Fruits from the Orchard

In searching for material for a new article I'm working on about the Canadian Wheat Board, I came across this article in Zmag that was an interview with David Orchard.

It's shocking. I've been interested with Orchard ever since some older guy at the Grind on Main came up to me years ago and proceded to try to force an e-mail address out of me to sign up on his team.

At the time, I was a blossoming activist who wouldn't even go near the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and didn't like some pushy guy trying to 'outwit' me e-mail out from under me. But he wouldn't go away. In the time since he first appeared I've taken notice of the following: his deal with Peter Mckay to prevent a merger of the PC and Alliance, his susequent court challenge against the merger that happened when McKay stabbed him in the back, a fairly left-wing treeplanting friend of mine who did volunteer work for him, an uber-conservative dude who liked his policies, and his king-making abilities which, along with the help of Martha Hall-Findlay, helped Dion capture the Liberal leadership crown last December.

This interview really impressed me and made me want to see the other side of Orchard, so I can somehow back-up the bad view I've had of him for the last 5 years as being legit.

Some choice quotes:

In the 1980s, when Brian Mulroney was preparing to implement the FTA, I went to Ottawa and knocked on the doors of the NDP. Nothing moved. I couldn’t understand why the “party of the Left” wouldn’t come out publicly against the FTA. Then a senior advisor to the NDP told me why. One of the NDP’s main donors at that time was the United Steelworkers of America (USWA). These large American controlled unions were not against the Canada-U.S. FTA in the 1980s. They changed their tune when NAFTA was being negotiated in the 1990s, and the NDP followed suit.

When we succeeded in getting the [Conservative] party to do a review of the FTA and NAFTA, it was [Maude Barlow], from the left, and Tom d’Aquino, head of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, from the right, who attacked me the next morning in the national media. I would never denounce people for being out on the streets, brave people getting out and making their message heard. But Martin and Bush aren’t only, or even mainly, afraid of thousands of people on the streets. They have plenty of tear gas. However, Martin is afraid of a couple of opposition seats in the House of Commons.