More from Michael Harris available More fromavailable here

When former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney calls from Rome to express sympathy and outrage that Ches Crosbie was blocked from running as a Conservative candidate in the 2015 federal election, you know the Conservative Party of Canada has a big problem.

Nor does that problem get any smaller, when former Conservative cabinet minister Jim McGrath calls to add his voice to the political maelstrom triggered by this blunder of epic proportions.

“The party has gone to hell,” he told his former cabinet colleague and fellow Newfoundlander.

“Of course it’s gratifying to get a call from the former prime minister and other colleagues,” said John Crosbie, a former giant of the Progressive Conservatives of the Mulroney days. “Brian was enthusiastic and full of energy as usual. The whole thing was an outrage from start to finish.”

The political lesson here? You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger – and you don’t mess around with John.

The elder Crosbie had this to say about the “humiliation” of his son Ches, and his rejection as “unsuitable” as a candidate in the October 19 federal election by the Conservative Party of Canada this past week.

“Ches doesn’t want to appeal this cowardly decision because he doesn’t want to be humiliated a second time,” Crosbie said, speaking for his son who is on vacation in Cambridge, England for another week. “I’d like him to run as an ‘independent.’ There is general anger and frustration down here. I feel like running myself and beating the piss out of them.”

As patriarchal lions go, the senior member of Newfoundland’s Crosbie clan still has a mighty roar, particularly when protecting the cub that bears his own father’s legendary name.

The Conservatives are lucky that the elder Crosbie has reached the exalted age of 84, or he would likely hand them their heads on a platter in the Avalon riding where they rejected his son. What the Tories have done is something like the Democratic Party in the United States finding a Kennedy unsuitable to run for Congress out of Massachusetts. And that is what the Crosbies of Newfoundland are – Kennedys with rough edges.

As Jane Crosbie, John’s wife, put it to me, “It’s awfully insulting. I never liked Harper. You know Brian Mulroney called to say how awful it was.”

Jane has always spoken her own mind and many viewed her as the secret to John’s success.

It is mildly ironic that if Michael Chong’s Reform Act had not been seriously weakened by amendments, Ches Crosbie would have been the Conservative candidate in Avalon. That’s because Chong had proposed taking away the leader’s power to veto candidates chosen by local riding associations.

So here’s what happened. Ches announced his bid for the nomination months ago. He has an excellent reputation in Newfoundland and Labrador as a crusading lawyer, and of course, the magical name. He had a team in place. Add to that a father who spent 10 years as a Conservative star cabinet minister under prime ministers Clark and Mulroney, and it’s a pretty attractive package.

When the deadline for seeking the nomination passed, Crosbie was the only person who had put forward his name. Right there and then, he should have won by acclamation. Instead, he was interrogated on a conference call by members of a selection committee that included Jim Tibbetts, head of ‘political operations’ for the party in Atlantic Canada and former PMO intern. In just 15 minutes, Ches Crosbie was deemed not to qualify as a Conservative.

Nor is Crosbie exonerating Harper in this wretched game of dirty party politics turned on one of its own. When asked about the prime minister’s hand in this, Crosbie replied, “There is no way that he didn’t know. It’s like the Duffy matter.” Nor is Crosbie exonerating Harper in this wretched game of dirty party politics turned on one of its own. When asked about the prime minister’s hand in this, Crosbie replied, “There is no way that he didn’t know. It’s like the Duffy matter.”

It is interesting to note that Harper appointee Senator David Wells introduced an amendment to the Reform Act in the Senate that would have neutered the power of MPs in caucus to trigger a leadership review. If his amendment had passed, it would have forced the Bill back to the House of Commons. That would have killed the legislation because the House of Commons had already adjourned.

Senator Wells has been mauled by John Crosbie in the Newfoundland and national media as the Machiavellian force behind Ches Crosbie’s rejection by the Harperites. Crosbie says Wells wanted to be the power broker between the federal government and Newfoundland and Labrador, and saw Ches Crosbie — and likely his father — as a threat.

The patriarch also says that Wells had been trying to persuade another Newfoundland Conservative, John Ottenheimer, to run in Avalon to stop Crosbie. Ottenheimer recently lost in his bid to lead the provincial PC party.

