The first Canadian Prime Minister was John A. MacDonald, a Conservative.  He was forced to resign as Prime Minister over the Pacific Scandal affair which brought to light secret campaign contributions from American investors interested in getting the contract to build the Trans-Canada railway.  Sir John A. experienced deep embarrassment over this weakness in his character and morals and resigned of his own volition.

Brian Mulroney, a more recent Conservative Prime Minister was investigated by the RCMP for suspicious dealings. Those allegations helped destroy his already shredded-to-tatters reputation.   But he wasn’t embarrassed in the least about that and, in fact, sued the Canadian government successfully for just over $2.1 million dollars for damaging his reputation further than he had managed to do on his own.

Brian Mulroney also accepted undeclared funds delivered secretly in paper bags from Karlhans Schrieber, a lobbyist for a European airplane manufacturer attempting to influence the Canadian government while Mulroney was the Prime Minister.

Mind you, the Karlhans Schrieber payments were revealed after the successful lawsuit against Canada to restore his reputation.  So Karlhans paid and we, the taxpayer, paid to assuage the feelings of a politician who accepted bribes while in office.  He is probably still not embarrassed.

John A. was humiliated and resigned.  Brian Mulroney was shamed and sued.  It would seem the blood still runs blue in the Conservative party but the embarrassingly low standards of behaviour have slipped even lower as the years have passed.

I can only shudder to think to what level the standards currently in vogue in the Conservative party have sunk.  How does one out-do ‘Paper-bag’ Mulroney?

Harper, it seems, has found ways.

And don’t think for a minute that today’s Conservative party doesn’t inherit the traditions and behaviours of it’s former members.  Of course it does.  Parties are like loose families.  Some members carry the party genes down the line generation after generation, election after election.  This is what makes a Tory a Tory.  It’s what makes a party a party.  They carry and share the values of their ancestors.  And they even call such beliefs ‘our traditional values’.

Stephen Harper and his MPs have the same values as Brian Mulroney.

In effect, when a person joins a party, they are claiming allegiance to the values of the others in the party, especially the leaders and the previous leaders.  A member of the Conservative Party of Canada is saying (in their defense: I believe they are saying it without knowing they are saying it), “I accept the taking of bribes/doing dirty tricks/selling out our heritage/mismanaging funds/usurping our rights/invading our privacy/ignoring the poor even if it is to the greater detriment of the Canadian people.” 

How can they deny it?  Even if they, personally, don’t accept bribes or do dirty tricks or lie and cheat and steal, they accept it in their own party.  It is a matter of record.

And this is the real point of the blog.  Most Conservatives I know are not that way inclined at all.  They are decent, honest people…………(albeit in denial about their political friends). 

The problem?  They are not looking past the name of the party.

To be labelled a small ‘c’ conservative is what they want to be saying.  “I am fiscally conservative.  I am even somewhat socially conservative.  And I think government should be as small as possible.  I am disinclined to vary greatly from what have been CANADIAN values.  I like Canadian values and I want to see them continue.”  I believe that is what virtually everyone (not deeply entrenched in the party) who votes Conservative is saying.

But BIG ‘C’  Conservative is just a name.  It is a word that doesn’t express the values of the party, it just differentiates one group from another.  Those who vote BIG C Conservative because they hold small c conservative values are being duped by the label being waved by crooks.  It is just branding.  It is just marketing.

Do you think a Ford actually fords (as in crossing a river?).  Do you think Armstrong cheese is made by strong arms?  Do you think Liberals are liberally minded?  Of course not.  So why would anyone think a Conservative has conservative values?

Put more bluntly:  they do not!

To be really ‘aware’ of what I am saying consider this simple question: which party conserves?  Which party promotes the preservation and conservation of that which Canadians value highly?  Which party could honestly be called Conservatives?

The answer is the Greens.  Here is a party totally dedicated to traditional values, sustainability, local economies and protecting the environment.  It is pretty hard to be any more conservative than that.

Go look up the definitions of conserve and conservation, why don’t you?

In fact, the Greens are so conservative, many people don’t vote for them because they seem unsophisticated in modern ways.  We are afraid the Greens haven’t evolved enough to understand business and the economy the way it is currently being played.  We think they would ‘lose’ in the economic sweepstakes.

And that fear is well-founded.  Greens are not crooks.  Not yet, anyway (power has a way of corrupting so watch that Elizabeth May like a hawk!).  The Greens don’t owe big business favours.  Greens don’t have a network of dirty tricks, secret plans and criminal operatives.  We are quite right in fearing that they can’t play the game the way it is played.

But isn’t that what we want?