Progressive Conservative political pioneer Flora MacDonald will be laid to rest this weekend but Prime Minister Stephen Harper will not be there.

The Prime Minister’s Office says Status of Women Minister Kellie Leitch will attend MacDonald’s funeral Sunday as a representative of the government.

Harper’s absence and his bare mention of the passing of the country’s first female foreign minister could be viewed as further proof of a growing divide in the Conservative camp between the so-called Red Tories and the Harperite offspring of the Reform Party.

“I’m not an expert in the Conservative Party family but I think there seems to be a rift between some of the folks who might traditionally consider themselves Red Tories, or Progressive Conservatives, and Mr. Harper’s preferred ilk of Conservative, which is perhaps more Reform-minded,” says Ian Capstick, managing partner of MediaStyle and a regular political commentator on CBC’s Power & Politics program.



“It’s not a lot of time out of your day to attend something of such significance. It’s unfortunate.”

Harper acknowledged MacDonald’s passing in a tweet last weekend: ”Condolences to the family of Flora Macdonald, who served her country at home and abroad.”

In addition to the misspelling of MacDonald’s name, some were incensed that the prime minister did not pay greater homage to the trailblazer.

In addition to statements of condolence regularly sent out by the PMO on the deaths of foreign heads of state, police officers and Canadian soldiers, Harper has issued lengthy statements in recent years on the death of Senate speaker Pierre Claude Nolin, broadcaster Knowlton Nash, businessman and philanthropist Joseph L. Rotman, Montreal Canadiens great Jean Béliveau and author Farley Mowat.

An editorial from the Ottawa Citizen says one might think that MacDonald’s long list of accomplishments would cause the Conservative party to revere her memory.

“But Flora MacDonald was a moderate, a Red Tory who opposed the merger that created today’s Conservative Party of Canada,” it says.

“Flora MacDonald wasn’t Stephen Harper’s type of Conservative. But she was a stateswoman — probably the most important Canadian stateswoman of the last 50 years. It is unfortunate if that is not enough to deserve official celebration by the government of the day, regardless of its ideological stripes.”

But MacDonald’s ideological stripes had changed somewhat.

A Red Tory — more socially liberal “Progressive Conservative” — she, along with her former boss, one-time prime minister Joe Clark, had not been shy about criticizing the current incarnation of the Conservative party.

In a 2012 interview with Diplomat Magazine, MacDonald said there wasn’t anybody in the Conservative government doing a good job.

“I don’t think they know what it’s all about,” she told the magazine.

Asked if she was still a Conservative she said she was still a “Progressive Conservative,” adding “there are only a few of us left.”

MacDonald told the magazine she voted NDP, explaining that she was a long-time friend of Marion Dewar, the mother of Paul Dewar, the NDP MP in her riding.

Clark has also been a vocal critic of the Harper regime, including in his book “How We Lead: Canada in a Century of Change,” in which he decries Harper’s lack of respect for his party and Parliament, and his squandering of Canada’s international reputation.

“Canada now talks more than we act, and our tone is almost adolescent — forceful, certain, enthusiastic, combative, full of sound and fury,” Clark wrote.

The ideological divide in the Conservative family has been blamed for recent election losses in Alberta and Ontario, which may not bode well for Harper in the upcoming federal election.

Capstick says the decision not to attend MacDonald’s funeral will hurt Harper, even within his own faction of the Conservative Party.

“This isn’t just any Conservative. This is Flora MacDonald. This is a woman who, when given the opportunity to join countless corporate boards and make hoards of money, decided she would dedicate herself to the world and she did that in the name of Canada and she was a trailblazer for so many women,” he says.

“This is petty politics and it doesn’t matter what your ideology is, the vast majority of people despise pettiness.”