In an interview with Fred Hutton of VOCM radio in St. John’s, Senator Wells denied Crosbie’s allegations, insisting that he had nothing to do with the decision to blacklist Crosbie. In fact, he claimed that he and Crosbie had talked about the nomination in Avalon months earlier, and that he thought Ches was a “good” candidate.

Wells said “I do not know the committee members who made the decision (to exclude Ches). I did not ask who they were nor did I attempt to contact anyone involved in the decision – before or after it was made.

“I have stated that Mr. Crosbie is a credible person and would have made a credible candidate. Despite the unfounded and bizarre accusations of John Crosbie, I still hold this view.” ‎

Not surprisingly, John Crosbie isn’t buying. Nor is he willing to exonerate Harper in this wretched game of dirty party politics turned on one of its own. When asked about the prime minister’s hand in this, Crosbie replied, “There is no way that he didn’t know. It’s like the Duffy matter.”

One of the reasons there is so much speculation about how the CPC decided to shame a family steeped in Conservative tradition is the secretiveness surrounding the whole affair. The CPC is saying it is an internal party matter. I have news for them; not anymore.

John Crosbie says that his son was told in the telephone interrogation with headquarters that a few feeble jokes he made about the PM regarding the Duffy/Wright Affair made him unfit to run as a Conservative. You know, making fun of the king is not the stuff loyal subjects are made of – even if it was all in fun and to raise money for a Shakespeare theatre around the bay.

But if Crosbie lost his nomination over making a jest at the expense of King Stephen, how in the blue blazing Jesus did another Newfoundlander, Kevin O’Brien, get his nomination green-lighted by the party?

After all, the man now set to run against Liberal Scott Simms in Coast of Bays-Central-Notre Dame said publicly on the radio that Stephen Harper had “no integrity.” You get the shiv for donning a grey whig and making fun of Harper, but you say the PM has no ethics and that’s just fine?

A far more plausible reason is that Ches Crosbie looks like he would be headed to trial this September on a ground-breaking class action suit representing 1,000 clients in a case involving allegations of physical and sexual abuse at five Indian Residential Schools in Newfoundland and Labrador.

For historical reasons, indigenous people from Newfoundland and Labrador were left out of the compensation package for First Nations, and also from Stephen Harper’s 2008 apology for the Residential Schools. The Harper government denied responsibility for schools that opened before the province joined Confederation in 1949.

Whether that case is mediated or goes to trial, Ches Crosbie is kicking with the wrong foot on this file — at least as far as this PM is concerned. First Nations issues do not ignite Stephen Harper’s enthusiasm; witness his utter silence about the finding of cultural genocide by his own Truth and Reconciliation Commission – or is that the Truth Without Reconciliation Commission?

And then there is the strange shedding of support on different fronts in what looks like the final days of the Harper majority. Many of the hard-right social conservatives are not running this time around, including people like Saskatchewan MP Maurice Vellacott. Harper got what he wanted from them, they got nothing back from him. If the pro-life vote turns to the Christian Heritage Party, that gives more room for the opposition parties, particularly the NDP in the Prairies and British Columbia, to beat Conservative incumbents.

Faced with the loss of the So-Cons on the hard right, the CPC also seems bent on purging all Red Tories from the party. Hugh Segal, Peter MacKay, Jim Prentice, gone; Michael Chong hobbled and marginalized; and now Ches Crosbie, scion of Newfoundland’s most famous Conservative family, rejected as candidate material. And that leaves?

Senator Wells says he has ruled out a run of his own in Avalon, where the CPC is now without a candidate. It’s probably a good thing since even with the promise of help from national campaign director Jenni Byrne, whom he calls ‘a colleague’, it would be less painful for him to simply jump into a wood chipper.

After the Crosbie Affair, Stephen Harper’s “era of ill-feeling” now reaches deeply into his own party. When you behave with the “obduracy of a peevish child,” as Conrad Black so poignantly put it, how long can it be before the inevitable trip to the woodshed?

About four months I should think.

—

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His nine books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. His new book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, is a number one best-seller.

Readers can reach the author at [email protected]. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.