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Young Tories find success after uphill battle
ALEXANDER PANETTA | Cnews | June 17, 2006

OTTAWA (CP) - Audrey Castonguay remembers the dark days for young Conservatives.

The half-empty rooms. The rent-a-crowds that helped fill them. The surprised stares from fellow teens when she informed them that the Progressive Conservative party still existed.

Those were the '90s - the Conservatives' decade in the political wilderness.

Things were particularly dark in her native Quebec, where the Tories did not win a single federal seat between 1997 and 2006.

But that was then.

The former provincial president of the party's youth wing gawked at the masses that greeted Stephen Harper in Montreal during a campaign stop before last January's federal election.

When more than 1,000 people streamed into a local hotel to hear him speak, it was clear to her that the times were a-changing.

"Wow. I never thought I would have seen that - we had to refuse people from coming in," she recalled in an interview.

Young Conservatives in her province had a running gag.

Any time they held an event anywhere in the province, they stocked the convention hall with the same 200 people who'd mingle with the few locals on hand.

"We called it the Conservative social club," said Castonguay, now 26.

But the federal election win has excited young Conservatives who stuck with the party through the lean years when it was split into two warring factions.

The rebuilding effort intensified in 2004 after the newly unified party saw a promising lead slip away in the final days of a federal election campaign.

While Conservative brass were planning their next election campaign, some younger Tories took to the Internet.

The Tories revamped their website with some of the most high-tech features on any political website in the world.

Podcasts, cellphone messaging, and refer-a-friend features are designed to draw in youngsters and expand the party's membership base.

The party actually had a strong youth presence in some regions of the country during the 1990s because of its more successful provincial wings.

But even there, young Conservatives were fighting uphill battles against their peers.

Aaron Lee-Wudrick recalls some lonely struggles in his high-school cafeteria while growing up in Kitchener, Ont. He remembers the 1998 Ontario teachers strike - which is why he became a young Conservative in the first place.

Most peers would simply roll their eyeballs when Lee-Wudrick defended government cutbacks in education spending. They couldn't bother paying attention.

But a small, energetic minority got upset - especially those whose parents were teachers.

"They essentially accused me (saying), 'You're supporting a party that's trying to take my mom's job away,' or something like that," he recalled.

"And I would simply say: 'Look, it's not something personal. It's not as if I want to take away someone's job - but there's a $10-billion deficit . . . and the money has to come from somewhere.' "

Today, he's 26 years old, working on a law degree and spending the summer helping the Tories prepare for the next election as a $1,000-a-month intern at party headquarters in Ottawa.

Statistically speaking, he's an exception to the rule.

Young people are far less likely to vote than older Canadians and typically less involved in traditional partisan politics.

The proportion of those attracted to the Conservative party is even smaller.

Young Canadians tend to be more liberal on issues including same-sex marriage, marijuana decriminalization, military action, and crime and punishment.

It's a reality best summed up by the quote famously - but probably falsely - attributed to former British prime minister Winston Churchill: "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."

But Andrew Scheer remembers the cause that drew him to the Conservative party at a young age: fighting government waste.

He'd read about scandals involving lost money at Human Resources Development Canada, and about wasteful spending on the long-gun registry.

When Reform party recruiters came knocking at his university, an early case of tax rage drew him to the cause.

"You might not think a young person would be too in tune to that," Scheer said.

"But I was working at the time (as a waiter) and I was paying my way through university, so I was paying taxes as well as my tuition.

"There's a lot of university students in the same boat."

Scheer is 27 today, is a Conservative member of Parliament from Saskatchewan, and is deputy Speaker of the House of Commons.

The new Conservative party does not have a youth wing. The idea of a one-member, one-vote system where each party member is equal was important to the old Reform party and is a reason the new party has not created a youth wing.

The Liberals and NDP both have separate youth wings, which do wield considerable power in each party's structure.

But Alexandra Stephenson says the Tories are the party for her. The 19-year-old political science student is also working at party headquarters in Ottawa this summer.

"I agree with small government and making sure that if people want to work hard and want to be involved in business, that can happen."

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Carl Sagan Goodness Richard Dawkins Goodness

 

THC Fiend

Ok, what the hell is this article doing on this forum, haha??

Even though it has nothing to do with marijuana, I'll make some comments...

Hmmm, maybe that's because of the Bloc Quebecois. Everyone in Quebec votes for that party, it has their province in it's name...

No, times aren't changing. Maybe conservative support in Quebec is rising because the liberal government stole $100 million intended for nationalist advertising in their province, and put it directly into the pockets of business partners.

Quick history lesson... back in the day we had ONE left-wing party; ONE centre of the spectrum party; and TWO right wing parties. Essentially, 60% of the country could be right-wing, and the liberals would still win. Talk about a vote split. It took them how many years to figure out that they needed to merge?

It's always nice to find out that the leader of your country is decided by the flashiness of their website.

I remember that; two weeks off school! It was the same year as the ICE STORM, another two weeks off school!

I love it when folks are more concerned about their rights to set up business than the welfare of the homeless, the neglected, the ghettos, etc etc. I really don't understand how people think industrialism is somehow HELPING humanity. What about the teen who's starving, who resorts to selling marijuana (benign) so he can eat, and then gets arrested and sent to jail for a few years unable to work or become educated? Why not take care of him before you worry about your right to set up a tobacco company, or swindle investor's and clients, or manipulate stock market info.

I'm sorry for the rant, but "I believe in business". What the hell.

__________________
"Nietzsche is dead."
-God

brevity is... wit