling ceremony"Everybody would give everything they have for the privilege to share our so-called miseries."
Harper quipped that he "didn't sign the petition," an apparent reference to the document circulating to prompt a referendum on Alberta independence.
Chrétien interjected and said, "any Tories did?" to which Harper replied, "I'm told not."
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Harper and U.S. protectionism: a trip down memory lane
January 19, 2012
On May 28, 2002, the House of Commons debated a supply motion from the opposition Canadian Alliance:
“That this House has lost confidence in the government for its failure
to persuade the US government to end protectionist policies…”
Stephen Harper rose to speak. “Mr. Speaker, this will be my first speech as the leader of Her Majesty’s official opposition,” he said. He offered the customary thanks to his electors and the people of Alberta, before shifting gears. “I do not have a lot of time so I want to focus instead on the issue we chose for today’s supply debate, which perhaps is the most important issue that ever faces Canada: our relationship with the United States and in particular the increasingly troubled relationship we have on the trade front.”
The motion of the day referred to softwood and agriculture disputes. “To this I could easily add a third, energy,” Harper said, “the issue of pipeline movement of Alaskan gas reserves to the lower 48.” Or a forth, border restrictions.
“The question we must ask is why this has occurred. Why do we find ourselves victims of protectionist, isolationist and unilateralist sentiments from the United States? Why are Canadian interests being systematically ignored in Washington?”
“In fairness,” Harper was willing to acknowledge “the reality of the United States’ domestic political interests, this being an important election year in the United States.” But there was another reason: “the consistent and complete inability of the present Canadian government to make our case to American authorities, to congress and especially to the Bush administration.”
Why was there a secretariat for the Asia-Pacific in Foreign Affairs but none for the United States? Why all the trade missions to China? The reason, Harper said, was the Jean Chrétien had never been a free trader. “The Prime Minister went back to the future. He tried to revive the failed trade diversification of the 1970s, the Trudeau government’s so-called third option strategy, which did not work then and is not working now.”
What was missing, Harper said, was a proper working relationship between the Prime Minister and the President. He quoted former Canadian ambassador to Washington Allan Gotlieb: “Without the Prime Minister in play, the president will not be in play.”
Here, at last, it is possible to see real light showing between the Prime Minister Harper was criticizing in 2002 and the one he has become in 2012. The reason Chrétien wasn’t taken seriously in Bush’s Washington, he said, was because Chrétien was soft on a bunch of security questions.
“It should not be surprising that when Canadian ministers suddenly show up in Washington and demand something be done about softwood duties or agriculture many high level American decision makers do not pay much attention.”
So now what? “On this I will make a very controversial observation. When it comes to United States-Canada relations, the government has much to learn from former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
“Whatever Mr. Mulroney’s shortcomings… he understood a fundamental truth. He understood that mature and intelligent Canadian leaders must share the following perspective: the United States is our closest neighbour, our best ally, our biggest customer and our most consistent friend. Whatever else, we forget these things at our own peril.”
The new opposition leader wrapped up his argument, the first he wanted to make on the subject he had selected in his parliamentary debut as a national party leader: “We will be unable to get the U.S. administration on board unless whoever is in the White House and leading members of congress value and respect what our Prime Minister brings to the table.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/
Harper plans to battle 'culture of defeatism' in Atlantic Canada
Members of the Nova Scotia legislature voted unanimously Thursday in favor of a resolution condemning Stephen Harper, the leader of the Canadian Alliance.
The resolution was in response to Harper's comments that there is a "defeatist attitude" in Atlantic Canada.
"There is a dependence in the region that breeds a culture of defeatism," the Opposition leader said Wednesday following question period in the House.
Nova Scotia's motion called on Harper to look at problems in his own party, and distinguish between the Alliance's unbroken string of defeats in most provinces and the reality of achievement and optimism in the Atlantic region.
Harper tried to clarify his remarks Wednesday by saying that the defeatist culture isn't restricted to Atlantic Canada. But he added that his party has to break through that attitude if the Canadian Alliance is to have a breakthrough of its own in region.
"We have a program that says that Atlantic Canada can be as wealthy as any other region, but that needs to be pursued aggressively and we don't sit around waiting for favours," he said.
People on the streets in the region couldn't believe Harper's comments. "What part of Canada is he from?" one asked.
