The Globe and Mail: Dissident Tories want Harper out

The Globe and Mail: Dissident Tories want Harper out

Full article follows below.

Go Harper Go! Go Harper Go! Get off the field, get on the bus and Go Harper Go!

The vultures are again circling....

This has got to piss off Harper. Every time he sneezes wrong, he gets people calling for his head on a platter.

But really, when your leader is unable to capitalize on the scandal-rocked minority government, is out-foxed by the supposed Prime Minister dithers, and fails to register any gains in the popularity after a summer on the BBQ circuit, can you really blame the natives for being restless?

I think Conservative party self-destruction watching has become the great Canadian pastime. Hockey is our obsession, but this could easily become our national distraction.

A.L.

By GLORIA GALLOWAY

Wednesday, September 14, 2005 Page A4

OTTAWA -- Stephen Harper is being asked to resign as leader of the Conservatives by a group of current and former candidates in Quebec who say he will never be an option for voters in that province.

Mr. Harper's detractors say there are similar letters circulating in other parts of the country and the public airing of the Quebec request that he step down will encourage those who have been afraid to voice their criticisms to speak openly.

"We will never win the next elections. Harper will resign after, that's for sure. But why wait after the elections? Isn't it better for him to get out NOW?" asks a letter being circulated to Quebec's Conservative candidates.

"We have more than enough time to find ourselves a real leader before the next elections. We all know what has to be done for the good of our party and country, and that's why we are asking publicly our leader to resign."

The letter is signed by four members of the party, including Francis-Pierre Rémiliard who is the current Conservative candidate in the riding of Jeanne-Le Ber. Two of the others, Lucien Richard and Payam Eslami-Manoucheri, ran for the party in the 2004 federal election. The fourth man, Philippe Giguère, was a Tory organizer during that vote.

Mr. Harper was travelling and was not available for comment yesterday but his spokesman, William Stairs, said the views of the letter writers do not reflect the party's reality.

"These are three candidates out of a total of 75. Mr. Harper has been into Quebec many times recently and everywhere he's gone, he has been well received," Mr. Stairs said. "It should be remembered that he got almost 85 per cent support at the meeting at the Congress Centre in Montreal [in March] and the whole entire Conservative Quebec team is working hard and focused on the next election."

There have been rumblings of discontent in Central Canada since the time the Canadian Alliance merged with the Progressive Conservatives to form the new Conservative Party. But those voices have grown increasingly louder in recent weeks after a summer tour by Mr. Harper failed to produce any substantial increase in popularity.

Nowhere is the frustration more pronounced than in Quebec where recent polls put the party's support among potential voters at about 12 per cent, only slightly ahead of the New Democrats and the Greens. With those numbers, the party is unlikely to make the breakthrough of winning a single seat in that province.

The letter makes it clear that some of its authors supported another candidate in the leadership race that was won by Mr. Harper. They say they agreed to go along with the wishes of the majority and support him "until today. Mr. Harper was a good transition leader; but his competence stops there."

The letter comes shortly after the firing of Richard Décarie, Mr. Harper's deputy chief of staff who was his chief organizer in Quebec during the leadership race.

It also precedes a party shakeup in that province that will respond to complaints about a lack of organization, communication and funding.

The letter points to the "wave of firings" in the Office of the Official Opposition and criticized the termination of organizer Norm Vocino, who is credited with making tremendous efforts despite being given limited resources.

"We no longer have an organization," the letter says. "We have no support from Ottawa. We have been abandoned by the inner circles of our party."

Mr. Richard, a long-time member of the Progressive Conservatives who organized that party's convention in 1986, said he was not afraid of being sanctioned as a result of the letter.

"In Quebec, he's not going to get one Member of Parliament elected, that's for sure," Mr. Richard said. And in Ontario, candidates are quitting "because this guy has no visions and this guy has made so many mistakes since the tabling of the budget of [Finance Minister Ralph] Goodale" last winter.

If an election were held this fall, he and the other letter writers predict that the Liberals would win a majority. And, while the party's finances seem to be in good shape, they argue that money will not win votes. "While the Liberal government is suffering from the sponsorship scam," the letter says, "what we can rightfully call the greatest scandal in Canadian history, our party cannot manage to move up in the polls."