Thinking About Strahl

Chuck Strahl, Conservative MP for Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon in BC has been diagnosed with lung cancer, as you all know by now. I haven’t thought much of Chuck Strahl since the summer of 2005. On the surface, he originally was an MP like all others. He first stood out to my attention as party whip for the Alliance. A bright but modest man, it seems. The bio page on his website lists, still today, some of his best accomplishments in an understated manner. Since becoming Deputy Speaker of the Commons, he has become more visible, but it has been his newly-announced illness that has raised his visibility even more. Despite his lung cancer, he has vowed to continue serving the public for as long as he can. It’s a courageous thing to do.

Strahl was not always so. In what was to me the lowest point of his career, he was chief mutineer against Stockwell Day, organised a separate caucus whose strings may or may not have originated at Preston Manning’s feet, and which would rather be politicly subservient to Joe Clark than to close ranks with his fellow Alliance members and their leader. However many failures Day’s leadership may have had, they were only aggravated by Strahl and the mutineers. He hurt the party. It was somewhat fitting that he would end up taking cues from Joe Clark. Strahl was afflicted with the Tory syndrome of turning against leader and colleagues. He was a Joe Clark Tory more than he was an Alliance man. Whatever Clark’s shortcomings, though, Clark always publicly respected Mulroney’s leadership (even if he did not invite the PM for dinner once). Strahl seemed oblivious to that lesson then, but he seems to have picked it up now.

Fundamentally, as an instrument of Preston Manning’s bitterness and in his convenient political romance with Joe Clark, Strahl showed a side of him that I could not come to trust, however rooted in personal conviction it may have been. He baulked the will of the party, much like in a Banana Republic, because he did not like the new leader. Two thirds of the membership had just elected Day and rejected Manning, but in the summer of 2001 Strahl arrogantly refused the party members’ decision, declared himself unable to deal with Day, refused to recognise the party’s constitution, and in what seemed to be a tantrum he left caucus to form his own ring of MPs (The Democratic Representative Caucus. It was a kind of a caucus, but it was neither representative nor democratic, which is why they had to hammer people twice with the very similar ideas of representation and democracy in their name). Mostly, Monte Solberg being the exception, the DRC was a ring of lacklustre Prestonista MPs. Strahl’s rebellion against Day might have survived its mutinous image if Strahl had not made an attempt (albeit failed) to capture the party leadership after forcing Day out. Over all, it’s the lack of loyalty to the membership’s democratic will that sticks in my mind right along all of Strahl’s good accomplishments in public life.

Strahl’s judgement seems to have improved since. He has become a more prudent man and a respected Deputy Speaker. I pray that his health will be restored. I wish him many years of success ahead, in good health.

Cross posted from Civitatensis