as left or socialist would find comfort with the NDP, while those on the conservative right would align with the Progressive Conservatives. Those living in Quebec who believed in separation and a Quebec nation would align with the Bloc Québécois. In its pure form, populism is more a methodology than a consistent stance on a series of issues. For a populist party to survive and succeed there must be a broad consensus that none of the current political philosophies respond to voter concerns. Some suggest the Bloc Québécois is populist because it was born out of political uprising. It is anything but, because it has a well-defined agenda with coherent and consistent policies designed to deliver the destiny it sees for Quebec.
For Reform to work as a populist party it could not be a purely conservative or right-wing party. Manning knew this, which is why he never wanted the right-wing label. He knew that unless he could attract voters away from mainstream political parties right across the country in somewhat equal proportions, his project would fail.
So, was Preston Manning as conservative as his Reform party members? Flanagan doubts this, for a number of reasons. He saw that Manning was fundamentally opposed to deficits and the burden of debt, but that view could easily be held from the left; witness Tommy Douglas, the former socialist NDP premier of Saskatchewan. Manning did not support an end to interventionist supply-management marketing boards and would also continue farm income subsidies. He supported social programs and opposed privatization of pension plans. Manning, said Flanagan, “is eclectic in his thinking, and has a tendency to embrace contradictory positions in a belief that they will be reconciled in some future synthesis. He is certainly not a socialist or even a liberal, but in ideological terms he could lead a centrist party with a favourable orientation to business …He envisions a dynamic process in which he will recruit centrist or even leftist members, whose presence will change the party’s ideological center of gravity, which in turn will make it more hospitable for centrist, leftists and so on. Eventually, he wants Reform to embrace the whole ideological spectrum, just as he wants to become a demographic microcosm of the whole Canadian society.”
To some in Canada, populism has a negative connotation. It is seen as a place where disaffected and angry misfits attempt to congregate legitimately because they cannot find a home in any of the mainstream parties. Manning tried his best to avoid this stigma, although he did acknowledge the inherent risk of his undertaking. “There is some academic literature where populism is a perversion of democracy where some demagogue bamboozles the public into support. I acknowledge there is a dark side to that. But that was never what we were talking about. It is a phenomenon that has its dark side but it is a very admirable phenomenon when it works properly.” It doesn’t always work properly. Brian Mulroney is reported to have warned Manning about the dangers of cobbling together a coalition of the disaffected: “You can build an army of opportunists, but you can never make them march.”
Manning was uncomfortable calling himself a populist or a conservative. “I stopped using populism because of the perceived negatives and just kept using democracy, democratic grass roots, bottom up, those types of words.” This labelling confusion irritated Manning. “The people that argue that Reform was populist, and to them populism is a derogatory word, they are often people who don’t really like democracy but don’t have the guts to say it, so they call it populism in protest.” For Manning, Reform fit into a broad historical and sociological context. “There are two parts of the country that innovate politically in the sense of supporting new movements outside the traditional ones... there are two parts of the country that are systemic changers. One is Quebec with that long list of third parties: Bloc Populaire; Union Nationale; Ralliament des Créditistes; BQ; ADQ. The other of course is the West with its stream: Riel, the independence movement, the Progressives; the depression parties, CCF, Social Credit, and then Reform.” Manning believed the urge to be different is somehow innate. “I argue there is something in the juices of these two regions that produce these movements, and will produce these movements sooner or later no matter what.” (Brian Mulroney responded to the notion of western juices by saying one could hardly expect westerners to remain calm when a political leader is telling them on a daily basis that they are being abused and exploited. It was one thing, argued Mulroney, to foment discord. It was quite another to govern the country where a national and inclusive perspective is required.)
The Reform Party of Canada was not established with a neutral ideological bent. The populist methodology was encumbered in the first instance by a number of predetermined views enshrined in its Statement of Principles. These included: a Triple-E Senate (elected, effective, and equal); conserving the physical environment; protecting the family unit; a free-enterprise economy; collective responsibility for the care of basic human needs; balanced budgets; and positive relations with the United States. These were the principles Manning hastily wrote on a sheet of paper that became the Reform party constitution. A truly populist party would not have policy markers in its constitution; rather, it would have various mechanisms and procedures to prioritize the will of electors and citizens.
Tom Flanagan questioned the legitimacy of populism in the Reform party: “The populist dream of consensus about policy matters is both empirically impossible and logically incoherent... as a political leader Manning operates with an intuitive grasp of the importance of agenda control, and within the Reform Party he tries to reserve that control for himself.”
Manning’s commitment to democracy also appears to have its limitations. Even within the party’s hierarchy, Tom Flanagan reported that Manning exercised de facto control over the nomination of the chairman and officers of the party’s executive council and the chairmen and members of all committees “... to ensure that all key positions are filled by reliable loyalists and to isolate mavericks on the council.” And when Reform party pol- icy was adopted at general assemblies and conventions, Manning frequently ignored those aspects with which he was not completely comfortable. “The relative lack of concerns with assembly proceedings and decisions stems from Manning’s feelings that he is not bound by them.”
Ted Byfield, a Reform party founder and creator of the Alberta Report, did not believe Manning was a populist and suggested he was more interested in control and power: “It always seems to me that [Manning] is always advocating something [populism] that is incompatible with his own instincts.... And I think that will likely get him into trouble before he’s finished, too, because it isn’t his [first] instinct. [Preston] is the authoritarian of the first order, [just] as his father was…”
The arguments that ultimately led to the merger between the Progressive Conservative and the Reform-Alliance parties were as valid throughout the 1990s as they were in 2003 when the merger was consummated. The parties were eating each other’s lunch.
Preston Manning was never comfortable with Reform being placed on the right wing, as in pro–free enterprise and minimal government, or the left wing, as in redistribution of wealth and state-run social programs. He thought that Conservatives on the right had “hard heads and hard hearts,” while the New Democrats on the left had “soft heads and soft hearts.” His political goal was to be “hard headed and soft hearted.” Yet in his autobiographies, Manning provided no evidence that Conservatives were hard-hearted. Instead, he pointed out that 60 per cent of government spending while Mulroney was in office was on social programs, hardly the measure of a hard-hearted politician. In elections to come, Reform party platforms would cut heavily in these areas.
Manning was alone in arguing that Reform was not on the right of the political spectrum. Trevor Harrison said: “The data support the widespread contention that Reformers are, in general, disgruntled Tories or previous supporters of other right-wing parties. The party’s 1989 delegate survey found that 78 per cent of the delegates identified themselves as previous Tories, 5 per cent Socreds, 5 per cent Liberals, and just over 1 per cent Confederation of Regions members. Similarly, the 1992 delegate survey found that over 79 per cent had voted Tory in 1984, while 46 per cent did so again in 1988, compared with 36 per cent who shifted to Reform.”
Reform members were far to the right of the Progressive Conservative party. Yet Manning didn’t even want to say he was a conservative. “Stephen Harper and I were conservative and could see the obvious contradiction,” said John Weissenberger. So could the media. They viewed Reform as ultraconservative. Denying reality made Canadians suspicious of Reform. “The critics would say you are