Fred Debrecen
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Fred Debrecen is a fringe politician and political activist in Manitoba, Canada. He has been involved with radical and far-right groups for several years, most notably in the anti-bilingualism movement.
Debrecen worked for the Manitoba Telephone System for more than thirty years. He has described himself as a "market analyst", and was a prominent early supporter of the Manitoba Confederation of Regions Party during the province's debates over the legal entrenchments of French-language services in the mid-1980s. On two occasions, he was ordered to paint over anti-French slogans on his fence.
He ran as a candidate of the federal Confederation of Regions Party in the 1984 election, receiving 830 votes in the riding of Winnipeg—St. James. The winning candidate, Progressive Conservative George Minaker, received over 12,000 votes.
For the provincial campaign of 1986, Debrecen started an organization known as One Nation, One Language Inc. (ONOLI), which circulated petitions calling for a unilingual English Canada. He ran in the provincial riding of St. James, and received 175 votes for a distant fourth-place finish.
Debrecen was a delegate at the founding convention of the Reform Party of Canada in October-November 1987. He ran again in St. James in the 1988 provincial election, this time falling to 137 votes. A third campaign in the same riding in the 1990 election netted him only 122 votes. Debrecen also ran for Mayor of Winnipeg in 1989, receiving 1647 votes and finishing eighth out of ten candidates.
In 1988, Debrecen told a tribunal examining issues of native justice in Manitoba that aboriginal Canadians are unwilling to work and expect white Canadians to pay for their survival. He also claimed that a pipe ceremony at the beginning of the tribunal was an insult to Canada's history as a "Christian British nation". (Vancouver Sun, 15 September 1988)
He also spoke out against the closing of the Roblin Hotel, a men-only beer establishment in Winnipeg in 1990. "A man can't live in the style he chooses," he was quoted as saying. "Men-only beer parlors are what built this country." (Vancouver Province, 30 March 1990)
Facing a serious decline in membership, the Manitoba CoR changed its name to the Manitoba Reform Party in 1991. Debrecen was named as the new party's leader, although a newspaper report from this period indicates that did not grant interviews to the press (Calgary Herald, 18 April 1991). The following year, Debrecen became one of only two candidates ever to run under the Manitoba Reform Party banner, in a by-election held in Portage La Prairie. He improved his vote total to 388, but still placed last among four candidates. He has not run for federal or provincial office since this time.
