Velmagate - a strong influence on Conservative Party behaviour in the past decade
This is my last pre-election post, but it's the one I have thought about the longest.
It started to germinate when I cleaned out my desk at The Langley Times in June, after 17 years as editor. One of the files I came across was entitled "Velmagate."
Reporters love to attach the suffix "gate" to ongoing issues that have the whiff of political scandal to them. This of course goes back to the granddaddy of all recent political scandals and the likely high water mark in the journalism world - Watergate. There have been plenty of "gates" at The Times and doubtless at almost every other mainstream media outlet in North America.
I don't know how Canadians are going to vote on Monday. Like many people, I am guessing that the Liberals will win, but I freely admit that much of that guessing is based on talking heads, who in turn base their opinion and guesses on polls. As I have noted before, polls have been notoriously inaccurate in many recent elections, including the 2013 B.C. provincial election. Pollsters were saying right up to election day that the NDP would win. That likely led to many voters deciding at the last minute, in some cases literally at the polling station, to vote Liberal. Certainly, it helped Peter Fassbender capture the NDP-held seat of Surrey-Fleetwood by 200 votes. (He also ran a very spirited campaign and did a lot of personal engagement with voters).
Even in the more recent Alberta election, polls were all over the map, although a trend towards the NDP was clearly showing up in the last part of the campaign.
How does that connect to "Velmagate?"
First, let me explain what Velmagate was. Velma Cole was present at the Feb. 28, 2004 nomination meeting where Mark Warawa captured the Conservative nomination for the new Langley riding. It was held at Langley Banquet Centre in Aldergrove, to host the large crowd of about 400. There were several candidates for the nomination.
Kurt Langmann, editor of The Aldergrove Star, covered the event for his newspaper and The Times. At that time, the Conservatives actually welcomed the media to nomination meetings, and in fact wanted the coverage of competitive races.
Randy White, the well-known MP from the former Langley-Abbotsford riding, who was first elected as a Reform MP in 1993, was at the meeting. Cole said that he stated, in a break between the second and third round of voting, that under a Conservative government, there would be "no more abortion" and "no more same-sex marriages."
She outlined her recollection of the meeting in a letter to The Times that was published on June 9, less than three weeks before the June 28 vote. The Conservatives denied that White had said such things. White himself denied saying such things. Langmann, who was at the meeting as a reporter, said he had not heard anything like that.
Cole decided to take a lie detector test to prove that she wasn't lying, and passed on the results to us. After consulting with our newsroom, it was decided that publishing the lie detector results wasn't relevant. It was a matter of her recalling things one way, and others disagreeing with that recall.
She then took the test results and her letter to the Liberal Party, and they ended up with The Vancouver Sun. Her perspective, along with some similar remarks White made on camera in May, 2004 for a film on same-sex marriage called Let No One Put Asunder, were published in The Sun and across Canada just two or three days before the election, and were taken by many to mean that the Conservatives would act decisively on those two issues if elected.
The party had been considered as likely to win at least a minority government, given the trouble the Liberals were in over the sponsorship scandal. That didn't happen, and Cole's recollection, the remarks White made to the filmmaker and the media's very late publication of that information, were definitely factors.
I believe that was a pivotal moment in confirming Stephen Harper's distrust and outright dislike for the media. He felt that it had conspired to bring out the information so late in the campaign that he could not respond to it.
There may be some accuracy to that feeling, although Cole did not go to the Liberals, and subsequently The Sun, until after she took the lie detector test, which was administered on June 17, 11 days before the election. She didn't go to them until several days afterwards, so there was limited time to put the story together. Nonetheless, I have always thought (but cannot prove) that The Sun deliberately held it back until just before election day.
The Conservatives didn't have to wait that long to assume power - the Paul Martin minority Liberal government held onto office by a thread and lost the January, 2006 election.
The excessive control that Harper exercises likely led to White not running again in the 2006 election. Anyone deemed a "troublemaker" or potential loose cannon had to go. Harper continues to exercise tight control over candidate selection, and nomination meetings are a far cry from what they were in 2004.
