Heward Grafftey - Later Political Career

Later Political Career

Grafftey attempted to return to Parliament in the 2000 election, but was unsuccessful. After suffering a serious injury which incapacitated him for most of the campaign, he came in third place behind the Bloc Québécois challenger and Liberal incumbent MP Denis Paradis. He did, however, finish with the second highest vote total of any Progressive Conservative candidate in the province of Québec.

In 2002, he was one of the first Progressive Conservatives to openly call for Tory leader Joe Clark's resignation, offering himself as a replacement. Grafftey eventually ran as a leadership candidate in the 2003 PC leadership contest. He ran a campaign that was devoid of defining policy proposals but which focused upon his political experience, his bilingualism and his belief that he could recruit 300,000 new members to help the PCs win the coming election. Although, like most of the candidates in the race, he supported the twin Progressive Conservative pillars of North American free trade and support for decentralizing reforms to the Canadian constitution, he often found himself in agreement with the left wing of his party, sharing maverick candidate David Orchard's opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Grafftey's candidacy received some media attention largely because he was the only candidate in the race who was fluently bilingual (in English and French) and actually had government experience. Yet Grafftey's age (75 at the time) was also mocked by political satirists as an indication of the lack of "new blood" in the PC Party. Grafftey withdrew several days prior to the vote for health reasons. Analysts suggest that Grafftey had 72 committed delegates hailing largely from several Montreal-area ridings. Most of Grafftey's delegates entered the convention as "undeclared delegates". He did not attend the convention, nor did he endorse any other leadership candidate, though many of his rural backers went over to David Orchard.

After the 2003 convention, Grafftey briefly re-entered the political spotlight by joining David Orchard and other former Tories in opposition to a proposed merger of the party with the Canadian Alliance. Grafftey still insists that he is a "Progressive Conservative". He ran in Brome-Missisquoi for the Progressive Canadian Party in the 2006 federal election and came in fifth place with 1,921 votes - 4% of the total ballots cast.