Randy Hillier Takes a Stand: Is Tim Hudak Losing Control of His Caucus?

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Several years ago my husband and I stayed in Peterborough, as part of a mini-vacation. When leaving our hotel we noticed a rather large rally where demonstrators, carrying signs "This Land is Our Land", had lined the drive.

We honked believing it to be a native protest, but soon realized that there were no native faces in the crowd.

When we returned later that day, the protesters were still in full force but had been moved across the road and several police cars now guarded the hotel entrance.

I asked the girl at the desk what was going on and she explained that there was a hockey tournament in town that weekend and there was an aboriginal hockey team staying at the hotel. These people were protesting native land claims.

Why was an out of town group of young men, who only wanted to engage in a sporting event, being targeted by a rather large and noisy group of angry white "landowners", I wondered. When I posed the question to hotel clerk, she rolled her eyes and said that "they were nuts" and did stuff like that all the time.

This Peterborough group soon became part of a larger organization, when an umbrella group was created in 2005, called the Ontario Landowners Association. Their first president was Randy Hillier, now Tim Hudak's MPP for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington.

Hillier had originally headed up the Lanark Landowners Association, whose motto was “This Land is Our Land: Back off Government”. They had become notorious for stunts though Hillier would refer to it as civil disobedience.

This "civil disobedience", included blocking highways, barricading government offices, staging illegal deer hunts, and publicly breaking laws that the Landowners regarded as unjust. This was primarily done as a tactic to draw media attention to perceived injustices, and thereby to pressure the provincial government to amend the laws. Hillier has explained the illegal actions of the Landowners as follows: "I believe in non-violent civil disobedience. I believe when a law or rule is blatantly wrong it is a part of our democratic process to challenge that law. At times civil disobedience is used to illustrate and further bring attention to the absurdity." (Wikipedia)

"I sent [Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty an email containing] a picture of a dead deer saying the people of Lanark County were removing nuisance deer because the Liberal government had revoked those licences [for farmers to shoot deer that were eating their crops]. I did it four years ago... and I would do it again ... " (1)

His group scored a victory on the illegal out-of-season deer hunt, fuelling their cause and in April of 2004, launched a large protest on Parliament Hill. Stephen Harper attended the rally and addressed the crowd, promising to make property rights a priority if elected prime minister. It was pretty clear that he was not only trying to woo the theocon vote, but was also trying to draw in the right-wing fringe groups.

You would have thought that he would have learned his lesson after the problems this imposed for the Reform Party. They had passed a motion at their opening assembly to allow extremist groups to join the party. When the question was posed, even Doug Christie? someone in the crowd spoke up. "Ah, leave him in, we may need him later". (2) Christie was leader of the Western Canada Concept, a Party pushing for the Western provinces and territories to split with Canada and form their own nation. Stockwell Day's father was a member of this group.

Eventually the extremists all but took over the party, necessitating a reinvention, though many of them are still around. Stephen Harper handles them by silencing them, but in a democratic country, elected officials should never be "silenced". It flies in the face of democracy.

Randy Hillier and the Religious Right

Once the Ontario Landowners Association was established, Hillier decided that instead of simple acts of protest, to move the group into the mainstream, by attempting to infiltrate government and implement changes from within.

So with the endorsement and help of his group's members, he successfully won a seat in the Ontario Legislature in 2007. Hillier not only endorsed "land rights" but backed a social conservative agenda, bringing him to the attention of Tristan Emmanuel, a controversial leading member of Canada's Religious Right.

Emmanuel backed Randy Hillier's bid for leadership of the provincial party, and though a long shot he became a kingmaker for Tim Hudak, when he threw his support his way:

Landowner leader Randy Hillier brokered a deal with former PC leader John Tory to avert the possibility of Landowner candidates. It is widely believed this resulted in the inclusion of anti-environmental clauses in the PC Party’s platform in 2007 and Hillier’s own candidacy for the PCs in Lanark.

Hillier’s leadership run last year was fueled by the Landowners, and Tim Hudak’s anti-Human Rights Commission positioning was designed to broker a deal with the Landowners and other radicals. Hudak will need to come to terms with these Landowners if he doesn’t want a problem on his right ... (3)

However, when you sell your soul you have to expect that eventually those who hold the lien are going to expect payment, and I think that Randy Hillier is beginning to become a problem for the Mike Harris protege Hudak.

We first saw this with the sit-in at Queen's Park in December:

For novice PC Leader Tim Hudak, his party's protest over the Liberal government's proposed harmonized sales tax produced a couple of unforeseen outcomes. The first was his own loss of face when a caucus member apparently defied the boss's wishes in a stunt that spun out of control ... As it unfolded, eastern Ontario MPP Randy Hillier hopped aboard, apparently ignoring instructions from caucus elders that he leave the Legislature when ejected by Speaker Steve Peters. Hillier's defiance of not just the Speaker but his own leadership raised embarrassing questions as to who was running the PC show. (4)

Now Hillier is once again challenging the authority of his leader, by posting a column on the handling of the G-20 security.

