by Paul Martin
It was in this atmosphere that Johanna Leffler, one of my advisers at Finance, who had also become a good friend, remarked to me that if I were serious about the party leadership, I would have to leave the government: “You cannot challenge Jean Chrétien when you are sitting in his cabinet.” My reply was that I had no intention to challenge the prime minister, only to organize to succeed him. The events of the coming months would take care of this little difference of opinion.
It was soon after my discussion with Johanna, on May 30, that Jean Chrétien arrived in an obviously agitated state at an unusual Thursday-morning meeting of cabinet. He said that the race to succeed him was getting out of hand: it was destabilizing the government. “I want this all to stop,” he said. “No more organizing. No more fundraising.” It was a stunning suggestion, absurd really. He had given the go-ahead for the race to begin, and now that Allan Rock, John Manley, Sheila Copps, and I were out organizing, he was trying to call a sudden halt. I had no intention of doing that. The loss of momentum and the blow to morale would have been huge and possibly irreparable. I had a clear lead on my rivals, and a precipitous halt would have hurt me more than anyone else.
Those who worked for me at Finance would all tell you that I was never very good at briefing them after cabinet meetings. I went back to my office that day and returned to my work. A few hours later, Tim Murphy came in and said, “What the hell happened at cabinet today?” I realized that I had goofed, leaving my staff unprepared for the fallout.
“How do you know about it?” I asked. Tim told me that the Chrétien people were spinning all over town that he had walked into cabinet and stared me down.
“The hell he did,” I said. It was only at that moment that I realized that Jean Chrétien had launched a full-scale attack.
Whether it was a well-planned attack is another matter. Some of those around me were certain that it was. I am not so sure. The night before the fateful cabinet meeting, a couple of MPs who supported me had met with some union leaders to discuss the leadership. During that discussion, I was later told, there was some talk about how my supporters would cope with Denis Coderre and Martin Cauchon, cabinet ministers who were strong Chrétien supporters in Quebec. As I understand it, word got back to the prime minister a few minutes before cabinet that I was “trying to take them out.” This was all idle talk — of which there was an abundance at the time — but it obviously sparked a reaction from Jean Chrétien, who heard it before I did.
Planned or not, we had clearly entered a new world. I had a speech the next morning in Hamilton and was flying there that night. As I was sitting in my hotel room preparing for the speech to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Tim Murphy came by and told me that the PMO wanted changes to my text.
The political drama between the prime minister and me was unfolding against the backdrop of a policy dispute that had intensified as our relations deteriorated. I had grown increasingly concerned that as a nation we had neglected the importance of our cities. To a degree, this was a constitutional issue. Because the cities are entities created by the provinces, the federal government does not have a direct constitutional relationship with them; and although their work can often have the most immediate effect on the most basic elements of our lives, they have a limited tax base. A city may invest in an industrial park to create jobs, for example. It will need to provide sewers and roads to the new businesses. Some of the people travelling to their new jobs will need enhanced bus service, and their co-workers who drive will put additional stress on existing municipal roads. Out of all this, the federal and provincial governments reap additional personal and corporate income taxes. But the city gets only a modest bump in property tax revenues. It bears the largest costs, in other words, yet the municipality receives the smallest tax harvest of any of the orders of government.
These arrangements were fine in 1867. However, I believed we now had to come up with creative ways around the constitutional barriers. After all, Canada is an increasingly urban nation. The cities are the setting for some of our biggest issues, whether it is immigration, mass transit, schools, or violent crime. The cities are also the throbbing commercial centres at the heart of globalized trade. As I have said many times, Canada may compete with China or Japan, but the tougher competition is between Toronto and Vancouver on our side of the Pacific and Shanghai and Tokyo on the other.
At the time, the Toronto Star had started to campaign for a federal focus on Canada’s biggest cities — mirroring my own thoughts, though my goal was broader — to include all municipal governments and not just those of our biggest cities. Urbanization was producing gridlock in downtown Toronto, but at the same time it was making it difficult for smaller centres to keep their hospitals open as population declined. We thought hard about what a New Deal might entail, and we developed some ideas about giving municipalities a broader and more stable tax base, appropriate to their responsibilities.
We also began to kick around ways of bringing municipal leaders more directly into national debates. After all, did the mayors of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal not have at least an equal need to discuss immigration and mass transit as the premiers of smaller provinces where those issues did not loom so large? Did the mayors of Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and Edmonton not have just as much reason to speak to Aboriginal issues as their premiers? It should be said as well that it is not just the large metropolitan centres that need to be considered in this context. Canada’s smaller centres and rural communities face their own challenges as the large urban centres grow in wealth and population.
Not everyone in Ottawa was enamoured with this line of thinking, and not just because it was liable to cost money. At a political level, there was the memory of the Department of Urban Affairs, created under Pierre Trudeau, which had been an irritant for the provincial governments, who saw it as an intrusion into their jurisdiction. When I used the phrase “New Deal” in a speech to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in Ottawa, the Toronto Star pumped it into a headline, which was fine by me, but which created tension with the PMO, where the inclination was to leave well enough alone. But for me the need for a national municipal policy was indisputable. The question was not whether, but when. So I decided that I would outline more specifics when I addressed the next meeting of the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, coming up in Hamilton.
