Toronto, immigrants and natives now embrace Tories, Kenney says

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One of the key architects of Stephen Harper's majority victory says Conservatives have usurped the Liberal mantle as the party of Toronto, immigrants and aboriginal Canadians.

In a analysis of the May 2 federal ballot delivered to a Tory convention in Ottawa Thursday, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney argued that the Tories accomplished this by tapping into the inherent conservatism of Canadians.

And he urged Conservative Party rank and file to make sure the Tory government sticks to its conservative convictions during the next four years.

"This is a special responsibility for you, the grassroots of our party, to ensure that sure our government does not waiver and that we stay true to our conservative principles," Mr. Kenney told the crowd at the Ottawa convention centre.

More than 2,200 Conservatives have gathered for three days in the nation's capital to toast their majority government win, talk shop and debate policy.

They're grappling with a question that all ruling parties face: how to prevent ministers and MPs, busy with their elected duties, from losing touch with the grassroots party members they will need to fight the next election in four years.

Mr. Kenney, the party's ethnic outreach czar, said the most important development May 2 was the Conservative breakthrough with immigrant Canadians. This helped the Tories clinch a 166-seat majority even though they lost ground in Quebec, traditionally a key ingredient in winning control of the Commons.

"Polls indicate that we won at least 42 per cent of the votes of immigrants to Canada - higher than our support within the general population [and]giving us a 20 per cent lead over the Liberals among new Canadians," Mr. Kenney said.

"From a 60-point deficit to a 20-point lead - one of the great achievements of Stephen Harper's leadership."

He said the election that saw the Conservatives make inroads among immigrants and Torontonians has created a "new, durable and diverse Conservative electorate" the party can rely on if it doesn't lose touch with the priorities of its voters.

"Canadians of all backgrounds are drawn to our party, not in spite of our values - like the media think - but because of our values," Mr. Kenney said.

"We don't depend on the bloated bureaucracies of the nanny state; we thrive on our freedom and are upheld by the law," he said.

"We don't assume that history began in the Summer of Love; we honour a tradition reaching back to the Magna Carta."

The convention gives grassroots Conservatives a chance to send blunt messages to the Harper government, such as a proposal Tories are calling the "Omar Khadr" resolution.

It proposes to make it Conservative Party policy to support stripping Canadians of their citizenship should they take up arms against this country or its allies. It's an apparent reference to Mr. Khadr, who was caught fighting U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and is currently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

It's unlikely the Harper government would ever contemplate such a law, which critics say would violate the Charter of Rights.

The resolution, from Mr. Kenney's Calgary-Southeast riding association, sends the message that while critics might feel the Harper government should have done more to help Mr. Khadr, there are Conservatives who believe Ottawa was too lenient with him.

Mr. Kenney said the Liberals failed because they devoted too much time focusing on what he called marginal issues such as the treatment of Afghan prisoners captured by Canadian soldiers.

"Our adversaries were focused on the obsessions of the chattering classes - like Taliban prisoners - rather than the practical bread-and-butter concerns of hard-working families."

"The country comes first," Mr. Kenney said. "And as we've seen, any presumed natural governing party that forgets this reality is in trouble."

The Tories aren't letting their incumbent MPs rest on their laurels.

Tory Members of Parliament will be forced to fight off rivals in their party for the right to carry the Tory banner as a candidate in the next election, party sources say.

Special protections that effectively sheltered incumbent Tory MPs from nomination fights are no longer in place. These protections, introduced in the latter years of minority government rule, grandfathered existing Conservative MPs as candidates for the next election unless two-thirds of their local riding association membership voted to hold a nomination battle.