The Conservative Leadership Foundation

As far as conservative political training schools go, only one exists, the Ontario-based Conservative Leadership Foundation (CLF). The CLF was founded fourteen years ago by two young Tories: John Mykytyshyn, who went on to do polling for Mike Harris, and John Capobianco, a seasoned politico who has held many positions in the federal and Ontario Conservative parties.

Capobianco had been youth campaign chair for Mike Harris’ successful run for the Ontario PC leadership in 1990. He used the race to build a core group of youth activists. Every weekend young Tories got together at Harris’ Toronto leadership headquarters to learn election skills. The key, according to Mykytyshyn, was to make things fun while imparting the campaign savvy necessary to win. Capobianco went on to become president of the Ontario PC Youth Association, and the CLF was born soon after.

The idea for the organization came primarily from training schools that had been set up in the late 1980s under the auspices of the federal PC Party, National Campaign Colleges (NCC) and the National Leadership Institute (NLI). At the helm of the NCC and NLI were a group of young Tory turks who had worked in the Mulroney government. Among them were Nigel Wright, now a managing director at Onex Corp., Tom Long, a former Canadian Alliance leadership candidate and a key architect of the Common Sense Revolution, and Stewart Braddick, who went on to become principal secretary to Mike Harris. The group had heard of Blackwell’s LI and wanted to emulate its success in Canada. Because the federal PC party was in government and had money, it was easy to plan events: an NCC the year before an election, the NLI in other years. The sessions were not only instructive but also exciting for young Tory trainees; perhaps too exciting, as when they made headlines for trashing the residences of Carleton University. But there was no doubting the schools’ success. Unfortunately, they are now defunct, but the CLF continues to thrive.

At its inception, the CLF did not have the funds the NCC and NLI had. After the 1990 election, the Ontario Tories were in third place in the legislature and mired in debt. But in 1991 it held its .rst session, chaired by former Ontario PC Campus Association President Sandra Buckler, as a completely volunteer-run organization. It remains that way today.

The key to the CLF’s appeal is a constantly-evolving curriculum geared to different levels of expertise, a system which avoided "the tyranny of the lowest common denominator," as Mykytyshyn puts it. The current trend in parties re.ects politically correct attitudes to make curricula as simplistic as possible, geared to the least knowledgeable person, so as not to make anyone feel out of place. While this may be an inclusive approach, it also ensures people won’t bother to come back a second time. Once they’ve attended a school, perhaps for one and only one time, they think they know everything. The reality is that campaign techniques are constantly changing, especially with the rapid advancement being made in political technology and software. It is always possible to learn more and get better, as long as the program continues to challenge its participants.

With this in mind, the CLF created a "tiered system." Participants were initially assessed in a two-hour exam process. Based on their prior knowledge of campaign techniques and strategy, they were streamed and taught a variety of classes appropriate to their level. (These in-cluded Alister Campbell’s famous basic "how to clap" course, as well as his more infamous class on how to run a recruitment table, in which he would throw a chair across the room to illustrate the fact that a suc-cessful recruiter never sat down.) Participants learned how to write brochures, knock on doors and much more.

As proof of the CLF’s impact, there was a direct relationship be-tween it and the genesis of the 1995 Common Sense Revolution. The CLF’s founders and attendees were the ones who eventually conceived and wrote the platform, ran campaigns for PC candidates across Ontario and later staffed MPP and ministers’ offices at Queen’s Park.

After their electoral success, however, the CLF fell into inactivity for several years as activists were absorbed with the task of running the government. Then in 2000, Capobianco and Mykytyshyn were ap-proached to restart the CLF, this time as an independent training school, not as an appendix of the PC party. It was refounded in 2001, with more than 130 students participating in its re-launch seminar in Hamilton, Ontario. CLF has had more events in recent years and hopes to continue doing more.

It is important for conservatives to invest in this type of organiza-tion and, most crucially, to replicate it at the national level. While the Conservative party under Stephen Harper has done some training in the past year, it is not enough. No programs speci.cally dedicated to training young members exist. The party has campus clubs, a youth website, an annual summer internship program in Ottawa and a promising roster of MPs under the age of thirty, but little else. It is imperative that this change soon.

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