Moment of the Decade: #5 Adscam

If you missed it, I asked readers to nominate, then vote, on Canada's top political moment of the decade. Over the first two weeks of January, I'm counting down the top 10 vote getters.



I’ve had Paul Martin’s autobiography on my desk for over a year. I've been meaning to write up a book review on it but for some reason I keep dithering.

I have, however, read his Adscam chapter, and here’s how he explains it:

I personally believe that a government whose ethics are doubted – rightly or wrongly – is a government paralyzed. You cannot summon the political will or public support for change unless people are prepared to give you their trust. That is why I decided to call a judicial inquiry that was led by Mr. Justice John Gomery.

[…]

Let’s be clear: it was the misdeeds revealed by the Auditor General and later by the Gomery inquiry that damaged the party. My condemnation of them was right in principle and also, as it happened, right politically. That catastrophic drop in the polls the day after the Auditor General’s report was released was quickly stemmed and then at least partly reversed as I showed the public that I shared their outrage.

As I see it, Martin hits the head on the nail in the first line I quoted. Governments become paralyzed when their ethics are doubted. The problem is, the Gomery inquiry only served to cast more doubts, as Martin himself admits when he says the Gomery inquiry revelations damaged the party.

So, contrary to what Martin claims, I’m not so sure calling the inquiry was the right thing to do politically and I think his narrative on what happened in terms of public opinion is way off. Here’s what some polls said at the time:

"This one is like a wildfire," [Ipsos-Reid president, Darrell Bricker] said. "It's out of control and everything the prime minister has done at this point has just blown the flames higher."

Despite a determined effort to restore Canadians' confidence in government, support for the ruling Liberal Party continues to slide. A new poll shows support for the Liberals has fallen another four points since Thursday.

The AG’s report was provocative and when you poll on a day when it’s on the front page of newspapers across the country, of course you're going to see movement in the polls. However, you’d normally expect that gut-reaction drop to recover and, given what we saw in the ’04 and ’06 elections, the reaction only got worse over time as support solidified against the Liberals.

But maybe Martin’s right and it would have been worse had an inquiry not been called. So the question is, was it the right thing to do? I’m not so sure.

Because, after the “explosive” embargoed testimony was made public, after Jean Chrétien’s show with the golf balls, after Quebecers saw the daily soap opera on TV, and after the opposition used Gomery’s report to bring down the government, I’m still not sure what the inquiry accomplished. I’m not being glib here – criminal acts were committed and people went to jail. But let’s be perfectly clear - no one went to jail because of the Gomery report and most of the good judge’s recommendations were either considered to be unenforceable or ignored - ignored by Stephen Harper, not the libranos.

All that said, we can debate whether or not the inquiry should have been called, but I think everyone can agree the AG’s report and the fallout from it certainly left their mark on the decade that was in Canadian politics.

Moment of the Decade: #6 Confidence Vote Mayhem

If you missed it, I asked readers to nominate, then vote, on Canada's top political moment of the decade. Over the first two two weeks of the new decade, I'm counting down the top 10 vote getters. Next week, the top 5 (in alphabetical order) - Adscam, Coalition, Iraq, Merger, and Same Sex Marriage.



It had everything you could possibly want in a political thrill ride. Scandal! Backroom deals! A long time government fighting for survival! Sex! Tape recordings! A dying man with the fate of the country in his hands! A tie confidence vote!

When I first asked for nominations to this contest, Globe blogger Andrew Steele wrote the following to me:

Belinda crossing the floor and that confidence vote perfectly summarizes the knifes-edge reality of minority government that has become the dominant storyline of aughts political coverage. Process over result. Personality over policy. The Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff dancing on a speaker at the after party.

And the knife’s edge had never been narrower. As soon as a media blackout on Gomery Inquiry testimony was lifted, what had been tantalizingly described as “explosive” allegations were made public, and the opposition parties made it fairly clear they’d had enough.

