News

The ruling Conservative Party concluded its first grassroots debate over policy direction in three years Saturday by tacking rightward on crime and punishment but rarely diverging from policies championed by the Harper government they helped elect.

The most divisive resolution that Tories passed was one backing extra legal penalties for individuals who commit violence against pregnant women and injure or kill their unborn children – a policy that the Conservative government has already pledged to enact in a less stringent form.

A majority of the 2,000 delegates also voted overwhelmingly in favour of scrapping the Canadian Human Rights Commission's power to probe complaints under the “hate messages” section of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Proponents of this resolution called this particular clause a threat to free speech and Tory Justice Minister Rob Nicholson was among those voting in favour of it.

Delegates, however, voted down a resolution that backed opening the door to more private health care, heeding pleas by some that embracing this would open up the party to attacks from opposition parties.

“The press is already reporting this as the thin edge of the wedge … why would you feed them the equivalent of an all-day sucker?” lawyer Stanley Hartt warned delegates.

The “Protecting Pregnant Women” policy resolution passed by a narrow margin despite warnings to Tories from abortion rights advocates that it was part of a “slippery slope” to criminalizing abortion.

Mr. Nicholson said the Harper government would move as it promised in August to enact similar legislation to the passed resolution. He repeated earlier Conservative pledges that this was not an effort to attack the right to abort.

“We will not reopen the [abortion] issue but in terms of protecting pregnant women against violence, we will make changes to the Criminal Code,” Mr. Nicholson told reporters.

Tory delegates also voted to pass a three-strikes-you're-out resolution that would see the government seek “dangerous offender” and mandatory life sentences for any person convicted of a third serious violent offence, criminal offence, terrorism offence or serious drug trafficking offence.

This is very similar to Bill C-27, which the Tories introduced about two years ago but didn't pass during the last Conservative minority government. Mr. Nicholson said the Conservatives want to try again to enact this into law. “That is [still] part of our criminal law agenda and we'll move forward … I hope to get opposition co-operation on this.”

Conservative delegates also voted to repeal the “faint hope” clause in Criminal Code that allows a criminal serving a life sentence to apply for early parole. The Tories ran on this promise in the 2006 election but have not passed it into law and it remains part of their tough-on-crime agenda.

Mr. Nicholson said he also voted to support scrapping the Canadian Human Rights Commission's power to probe complaints under the “hate messages” section of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

He said the matter is already being reviewed. “I am going to have a look at the review on this. You heard from the convention today that they're very interested in it. And we're going to have a look at it.”

During his speech Thursday to the Tory convention, Mr. Harper had warned party diehards that Tories must avoid an ideological approach to governing as the economy loses steam.

It was a timely caution. Not only were Tories debating policy changes that threaten to expose divisions in their party, but the Harper government is increasingly at risk of running a deficit and under pressure to bail out industries. These are scenarios that its Reform and Canadian Alliance predecessor parties abhorred.

Implicit in Mr. Harper's comments was a reminder that the party must stay united rather than fracture into the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance factions that merged in late 2003.

Back then, as Mr. Harper reminded delegates Thursday, “The [Liberal] government of the day ridiculed us, the pundits discounted us.”

On Saturday morning, delegates learned the party is in robust financial health. The head of the federal Conservative fundraising machine said the party will soon be debt-free and have cash in hand once $10-million in Elections Canada rebates are returned to the party following last month's election victory.

Irving Gerstein told delegates that the Conservatives are leaving the opposition Liberals in the fundraising past.

“We are ready to fight the next election whenever it may come,” Mr. Gerstein said Saturday morning in a speech.

The party's aggressive and sophisticated techniques for finding, contacting and cultivating partisan donors are perfectly suited to the Federal Accountability Act, said Mr. Gerstein, a reference to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's first major piece of legislation when the Tories came to office in 2006.

“We have created complex, leading-edge fundraising techniques such as data-mining, segmentation, targeted marketing and relationship management – all in an effort to move our pool of identified supporters up the support pyramid from supporters to members to donors,” said the fundraiser.

As a result, some 175,000 donations are coming into the party annually, with an average donation of $115.

But the Conservative data management system, known as CIMS, has raised both fundraising envy and privacy concerns.

Last March, federal privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said she was beginning a study into the way political parties use personal data.

At the time, Ms. Stoddart expressed concern over the “very sophisticated information machine” that powers U.S. politics and said she feared it is coming to Canada.

“It gives you a lot of profiling of individual voters that correlates their political affiliations with many other things,” said Ms. Stoddart. “I think this would be regrettable if Canadians' political opinions then were individually tracked that way.”

Ms. Stoddart's worry is Mr. Gerstein's motherlode.

“The key to the success of our fundraising business is the funds database and our ability to prospect new donors, to effectively use the [CIMS] database for both fundraising and political purposes, and being at the cutting edge of political fundraising techniques in North America,” he told the Conservative convention.

Publicly posted returns from Elections Canada have long shown the Conservative party to be awash in cash compared to their political adversaries.

In the first nine months of 2008, the Tories raised $14.8-million compared to $3.6-million for the Liberals.

Mr. Gerstein noted that not only has the party been able to pay off all debts since its merger birth in 2003, all its suppliers are fully paid up and there have been investments in party infrastructure.

“We have supported aggressive pre-writ advertising campaigns,” added Mr. Gerstein, “and I believe [Liberal Leader Stéphane] Dion has already commented on the effectiveness of that expenditure.”

Conservatives also voted in favour of the establishment of a national securities regulator to replace the patchwork of provincial and territorial regulators currently in place. This is a new policy for the party but federal Tory finance minister Jim Flaherty has been campaigning for this for more than two years to no avail. Ottawa could theoretically impose a regulator on the provinces but this would trigger a backlash from premiers, most notably in Quebec and British Columbia.

With files from Canadian Press