Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day, I asserted a few months ago in Chronicles (“Taking Stock,” Views, November 2000), would “seek to persuade Middle Canadian voters that the [governing] Liberals are their enemies, not their friends.” I also argued that he didn’t “play by his enemies’ rules,” and that his party was “a viable alternative to Liberal (and liberal) hegemony.” I even compared Day to Ronald Reagan. In the words of Johnny Rotten, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

Canadians voted on November 27, and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien won his third consecutive majority government. The Liberals took 172 seats (up from 155); the Alliance, 66 (up from 60); the separatist Bloc Quebecois, 38 (down from 44); the socialist New Democratic Party, 13 (down from 21); and the otiose Progressive Conservatives, 13 (down from 20).

Repeating the failures of its predecessor (the Reform Party), the Alliance took only two seats in Ontario; the Liberals took 100 (out of 103). This was particularly bitter for the Alliance, as Day had spent as much time in Ontario as in all the other nine provinces combined. Even more galling, the Alliance failed to finish off the Conservatives, who differ from the Liberals only in the sense that arsenic differs from cyanide. The Conservatives retained official-party status; leader (and former prime minister) Joe Clark, completing his transformation from hapless Boy Scout to the troll beneath the bridge of Canadian politics, was elected in the Alliance heartland of Calgary.

Once again, Canada split from east to west. The Alliance won 64 of its seats in the four Western provinces and almost swept Alberta and British Columbia. The consensus is that Ontarians were repelled by a “scary,” “divisive,” and “extreme” social conservatism from the hinterland. Rubbish. Day ran an almost issue-free campaign. The same man who declared that “the era of political correctness is over” ran headlong from his own policies in a futile attempt to persuade Canadians that he represented no threat to liberal hegemony. He gutted the Alliance’s single-tax plan and was unable to deliver a single philosophical or moral justification for an end to tax robbery. Day swore he would outdo the Liberals in buttressing Canada’s collapsing medicare system. He became almost hysterically incoherent when presented with the details of his party’s direct-democracy plan.

Day is a Pentecostal Christian, and he has been accused routinely of desiring to “impose” his religious beliefs on the nation. Never mind that the Liberals have imposed their atheist immorality on Canada for over three decades. The same man who, earlier in the year, had quoted Hilaire Belloc and decried the “naked public square” turned yellow. He pandered to every ethnic group he could find: Chinese, Sikhs, Muslims, Greeks, Armenians. He hinted that he would increase immigration—even though Canada already takes in more immigrants per capita than any other country in the world. He practically promised to make Israel the 11th province.

His pandering only upped the multiculturalists’ ransom demands. Liberal minister Elinor Caplan said that Alliance supporters were “Holocaust deniers, prominent bigots and racists.” Liberal minister Hedy Fry said that Day’s belief that “Jesus Christ is the God of the whole universe” is “an insult to every Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, everybody else who believes in other religions.” Chrétien was more oblique, conjuring visions of Europe laid waste by the Nazis and concluding that the Alliance appealed to the “dark side.”

Chrétien and Clark lied repeatedly about the Alliance platform, but Day, adopting the same holier-than-thou attitude that crippled Reform leader Preston Manning, could only whine. He begged Chrétien to “call off your dogs” and commended his “agenda of respect” to the prime minister—his pre-election decision to campaign with one hand tied behind his back.

Day refused to be drawn on abortion, which became a campaign issue for the first time ever. Despite his pro-life views, he remained silent after Chrétien and Clark, both nominally Roman Catholic, alleged that Catholic teaching was uncertain on the subject. Day remained silent even after Chrétien hinted (at a Catholic high school, no less!) that abortion was not a problem for him, as he was too old to force his wife to have one.

In the end. Day was left with nothing to sell but the cult of his (as it turned out) shallow and not especially interesting personality. Ronald Reagan? More like Reagan without the brains.

How bad is the state of the Canadian right? Bad enough that Canadian conservatives look longingly at George W. Bush as a paragon of principled conviction.