Now, this was before people realized you could just prorogue the House if you were chickenshit scared of a confidence vote, so the Liberals postponed opposition days and Paul Martin went on TV and talked about his father. Paul cut a deal with Jack Layton who was in one of his “results for people” moods, thinking “Yeah, corruption is awful, and they wasted taxpayer dollars, but for a billion dollars, I’ll keep them alive. It’s what Ed Broadbent would want.”.

With a "too close to call" vote looming, Scott Brison stood up in the House every day saying “let Judge Gomery do his work” while the opposition heckled and screamed. The government lost a confidence vote, but it wasn’t really a confidence vote. Parliament was shut down. Either way, a vote was inevitable and everyone started doing the math and quickly realized that, holy crap, the fate of the government was in the hands of a few independents, among them Carolyn Parrish and David Kilgour. Ouch.

Then, in what may have been the single biggest jaw dropper of the decade, Belinda Stronach became a Liberal. Remember, this was before David Emerson and Wajid Khan (KHAAAAAAAAAN!) – it was a big deal. This was a woman who had helped bring about the Conservative Party merger just 18 months earlier. She was seen as a future Tory leader (by herself). And, oh yeah, she was dating Peter MacKay. Talk about a bad breakup.

So this changed the math, and it soon became fairly obvious that the fate of the government would come down to a maverick MP who was dying of cancer. The media pestered him. The Conservatives did some stuff which I won’t go into because, well, everyone who has gone into it has wound up getting sued.

So on May 19th, 2005, Chuck Cadman stood up, wearing jeans and chewing gum, and calmly forced a tie. Peter Miliken then, in a moment all young boys who hope to one day grow up and become speaker of the House of Commons dream of, got to cast a tie-breaking vote, to save the government.

It didn’t end there, because that set off the whole Gurmant Grewal fiasco which, if nothing else, allowed Tim Murphy to utter what is probably the quote of the decade, calling the Liberal Party “a warm and comfy mat with lots of fur on it”.

So, in he end, the Liberals survived. But, as Paul Wells’ book made clear, that survival likely gave the Conservatives the time they needed to ensure victory 8 months later.

So this moment left its mark. And when it comes to sheer popcorn politics, it was about as good as it gets.

Moment of the Decade: #7 The 2006 Federal Election

If you missed it, I asked readers to nominate, then vote, on Canada's top political moment of the decade. Over the next two weeks, I'll be counting down the top 10 vote getters.



For about two weeks, everyone who liked politics started talking in staccato: “There’s no mayonnaise. On my sandwich. No mayonnaise. In Canada. I’m not making this up. I’m not allowed to make this up.” I went to a model parliament the weekend after the election and there were 12 "soldiers in our streets" jokes during the first 5 minutes of our mock question period.

But, for all the flack surrounding it, I think the commercials that really made a difference were “Change” and “Entitlements”, shown below:



The first (which I can’t find a video for anywhere) was released at a time when things seemed to be going well for the Liberals. They were up by 5 or 6 points in most polls (and a dozen points in most Ekos polls). Yes, there had been the beer and popcorn gaffe. But Harper had released his entire platform and it hadn’t exactly lit the world on fire.

But the signs were all there. Sure, people said they’d vote Liberal, but Stephen Harper had caught up to Paul Martin on the best PM question, and voters paying attention to politics were flocking to the Tories. People were ready for change after 13 years, and the ad played on those feelings.

The second ad was released the first day after the Christmas holidays, right after the Income Trust investigation had been announced. It played on the corruption theme perfectly and, having already announced a relatively unscary platform, Harper was now free to go neg.

From there, the Liberal campaign went into free fall. No matter how perfectly clear Paul Martin made himself, the media decided Liberal policy wasn’t quite as exciting as the Liberal mole and sagging poll numbers. John Duffy and Mike Duffy went at it on air before the debate. (Imagine that! A Liberal strategist daring to question the journalistic integrity of Mike Duffy.) Later that night, Paul Martin launched his often-ridiculed notwithstanding clause hail mary. Not that it really mattered, since everyone was busy talking about the aforementioned soldiers ad.

