Don’t take party unity for granted, Manning tells Tories

Potential leaders to debate policy at conference

• Veteran politician Preston Manning says the next Conservative leader must strike a balance between emphasizing party unity and addressing populism bubbling up to the surface of Canadian politics.

In an interview before this week’s high-profile conservative conference organized by his Manning Centre, Manning told the National Post whoever becomes leader must remember the Conservative party was stitched together not so long ago.

“It’s got fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, constitutional conservatives in Quebec, democratic conservatives on the prairie. It’s a coalition, and I think whoever leads it has to recognize this is a coalition. … Hopefully the stitching is solid stitching, but it’s not like it’s been around for a hundred years,” Manning said.

The party formed in 2003 to bridge Progressive Conservatives with members of the Canadian Alliance, which was the successor to Manning’s Western-based Reform Party.

“You can’t take the unity of coalitions for granted. You have to work on it,” Manning said. “If you can’t make democracy work internally to handle your differences, how are you going to go to the public and say you can make it work in the broader differences of society?”

The agenda for this week’s conference in Ottawa includes a debate between leadership candidates who are divided on several questions, including whether Canada’s immigration policy should be changed.

In the context of Liberal government positions and a Trump government in the U.S., Manning said populist questions around diversity, extremism and inclusiveness must be addressed.

“One of my worries is, and it fits into the Trump phenomenon, that a lot of the political establishment in Canada is denying that those concerns exist here, or just decrying anybody that brings them up,” he said. “I just think that’s a mistake. I think there are concerns on all of those issues and they’re down below and people resent it when they can’t be aired.”

Manning likened it to an oilpatch metaphor. With “wildcat wells,” pressure can push the oil out of the top and blow the platform off. To avoid that, you drill a relief well, from the side, at just the right angle, and it takes the pressure off.

“The oil well’s blowing, and it’s messy, and it’s throwing all this stuff all over the place, and it can be dangerous. But what do you do? You try to find some way of redirecting it as some constructive end. And that’s one of the real challenges of leadership.”

Manning recalled how populism in the ’80s and ’90s spurred his Reform Party, which harnessed a “populist element” of Western alienation rather than allowing it to tear up the federation.

To avoid or suppress topics the rank-and-file care about isn’t wise, Manning said. That’s why several controversial topics are on the docket for the conference.

Titles of hot-button sessions include: leading the response to Islamist extremism and its ideology in Canada; Down with the elites?; A Trump movement in Canada?; and stifling dissent: conservatism on campus.

“Hopefully they’ll be addressed responsibly,” Manning said.

As traditional news media lose ground and more online media outlets celebrate specific political biases, however, Manning expressed concern over online silos of opinion that could be counterproductive to that hope.

“People are just taking these social media offerings that coincide with their preconceived opinions,” he said. “I just see that happening all over the political spectrum and it’s not healthy. And it’s not conducive to democratic discourse.”