National Citizens Coalition
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the Canadian conservative lobby group. For the Zambian political party, see National Citizens' Coalition.
The National Citizens Coalition is a Canadian libertarian-conservative lobby group. It supports privatization, tax cuts, and government spending cuts and opposes laws that limit spending by non-party organizations during election campaigns.
The NCC claims a membership of between 40,000 to 45,000 individuals, but has not released members' names. It reports an annual budget of $2.8 million.
The NCC holds no annual general membership meetings and provides no financial statements to its members. The organization's constitution distinguishes between 'voting' and 'public' members. Public members pay dues but do not have formal mechanisms for influencing the organization's policies or priorities. Public members are not entitled to be notified of or to attend any meetings, and they are not entitled to vote at any such meetings.
The organization has fought to keep information about itself confidential. The NCC opposed proposed amendments to the Canada Elections Act that would have required third-party organizations like the NCC to publish of names of all contributors donating more than $250.
During its almost four decades of existence, the NCC has campaigned against:
- the Canada Health Act,
- the Canadian Wheat Board,
- the general strike organized by the Canadian Labour Congress against wages and prices controls imposed the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau in 1975, and
- the admittance of Vietnamese refugees ("boat people") to Canada in 1979-1980.
- closed-shop unions
- the so-called "gold-plated" pension plan for Members of Parliament
- government waste in general
The NCC founded and funded Ontarians for Responsible Government, a lobby group that played a large role in electing the Progressive Conservative Harris government in Ontario of 1995-2004. It has also legally challenged electoral financing laws limiting third-party advertising spending during election campaigns.
The NCC was founded in 1967 by Colin M. Brown, a wealthy life insurance executive from London, Ontario, to fight against the creation of public healthcare. Brown took out full-page advertisements in newspapers nationwide in an effort to recruit like-minded citizens. One of the NCC's early efforts was a campaign against the admission of Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s, during which Brown made comments that were criticized as racist.
Stephen Harper, the current Prime Minister, was at one time president of the NCC.
[edit] Timeline
- 1967 – National Citizens' Coalition founded by Colin M. Brown.
- 1987 – David Somerville takes over leadership.
- 1993 – NCC successfully supports Stephen Harper's bid to become a Reform Party Member of Parliament for Calgary West.
- 1997 – Harper resigns to join NCC.
- 1997 – Stephen Harper becomes Vice-President of NCC.
- 1998 – Stephen Harper becomes President of NCC, Gerry Nicholls becomes Vice-President.
- 2002 – Stephen Harper resigns as President of NCC to seek the leadership of the Canadian Alliance.
