Craig Chandler
Craig B. Chandler (born
1970) is a
Canadian political, business and religious activist. He was a candidate at the
2003 Progressive Conservative leadership convention. He is a co-founder of the
Progressive Group for Independent Business (PGIB), and currently serves as an executive director of the organization.
In his younger years, Chandler was a youth member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. In
1989, Chandler joined the
Reform Party of Canada and was active among the Young Reformers on the campus of
McMaster University in
Hamilton, Ontario. He served on the Board of Directors of the
Burlington Reform Party constituency association for four years, and was an organizer and fundraiser for the party's fledgling Ontario wing. In the
1993 federal election, Chandler ran as a Reform Party candidate in the riding of
Hamilton Mountain. He finished in a distant second place with 10 297 votes in comparison to the incumbent
Liberal Party of Canada MP
Beth Phinney who received 27, 218. Chandler's campaign was touched by controversy when Burlington Reform Party candidate Hugh Ramolla interjected "hit her, Craig" during an all candidate's meeting - referring to a female NDP candidate who chastised Chandler's stances on healthcare during the debate. In addition, Chandler's actions in the dealings surrounding the untimely death of his campaign manager has been the source of much scuttlebutt in political circles around Hamilton for years.
Chandler then moved to Alberta, and ran in the
1997 provincial election as a candidate for the
Social Credit Party of Alberta, led at that time by future
Alberta Alliance party leader
Randy Thorsteinson. Chandler ran in the riding of
Calgary West, finishing with 1,100 votes, or 7.5% of the electorate. He later rejoined the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, and endorsed United Alternative candidate
Brian Pallister in the party's 1998
Progressive Conservative leadership convention.
In
2000, Chandler's PGIB supported the creation of the
Canadian Alliance and supported
Stockwell Day in his bid to become Alliance leader on the second ballot (Chandler publicly supported and personally voted for Reform MP
Keith Martin on the first ballot). In
2002, Chandler and the PGIB backed
Stephen Harper's successful bid for the leadership of the Alliance.
In
2003, Chandler took out a membership in the
Progressive Conservative Party in order to run in that party's
2003 leadership race. He ran on a platform of creating a coalition between the PC and Alliance party caucuses. He withdrew prior to voting in order to endorse the only other candidate that was open to tangible cooperation on the right, Calgary lawyer
Jim Prentice.
The night before the PC leadership convention, Chandler delivered a platform that the
Canadian Press described as
homophobic,
fundamentalist and "
neoconservative to the bone." James Muldoon, a fundraiser for front runner
Peter MacKay, described Chandler as "the true black face of neoconservatism. He could live to be 100 and he'll never know the meaning of, I am my brother's keeper." [
1]. Chandler's statements were called "bitter and resentful" by MacKay, whom Chandler criticized for supporting of the passage of
Criminal Code of Canada amendment
Bill C-250 that added
homosexuals to the list of groups protected by
hate crimes legislation. Chandler suggested that the amendment would lead to the banning of the
Bible and other religious texts in schools and public libraries. Chandler complimented Tory MP
Elsie Wayne on her "honest statements" about homosexuals, suggesting that no one has to apologize for having an opinion, even if it is not
politically correct. This section of his twenty minute speech was booed by many delegates.
Chandler also called for a formal union of the PC and CA parties, advocating an electoral coalition between the two parties that would eventually lead to a merger. Chandler proposed that:
* Currently elected PC and CA MPs would run uncontested for their nominations and stand as sole right-of-centre candidates in their respective ridings in the next election;
*
Liberal Party,
New Democratic Party or
Bloc Québécois ridings where the PCs ran closest to first-place in the
2000 election would have a PC candidate running as the sole right-of-centre choice in the next election and
vice versa for ridings where CA candidates came closest to first-place.
* After the next election, the elected parliamentary caucuses of both parties would work towards a full-fledged merger.
At the end of his speech Chandler was complimentary of the leadership qualities of his competitors
David Orchard and
Scott Brison, before endorsing and pledging support to
Calgary lawyer Jim Prentice's leadership bid to the astonishment of many delegates in attendance[
2].
Ultimately Chandler was a marginal candidate during the race, though his bid for leader did receive support from some members of the party's far right fringe. Some political humorists suggested that their first and only impressions of Chandler were that he was generally uninspiring in the party debates and that his ambition must have been "to be as charismatic as
Joe Clark." With the exception of statements in one debate on
CPAC where he openly apologized to the citizens of the
United States for the
Government of Canada's unwillingness to participate in the
2003 invasion of Iraq, his candidacy was largely ignored by the media until the dying days of the campaign. Chandler admitted in the
Globe and Mail and the
National Post (May 29, 2003) that he had never tried to seriously contest the leadership of the PC Party, but had instead served as a voice for the Progressive Group for Independent Business and their
United Alternative efforts. PGIB members donated $250,000 to Chandler's bid.
