Ex-Reformer Herb Grubel has foreseen the light. In A Professor in Parliament (Soules $19.95), an autobiography released prior to the United Alternative convention, the former Reform Party Finance Critic has praised Stockwell Day, new leader of the right in Canada, as "articulate, a true conservative and an experienced politician.";

Having done so, Grubel insists he isn't hankering to re-enter politics. "I have stayed out of the fray,"; he says, "In fact, I purposely didn't return a call from Terry O'Neill of BC Report after the United Alternative convention. I didn't want to say anything negative against Preston.";

He already has.

While Grubel cites Preston Manning's "insatiable appetite for work"; and his "seemingly endless stamina and much psychological hardiness,"; Grubel finds fault with Preston Manning's "unwillingness or inability to have close relationships."; The extroverted Grubel, sometimes candid to a fault as a politician, maintains Manning "will probably always remain aloof, uncomfortable in social situations and disinterested in the details of people.";

Grubel and Manning sometimes walked home together as Ottawa neighbours. Whenever Grubel tried to initiate conversations that weren't work-related, he says Manning was a cold fish. "Thereafter I deliberately tried a different strategy,"; says Grubel. "I did not say anything, wondering what topics Manning would bring up to close the conversational vacuum. Most of the time the vacuum just stayed until it was broken by someone else joining us.";

On the professional level, Grubel claims Manning commandeered the editing of Reform's Taxpayers' Budget of 1995. He also complains that, as Finance Critic, he was largely excluded from drafting Reform's 1997 election budget. Manning showed "a tendency to leave important projects languishing under benign neglect"; and Manning negated "the important analytical and political work done by people he had asked to do it."; According to Grubel, Manning appointed long-time associates to positions of responsibility "in disregard of others with superior qualifications and abilities.";

Pride goes before an autobiography.

If it's any consolation to Grubel's ego, the majority of attendees at the United Alternative convention appear to have voted in agreement with his criticisms in A Professor in Parliament wherein Grubel disapproves of Manning's adherence to populist, democratic principles and "his unwillingness to offer a true conservative party platform.";

An emigrant from Germany to the U.S. in 1956, Grubel joined newly created Simon Fraser University as an anti-Keynesian economics professor in 1971. As the Reform MP for Capilano-Howe Sound from 1993 to 1997, he was branded a 'doctrinaire zealot on the marvels of market forces' but worked closely and constructively with Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin. His tenure in Parliament was not always smooth.

With a German accent that became pronounced with agitation, Grubel once feared being accused of Holocaust denial by a CBC reporter in 1993. For a variety of reasons, including his distance from Preston Manning, he decided not to run for re-election in 1997. Herb Grubel now lives in North Vancouver and serves as a consultant to The Fraser Institute. 0-9686783-0-0

[BCBW WINTER 2000]