Senior Conservative Party commentators were virtually begging besieged Status of Women Minister Helena Guergis to quit Cabinet before Prime Minister Stephen Harper fired her and expelled her from Tory caucus last week.
But interviews with lifelong Conservatives in her rural Ontario riding of Simcoe-Grey, Ont., who abandoned Ms. Guergis before the last federal election—coupled with political finance records that show a dramatic plunge in local support—suggest her star had already fallen sharply at home before it exploded in such dramatic fashion in Ottawa.
The Toronto Star broke a story last week alleging that Ms. Guergis' husband, former longtime Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, had shady business ties and potentially oversold himself to clients as having access to the PMO. The Star also reported that even though he lost his Edmonton seat in the 2008 election, he continued to hand out his MP business card and used Ms. Guergis' Parliamentary MP email account for personal business.
Prime Minister Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) announced last week his "office became aware of serious allegations regarding the conduct of" Ms. Guergis and he "referred the allegations to the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner and to the RCMP." Mr. Harper said, "These allegations relate to the conduct of Ms. Guergis and do not involve any other ministers, MPs, Senators or federal government employees." He said he would not comment further, but noted that Ms. Guergis resigned her junior Cabinet position, which he accepted, and that until the investigation into her conduct is resolved, she will not be sitting as a Conservative Member of Parliament. Mr. Harper said Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose (Edmonton-Spruce Grove, Alta.) would take on additional responsibilities for the Status of Women.
The drop in riding popularity might not have sealed her fate before the explosive Toronto Star story last week. It certainly reduced, however, her chances of backup.
Tim Powers, a regular spokesperson for the party's polices and politics, was blunt as he indirectly offered Ms. Guergis advice when the controversy over her known actions and those of her husband escalated.
"She has to remember that this isn't a party of one," Mr. Powers said in an interview with The Hill Times. "There comes a point on a team where certain players get to a place where they have to make judgment calls about whether they are contributing positively or negatively to the team. Helena needs to get to that place."
It was, in retrospect, like a prelude to Mr. Harper's revelation the next day.
Mr. Powers was speaking about a resignation from cabinet, but when asked about the fact Ms. Guergis is also the party's nominated candidate in Simcoe-Grey, and whether the party could interfere with her plans to run again, he replied: "She is a sitting candidate, yeah, but again, I say, she controls her own destiny, right?"
If Ms. Guergis ever does run for the party again in Simcoe-Grey, it could be an uphill fight.
Donor records and interviews with a half-dozen constituents, including two former supporters who described themselves as born and bred Conservatives, one saying he "grew up with the PC stamp on my rear end," show Ms. Guergis' popularity began dropping sometime in the period after the 2006 federal election. The decline began even though she won her first promotion to Cabinet in 2007 and it continued as she began making public appearances and statements that did not sit well with conservative-oriented voters who dominate the region.
"If things haven't gone the way you thought they should with the person that you donated the money to, well, too bad so sad, but not this year," said Wayne Carleton, the self-described branded Conservative, who contributed $400 to Ms. Guerguis' 2006 re-election but did not give her a dime for the 2008 campaign.
Elections Canada records show the number of supporters who contributed more than $200 apiece to Ms. Guergis' campaigns dropped from 66 in the 2006 campaign to 34 in 2008, 12 of the 2008 crowd being wealthy people who gave the limit of $1,000 each. The number of donors who gave less than $200 each, the grassroots, dropped from 112 to 71. Her total contributions plunged from $48,295 to $30,550 from one campaign to the other, and she also required $73,758 in cash transfers from the Conservative party for the 2008 contest.
Another staunch Conservative, who voted Reform in Simcoe-Grey while the populist party was trying to gain a toehold in Ontario, said Ms. Guergis alienated many Conservatives in the riding during her past two terms as an MP. He also discontinued financial support for the 2008 election.
"I didn't like what I saw," said the old party loyalist, who did not want to be identified. "I think she's a nice looking girl, presents a good image, but she's made a lot of people angry around here. I've got friends who supported her but won't now. I've been a Conservative my whole life. I've never voted for anything else."
Both Conservatives mentioned an unusual development in Collingwood, Ont., last year that scorched Ms. Guergis, well before her Charlottetown Airport meltdown and Mr. Jaffer's narrow escape from drug possession and impaired driving charges last March.
They said they and many other constituents were angered when an elite private school, Pretty River Academy, obtained a total of $507,667 in economic stimulus grants from the federal and provincial governments following the 2009 budget, with Ms. Guergis' active support. The academy, on the outskirts of town, charges $10,350 tuition for high school students and $10,500 for pre-schoolers.
The annual tuition is reduced by $1,000 if parents put up a $25,000 bond toward a trust fund for capital projects. The stimulus money, of course, is aimed at capital works, and the cash for the school came from a program intended for public recreation.
"A lot of people were up in arms about it. There was all kinds of charitable places it could have gone to," said the Conservative who wished to remain discreet.
"Politics has got to be something that I'm sort of ticked off with a lot of the time, just because of all the bull-crap that goes on," said Mr. Carleton. "Yes, I know it's politics and all that, but that riled a lot of people."
The dustup over the stimulus funding for Pretty River Academy was one of the controversies that sparked a political assistant to Ms. Guergis to write a string of letters to the editor of The Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin, under a misleading name, to defend her boss.
Ian Chadwick, a Collingwood town councillor and local businessman, says Simcoe-Grey, where Conservative rule was interrupted only by the voter split the Reform Party created when it began trying to expand into Ontario in the 1997 election, has a strong religious and small-c conservative bent through a broad rural swath in its centre.
Some of Ms. Guergis' antics riled those elements, including her bikini-wearing participation in the Great Northern Exhibition dunk-tank spectacle and an appearance as a Collingwood ski bunny on the CBC Rick Mercer Report show, said Mr. Chadwick. Mr. Mercer had by then sharpened his satirical digs at Prime Minister Harper.
"This is the kind of riding where MPs are expected to show up on Canada Day," Mr. Chadwick told The Hill Times. "They're expected to flip pancakes."
Ms. Guergis' trip to Mexico when she was a junior foreign minister to aid a detained Canadian woman, where she opted to attend a cocktail party instead of visiting the woman in prison, did not help, says Enterprise-Bulletin editor Ian Adams. He added that constituents also feel Ms. Guergis had a sense of "entitlement"—perhaps reflected in Ottawa stories about her harsh treatment of staff—because her family is prominent in the sub-region surrounding its hometown of Angus and two of her cousins and a sister are local politicians. Guergis' sister has been her legal official agent—responsible for campaign spending and contributions—for the past two elections.
The recent revelation that Ms. Guergis and Mr. Jaffer took out an $888,000 mortgage to buy an upscale Ottawa house was like icing on an unpopular cake.
"I guess she considered herself party of the Angus Royalty," Mr. Adams said.
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The Hill Times
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