It’s time for young conservatives to once again step up and lead
New feature in The Hub: Everything that’s old is new again, and ‘Winds of Change’ are again blowing for younger conservatives.
Editor’s note: I’m featured in The Hub today, as part of their series on the 30th anniversary of the ‘Winds of Change’ conference. It’s been a pleasure to join fellow contributors Preston Manning, Ian Brodie, Tom Flanagan, and many more, as (united) federal conservatives in Canada look to the past—and the future—in the hopes of securing an increasingly-elusive victory in the years ahead.
Alexander Brown: It’s time for young conservatives to once again step up and lead
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 1996 Winds of Change conference, a formative moment in modern Canadian conservatism. Convened at a time of deep political fragmentation on the Right, the conference brought together a new generation of thinkers and activists to advance both the case for unity and a more assertive conservative vision for the country. Its ideas helped shape the creation of the Conservative Party of Canada and the policy direction of the Harper era. To mark the occasion, The Hub will feature a series of essays from leading voices reflecting on the conference’s legacy—and what its lessons mean for conservatism and Canada today.
While victory for an eventually-united front of Canada’s Right did not come until 2006, the seeds were planted in Calgary in 1996, a stone’s throw from that trio of famous peaks in Canmore, Alberta.
Back then, Stephen Harper articulated his “Three Sisters” theory, arguing that a Conservative majority had to be built on a coalition of Western Canadian populists, traditional Tories in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, and francophone nationalists in Quebec, foreshadowing his later success in merging the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives to form the modern Conservative Party of Canada.
A youth movement to recover Canada’s lost future
Just as important as ringing in this pearl jubilee is to remember just how generationally upending this gathering was viewed at the time. A political observer described Winds of Change as “a whole crop of 25-year-olds [stepping] forward to ease their elders aside and reunite divided conservatives.” Out were exclusively grey-haired affairs, in were organizers David Frum and Ezra Levant, and figureheads like Harper, taking the reins in their 30s and 40s, surrounded by collaborators big and small-c alike.