So it looked for a while like Harper might get that majority, but the man has always been kind of like BJ Ryan when it comes to closing the game. So he complained about the liberal civil service, judiciary, and senate. This was back when the “Stephen Harper Bogah Bogah!” tactic still had some resonance, so he was denied the landslide many had expected.

Despite those late stumbles, it was still a beautifully run campaign by Harper, and the election I would use as a case study if I were ever teaching a first year Poli Sci class.

Sure, there were gaffes and the income trust wild card, but I don’t think those made a difference. Rather, the Tories understood the mood of the electorate and played on it. They controlled the agenda from day 1 – getting ugly issues out of the way early, then rolling out daily policy announcements early each morning to control the day's media cycle. This served as an early inoculation against the hidden agenda attack, allowing them to go for the jugular on the corruption issue after Christmas. They had popular policies and could tell voters how those policies would impact their lives.

They were well prepared but willing to adjust and call the occasional audible – when Martin challenged Duceppe to a national unity debate then backed down, Harper volunteered to fill in. When Harper moved from challenger to front runner for the second round of debates, he changed his tone accordingly.

It may not have been the most exciting, the most shocking, or the most important election in our nation’s history (I’m sure Paul Martin would disagree). But it was far more memorable than the 2000, 2004, or 2008 campaigns, which failed to crack the top 10 of this list. And it’s not hard to argue that the change from Liberal to Conservative government was the defining political moment of the decade.

Moments of the Decade: #10 Paul Martin is Quit-Fired

If you missed it, I asked readers to nominate, then vote, on Canada's top political moment of the decade. Over the next two weeks, I'll be counting down the top 10 vote getters.



You wouldn’t expect a Cabinet Shuffle to make the top 10, but this was the culmination of a bitter feud that had defined the Liberal Party for a generation. Hell, even today, Liberals can’t agree on whether Paul Martin quit, or was fired.

So, in the interests of Liberal unity, it’s likely best to say: "Jean Chretien and Paul Martin ran against each other for leadership in 1990 and, yada yada yada, John Manley was named Finance Minister a dozen years later."

No one will ever really be able to agree on what happened during those yada yadas. Did the kids really think they were shouting “fondue”? What exactly happened at the Regal Constelation? Did Chretien do a third term out of spite? Would Martin have forced him out in a leadership review? Were the campaign finance rules a giant F U from Chretien to his successor?

None at that really matters because, through the beauty of politics, one of the biggest political feuds in Canada's history would simultaneously be the most successful PM-Finance Minister partnership this country has ever seen. Go figure.

That’s not to say it wasn’t ugly. The Liberal Party spent a dozen years eating itself alive, and the scars of this fight would be felt throughout the decade. It was the political version of the Jets and Sharks. In the words of Stephen Colbert – “we’re at war, pick a side”. I joined the Liberal Party my first year of University as a naïve kid who liked politics, and quickly had to decide which half of the party I would hate and which half I would go to war for. It was like that everywhere. In Alberta, you couldn’t get membership forms to sign up new Liberals if you didn’t support the right guy. Because, after all, the worst thing that could happen to the Liberal Party in Alberta would be getting more card carrying members.

And while it’s true this feud may have been more about the 90s than the 00s, the over-arching political story of the aughts was the fall of the Liberals and the rise of Stephen Harper. And Martin leaving Cabinet was the first domino in a series of events that would define the decade.

Later that year, the next domino – Chretien announcing his long goodbye – fell. That pushed over the CPC merger domino. And the Chretien-forced-out-early-leaving-Adscam-on-Martin’s-lap domino. Which hit the Mad-As-Hell domino, and the ’04 election domino and, well, you get the picture. The feud forced a lot of big names out of politics – Allan Rock, John Manley, Sheila Copps – changing the dynamics of the next two Liberal leadership races and the shape of the political decade that was.

On June 2nd, 2002, the first domino was pushed over. Or pulled itself down, depending on your perspective.

