To understand Stephen Harper you should know that for three years he ran a group started in and often focused on Ontario that was slightly to the right of Mike Harris and Margaret Thatcher, although this never emerged much in the federal election.
From 1998-2001, our new prime minister was president of the National Citizens? Coalition, founded by Colin Brown, a wealthy insurance executive and Progressive Conservative activist in London, Ontario.
Brown in the 1960s was a friend of Conservative premier John Robarts, also from London, and his company managed a lot of provincial civil servants? pension funds.
Brown?s only other claim to fame was that he took Robarts and a plane load of about 60 politicians and business leaders annually to the United States to watch the Masters golf tournament.
News media of the time reported this as a sporting event, but the businessmen must have been grateful to have this opportunity to hobnob with politicians who made many decisions that affected them.
Brown founded the NCC in 1968 mainly to criticize the size and cost of government and claimed it represents ?ordinary people,? although it has not
pressed much for more safety in the workplace or a higher minimum wage.
He did not have the same rapport with Robarts?s successor as premier, William Davis, a more moderate Tory, who did not go on the golf trips and presumably recognized accepting them would place him in a conflict of interest.
Brown and the NCC even attacked Davis after he helped Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau secure a formula enabling the federal and provincial governments to change the Constitution and insert a Charter protecting rights.
The NCC accused Davis of surrendering to Trudeau, helping him make a power grab and resembling Neville Chamberlain.
He was the British prime minister who bowed and scraped to Hitler in a vain attempt to avert World War II ? we are not making this up, as negative ads said in the election ? and it was among the most disgraceful comparisons ever made in Ontario politics.
This was before Harper ran the NCC, but he must have known of and felt comfortable with its policies and tactics or he would not have agreed to lead
it.
The NCC attacked a later Conservative leader, Larry Grossman, for supporting pay equity, rent controls and minor protection from discrimination for homosexuals, all now commonly accepted.
The NCC said Grossman was ?more socialist than the socialists? and urged Conservatives to withhold donations, but Grossman retorted being criticized by the NCC raised his stature with voters.
When the New Democrats were in government, an NCC offshoot, Ontarians for Responsible Government, claimed it had a poll showing ?a shocking? 41 percent of residents felt it was managing the economy so poorly they would seriously consider leaving the province if they could afford to.
Not many would believe this and it proved only questions in a poll can be worded to obtain almost any desired answer.
The NCC accused Brian Mulroney when he was Conservative prime minister of being ?too pink? and ?subsidizing socialism.?
It ran ads saying an NDP leader, Ed Broadbent, whom most people probably would consider as comfortable as old shoes, was ?very, very scary.?
The NCC also ran huge, cruel ads criticizing a federal Conservative government decision to allow in 50,000 Vietnamese refugees, arguing they would bring in too many relatives, take jobs from Canadians, find housing scarce and feel out of place, and the government replied this smacked of racism.
Under Harper the NCC lobbied for tax credits for parents who send their children to private schools, which helps mostly, although not only, the better-off, weakens public education and in Ontario has been introduced by Harris and rejected by the current Liberal government.
The NCC also would sell all crown corporations whose functions can be performed by the private sector and not even Harris or Thatcher went that far. How much of this does Harper still believe?
