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I've said a little on this before, but I'll give it another shot.
Historically, Canadian "conservatism" has nothing in common with USAmerican "conservatism", so USAmericans are starting at a disadvantage in trying to understand current "conservative" events here.
The (Progressive) Conservative Party was historically the nationalist, protectionist party. The Liberal Party was historically the internationalist, free-trade party. They represented different factions of the same class: old money and new money, respectively. The Conservative election slogan, over a hundred years ago, was "no truck nor trade with the Yankees". Brian Mulroney's free trade deal with the US kinda stepped outside that box.
The PC government of Ontario in the 60s and 70s was waaay to the left of anything a USAmerican could dream of. Generous post-secondary student grants and loans for anyone who needed them, that universal health care system, loads of subsidized housing for the elderly, social service and employment programs galore, practically a chicken in every pot. Of course, those were prosperous days. So the PCs could govern as the federal Liberals do: give 'em as much of what they want as we need to and can without affecting profits too much, as long as we stay in power.
There is also the Red Tory tradition, what you might call *real* "compassionate conservatism". A tradition that respects individual rights and strives to meet people's needs. A collectivist approach.
David Orchard (the rebellious former candidate for the PC leadership) is in that tradition. In fact, I have friends who are somewhat disaffected Vancouver members of the (social democratic/left) New Democratic Party who were delegates for him to that leadership convention. I actually don't know a whole lot about him, but I hear that there were others like them.
But since the 70s, the PC party has pretty much eliminated its Red Tories, and jumped on all the neo-conservative (what the world outside the US calls neo-liberal) bandwagons. The fluke that was the right-wing Brian Mulroney's win in 1984 (disaffected Quebec liberal voters punished the Liberals by electing any idiot who ran as a Tory and giving Mulroney a majority in the House) changed everything. The PC party simply *never was* an "incarnation of the same 'Right Wing Nut' philosophy" before him.
The Canadian Alliance (formerly Reform Party) is not in that tradition at all. It is not in any "Canadian" tradition. It is an outgrowth of a parochial christian fundamentalism, outside the "political" sphere, that has long had a strong influence in Western provinces, and until 50 years ago was paralleled by the RC influence in Quebec. Quebec got out from under the church and joined the modern world; the fundies of Alberta don't want to be part of that world -- the world in which Canada is a diverse and tolerant society in which individual rights are respected and collective responsibilities are assumed. Respect for rights and living up to collective responsibilities are both Canadian traditions, and in fact are both Tory traditions, all to varying degrees and with different emphases. But the Alliance rejects *both*.
The "union" proposed is in fact the absorption and elimination of traditional Canadian conservatism. There is no union; there is a takeover. There is no compromise; there is vanquishment and surrender. David Orchard and his supporters know that. And I think that anyone on the "left" of the Democratic Party believes that this is what "compromise" and "cooperation" by them would be, too.
I imagine that such demands look to them very much like "our way or the highway". I know they do to me. That's not to say that sometimes there aren't overarching necessities that call for unity around a single issue (anybody but Bush, as I understand it) -- damned if I didn't vote Liberal in our recent provincial election, for the first time in my many years of voting, because it *was* an "anybody but" situation: the Ontario PC party was no longer the party of 60s Premier Uncle Bill Davis, it was the Alliance by another name, and in my riding the NDP was not going to win the 3-way split. But I did that only because I believed that a Liberal government would indeed be better, even if nowhere near what I wanted. Federally, say in 1988 when Mulroney was re-elected, I was under no such delusion and would have voted neither Liberal nor PC if they had been my only choices. They were the same thing, not "the opposition". And I can understand those who think that right-wing Democrats aren't really any different from Republicans.
It galls me to see the Liberal Party held up as an example for our progressive southern neighbours. The Liberal Party -- and more so under the next Prime Minister, Paul Martin -- is an economically right-wing party. It "compromises and cooperates" to precisely the extent needed in order to stay in power and pursue that right-wing agenda. It is to its advantage to placate the "left" by giving in to socially left-wing demands (you haven't actually seen it leading the charge on any of those, have you?), thus improving its image among those whom its economic policies harm the least -- those most likely to vote.
So please don't try to learn lessons from either the Canadian right wing or ... the Canadian right wing. The Conservatives or the Liberals. The Conservatives have capitulated, not compromised, their values; and the Liberals just talk the talk that makes them sound better than the "right wing", they don't actually govern in the interests of the governed.
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