Atlantic economy booming, says political scientist
NDP leader Alexa McDonough, an Atlantic Canadian, says the comments don't sit well with her.
"This is the real Stephen Harper who wanted to put up firewalls around Alberta to keep us nasty Eastern Canadians out because we're ne'er-do-wells and lazy bums," said McDonough.
Joe Clark says the Alliance leader is treading dangerous waters. "All of us should be very careful to not apply false caricatures to a region."
New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord says Harper is wrong about the economic prospects of the region.
"I think he's sadly mistaken and I would invite him to take the time to come and visit," he said. "In fact, the people here have a very positive attitude."
A political scientist from Dalhousie University in Halifax says Atlantic Canada is actually booming. "The region is moving forward economically," said Jennifer Smith. "It's growing faster than other regions of the country.
"I'm sure that comes as a surprise to some people, but it won't come to a surprise to people who are living here in the region."
Harper allowed there are positive signs in the region, pointing New Brunswick out in particular. But he insisted there is still a long way to go.
"It's not going to be a secret to people in Atlantic Canada that they don't feel very optimistic about their prospects and that's why children and grandchildren have been leaving that region for years," he said. "We're going to change that."
Harper will get closer look at the culture of Atlantic Canada this summer when he plans a tour of the region.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/
Old Harper speech resurfaces on debate day
A speech given by Stephen Harper eight years ago has resurfaced just in time for the first debate of the federal election campaign, and the Liberals are likely to claim it as evidence of the Conservative leader's true character.
The Canadian Press was alerted Wednesday evening to the 1997 speech given to the Council for National Policy, an American think tank in Montreal. The entire text of the speech can be found on the group's website – although there's no longer a link to it from the list of past speakers.
Canadian Press says it was pointed to the story by an "opponent of [Harper's] social policies" who wanted to remain anonymous.
- RELATED: Full text of Harper's speech
Given in Montreal while Harper was a private citizen – he was between stints as an MP at the time – the speech praises American conservatives and slams Canada for being a "European welfare state."
The speech also contains comments about gay rights, abortion, bilingualism and the unemployed.
By contrast, the introduction to the speech contains the following: "Your country, and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world."
The Conservatives have confirmed Harper gave the speech, but say the remarks were intended to be tongue-in-cheek, and have no relevance to the current election campaign.
Liberals, however, jumped on the speech, saying it illustrates how a man who wants to be prime minister describes the country to an American audience.
U.S.-Canada relations have become an election issue this week, after U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins told Canadian politicians to tone down the anti-Washington rhetoric.
Both Harper and Liberal Leader Paul Martin have said Wilkins has no business commenting on a Canadian election campaign.
Harper has also tried to distance himself from the administration of President George W. Bush, writing a letter to the Washington Times newspaper in response to a column calling him the White House's dream candidate.
Harper made it clear in his letter that he has philosophical differences with the U.S. president.
Full text of Stephen Harper's 1997 speech
Updated Wed. Dec. 14 2005 9:20 PM ET
Canadian Press
OTTAWA -- The text from a speech made by Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, to a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing U.S. think tank, and taken from the council's website:
Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin by giving you a big welcome to Canada. Let's start up with a compliment. You're here from the second greatest nation on earth. But seriously, your country, and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world.
Now, having given you a compliment, let me also give you an insult. I was asked to speak about Canadian politics. It may not be true, but it's legendary that if you're like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians.
But in any case, my speech will make that assumption. I'll talk fairly basic stuff. If it seems pedestrian to some of you who do know a lot about Canada, I apologize.
I'm going to look at three things. First of all, just some basic facts about Canada that are relevant to my talk, facts about the country and its political system, its civics. Second, I want to take a look at the party system that's developed in Canada from a conventional left/right, or liberal/conservative perspective. The third thing I'm going to do is look at the political system again, because it can't be looked at in this country simply from the conventional perspective.
First, facts about Canada. Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it. Canadians make no connection between the fact that they are a Northern European welfare state and the fact that we have very low economic growth, a standard of living substantially lower than yours, a massive brain drain of young professionals to your country, and double the unemployment rate of the United States.
In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.
That is beginning to change. There have been some significant changes in our fiscal policies and our social welfare policies in the last three or four years. But nevertheless, they're still very generous compared to your country.