The media, including local media who have little to no interest in political partisanship and game-playing, are considered unreliable at best and enemies at the worst.
The public cannot attend a Conservative campaign rally at which Harper is present without enduring extensive security checks, and anyone uttering one word that doesn't fit within the Conservative script is likely to be thrown out.
I believe Velmagate had a lasting influence on how the Conservative Party in general, and Stephen Harper in particular, conduct themselves in dealing with the general public and the media. While some MPs such as Warawa are quite accessible to local media, the overall control exercised by the prime minister, through his office and the party, is at a level we have never seen in Canada before.
All of this has led to where we are today, two days from the election, where Harper and his style of governing is the main issue in the campaign, despite the Conservative ads where he says "this election isn't about me." Oh yes it is, in the minds of the vast majority of voters.
Will a prime minister Justin Trudeau be any different? Not too likely. His father, when prime minister, called MPs "nobodies" and began the centralization of power in the PMO that was continued and expanded by Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and Harper.
Trudeau won't let anyone who wants to talk about the lack of abortion laws in Canada even seek the nomination in his party, and it is very likely he will have a large cadre of 20-somethings in his office to keep track of MPs and their every comment. He has interfered in a number of nomination battles.The lack of process shown when he threw out two members of his caucus based on unsubstantiated allegations by an unnamed accuser is instructive of how he will act. So is the way he booted Liberal senators out of the party caucus. He made an announcement with no consultation and minimal notice to those affected.
By the way, Harper has never touched the abortion issue and has come down hard on MPs like Warawa who tried to open discussion on abortion used for gender selection purposes.
Harper did promise in the 2006 campaign to hold a free vote on same-sex marriage. He did so after he was first installed as PM. MPs voted in favour of same-sex marriage (which had already been legalized by the courts). The motion was supported by members of all parties, and there has been little discussion of the issue since that time.
I may be wrong, but I believe Velmagate has played a significant role in shaping the federal political scene over the past decade.
It started to germinate when I cleaned out my desk at The Langley Times in June, after 17 years as editor. One of the files I came across was entitled "Velmagate."
Reporters love to attach the suffix "gate" to ongoing issues that have the whiff of political scandal to them. This of course goes back to the granddaddy of all recent political scandals and the likely high water mark in the journalism world - Watergate. There have been plenty of "gates" at The Times and doubtless at almost every other mainstream media outlet in North America.
I don't know how Canadians are going to vote on Monday. Like many people, I am guessing that the Liberals will win, but I freely admit that much of that guessing is based on talking heads, who in turn base their opinion and guesses on polls. As I have noted before, polls have been notoriously inaccurate in many recent elections, including the 2013 B.C. provincial election. Pollsters were saying right up to election day that the NDP would win. That likely led to many voters deciding at the last minute, in some cases literally at the polling station, to vote Liberal. Certainly, it helped Peter Fassbender capture the NDP-held seat of Surrey-Fleetwood by 200 votes. (He also ran a very spirited campaign and did a lot of personal engagement with voters).
Even in the more recent Alberta election, polls were all over the map, although a trend towards the NDP was clearly showing up in the last part of the campaign.
How does that connect to "Velmagate?"
First, let me explain what Velmagate was. Velma Cole was present at the Feb. 28, 2004 nomination meeting where Mark Warawa captured the Conservative nomination for the new Langley riding. It was held at Langley Banquet Centre in Aldergrove, to host the large crowd of about 400. There were several candidates for the nomination.
Kurt Langmann, editor of The Aldergrove Star, covered the event for his newspaper and The Times. At that time, the Conservatives actually welcomed the media to nomination meetings, and in fact wanted the coverage of competitive races.
Randy White, the well-known MP from the former Langley-Abbotsford riding, who was first elected as a Reform MP in 1993, was at the meeting. Cole said that he stated, in a break between the second and third round of voting, that under a Conservative government, there would be "no more abortion" and "no more same-sex marriages."