Francie Ducros, the prime minister’s director of communications, had shown increasing interest in my Hamilton speech even before the cabinet showdown with the prime minister. Now out of the blue, word came to me through Tim Murphy that the PMO wanted to take the unprecedented step of censoring parts of my speech. Jean Chrétien and I had had differences on many subjects over the years, but the PMO had never arrogated this role. “I am not changing a word,” I told Tim. “This has never happened before and to hell with them.” I delivered my speech on Friday morning precisely as I had planned.
Meanwhile, trouble was looming over another speech that I was scheduled to deliver that night. Tony Dionisio, Toronto leader of the Labourers International Union who supported Brian Tobin’s leadership bid until he withdrew from the race earlier in the year, had invited me to speak to a gathering in Toronto. We started getting word that the prime minister wanted me to cancel that appearance and attend a speech he had decided to give, also in Toronto, to the Ontario wing of the federal Liberal Party. I have long had a practice of never cancelling a speaking engagement at the last minute except in the most extreme cases. I told my staff to tell the PMO that I would not cancel my plans, which had been in the works for weeks.
You can’t be in competition with the prime minister, was the message I received indirectly from David Smith — one of the few Chrétien strategists who was still trying to keep channels open. The word, as it reached me, was that I needed to introduce the prime minister and pledge my loyalty.
I said, “Wait a minute. Are all the candidates being asked for an oath of fealty? If not, why should I?”
I did agree to co
me and make an introduction, however, but only if they could change the timing, since it conflicted directly with my earlier commitment. That was not on, either.
Chrétien’s people made sure that the media knew all about this dispute. Naturally, there was a large posse of reporters who showed up for my speech “loaded for bear.” When the time came for the scrum, I said that I was going to “consider my options.” It may seem naive, but this whole thing had exploded from nowhere in just two days. I genuinely did want to consider my options, and was going to do it on my own time.
That weekend, Eddie Goldenberg phoned me at the farm and asked me point-blank to make a declaration to the media that I intended to stay in the government. I said that I could not do that because I was still mulling over the options. Eddie told me that I had to phone the prime minister then. I said that if the prime minister wanted to discuss this, he should call me. He did not. Eddie and I had several conversations, but no one was budging. Finally, on Sunday morning, Sheila and I drove into Montreal, and it was there, that afternoon, that I took a call from the prime minister. We spoke only briefly before he handed the phone to Eddie. Eddie said he had drafted a letter of resignation for my signature explaining my reasons for quitting and stating that it was by mutual agreement. But I wasn’t interested. There was no mutual agreement. I knew that I was almost certainly going but did not say so on the phone. I wanted to resign on my own terms the next morning. Terrie phoned David Dodge at the Bank of Canada to reassure him that I would make an announcement of my decision before the markets opened on Monday.
Toward the end of the afternoon, Sheila and I got in the car to drive back to Ottawa. As I drove, I leaned over and switched on CBC Radio to listen to Cross Country Checkup. That’s where we heard that John Manley was being sworn in as finance minister.
And that’s how I “got quit.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Next Level
“Getting quit” turned out to be more liberating than I had anticipated. It enabled me to talk about my own policies more freely — though not, as I explain below, as freely as I would have liked. I could, however, now organize for the leadership without restriction. That in turn meant that Jean Chrétien had to lift the ban on campaigning for all the potential candidates. He could hardly have me outside the cabinet campaigning at full tilt while preventing his preferred successors inside the cabinet, such as Allan Rock, John Manley, and Sheila Copps — anyone but me, in other words — from doing the same.
It was by this time indisputable that the party and the caucus did not want to face another election under the same leadership. The same was true of the public: the prime minister had even signalled his intention to step down before the next election during the 2000 election campaign. What was infuriating about Jean Chrétien’s posture in this period was that notwithstanding those strong signals, he began to talk tough in public — “I’m the little guy from Shawinigan. No one’s going to push me around.”
I will admit that this got me going. I don’t look for a fight, but if somebody wants one, they are going to get one. I think this goes back to a very basic decision when you get into politics. You need to understand that politics can be a rough game at times. If you aren’t prepared for that, best to take up another line of work.
Meanwhile, there was a parallel track behind the scenes. Shortly after the 2000 election, Dennis Dawson phoned me to say that he had been summoned for a chat with Jean Pelletier. Pelletier had suggested that the party’s biennial meeting, at which there would be an automatic leadership review, and which would normally occur in March 2002, should be delayed by a year. In this scenario, the biennial meeting, when it eventually did occur, could easily be converted into a leadership convention to replace Jean Chrétien. According to Pelletier, this would avoid forcing the party through a divisive leadership review process, when the prime minister was planning to step down eventually anyway. Pelletier apparently recognized that the prime minister was unlikely to achieve the level of support he needed to survive a review.
Taking this into account, after some negotiation as to precise dates, my supporters on the national executive, who formed a majority, agreed to delay the meeting until February 2003.
