Editor:
Re: Watts to seek federal seat for Tories, Sept. 18.
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts outing as a Conservative Party of Canada candidate in South Surrey-White Rock will be thoughtful and a positive contribution to debate.
She is right to say that one of the first things you learn quickly in politics is that people are not always what they appear to be. That is true of the Harper neo-Conservatives who remain the Reform Party, provincialist, continentalist and neoconservative – not Tory and Progressive Conservative.
Progressive Canadians are Progressive Conservatives, the party of Confederation, of nation-building, national vision and national unity; PCs, principled in the belief that to achieve Tory democracy requires good public policy framed around the people’s interest not party, the national interest and integrity.
The young John A. Macdonald put it best: “…our aim should be to enlarge the bounds of our party so as to embrace every person desirous of being counted as a ‘progressive Conservative,’ and who will join in a series of measures to put an end to the corruption which has ruined the present government and debauched all its followers.”
As the Tory candidate in South Surrey-White Rock-Cloverdale in 2006, ’08 and ’11, since the CA 2003 takeover of the Tories as the CPC, I am happy to say cordially to Mayor Watts, welcome to national politics.
Brian Marlatt, White Rock