Hello Newman

Far be it for me to disagree with a respected historian like Peter C. Newman but…I’m going to disagree with Peter C. Newman.

In Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Newman explains his theory of how Liberals choose their leaders:

If history doesn't exactly repeat itself, it sets significant patterns, such as the astonishing fact that the carpetbagging Mr. Ignatieff, after an absence from Canada for 30 years, finds himself after the briefest of apprenticeships in contention for the country's top political post.

Curiously, this has been the rule, not the exception. All of the Liberal leaders who became prime minister during the six decades between the 1920s and 1980s were also carpetbaggers - in the sense that they wrested the leadership from the party's veteran worthies, who were shoved aside for the newcomers.

Newman goes on to explain how Liberal leaders – from King to Martin, have fit into this outsider mould. And, at first glance, he does have a certain point. Like Ignatieff, St. Laurent, Pearson, and Trudeau were all recruited into politics and none of them were what you would call "typical" politicians. And in the case of Trudeau, like King, Newman's characterization of them wrestling the crown away from the “party’s veteran worthies” is certainly apt.

However, St. Laurent and Pearson were about as establishment as you can get. St. Laurent had 7 years in Cabinet before winning the party’s leadership in 1948, while Pearson had a decade as a Cabinet Minister before being anointed a decade later. These were not newcomers on the scene – rather, they’d been groomed as leaders-in-waiting for years.

Where Newman’s theory really hits pot holes though, is in recent times. Although he admits that Dion was a break from the pattern, he takes great pains to portray Turner, Chretien, and Martin as outsiders due to their brief breaks outside of the party (or, in Martin’s case, outside of Cabinet) before taking on the leadership. Yet all three were the embodiment of “veteran worthies” – lifelong Liberals, forever viewed as the party dauphin, who had 50 years in Ottawa between them prior to winning their respective leadership races. A few years at a Toronto law firm or on the party backbenches doesn’t change that in the least.

I also question how distinctly "Liberal" this leadership philosophy is. Stephen Harper and Newman's buddy Brian Mulroney were political outsiders when they inherited the Tory crown, while Kim Campbell and Joe Clark had only been MPs for four years when they took over. Sifting through the dust-bin of Tory leaders, you’ll also find that party’s habit of selecting provincial politicians over established Ottawa veterans.

But let’s put all that aside, and let Newman explain why this strategy has been successful:

All this hocus-pocus has been political sorcery of the highest order because instead of having to defend their predecessors' records, each freshly minted leader could innocently protest, "Who, me? I wasn't even there ..."

Again, portraying Louis St. Laurent as an agent of change after the King years seems like a bit of a stretch. And, hell, when you’re in power for 22 consecutive years and are considered the natural governing party, defending your predecessor’s record isn’t that hard to do. Yes, Paul Martin did try the “I wasn’t even there” line a few times, but that didn’t turn out so hot for him, now did it?

So, what’s the moral of all this? Ignatieff may mark a bit of a return to the party’s habit of recruiting from outside of its own ranks, but there’s no “secret Liberal recipe” to finding a good leader.

The League of Below Average Prime Ministers Endorses Green Shift

Kinda:

The report calls for a $30-a-tonne price tag on emissions, and says a "staggering" investment in green technologies is required.

The document has been signed by four former prime ministers, Joe Clark and Kim Campbell, both Progressive Conservatives, and Liberals Paul Martin and John Turner.

[...]

The report stops short of endorsing the Liberals' Green Shift carbon plan, which would offset a tax on emissions with income tax cuts, but Roy said funds generated by an emissions tax must be redistributed to those who would be hit the hardest.

Random News

1) Andrew Coyne is waging one heck of a crusade against the Tory budget and I must say - give me a sword! When this guys picks an issue to feel passionate about, you do not want him against you.

-Tuesday's Column

-Wednesday's Column

-And a link to Jack Mintz's critique of the ever expanding tax code. Next year: tax rebates on dental floss!


