the provinces,” Manning explained. But it was hard for Reform to be heard in Quebec. Reform was seen as the party that led the fight against Meech Lake, the party that would not allow Quebec to be recognized as a distinct society.
To be clear, the Meech Lake Accord was not an influence in the initial meetings that led to the founding of the Reform party. The Meech Lake Accord was signed on June 3, 1987, just after the Vancouver Assembly that led to the launch of the Reform party.
The first electoral test for reform came in 1988, when Brian Mulroney’s government faced the electorate for the first time. Speaking in 2003, Mulroney recalled his puzzlement at the prospect of facing Preston Manning and the Reform party on the ballot, given his government’s record at responding to western grievances:
We had not run a perfect government. We had made mistakes. But, as I arrived in Alberta to begin the campaign I felt reasonably confident, however, of taking on this coalition of Free Trade opponents: unemployment was down; growth was strong; the NEP was abolished; FIRA was eliminated; the wave of privatization had begun; we had negotiated the Canada–U.S. FTA, an initiative ardently sought by Western Canada for generations; we had three Albertans in Cabinet in positions of great influence: Messrs. Mazankowski, Deputy Prime Minister; Clark, Foreign Affairs; Andre, Government Leader. I was running the most conservative government since Prime Minister St. Laurent and our government had responded more fully to western Canadian aspirations than any other in modern history. Imagine my surprise, therefore, to find that, running against us and cutting into our vote at the centre and centre-right, was Preston Manning and the old Social Credit Party, then dressed up under a new name, the Reform party. This was the beginning of the division of conservative forces in Canada. At the very moment the centre-right was gaining effectiveness in Canada, Mr. Manning chose to launch a new party, split the vote and give rise to the political fragmentation we know today.
The election was dominated by debate over the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Liberal leader John Turner said opposition to the FTA was the “cause of his life.” In the free trade debate, Reform was on the same side as the Tories. Conservative- minded voters feared that placing a protest vote with Reform might defeat the PCs and thwart the trade deal. Those who might otherwise have voted Reform instinctively knew the consequences of splitting the conservative vote. Mulroney would later remark, “Had Westerners truly split the conservative vote in 1988, Canada would never have had free trade, something the West had wanted for the past 125 years. As it was, a number of NDP were elected in 1988 because of vote splitting.”
Don Mazankowski recalled that Reform certainly made its presence felt in 1988, but that the election battle lines were drawn around free trade. “I ran in seven election campaigns. That one was the most satisfying because it was clearly an issue-oriented campaign. One side was going to win and one side was going to lose and Canada was going to take a different track. That is the real genius of the Mulroney government.” If western alienation was real, this was not the election where it was safe to give it expression.
The major issue that Reform brought to the electorate in 1988 was financial mismanagement, specifically the inability of Mulroney’s government to balance the books.
Much of the Reform effort was focused on the riding of Yellowhead, Alberta, where Preston Manning took on Joe Clark, then minister for external affairs and a former Tory leader. It was clever and politically savvy for Manning to pick such a high-profile opponent. No one expected Manning to win, but the contest gave Manning the opportunity to debate and ridicule a former Conservative prime minister in local debates and on local media. Such encounters would be played across the country, giving both Manning and Reform some much-sought-after publicity.
Author Graham Fraser describes a campaign event where Preston Manning squared off against Joe Clark:
Manning... was cheered when he told the audience to send the old parties a message, and that his election would be a warning to MPs across Canada. “If you [Clark] will not faithfully represent those who elect you, you will be replaced by someone who will.” This was the issue people questioned Clark most closely about. They opposed bilingualism and favoured capital punishment: he [Clark] had supported bilingualism and voted against capital punishment. “How can we vote for you if you don’t vote for us?” one member of the audience asked.
Manning tapped into the anger and feelings of alienation that existed in western Canada. Voters in the West remembered well the decision by Mulroney, with his western cabinet ministers by his side, to award the CF-18 maintenance contract not to a Manitoba company, but to a Quebec firm. Reformers campaigning in Manitoba distributed pamphlets telling voters, “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even.”
For a first attempt in a strategically difficult election, Reform per- formed remarkably well. It received slightly more than 2 per cent of votes cast nationally and 8.5 per cent of votes cast in the 72 ridings in which it fielded a candidate. The Tories won 25 of 26 Alberta ridings, but Reform captured 15.3 per cent of the vote, with support from both urban and rural ridings. Preston Manning placed second in Yellowhead, reducing Joe Clark’s popular vote from 74 per cent in 1984 to 45 per cent in 1988. Manning lost by a margin of only 6,640 votes.
While the Free Trade Agreement was secure, Alberta had still managed to cast a meaningful protest vote, a warning Progressive Conservatives should have heeded. Reform had shown that it was not a fringe party.
One of Reform’s most successful candidates was Stephen Harper. There was some awkwardness to this campaign because Harper was on the same ballot as Jim Hawkes, his former boss and one of his political mentors. Hawkes had recognized Harper’s potential four years earlier in the 1984 campaign, when Stephen led the youth volunteers in Calgary West. Hawkes had brought Harper to Ottawa to work as his legislative assistant, and they had spent many hours together discussing the nation, policy, and political strategy. Harper felt sufficiently uncomfortable facing his former boss that he called Hawkes before the election to ask if his candidacy would bother him. Hawkes acquiesced to Harper’s candidacy. (It is difficult to know what would have happened had Hawkes objected.) Harper had already formed the local Reform constituency association and had been acclaimed as its candidate. Most likely the call to Hawkes was simply an indication of respect. Harper was in the 1988 campaign for better or worse.
As the party’s first chief policy officer, Harper had been instrumental in crafting Reform’s 1988 election platform. Drawing inspiration from the manifesto of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the Reform platform was clearly more conservative than populist, although elements of both streams of thinking were clearly in evidence in the thirty-six-page document. (It is noteworthy that a populist party would have a chief policy officer; you would expect its platforms would be assembled from the grassroots and not entrusted to a single person.)
Harper and Hawkes could hardly disagree on the principal election issue, free trade. The Liberals did Stephen Harper no favours when they turned the campaign into a virtual referendum on the FTA. Yet Harper finished a respectable second in the election, with 16.6 per cent of the vote, compared with Hawkes’s 58.5. It was an easy win for Hawkes, but his popular support was 16.2 percentage points lower than it had been in 1984, about the same level given to Harper. This suggests the conservative vote held together between 1984 and 1988, although vote splitting had no consequence on the outcome.
For many reasons, the 1988 results should have made the Tories nervous, but instead they were joyous. They had focused entirely on John Turner and the Liberal party. “After the [leaders’] debate I figured we had lost it,” said Mazankowski. “It looked at times like the Liberals might win. But that’s when Mulroney turned on the after- burners and he went to work. Then there was no looking back.” Mulroney secured another majority government, winning 169 of 295 seats.
The Tories felt they could ignore Manning and Reform without consequence. After all, they won 7 of 14 seats in Manitoba, the province that was supposed to punish them for the CF-18 decision. The Tories felt they had an unshakeable grip the West. “They loved us out west,” said David Angus. “The oil barons of Calgary, they loved Mulroney. We got rid of the NEP. They gave us lots of money. They got everything in spades.”
While the Tories may have kept the oil patch, however, the battle for