In the weeks after my departure from cabinet, there was a warm gust of support for me from the party and the public. I went on a national speaking tour, attracted significant crowds, and had an enthusiastic reception everywhere I went. Anne McLellan, at this time a senior minister in the Chrétien government, introduced me when I attended the Calgary Stampede. A number of ministers discreetly contacted me to reconfirm their desire that I be the next leader. I received many calls from long-time party members whom I knew, and some of the people associated with me, such as David Herle, Karl Littler, and Michele Cadario, were flooded with offers of support. Yet none of this in itself meant much so long as the prime minister was dug in.
What set the cat among the pigeons, however, was a feature in the Hill Times, an Ottawa publication popular with the media and political insiders. The Hill Times published a list of MPs who supported me alongside a list of those supporting Jean Chrétien. Since my list was considerably longer, the PMO applied pressure on MPs to switch their names into his column, which a number of them did. Some of my closest associates still in cabinet, such as Ralph Goodale and Anne McLellan, were told to make sure their names were on the Chrétien list as well. Eventually the lists pulled into a virtual draw.
As sometimes happens in politics, however, a modest success can lead to an overreaching mistake. The caucus was scheduled to have its annual summer retreat in Chicoutimi in August. A few days before the meeting, Don Boudria and Martin Cauchon announced with some fanfare a list of ninety-four MPs who, they said, had pledged their support for the prime minister in a future leadership review — just more than half the caucus. This time, however, some MPs began stating publicly that their names should not be on that list. Pretty soon the total was tumbling well below 50 per cent. It was a tactical blunder on the part of the Chrétien camp, and was read by the media as a sign that the party had reached a “tipping point.”
From the time I “got quit,” we had all expected the Chicoutimi caucus meeting to mark a crucial turn in the road for Jean Chrétien’s leadership. Still, perhaps I was more relaxed about the event than I should have been. After arriving at Chicoutimi, I headed out for a caucus golf game. I ignored Jim Pimblett’s caution that I should not do my pre-game stretches in sight of the press photographers. The result was that the next morning every paper in the country featured a truly awful picture of yours truly. To this day, the photo is still occasionally resurrected from the archives. I’ve often wondered if I could sue the photographer for libel; probably not, since I’m told truth is a valid defence in such circumstances.
Shortly after arriving in Chicoutimi himself, the prime minister gave an aggressive speech attacking some of the ideas I had been publicly proposing to reform Parliament and give MPs more clout — seemingly a signal that he planned to take no prisoners during the caucus. The next day, as I entered the caucus room, Richard Wackid from the party whip’s office handed me an envelope, which I stuck in my back pocket without opening. So when the prime minister gave his address to caucus, his declaration came as a surprise. He sought to buy himself some more time as prime minister by offering to resign in February 2004 — a full year later than the biennial, which had been scheduled at his request for February 2003, just six months away. Later, when I checked the envelope, I discovered that it contained a note signed by the prime minister saying that he was planning to make an announcement about his future.
As I sat in the back of the room, I was besieged by caucus supporters offering me conflicting advice. Some felt that this was another manoeuvre that would inevitably be followed by yet another after that, with Jean Chrétien determined not to go until he had destroyed my chances of succeeding him. They urged me to insist that the party should go ahead with its established timetable, with a biennial early the next
year in which there would be a leadership review. Others took the view that as unsatisfactory as it might seem, Jean Chrétien’s pledge offered a path to our goal without further strain to the party. I shared this latter view.
In order to make my intentions known, I needed to figure out an appropriate place. Some of the other potential leadership contenders held “scrums” with the media outside the caucus room, but I have never liked the chaos of scrums and did not think that it would be sensible that day for me, as potentially the next prime minister, to react in that kind of forum. Brian Guest approached the prime minister’s staff to see whether I could use the microphone that had been set up for the prime minister to hold his press conference, but they refused. So there was a scramble to find a hotel room with the proper audio hookup for the media. All of this took far too long and so when I came out, paid a brief tribute to the prime minister, made my statement, and then left without taking any questions, it was a bit of an anti-climax — or so the assembled reporters obviously felt. My brief remarks conveyed what I wanted, however: that I would accept the prime minister’s timetable to avert further damage to the party.
Fifteen months passed from the Chicoutimi caucus meeting till the leadership convention, which was scheduled, after a bruising fight by the party executive, for November 2003. For me, it was very different from the leadership race of 1990. This time, instead of being the underdog, I was the favourite. This time, instead of having to put together an organization from duct tape and binding twine, the challenge was to make room for newcomers in an organization already bursting with talent.
It was well known that I had a large group of intensely committed supporters that had been nicknamed “The Board” by my longtime personal assistant, Thérèse Horvath. Thérèse had been in Pierre Trudeau’s PMO, where she worked very closely with Jim Coutts. Later on she became Raymond Garneau’s assistant. When he was defeated in 1988, my first act was to commiserate with him. My second was to ask if I could hire Thérèse. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. She has been with me ever since, and I could not function without her. Her ability to deal with people is extraordinary. In opposition, in the minister’s office, in the Prime Minister’s Office, or out of office dealing with Africa and the wide range of Aboriginal issues that involve me now, she has the knack of making everyone feel special, a knack that has turned night into day for me on too many occasions to count.