Let me just make a comment on language, which is so important in this country. I want to disabuse you of misimpressions you may have. If you've read any of the official propagandas, you've come over the border and entered a bilingual country. In this particular city, Montreal, you may well get that impression. But this city is extremely atypical of this country.
While it is a French-speaking city -- largely -- it has an enormous English-speaking minority and a large number of what are called ethnics: they who are largely immigrant communities, but who politically and culturally tend to identify with the English community.
This is unusual, because the rest of the province of Quebec is, by and large, almost entirely French-speaking. The English minority present here in Montreal is quite exceptional.
Furthermore, the fact that this province is largely French-speaking, except for Montreal, is quite exceptional with regard to the rest of the country. Outside of Quebec, the total population of francophones, depending on how you measure it, is only three to five per cent of the population. The rest of Canada is English speaking.
Even more important, the French-speaking people outside of Quebec live almost exclusively in the adjacent areas, in northern New Brunswick and in Eastern Ontario.
The rest of Canada is almost entirely English speaking. Where I come from, Western Canada, the population of francophones ranges around one to two per cent in some cases. So it's basically an English-speaking country, just as English-speaking as, I would guess, the northern part of the United States.
But the important point is that Canada is not a bilingual country. It is a country with two languages. And there is a big difference.
As you may know, historically and especially presently, there's been a lot of political tension between these two major language groups, and between Quebec and the rest of Canada.
Let me take a moment for a humorous story. Now, I tell this with some trepidation, knowing that this is a largely Christian organization.
The National Citizens Coalition, by the way, is not. We're on the sort of libertarian side of the conservative spectrum. So I tell this joke with a little bit of trepidation. But nevertheless, this joke works with Canadian audiences of any kind, anywhere in Canada, both official languages, any kind of audience.
It's about a constitutional lawyer who dies and goes to heaven. There, he meets God and gets his questions answered about life. One of his questions is, "God, will this problem between Quebec and the rest of Canada ever be resolved?'' And God thinks very deeply about this, as God is wont to do. God replies, "Yes, but not in my lifetime.''
I'm glad to see you weren't offended by that. I've had the odd religious person who's been offended. I always tell them, "Don't be offended. The joke can't be taken seriously theologically. It is, after all, about a lawyer who goes to heaven.''
In any case. My apologies to Eugene Meyer of the Federalist Society.
Second, the civics, Canada's civics.
On the surface, you can make a comparison between our political system and yours. We have an executive, we have two legislative houses, and we have a Supreme Court.
However, our executive is the Queen, who doesn't live here. Her representative is the Governor General, who is an appointed buddy of the Prime Minister.
Of our two legislative houses, the Senate, our upper house, is appointed, also by the Prime Minister, where he puts buddies, fundraisers and the like. So the Senate also is not very important in our political system.
And we have a Supreme Court, like yours, which, since we put a charter of rights in our constitution in 1982, is becoming increasingly arbitrary and important. It is also appointed by the Prime Minister. Unlike your Supreme Court, we have no ratification process.
So if you sort of remove three of the four elements, what you see is a system of checks and balances which quickly becomes a system that's described as unpaid checks and political imbalances.
What we have is the House of Commons. The House of Commons, the bastion of the Prime Minister's power, the body that selects the Prime Minister, is an elected body. I really emphasize this to you as an American group: It's not like your House of Representatives. Don't make that comparison.
What the House of Commons is really like is the United States electoral college. Imagine if the electoral college which selects your president once every four years were to continue sitting in Washington for the next four years. And imagine its having the same vote on every issue. That is how our political system operates.
In our election last Monday, the Liberal party won a majority of seats. The four opposition parties divided up the rest, with some very, very rough parity.
But the important thing to know is that this is how it will be until the Prime Minister calls the next election. The same majority vote on every issue. So if you ask me, "What's the vote going to be on gun control?'' or on the budget, we know already.
If any member of these political parties votes differently from his party on a particular issue, well, that will be national headline news. It's really hard to believe. If any one member votes differently, it will be national headline news. I voted differently at least once from my party, and it was national headline news. It's a very different system.
Our party system consists today of five parties. There was a remark made yesterday at your youth conference about the fact that parties come and go in Canada every year. This is rather deceptive. I've written considerably on this subject.
