To be a Conservative means being progressive
Increasingly, as the gap widens between Progressive Conservatives and members of what was the neo- conservative Canadian Alliance, or Reform Party, in 2003, a battle seems to be raging between Red Tories and Blue Tories.
The irony, of course, is that “progressive Conservative” is what always has been meant by Tory in Canada. To be a true blue Tory is to be a PC, as was meant by “Liberal, Tory same old story.”
Today, of course, the PC Party is the Progressive Canadian Party but Tories in what is now being called the Conservative Party have more in common with PCs, and should merge, than they ever did with the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance.
Plainly said, if you aren’t a “progressive Conservative,” you aren’t a Tory and in the English- speaking world not a conservative at all.
Canadian Conservatives are “progressive Conservatives,” the true Tory legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald, whose birthday is celebrated Saturday.
In a Feb. 9, 1854 letter to his colleague Captain Strachan, Canada’s first prime minister stated his conclusion that the future growth and development of Canada and of the Tory party required that “… our aim should be to enlarge the bounds of our party so as to embrace every person desirous of being counted as a ‘ progressive Conservative’, and who will join in a series of measures to put an end to the corruption which has ruined the present government and debauched all its followers.” — The National Archives.
So it was with Edmund Burke before him, Joseph Addison and others before Burke, in their view that to be Tory was to honour our institutions, to serve the nation, to be responsible to the community through the social contract between each individual and the larger society, equally before the law with those enjoying the privilege of wealth and office having a greater duty of service by virtue of those privileges, a concept once called noblesse oblige and today simply social responsibility, honour and duty.
Happy birthday, Sir John A. Macdonald. BRIAN MARLATT White Rock ( The writer is the PC Party candidate- of- record in South Surrey- White Rock-Cloverdale and a lifelong Progressive Conservative.)