The Canadian Alliance was founded at a convention at the end of January. The main components of the new party are the Reform Party and the ruling provincial wings of the Conservative Party in Alberta and Ontario.

The Canadian Alliance forms the official opposition in Canada's parliament. It has no seats east of Manitoba but hopes to make a breakthrough in Ontario in order to form a government in the next federal elections, expected to be called as early as the fall. Leading figures from the Ontario Conservative government support the Alliance.

More and more leading Conservative politicians have joined the Canadian Alliance, marking the death knell of what was one of the major capitalist parties in Canada since the country was officially constituted as a nation in 1867.

On July 10, Conservative Alberta premier Ralph Klein stated, speaking of the Conseras vative Party, "Most of the members of that party, just like most members of the Reform Party, have now gone to the Canadian Alliance, because that is the true unification of the conservative movement in Canada. Joe [Clark] should get on board." Clark, the leader of the Conservative Party, represents the "moderate" Conservative current that is disintegrating as politics in Canada becomes more polarized.

Day is known for having the most outspoken right-wing views of all the candidates who contested the Canadian Alliance leadership. While he played down somewhat his reactionary views on abortion rights, gay rights, the death penalty, immigrants, and other issues during the leadership race, others continually raised them. His election as leader of the Alliance and the emergence of that party as a major force in politics mark a noticeable shift to the right in capitalist politics in Canada.

When asked from the audience if he held anti-Jewish views in a leadership debate on July 5, Day vehemently denied it. But his rival in the Alliance, Preston Manning, seized on the question to portray Day as someone who is too open about his right-wing views. "I simply say," Manning declared, "that on those types of questions that anybody who becomes leader of the Alliance has to be extremely careful in the statements they make, [so] that they do not provide opportunities for the Liberals or the national [press] gallery to malign the Alliance through slip-ups like that."

Three days after Day's election as leader, Dr. Garson Romalis, a doctor who performs abortions in Vancouver, was stabbed in the back in his clinic. While Day condemned the violent attack, a significant part of his support comes from antiabortion and other right-wing groups. In 1995, Day supported an antiabortion group that called on the Alberta government to stop funding abortions unless the mother's life was in danger.

In 1989 Day opposed extending human rights protection to homosexuals. In 1994, when the Supreme Court ordered the Alberta government to amend its human rights legislation to protect homosexuals, he urged Premier Ralph Klein to override the decision using the "notwithstanding" clause in the constitution, which allows provincial governments to set aside constitutional decisions for five years.

He has proposed putting Chinese immigrants on a government plane and sending them back to their country of origin. He advocated putting a man convicted of murder, Clifford Olson, into the general prison population, suggesting that he be killed by other prisoners. He said, "People like myself say, 'Fix the problem. Put him in the general prison population. The moral prisoners will deal with him in a way we don't have the nerve to.'"

Day calls for shifting health care increasingly from a state-funded system to private business. Both the Alberta and Ontario Conservative governments have led the attacks in this country on social services, health care, and education.

On foreign policy he calls for Canadian imperialism to assert its interests in the world. He proposes increasing military funding by $2 billion over the next two years and wants the Canadian military to be "an organization capable of fighting wars." He supports the U.S. government's efforts to create a missile shield system for North America--one that would give Washington a first-strike nuclear capacity. Day also calls for a permanent Canadian military presence in Europe, and proposes a review of relations with revolutionary Cuba, with a clear goal of limiting them.

In playing down his more controversial views during the leadership contest in the Canadian Alliance, Day stressed his positions in favor of regressive taxes, beefing up criminal law, more funding for both health care and the military, and an elected senate. He introduced a "flat" tax in Alberta, where everyone who pays taxes is taxed at the same rate--a bonanza for the wealthy and an extra burden on working people. He stands for making it more difficult for prisoners to get parole.

Day proposes granting provinces more autonomy by limiting federal encroachment on provincial jurisdiction, and he argues that provinces should be able to opt out of federal programs, with full financial compensation from Ottawa. By putting Quebec on the same level as all the other provinces, Day denies the historic oppression of the French-speaking Quebecois, who as a group are subjected to lower wages, higher unemployment, and inferior education and health care than the English-speaking population.

On the fight by Native people for more control over resources, Day's policy platform states, "We will not support race-based allocation of harvest rights to natural resources."

There is no indication that the Alliance has won any significant support in Quebec. The fact that a significant wing of Canada's ruling rich is prepared to support a party that aims to form a federal government with little support in Quebec is a new development in Canadian politics and a sign of growing weakness.

The Globe and Mail, one of Canada's two national newspapers, commented in a July 10 editorial, "The Alliance's goal is valuable: to create a strong party that will give the federal Liberals a true fight. It is in the country's interest that one party not remain in power by default."

In the 1993 federal election, which the Liberal Party won, the ruling Conservative Party was decimated and two new parties won significant support--the Reform Party in the west and the sovereignist Bloc Quebecois in Quebec. This regional and national fragmentation of bourgeois politics in Canada and the absence of any "national" alternative to the ruling Liberal Party are of growing concern to Canada's rulers.  
 
 
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