We had a two-party system from the founding of our country, in 1867. That two-party system began to break up in the period from 1911 to 1935. Ever since then, five political elements have come and gone. We've always had at least three parties. But even when parties come back, they're not really new. They're just an older party re-appearing under a different name and different circumstances.
Let me take a conventional look at these five parties. I'll describe them in terms that fit your own party system, the left/right kind of terms.
Let's take the New Democratic Party, the NDP, which won 21 seats. The NDP could be described as basically a party of liberal Democrats, but it's actually worse than that, I have to say. And forgive me jesting again, but the NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men.
This party believes not just in large government and in massive redistributive programs, it's explicitly socialist. On social value issues, it believes the opposite on just about everything that anybody in this room believes. I think that's a pretty safe bet on all social-value kinds of questions.
Some people point out that there is a small element of clergy in the NDP. Yes, this is true. But these are clergy who, while very committed to the church, believe that it made a historic error in adopting Christian theology.
The NDP is also explicitly a branch of the Canadian Labour Congress, which is by far our largest labour group, and explicitly radical.
There are some moderate and conservative labour organizations. They don't belong to that particular organization.
The second party, the Liberal party, is by far the largest party. It won the election. It's also the only party that's competitive in all parts of the country. The Liberal party is our dominant party today, and has been for 100 years. It's governed almost all of the last hundred years, probably about 75 per cent of the time.
It's not what you would call conservative Democrat; I think that's a disappearing kind of breed. But it's certainly moderate Democrat, a type of Clinton-pragmatic Democrat. It's moved in the last few years very much to the right on fiscal and economic concerns, but still believes in government intrusion in the economy where possible, and does, in its majority, believe in fairly liberal social values.
In the last Parliament, it enacted comprehensive gun control, well beyond, I think, anything you have. Now we'll have a national firearms registration system, including all shotguns and rifles. Many other kinds of weapons have been banned. It believes in gay rights, although it's fairly cautious. It's put sexual orientation in the Human Rights Act and will let the courts do the rest.
There is an important caveat to its liberal social values. For historic reasons that I won't get into, the Liberal party gets the votes of most Catholics in the country, including many practising Catholics. It does have a significant Catholic, social-conservative element which occasionally disagrees with these kinds of policy directions. Although I caution you that even this Catholic social conservative element in the Liberal party is often quite liberal on economic issues.
Then there is the Progressive Conservative party, the PC party, which won only 20 seats. Now, the term Progressive Conservative will immediately raise suspicions in all of your minds. It should. It's obviously kind of an oxymoron. But actually, its origin is not progressive in the modern sense. The origin of the term "progressive'' in the name stems from the Progressive Movement in the 1920s, which was similar to that in your own country.
But the Progressive Conservative is very definitely liberal Republican. These are people who are moderately conservative on economic matters, and in the past have been moderately liberal, even sometimes quite liberal on social policy matters.
In fact, before the Reform Party really became a force in the late '80s, early '90s, the leadership of the Conservative party was running the largest deficits in Canadian history. They were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. Officially -- what else can I say about them? Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized, health-care system and multicultural policies in the constitution of the country.
At the leadership level anyway, this was a pretty liberal group. This explains one of the reasons why the Reform party has become such a power.
The Reform party is much closer to what you would call conservative Republican, which I'll get to in a minute.
The Bloc Quebecois, which I won't spend much time on, is a strictly Quebec party, strictly among the French-speaking people of Quebec. It is an ethnic separatist party that seeks to make Quebec an independent, sovereign nation.
By and large, the Bloc Quebecois is centre-left in its approach. However, it is primarily an ethnic coalition. It's always had diverse elements. It does have an element that is more on the right of the political spectrum, but that's definitely a minority element.
Let me say a little bit about the Reform party because I want you to be very clear on what the Reform party is and is not.
The Reform party, although described by many of its members, and most of the media, as conservative, and conservative in the American sense, actually describes itself as populist. And that's the term its leader, Preston Manning, uses.
This term is not without significance. The Reform party does stand for direct democracy, which of course many American conservatives do, but also it sees itself as coming from a long tradition of populist parties of Western Canada, not all of which have been conservative.
