Canada’s Reform Party Spurns Its U.S. Counterpart

They have the same name, and both want to reconfigure the political order. But Canada’s Reform Party rejects any association with the U.S. version of Pat Buchanan, Jesse Ventura and Donald Trump.

At one point, the Canadians even thought about suing the Americans for copying the Reform Party name. Lack of jurisdiction quashed the idea, but concern lingers that the “three-ring circus” south of the border will confuse Canadian voters, says Jason Kenney, a Reform Party member in Parliament.

“The Reform Party in Canada is trying to shake the notion that it’s an erratic, wing-nut party,” said Kenney, a former tax activist. “Whatever people hear about our American namesake, it kind of reinforces that notion.”

Although their differences far outnumber their similarities, the Canadian and U.S. Reform parties both face critical tests this year that could determine their potential for growth and success in future elections.

Canadian Party Has Clear Leader

In the United States, Trump, the billionaire developer, and Buchanan, an economic nationalist, appear poised to battle for the Reform Party’s presidential nomination and its $12-million matching federal campaign funds. Whoever leads the party must mount a credible challenge in the November election or risk Reform’s relegation to political sideshow.

Canada’s Reform Party has several crucial attributes lacking in its U.S. counterpart--a clear leader in Preston Manning, a solid geographic support base and national status as the official opposition in Parliament.

It grew in 12 years from a protest movement by Westerners tired of being ignored by the federal government to become Parliament’s second-biggest party, winning 60 seats in the 301-member legislature in 1997.

But all its support comes from western provinces, and a reputation for xenophobia and other socially conservative stances make the Reform Party unpalatable to Canada’s liberal-leaning mainstream. It has no Parliament members from Ontario, the most populous province, and points east.

Manning is campaigning to unify Canada’s divided conservative voters, proposing a new party that would combine the Reform Party with the Conservative Party that governed in the 1980s under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

A conference in Ottawa in late January will set policy and choose a name for Manning’s new party, and the Reform Party will hold its national conference the next day to consider the plan. If the Reform conference accepts it, the plan goes to a spring referendum by Reform’s 65,000 members.

The goal is obvious--by healing the conservative split his party began by opposing Mulroney’s policies, Manning believes the unified party can defeat the governing Liberals in the 2001 national election.

But unity carries a potentially heavy price for bedrock Reform supporters.

Lawrence LeDuc, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, says Manning risks alienating his deeply conservative Western support base by broadening the party message to seek nationwide backing.

“It’s becoming more like an established party and less like this maverick . . . that gave it part of its appeal in the West,” LeDuc says. “It’s kind of a Catch-22. The party needs the West--that’s where its roots are--but it’s got to grow past it.”

Kenney, the Reform Party lawmaker, acknowledges that social issues like abortion and capital punishment are the biggest obstacles to unifying conservatives. To limit the damage, his party calls for referendums on major questions instead of risking public policy battles.

“We only commit ourselves to a process and not an outcome,” he says. “It’s a stress point. We have some tension on it.”

Unity Plan Supports 2 National Languages

In a signal of potential change, a policy document for the upcoming unity conference accepts Canada’s two national languages of French and English, and recognizes the federal government’s responsibility to protect minority language rights. The Reform Party previously opposed special official status for the French language.

Manning recently indicated he will step down if Reform Party supporters kill the unity plan by refusing to reach out to the East and instead choose to “simply consolidate our current base in the West.”

“I would not be interested in or able to lead such a retreat,” he said in a letter sent to party members.

While some Conservative Party officials support the plan to merge with Reform, Conservative leader Joe Clark opposes it. Clark and Manning are longtime rivals who both have ambitions to be prime minister, and their power struggle is a major obstacle to unifying the Canadian right.

A look south shows the potential cost of failing to merge.

The U.S. Reform Party also began as a protest, but by one man--Texas billionaire Ross Perot--against the budget deficit.

He spent $20 million of his own money to win 19% of the vote as an independent in the 1992 presidential race. Perot’s strong showing drew support away from Republican incumbent George Bush, who lost to Bill Clinton.

The Perot movement became the Reform Party, but Perot won only 8.5% of the vote in the 1996 election. Now high-profile media figures like Buchanan, Trump and Ventura, a former pro wrestler elected Minnesota governor, are competing for the Reform legacy.

Joseph Zboralski, a political science professor at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto, isn’t surprised by the colorful lineup.

“The United States is so entrenched and biased toward a two-party system, you almost need to have these kind of larger-than-life, comical-type figures to attract attention,” he says.