Full Circle: Death and Resurrection in Canadian Conservative Politics

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

In Full Circle, Plamondon—once a Liberal, then a Progressive
Conservative (PC), then a supporter of Stockwell Day and the Canadian
Alliance (CA)—traces conservative history from the Reform Party’s
creation in 1987 until Stephen Harper’s advent as prime minister in
2006.

The most controversial section of the book deals with the 2003 PC–CA
merger, when Peter MacKay broke a written promise to David Orchard that
if elected PC leader, MacKay would not merge the PCs with the CA.
Plamondon explains that MacKay made the promise because he wanted the
support of Orchard’s followers, and he believed at the time such a
merger to be impossible. MacKay then proceeded with the merger because
he thought that without it, the Liberals would monopolize government;
that Brian Mulroney favoured the merger; and that Stephen Harper, leader
of the CA, accepted all MacKay’s conditions. A by-election in the
Ontario constituency of Perth-Middlesex in May 2003, which the PCs won
and in which the CA did badly, convinced Harper that without a merger,
the CA would remain a Western rump. Plamondon based his conclusions on
interviews with more than 30 prominent CA and PC members.

There are mistakes. Plamondon says that Diefenbaker’s minority
government lost a vote of confidence early in 1958, but it did not;
Diefenbaker requested a dissolution from the Governor General because he
believed (correctly) that he could win a majority. Plamondon wrongly
identifies Manitoba’s Liberal leader, Sharon Carstairs, as its
premier. He says that the Charlottetown Accord predated the GST;
however, the GST took effect January 1, 1991, and the Charlottetown
Accord surfaced in 1992. He ignores the Liberals’ close call in the
1997 election. He states that no provincial premier has become prime
minister, ignoring Sir Charles Tupper. He argues that the interwar
Progressives were ideologically closer to the Reform Party than to Red
Tories.

Plamondon considers the PC–CA merger a victory for what is right (in
both senses of the word). Readers, depending on their political
convictions, will decide whether this is a glorious success story or a
tale of politics at its worst.