The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The political scale tipped further to the right Saturday when Canada's two conservative parties merged in a bid to end a decade of Liberal rule. By an overwhelming majority of 90.4 per cent, Progressive Conservative Party delegates voted to join the Canadian Alliance. "We have just become Paul Martin's worst nightmare," Tory Leader Peter MacKay told a crowd of supporters in Ottawa. "Finally, after 10 years, the Liberal Party will be facing a united, strong, conservative family in the next general election." The two parties will combine to form the Conservative Party of Canada, ending years of vote-splitting among the nation's right-wing base. The historic vote to dissolve the PC Party took place at 26 sites across the nation and involved 2,456 Tory delegates. The vote showed that vocal opponents of the merger, such as former Tory leader Joe Clark, were decisively outnumbered by proponents. Many conservatives felt that a united right was the only way to regain federal governance for the first time since 1993. Flin Flon City Councillor Tom Therien was one of them. "In order to provide the Liberal Party with some form of formidable opposition, the right is going to have to unite," Therien, a provincial member of the PC Party, told The Reminder this past fall. "If we keep having these small parties, the Liberals will remain in power forever at this rate because there really is no formidable national party other than the Liberal Party. The rest are too small."
