Simpson vs. The NCC

For some reason Globe and Mail columnist Jeffery Simpson decided to smear the National Citizens Coalition in his Saturday column.

I won’t bore you with the details, but Simpson’s general point was that Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn’t hold all that an important or serious position when he was with the NCC.

Well Harper certainly thought his work here was important.

In the February 1997 edition of our newsletter, when he had just resigned as an MP with the Reform Party to join our group, Harper explained why he wanted to work with us.

Here’s an extract:

“The truth is that, in the past decade, the political arena has begun to fill with politicians and political organizations struggling to implement the basic values for which the NCC has always stood, at one time very much alone. The agenda of the NCC was a guide to me as the founding policy director of Reform.

I have long supported and proudly defended the NCC and it has never given me reason to do otherwise.

Elected officials are constrained by the need for popularity every four to five years. The average one is consumed by the monthly opinion polls. The really bad ones worry about the approval of every group coming through their offices looking for a handout. Working with you in the NCC provides me with an opportunity to do much more --- to fight for basic conservative values of free markets and free elections, whether fashionable at that moment or not.

I am honoured to join you in your fight. The battle for political and economic freedom will have its victories and setbacks, as it has in the past.

It will never end . . . and we shall never surrender.”

And indeed as NCC president, Stephen Harper led many important battles for freedom.

That’s a fact Simpson chooses to ignore, meaning he is either a shoddy journalist or a biased one – or maybe both.