Douglas H. Christie
810 Courtney Street
Victoria, B.C. V8W 1C4
Tel: (250) 385-1022/Fax (250) 479-3294
January 30, 1998
Hon. Preston Manning
Leader of the Opposition
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
Dear Mr. Manning:
On December 10, 1997 I was in Ottawa and heard from rumours you were going to make a major speech at 3:30 p.m. I made a point together with my client with whom I had been earlier in the Supreme Court, to be there to hear you.
I have always harboured doubts about your integrity and the purposes for which you were in politics since I realized you were working to undermine my cause which is Western Canada as an independent country; free of all eastern control and domination.
What I heard you say in quoting from a letter you received from a woman from New Brunswick convinced me you are a man of integrity, decency and honour. I say this knowing how seldom such qualities are found in men generally and how much more rare they are in politicians.
I write to share with you my feelings as I heard you speak. Firstly, I saw with what contempt you were treated by the governing Liberals, the B.Q. and the speaker who interrupted your speech to go to the Upper House so Chief Justice Lamer could sign some bills. I am cynical enough to believe it wasn't an accident and was clearly intended to interrupt what was one of the best speeches I ever heard.
Fortunately, when I went to see what was happening there, I soon came back to the Commons gallery and heard you further. You were truly great in your speech. I believe you do believe in your cause of a stable small government as do I.
I see a whole host of my Western countrymen who as free men and women are being robbed of their future and heritage by a corrupt government who steals from them daily and enslaves their children. I see you, a man who seeks to make the system work fairly leading them to believe it can be and will be changed. Even as you spoke, I could see that it would never change and independence and a new nation is our only real hope, slim as that may be.
You and I both have one thing in common: we age and will soon be unable to change very much. But why should we not now trade all our days from that time to now for one brief and shining hour when we strive to throw off that corrupting power from our children and their children and start to build a new nation on a better foundation?
I fear you will disregard this plea because Ottawa has a seductive power to convince those who live there that all is well, and things will change or do not really need to change. Getting rid of Trudeau, we got Mulroney, getting rid of Mulroney, we got Chretien and even if we got your leadership, Ontario and Quebec would still rule us and you. Reform is impossible, really. The powers of central Canada are so smug, so greedy, so omnipotent they will never change.
For this reason, I challenge you to set a deadline upon which the Reform party will seek reform no more, but will return to the land from whence it sprang and fight for freedom here by a referendum of our own. You have the means and the ability, but do you see the wisdom of this?
Your silence in response to this letter will tell me as the days go by that what I saw was merely another skillfully contrived illusion and my hopes of a combination of wisdom and integrity was really just naiveté once again. I have been disillusioned before and perhaps again. But for one brief time on December 10th, I thought I heard a man of the stature of John Diefenbaker and I had hope. So I wrote this letter after many days and nights of thought in the hope that somehow I might help to build a nation, a new nation, clean and free of all that I saw when they smugly and arrogantly interrupted your speech. I wrote this letter to reach out to a fellow Western Canadian whose spirit I had hope in, whose words I trusted. I hope still not to be disappointed.
As one who has fought and will always fight for this cause of Independence, I offer my support to you if it should come to pass that you see that the West is where a fair nation is possible. Otherwise, I predict you will become what has so often happened to good Western Canadians, more reformed by the system of things in Ottawa than reforming of it.
Yours for Independence,
Douglas H. Christie