by the time of the 2000 election. Smith first ran for the Reform Party in 1993, and later supported that party's re-constitution as the Canadian Alliance. In 2000, he said that his party would introduce tax cuts while maintaining social programs, and would eliminate regional development corporations such as FedNor. He also argued that the Canadian Alliance had been unfairly caricatured as intolerant. When the Liberals won a majority government in the election, Smith said that they would "bankrupt this country and kill off all our social programs". In 2003, Smith supported the Canadian Alliance's merger with the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to create the Conservative Party of Canada. He supported Belinda Stronach in the leadership campaign that followed. Whitby—Ajax: Shaun Gillespie Gillespie was 35 years old at the time of the election (Toronto Star, 23 November 2000), and worked as a police officer in Toronto (Toronto Star, 28 October 2000). He took a leave of absence from his official duties, and campaigned on a "law and order" platform (Toronto Star, 28 November 2000). He received 13,159 votes (26.98%), finishing second against Liberal incumbent Judi Longfield. In earlier years, Gillespie had played bass guitar in a new-wave band with Our Lady Peace guitarist Mike Turner (Toronto Star, 11 November 2000). Manitoba Gary Nestibo (Brandon—Souris) Nestibo was born on 19 May 1951 in Deloraine. He works a farmer in Goodlands, Manitoba, and has been a director of Keystone Agricultural Producers and the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, which opposes the single-desk marketing policy of the Canadian Wheat Board. He unsuccessfully tried to start a $4.5 million hog operation in Deloraine in 1998, as a director of Southwest Stock Farms Ltd. Nestibo sought and won the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba nomination for Arthur-Virden in April 1999, defeating rival candidate Dale Smeltz on the third ballot. Larry Maguire and Grant Fotheringham had been eliminated in earlier counts. One of his nominators described Nestibo as a family man who was "categorically willing to defend the Biblical principles this nation was founded upon". He was 47 years old. Soon after the nomination meeting, Nestibo was accused of participating in an alleged land-for-votes scheme in the previous year's municipal elections. Nestibo and several others were alleged to have purchased marginal land in the Rural Municipality of Winchester for a low fee, and then voted for Jim Holden, the seller, in a council election. The