It also is populist in the very real sense, if I can make American analogies to it -- populist in the sense that the term is sometimes used with Ross Perot.
The Reform party is very much a leader-driven party. It's much more a real party than Mr. Perot's party -- by the way, it existed before Mr. Perot's party. But it's very much leader-driven, very much organized as a personal political vehicle. Although it has much more of a real organization than Mr. Perot does.
But the Reform party only exists federally. It doesn't exist at the provincial level here in Canada. It really exists only because Mr. Manning is pursuing the position of prime minister. It doesn't have a broader political mandate than that yet. Most of its members feel it should, and, in their minds, actually it does.
It also has some Buchananist tendencies. I know there are probably many admirers of Mr. Buchanan here, but I mean that in the sense that there are some anti-market elements in the Reform Party. So far, they haven't been that important, because Mr. Manning is, himself, a fairly orthodox economic conservative.
The predecessor of the Reform party, the Social Credit party, was very much like this. Believing in funny money and control of banking, and a whole bunch of fairly non-conservative economic things.
So there are some non-conservative tendencies in the Reform party, but, that said, the party is clearly the most economically conservative party in the country. It's the closest thing we have to a neo-conservative party in that sense.
It's also the most conservative socially, but it's not a theocon party, to use the term. The Reform party does favour the use of referendums and free votes in Parliament on moral issues and social issues.
The party is led by Preston Manning, who is a committed, evangelical Christian. And the party in recent years has made some reference to family values and to family priorities. It has some policies that are definitely social-conservative, but it's not explicitly so.
Many members are not, the party officially is not, and, frankly, the party has had a great deal of trouble when it's tried to tackle those issues.
Last year, when we had the Liberal government putting the protection of sexual orientation in our Human Rights Act, the Reform Party was opposed to that, but made a terrible mess of the debate. In fact, discredited itself on that issue, not just with the conventional liberal media, but even with many social conservatives by the manner in which it mishandled that.
So the social conservative element exists. Mr. Manning is a Christian, as are most of the party's senior people. But it's not officially part of the party. The party hasn't quite come to terms with how that fits into it.
That's the conventional analysis of the party system.
Let me turn to the non-conventional analysis, because frankly, it's impossible, with just left/right terminology to explain why we would have five parties, or why we would have four parties on the conventional spectrum. Why not just two?
The reason is regional division, which you'll see if you carefully look at a map. Let me draw the United States comparison, a comparison with your history.
The party system that is developing here in Canada is a party system that replicates the antebellum period, the pre-Civil War period of the United States.
That's not to say -- and I would never be quoted as saying -- we're headed to a civil war. But we do have a major secession crisis, obviously of a very different nature than the secession crisis you had in the 1860s. But the dynamics, the political and partisan dynamics of this, are remarkably similar.
The Bloc Quebecois is equivalent to your Southern secessionists, Southern Democrats, states rights activists. The Bloc Quebecois, its 44 seats, come entirely from the province of Quebec. But even more strikingly, they come from ridings, or election districts, almost entirely populated by the descendants of the original European French settlers.
The Liberal party has 26 seats in Quebec. Most of these come from areas where there are heavy concentrations of English, aboriginal or ethnic votes. So the Bloc Quebecois is very much an ethnic party, but it's also a secession party.
In the referendum two years ago, the secessionists won 49 per cent of the vote, 49.5 per cent. So this is a very real crisis. We're looking at another referendum before the turn of the century.
The Progressive Conservative party is very much comparable to the Whigs of the 1850s and 1860s. What is happening to them is very similar to the Whigs. A moderate conservative party, increasingly under stress because of the secession movement, on the one hand, and the reaction to that movement from harder line English Canadians on the other hand.
You may recall that the Whigs, in their dying days, went through a series of metamorphoses. They ended up as what was called the Unionist movement that won some of the border states in your 1860 election.
If you look at the surviving PC support, it's very much concentrated in Atlantic Canada, in the provinces to the east of Quebec. These are very much equivalent to the United States border states. They're weak economically. They have very grim prospects if Quebec separates. These people want a solution at almost any cost. And some of the solutions they propose would be exactly that.
They also have a small percentage of seats in Quebec. These are French-speaking areas that are also more moderate and very concerned about what would happen in a secession crisis.