Some political analysts have suggested that despite being a marginal candidate, Chandler may have had an influence on the final results of the leadership race [
3]. While Chandler suggested in his speech that he had as many as 103 secret supporters amongst the "undeclared" delegates attending the function, most analysts suggest that Chandler only had 12 committed delegates from a few Calgary riding associations. Many of the undeclareds hailed from the failed candidacies of former PC cabinet minister
Heward Grafftey and Tory MP
André Bachand. Chandler withdrew from the race too late be removed from the first ballot. His supporters are believed to have likely voted in favour of Jim Prentice, who Chandler had endorsed, and so Chandler was officially eliminated with 0 recorded delegates voting in his favour on the first ballot.
After a second ballot,
Red Tory leadership candidate
Scott Brison emerged in fourth place,
only 3 delegates behind Jim Prentice. Some analysts have suggested that Chandler and his dozen delegates helped prevent Prentice from coming in fourth, after Brison's supporters received a slight boost in size from defections by some of fellow Nova Scotia MP Peter MacKay's delegates. It is not clear whether the present political situation would have been any different if Brison had survived the second-ballot and faced off against David Orchard and Peter MacKay in the third and fourth ballots. That said, the results of the 2003 PC Leadership race were quite historical and Chandler did have some impact, even if the results were quite inadvertent.
After the Tory leadership race, Chandler quickly receded from the public eye. He resurfaced briefly during the
2004 federal election, and during the March 2005
Conservative Party of Canada policy convention in Montreal. Both times he criticized newly minted Tory leader
Stephen Harper's ambiguous positions on perennial social conservative concerns surrounding
abortion,
euthanasia,
freedom of speech for evangelical Christians,
same-sex marriage and
civil union rights for common-law couples. Chandler also suggested that he resented Harper's attempts to "shut-up" socially conservative MPs.
Recently, Chandler became CEO of the religious lobby group
Concerned Christians Canada Inc., a political lobby organization that rallies support for
Evangelical Christian riding candidates, MPs and causes.
In February of 2004, Chandler suggested on
CBC Newsworld that he would be campaigning for the Conservative Party nomination in the next election in the riding of
Calgary North Centre which is currently represented by Conservative MP Jim Prentice. This choice of riding is believed to be because of Prentice's continuing votes in favour of the legalization of
same-sex marriage in Canada. However, Chandler's intentions were prematurely thwarted when the March CPC Policy Convention in Montreal voted in favour of allowing sitting Tory MPs to gain their nominations uncontested in minority government scenarios where elections are less predictable.
In November 2004 during the
2004 Alberta provincial election, Craig Chandler managed the campaign of
David Crutcher, an
Alberta Alliance Party candidate in
Calgary Edgemont. Crutcher won 1,657 votes, or 14% of the total.
David Crutcher announced his intention to run for leadership of the
Alberta Alliance and Chandler would be managing his leadership campaign. They ultimately placed third in the race, out of a field of four candidates.
Chandler wrote a controversial pre-Tory convention article for the March 15, 2005 issue of the
Globe and Mail newspaper in which he criticized pro same-sex marriage MP
Belinda Stronach, then a Conservative, as "a well-known
liberal who has successfully infiltrated the new Conservative Party of Canada." He reiterated his statements on Stronach in an April 13 cover article on Belinda Stronach in
Maclean's Magazine [
4].
Stronach later
crossed the floor to the
Liberal Party of Canada. In an interview on the program
CBC News: The Hour with host
George Stroumboulopoulos, Chandler suggested that Stronach's discomfort with the new Tory party's policies was a sign that the new Conservatives would not be "just another liberal party," and that her defection was "a victory for
family values supporters". Stronach won reelection, defeating the Chandler-backed Conservative, Lois Brown.
In late May of 2005, Chandler helped organize an anti-same-sex marriage rally in
Toronto,
Ontario that attracted 10,000 people.
Chandler also currently hosts his own radio show on
AM 1140 in Calgary. *[
5] Freedom Radio Network AM 1140 Calgary
Chandler currently resides in Calgary with his wife and children.
*
CBC News coverage of Chandler's campaign and convention speech*
Globe and Mail article "The Right Way for Stephen Harper" by Chandler*
CBC Newsworld: The Lens - God Only Knows: Same Sex Marriage
