David Orchard Update: Lawsuit Against Tory/Alliance Merger Not Dead

Dec 6th National Meeting With regard to the Dec 6th National Meeting, the merger proposal did pass with 90% support nationally, but achieved only 64.9% at the Victoria hub. We felt some consolation that it failed to achieve 2/3 support in Victoria, as well as in 3 or 4 more of the 27 hubs. (The Victoria hub was connected by phone to the other 26 hubs across Canada.) Most of the speeches from all the hubs were from mediocre to boring, but we were treated to a few very good speeches against the merger. The speech from the Victoria hub, by Nanaimo's Bill McCullough, was particularly supportive of the argument that the merger is really a takeover by the Alliance,. He revealed that, in Nanaimo, he has been invited the join the "new Alliance association" and that, in Calgary, the new party's constitution is already quietly being amended, starting with the removal of the phrase "socially progressive". It was so disheartening to witness the sneers and moans by the YES side when Party luminaries like Joe Clark spoke against the merger. Even worse, when 93-year-old Alfred Langford of London, Ontario, spoke against the merger, someone in Victoria's YES crowd called him "senile". Mr. Langford did raise a good laugh though when he finished by proposing that the floral emblem of the new party ought to be the Carrion flower because... it stinks. The final piece of business at the Meeting was a procedural motion by Craig McGuigan, which the National President ruled out of order. We will explore the possibility that this may be yet another example of the Party's violations of rules of order. Scuttlebutt In a conversation with David on Dec 9th, he reports that MacKay is choosing who will be on the Interim Joint Council (IJC) of the Conservative Party and that tempers have flared amongst members of what used to be the PC Management Committee. Some who are not being chosen by MacKay, but who helped engineer the betrayal of the PC Party, are now feeling betrayed by MacKay. The Future As to how we might be able to continue to try to achieve the goals that have brought us together, the possibility of regional meetings, or a national meeting, for the purpose of exploring our options, has already been mentioned and well received. David reports that he is still in discussions to determine some of those options for the short and long term.