The Liberal party is very much your northern Democrat, or mainstream Democratic party, a party that is less concessionary to the secessionists than the PCs, but still somewhat concessionary. And they still occupy the mainstream of public opinion in Ontario, which is the big and powerful province, politically and economically, alongside Quebec.
The Reform party is very much a modern manifestation of the Republican movement in Western Canada; the U.S. Republicans started in the western United States. The Reform Party is very resistant to the agenda and the demands of the secessionists, and on a very deep philosophical level.
The goal of the secessionists is to transform our country into two nations, either into two explicitly sovereign countries, or in the case of weaker separatists, into some kind of federation of two equal partners.
The Reform party opposes this on all kinds of grounds, but most important, Reformers are highly resistant philosophically to the idea that we will have an open, modern, multi-ethnic society on one side of the line, and the other society will run on some set of ethnic-special-status principles. This is completely unacceptable, particularly to philosophical conservatives in the Reform party.
The Reform party's strength comes almost entirely from the West. It's become the dominant political force in Western Canada. And it is getting a substantial vote in Ontario. Twenty per cent of the vote in the last two elections. But it has not yet broken through in terms of the number of seats won in Ontario.
This is a very real political spectrum, lining up from the Bloc to reform. You may notice I didn't mention the New Democratic Party. The NDP obviously can't be compared to anything pre-Civil War. But the NDP is not an important player on this issue. Its views are somewhere between the liberals and conservatives. Its main concern, of course, is simply the left-wing agenda to basically disintegrate our society in all kinds of spectrums. So it really doesn't fit in.
But I don't use this comparison of the pre-Civil War lightly. Preston Manning, the leader of the Reform party has spent a lot of time reading about pre-Civil War politics. He compares the Reform party himself to the Republican party of that period. He is very well-read on Abraham Lincoln and a keen follower and admirer of Lincoln.
I know Mr. Manning very well. I would say that next to his own father, who is a prominent Western Canadian politician, Abraham Lincoln has probably had more effect on Mr. Manning's political philosophy than any individual politician.
Obviously, the issue here is not slavery, but the appeasement of ethnic nationalism. For years, we've had this Quebec separatist movement. For years, we elected Quebec prime ministers to deal with that, Quebec prime ministers who were committed federalists who would lead us out of the wilderness. For years, we have given concessions of various kinds of the province of Quebec, political and economic, to make them happier.
This has not worked. The sovereignty movement has continued to rise in prominence. And its demands have continued to increase. It began to hit the wall when what are called the soft separatists and the conventional political establishment got together to put in the constitution something called "a distinct society clause.'' Nobody really knows what it would mean, but it would give the Supreme Court, where Quebec would have a tremendous role in appointment, the power to interpret Quebec's special needs and powers, undefined elsewhere.
This has led to a firewall of resistance across the country. It fuelled the growth of the Reform party. I should even say that the early concessionary people, like Pierre Trudeau, have come out against this. So there's even now an element of the Quebec federalists themselves who will no longer accept this.
So you see the syndrome we're in. The separatists continue to make demands. They're a powerful force. They continue to have the bulk of the Canadian political establishment on their side. The two traditional parties, the Liberals and PCs, are both led by Quebecers who favour concessionary strategies. The Reform party is a bastion of resistance to this tendency.
To give you an idea of how divided the country is, not just in Quebec but how divided the country is outside Quebec on this, we had a phenomenon five years ago. This is a real phenomenon; I don't know how much you heard about it.
The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things.
What was significant about this was that this constitutional proposal was supported by the entire Canadian political establishment. By all of the major media. By the three largest traditional parties, the PC, Liberal party and NDP. At the time, the Bloc and Reform were very small.
It was supported by big business, very vocally by all of the major CEOs of the country. The leading labour unions all supported it. Complete consensus. And most academics.
And it was defeated. It literally lost the national referendum against a rag-tag opposition consisting of a few dissident conservatives and a few dissident socialists.
This gives you some idea of the split that's taking place in the country.
Canada is, however, a troubled country politically, not socially. This is a country that we like to say works in practice but not in theory.
You can walk around this country without running across very many of these political controversies.
I'll end there and take any of your questions. But let me conclude by saying, good luck in your own battles. Let me just remind you of something that's been talked about here. As long as there are exams, there will always be prayer in schools.
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