2. Stockwell Day is in trouble again...


3. More reports on the new era of peace between provinces and the federal government.


4. The opposition parties pass Paul Martin's private members bill on the Kelowna Accord which the Tories plan to ignore. Of note, Brian Mulroney has spoken out in favour of the bill.


5. John Ivison has a good article on the potential of the Tories converting to Kyoto. He opens with a brilliant line: "The suggestion from this week’s budget is, if there was a sizeable voting population of Vikings in the country, he'd offer up a few villages in Newfoundland to plunder."


6. On the flip side, the Liberals are now not only backing Harper's crime bill, but trying to fast track it.


7. I'll leave the comments to those in Ontario, but Dalton McGuinty has brought in a pre-election budget of his own.

Bart's Books - The Way it Works

I just finished up Eddie Goldenberg’s behind the scenes look at life in the PMO – The Way it Works. For those not wanting to read the full review, I’d sum it up by saying it’s the kind of book a die hard political hack would enjoy but, unlike something like Paul Wells’ book, it’d be a pretty dull read for anyone with only a passing interest in politics.

Let’s start with what’s not covered in the book. There’s not much on Eddie Goldenberg’s personal life since, unlike Bill Clinton, he hasn’t earned the right to tack on 200 pages about his childhood. There are only three words on the Kyoto Accord, so you won’t get any more insight on Goldenberg’s latest machinations on the subject. There’s next to nothing on election campaigns as the book really does try to limit it’s scope to life in the PMO. And, at that, it is successful at giving a behind the scenes glimpse of the way it works. Goldenberg describes the decision making process for several major (and minor) decisions, giving a recap of the balancing between policy and politics which go into all of them. He’s quite blunt about having to consider the political ramifications about all decisions, just as he’s up front that certain appointments are nothing more than patronage. He also makes several references to the pork barreling desires of MPs with what he calls PIMBY (Please in my backyard).

Because of admissions like this, the book deserves to be taken a bit more seriously than, say, Sheila Copps' book. Goldenberg does admit that Chretien wasn't infallible, calling the GST reversal “a big mistake that would affect his credibility as PM”. At the same time, the understandable bias is still there and the book certainly paints JC in the most favourable light possible. Also receiving heaps of praise is Stephane Dion, which is a little surprising given that the book was released in the midst of a leadership race where Eddie was helping out Bob Rae. Dion is described as being like a son to Chretien and was one of the few ministers invited out to Harrington Lake with Jean.

Receiving quite a bit less praise than Dion was, of course, Paul Martin. Goldenberg doesn’t go out of his way to smear Martin at all, but he does get a few subtle digs in here and there (“very, very important”). He also claims that Martin opposed Meech purely for political reasons and that Tim Murphy once told him that “Paul’s people didn’t think it would be good for [Martin] to be associated publicly with anything in Trudeau’s memory”. Despite these less than flattering anecdotes, Goldenberg goes to great lengths to praise Martin’s work as Finance Minister and the good working relationship Paul had with his boss. And when describing things like the Martin/Tobin broadband battle during the 2002 budget, you really do get the sense that he isn’t taking sides.

As I said in the beginning, there are a few behind the scenes stories which political junkies will appreciate. Goldenberg recaps several meetings with George Bush, and tells of how Lucien Bouchard spent his entire meeting with Bill Clinton asking advice about private schools rather than talking about Quebec separatism. There are also a few surprises here and there in the book, such as the revelation that Ralph Klein was one of the federal government’s biggest allies during the 2000 Health negotiations. And I know I got a kick out of guessing who the cryptically described politicians in Goldenberg’s less than flattering stories are (for example, the “Toronto MP and future Paul Martin Cabinet Minister”).

Probably the most interesting thing about the book is to see what Goldenberg considers to be Chretien’s greatest achievements. And given the amount of ink he spills on different subjects, it’s clear to me that he sees the innovation agenda, the Clarity Act, the economic recovery, and, maybe above all else, the decision to stay out of the Iraq war, as the most significant accomplishments of Chretien’s decade in power.