She outlined her recollection of the meeting in a letter to The Times that was published on June 9, less than three weeks before the June 28 vote. The Conservatives denied that White had said such things. White himself denied saying such things. Langmann, who was at the meeting as a reporter, said he had not heard anything like that.
Cole decided to take a lie detector test to prove that she wasn't lying, and passed on the results to us. After consulting with our newsroom, it was decided that publishing the lie detector results wasn't relevant. It was a matter of her recalling things one way, and others disagreeing with that recall.
She then took the test results and her letter to the Liberal Party, and they ended up with The Vancouver Sun. Her perspective, along with some similar remarks White made on camera in May, 2004 for a film on same-sex marriage called Let No One Put Asunder, were published in The Sun and across Canada just two or three days before the election, and were taken by many to mean that the Conservatives would act decisively on those two issues if elected.
The party had been considered as likely to win at least a minority government, given the trouble the Liberals were in over the sponsorship scandal. That didn't happen, and Cole's recollection, the remarks White made to the filmmaker and the media's very late publication of that information, were definitely factors.
I believe that was a pivotal moment in confirming Stephen Harper's distrust and outright dislike for the media. He felt that it had conspired to bring out the information so late in the campaign that he could not respond to it.
There may be some accuracy to that feeling, although Cole did not go to the Liberals, and subsequently The Sun, until after she took the lie detector test, which was administered on June 17, 11 days before the election. She didn't go to them until several days afterwards, so there was limited time to put the story together. Nonetheless, I have always thought (but cannot prove) that The Sun deliberately held it back until just before election day.
The Conservatives didn't have to wait that long to assume power - the Paul Martin minority Liberal government held onto office by a thread and lost the January, 2006 election.
The excessive control that Harper exercises likely led to White not running again in the 2006 election. Anyone deemed a "troublemaker" or potential loose cannon had to go. Harper continues to exercise tight control over candidate selection, and nomination meetings are a far cry from what they were in 2004.
The media, including local media who have little to no interest in political partisanship and game-playing, are considered unreliable at best and enemies at the worst.
The public cannot attend a Conservative campaign rally at which Harper is present without enduring extensive security checks, and anyone uttering one word that doesn't fit within the Conservative script is likely to be thrown out.
I believe Velmagate had a lasting influence on how the Conservative Party in general, and Stephen Harper in particular, conduct themselves in dealing with the general public and the media. While some MPs such as Warawa are quite accessible to local media, the overall control exercised by the prime minister, through his office and the party, is at a level we have never seen in Canada before.
All of this has led to where we are today, two days from the election, where Harper and his style of governing is the main issue in the campaign, despite the Conservative ads where he says "this election isn't about me." Oh yes it is, in the minds of the vast majority of voters.
Will a prime minister Justin Trudeau be any different? Not too likely. His father, when prime minister, called MPs "nobodies" and began the centralization of power in the PMO that was continued and expanded by Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and Harper.
Trudeau won't let anyone who wants to talk about the lack of abortion laws in Canada even seek the nomination in his party, and it is very likely he will have a large cadre of 20-somethings in his office to keep track of MPs and their every comment. He has interfered in a number of nomination battles.The lack of process shown when he threw out two members of his caucus based on unsubstantiated allegations by an unnamed accuser is instructive of how he will act. So is the way he booted Liberal senators out of the party caucus. He made an announcement with no consultation and minimal notice to those affected.
By the way, Harper has never touched the abortion issue and has come down hard on MPs like Warawa who tried to open discussion on abortion used for gender selection purposes.
Harper did promise in the 2006 campaign to hold a free vote on same-sex marriage. He did so after he was first installed as PM. MPs voted in favour of same-sex marriage (which had already been legalized by the courts). The motion was supported by members of all parties, and there has been little discussion of the issue since that time.
I may be wrong, but I believe Velmagate has played a significant role in shaping the federal political scene over the past decade.
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