Instead of a choosing a more controlled and less populated location that would not be such a powerful magnet for the few juvenile anarchists, Stephen Harper agreed to host the G20 in a location that he had to have known would draw the greatest opposition and most violent response, therefore justifying an outrageous expenditure of public dollars and creating an army of police equipped with a siege mentality.

Both the provincial and federal governments now attempt to shirk responsibility for their actions by shifting blame to one another and to the police, who were acting under political orders ... .They both use the common theme that upholding law and order required usurping our civil liberties. Any elementary school student knows these are not mutually exclusive — in fact, they are wholly interdependent. As numerous failed dictatorships have proven, you cannot have law and order without civil liberties. (5)

His column was a direct contradiction to one inked by Tim Hudak, where he placed all the blame on the protesters and backed the police action. How Hudak will handle this is any one's guess, but I think he is learning the hard way that once you court the Religious Right, they hold all the power. Stephen Harper is now learning this and while bringing in fringe groups for support, both leaders are facing the problem of knowing what to do with them.

I think this will end badly for citizens who only elect officials to govern, not appease right-wing factions.

Sources:

1. "Debate one last swipe before vote", Napanee Guide, October 5, 2007

2. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995, ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6

3. Tests and double tests, By Andrew Steele, Globe and Mail, February 5, 2010

4. Hudak and the Tory sit-in bring to mind Wile E. Coyote, By Jim Coyle, Toronto Star, December 7, 2009

5. Opinion: G20 crackdown reeks of tyranny, By Randy Hillier, Toronto Star, July 12, 2010

How Stephen Harper and the Theo-Cons Helped to Engineer an Election

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"For Harper, the courtship of the Christian right is unlikely to prove an electoral one-night stand. Three years ago, in a speech to the annual Conservative think-fest, Civitas, he outlined plans for a broad new party coalition that would ensure a lasting hold on power. The only route, he argued, was to focus not on the tired wish list of economic conservatives or “neo-cons,” as they’d become known, but on what he called “theo-cons”—those social conservatives who care passionately about hot-button issues that turn on family, crime, and defence.

"Even foreign policy had become a theo-con issue, he pointed out, driven by moral and religious convictions. “The truth of the matter is that the real agenda and the defining issues have shifted from economic issues to social values,” he said, “so conservatives must do the same.

"Arguing that the party had to come up with tough, principled stands on everything from parents’ right to spank their children to putting “hard power” behind the country’s foreign-policy commitments ... " (1)

Stephen Harper's exploitation of the Religious Right was planned and nurtured over many years. Even back in the Reform Party days, he tapped into many front groups, who were able to enjoy enormous tax benefits, while claiming to be religious, charitable or civic enterprises; when in fact they were highly motivated to get the Reformers elected. Many fell under the Northern Foundation (2), a group to which he was as founding member (3) and included the anti-feminist REAL Women of Canada. (4)

But it wasn't until Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney hit the federal political scene, that their armies became mobilized. This was going to be a culture war that not only pit Christian extremists against government, but "Bible-believing fundamentalists against their Christian brethren." (5) It was not merely an attempt to replace politicians at all levels with Christians, they had to be "born again" Christians. People who believed in the absolute, literal word of the Bible. Or at least how they interpreted that word.

And one of the people leading the charge was Charles Mcvety, a close personal friend and long time supporter of Jim Flaherty.

McVety .. turned to key strategists who choreographed the religious right’s takeover of the Republican Party to help ... In February of 2004, he imported Jerry Falwell for an “Emergency Pastors Briefing” to rally six hundred evangelical clergymen against a bill that included making denunciations of homosexuality a hate crime. In December of 2005, he helped to launch the Institute for Canadian Values with a gala dinner tutorial from Ralph Reed "the boyish tactical wizard behind Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, which succeeded Falwell’s Moral Majority and helped mobilize the South for Bush." (5)

With nearly two million believers in his grassroots guerrilla force, Reed terrified liberal Republicans with his organizational stealth. “I paint my face and travel at night,” he once boasted. “You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag. You don’t know until election night.”

... his appearance a day after the federal election call drew a sold-out crowd of evangelical and Conservative activists, including Senator Anne Cools and McVety’s old friend Jim Flaherty who, as Ontario’s attorney general, had once called for jailing the homeless.

