COLUMN: Carillon Flashback November 27, 1985 – Manitoba leaders difficult to deal with, Epp says

The Conservative Party’s campaign of reconciliation with the provinces during the 1984 federal election has proven difficult to achieve in Manitoba, according to Provencher MP Jake Epp.

Epp was in Steinbach for a Provencher Conservative Constituency Association meeting 14 months after his party swept the federal election with the largest Conservative majority in the country’s history. The Sept. 4, 1984 election also saw Jake Epp returned with his largest majority in five elections in Provencher. With nearly 20,000 votes, Epp nearly tripled the vote count over his nearest competitor, New Democrat Ron Buzahora.

On election night in 1984, Epp said he was looking forward to working with a majority government, something he never experienced before.

He said he hadn’t expected the extent of the majority and recalled he had been an 18-year-old working on the campaign of 1958 when the Conservatives, under the leadership of John Diefenbaker, elected the previous high of 208 members.

Epp said prior to the election of the Conservative government, with a huge majority of 211 seats, the animosity between the federal and provincial governments could “be cut with a knife,”

“Great steps have been made toward restoring healthy working relationships with the provinces.”

Epp went on to say that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has the gift of being able to sit down with the provinces and discuss difficult issues in an atmosphere of grown men and women dealing with issues without acrimony.

However, it was not as easy in Manitoba, where the provincial NDP government wants to run against the federal government, Epp said.

“Manitobans are telling the provincial government they have a mandate to carry on with the governing of the province.”

His government’s efforts in the area of economic renewal have also been effective, Epp told the Provencher constituency meeting.

While there are some black clouds on the horizon, the trends have been good. The inflation rate has dropped to a manageable four percent and the bank rate has dropped three percent over the past year, Epp said.

“I don’t believe a government can create long-term jobs, but the climate in which those jobs can be created is the government’s responsibility, More than 300,000 new jobs have been created over the last year.”

Adjustments must be made to retain the domestic market, and the international market is extremely competitive, he said.

Epp went on to defend the Conservative government’s attempt to establish a closer relationship with the United States.

“It’s good that the U.S. is our friend and it’s good they are next door to us, The personal relationship between the prime minister and the president is extremely important.”

Epp said Canada was not pretending to be a strong superpower. In trade and international relationships, Canada needs to know who its friends are, because ‘it’s that kind of world.’

– with files from Tim Plett