Page "Reform Party of Canada" Paragraph 32

By 1997, the Reform Party attempted to shed the negative public outlook on the party's views on immigration and minority rights by selecting multiple ethnic minority candidates to run as Reform Party candidates in the 1997 federal election to demonstrate that the Reform Party's policies were not intended to be intolerant.

As a result, multiple minorities became Reform Party members of parliament including Rahim Jaffer, who became Canada's first Muslim member of parliament ; Gurmant Grewal an Indo-Canadian who immigrated to Canada six years earlier in 1991 ; and Inky Mark, a Chinese-Canadian.

However, these attempts to restore the Reform Party's image as a tolerant political party were damaged in the 1997 federal election when the Reform Party released a controversial television advertisement where the faces of four Quebec politicians: Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe, Progressive Conservative leader Jean Charest, and the separatist Premier of Quebec Lucien Bouchard were crossed out followed by a message saying that Quebec politicians had dominated the federal government for too long and that the Reform Party would end this favouritism towards Quebec.

The advertisement was harshly criticized by the other party leaders including accusations that Preston Manning was " intolerant " and a " bigot " for having permitted the advertisement to be aired.

Manning however has not held a public negative view of Quebec and in his 1992 book, The New Canada, he complemented Quebec for being open to populist third parties, mentioning the Bloc Populaire Canadien, the Ralliement créditiste du Québec, the Parti Québécois, and the Bloc Québécois as examples of populist third parties in Quebec.