But Reed also offered a lesson on how to take over a nomination contest or a riding. “He taught us all that only a handful of people actually go and seriously volunteer to get someone elected,” McVety says. “We’re talking about 150 people per riding. Tiny numbers! This is the size of a small church.” (1)

Rondo Thomas and Equipping Christians for the Public Square

Working through another Flaherty supporter, Tristan Emmanuel, founder of a group called Equipping Christians for the Public Square; Mcvety began his covert operations. I don't know if he painted his face and travelled at night, but he set his sights on a few dozen ridings scattered across the country.

McVety himself zeroed in on one particular target: Mark Holland, the Liberal MP in his own riding of Ajax-Pickering, who had organized the pivotal caucus petition that convinced Paul Martin to push Bill C-38 [same-sex marriage bill] through before the Commons’ summer recess last year. (1)

McVety helped to engineer the nomination of Rondo Thomas, his longtime deputy at Canada Christian College, but then a video surfaced of Thomas that questioned his ability to function in the world.

A video has recently surfaced showing Ajax Pickering Conservative candidate Rondo Thomas whipping up his troops in the battle against equal marriage for same-sex couples. As the top lieutenant of Defend Marriage Coalition leader Charles McVety, Mr. Thomas played an active but mostly low-profile part in the
fight against passage of Bill C-38, the equal marriage bill.

In the video, Mr. Thomas was quoted as saying:

“There is going to be a clash of morality views between those who believe in righteousness and those who believe in immorality and when we collide there is going to be conflict…It doesn’t matter what the media says, it doesn’t matter what the government says — the facts don’t count. We are going to win this conflict.” Rondo Thomas is one of the top leaders of those against equal marriage and he is intimately connected with everyone from Charles McVety to Campaign Life Coalition to American Ralph Reed, founder of the Christian Coalition.”(6)

But McVety did something else that even more disturbing. He phoned Mark Holland, the Liberal candidate who went on to win the election.

“How are your constituents going to feel about you not being married?” Almost no one knew that Holland and the mother of his three children had never tied the knot in their fourteen years together. The MP was stunned. “To me it was a veiled threat,” he says. (1)

Tristan Emmanuel

Emmanuel was a candidate in the 1997 federal election for the Christian Heritage Party, and has been a long time political activist for Canada's far right. He was behind a group called Canadians for George Bush, who rallied for Canada to join the Iraq War. Speakers included Jim Flaherty, Stockwell Day and Tim Hudak, who is Mike Harris's protegee.

Galloping Beaver discusses how Tristan Emmanuel and his Equipping Christians for the Public Square worked behind the scenes to get Stephen Harper elected.

If anything is not receiving sufficient attention during this election campaign it is the hard link between Stephen Harper's Conservatives and the likes of Tristan Emmanuel ... which should be a clear reminder that the Conservative Party of Canada is not the old Progressive Conservative Party. In fact, the CPC is rapidly becoming more and more like the US Republican Party and that is particularly so with respect to the influence of the dominionist bible movement or, the "Christian right".

He has been active in promoting "Christians" to run for the Conservatives who now have at least nine candidates sporting radical Christian credentials. All of them openly campaign against same-sex marriage, most want abortion made illegal and some are virulent racists. A good proportion of them have been or are leaders of the Canadian branches of organizations such as Focus On The Family and the Promise Keepers.

Emmanuel has some rather disturbing beliefs of his own. He praised Franklin Graham for his openly stated opinion that Islam was an "evil and wicked religion" and endorsed the belief that Christians and Muslims did not share the same God, which in Emmanuel's view made Muslims infidels. He has described gays and lesbians as "sexual deviants". Canadians have a reason to be nervous. The CPC is moving closer to the position in which the US Republican Party finds itself. If the Conservatives form government, the differences will be difficult to distinguish. (7)

It has been four years since that election and the Religious Right has actually become even more powerful, a force that is going to be very difficult to remove from "office".

Religious front groups now dominate the political landscape, and as Stephen Harper and his Reform movement work diligently to turn Canadians off politics, they will continue to strengthen their hold on Canadian governance.

Unfortunately, our media ignored this threat simply becasue they didn't want to attack someone's religious beleifs. But we are under attack now. And you have to remember that these Christian extremists are even going after mainstream Christians who promote a social gospel.

They only want fundamentalists like themselves.

Sources:

1. Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons: The rising clout of Canada's religious right, By Marci McDonald, The Walrus, October 2006

2. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper demonstrates continued ultra right wing affiliations by blocking pro social justice Toronto candidate, By Dr. Debra Chin, The Canadian

3. Preston Manning and the Reform Party. Author: Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 100

4. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada. Author: Trevor Harrison Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, Pg. 121

5. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8

6. Rondo Thomas: Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Campaign cover-up going on, Egale Canada, January 16, 2006

7. The Albatross Around Stephen Harper's Neck, The Galloping Beaver, January 2, 2006