The As It Happens Files

by Mary Lou Finlay

Some politicians are so afraid of their own mouths—so wedded to the script—that they probably wouldn’t sound natural talking to their own mothers, in which case we didn’t particularly want to talk to them.

  Speaking of programmed responses always makes me think of one of the earliest interviews of my career, when I was co-hosting a daily TV show in Ottawa called Four for the Road. Our brief was to roam around Ottawa and the Ottawa Valley, from Pembroke to Hawkesbury and Kapuskasing to Smiths Falls, looking for people and stories. The show was broadcast live from the studio two or three days a week, and we taped the other shows from the field, using a remote studio—basically, a control room in a truck.

  One day I was scheduled to talk to a chef—call him Etienne Lebrun—who had made a name for himself in a little country restaurant north of the city. Our bilingual researcher, always happy to have an opportunity to practise her French, did the whole pre-interview with M. Lebrun in his native language. One of the questions she forgot to ask him was whether he could, in fact, speak English. As it turned out, he could not, and the interview went something like this:

  ML: So M. Lebrun, you’ve made quite a reputation for yourself up here. What makes your cooking so appealing?

  EL: Vell, ve haf verry good, very fresh food. Our terrine de faisan is excellent.

  ML: And what brought you to this part of the world?

  EL: [pause] Our terrine de faisan is excellent.

  ML: It is indeed. We’ve just sampled it. Very, very good. But you did not study here, did you? Where did you learn to cook?

  EL: [another pause] Also, our confit de canard Sarladais veet aubergine farcie…

  And so it went until, mercifully, my allotted eight minutes were up. Since that time, whenever I’ve overheard a researcher practising his French or Spanish or Russian on a prospective interview subject, I’ve made sure to lean over and whisper, “Please be sure they understand that the interview will be in English before you book them.”

  A corollary of that might be, “Make sure the guest’s English is good enough to be understood by someone listening to the interview on a car radio in traffic or in the kitchen with three kids yelling.” Listening to someone talking on the radio on a cellphone from the other side of the world can be taxing enough without throwing an impenetrable accent into the mix.

  But getting back to politics … In my experience, the people who were hardest to pry loose from their prepared media responses were often, I’m sorry to say, female Members of Parliament. I think it must have stemmed from a lack of confidence. Talking to some of them in public was like trying to have a conversation with a slot machine. No matter what you asked them, you’d get one of the pre-scripted responses or “talking points” that their media advisors had prepared for them.

  That said, there’s no shortage of male public figures who are careful to a fault, and there are plenty of women who are far from shrinking violets: Conservative Senators Pat Carney and Elsie Wayne come to mind, as well as former Liberal MP Sheila Copps and the straight-shooting Deborah Grey. Grey, an Alberta woman who suited up in leather and rode around the capital on a Honda Goldwing, made a name for herself as the country’s first Reform Party MP, and went on to become Deputy Leader and Acting Leader of the Reform Party and its various successors and incarnations before retiring in 2005. She once brought a pig into the House of Commons to protest against a Liberal motion to increase MPs’ salaries. In his recent memoir, My Years as Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien says he regarded Grey as a “feisty and effective opponent,” and he had a lot of admiration for her.

  Three of the four women I’ve just mentioned hail from the west or the far east of the country (Newfoundland), so maybe it’s where you grow up that determines whether you’ll be frank and outspoken or careful and timid. Pat Carney certainly falls into the former category. Once I made the mistake on air of appearing to treat the Canada-U.S. salmon wars too lightly—I think I referred to them as “the fish thing”—and Senator Carney went ballistic. Or pretended to. As a veteran pol, she knew how to exploit a situation to her advantage, and she got the attention she wanted for what was, admittedly, a very serious issue in her constituency. Steaming or not, Carney was always good value on the air, and I enjoyed talking to her.

  Of course, it’s not hard to figure out why people in the public eye are afraid to speak frankly. In an age of instant, universal communication, to say nothing of political correctness, you have to walk on eggshells sometimes in order not to end up with egg on your face. The smallest slip might spell the end of your public career; adversaries will take your words out of context and beat you up with them, and the media will be howling with glee.

  We can’t help it; scandal and controversy are as mother’s milk to us. Which brings us back to the Conservative Party’s forerunner (and successor), the Alliance. Not surprisingly, Stockwell Day’s style eventually spawned a revolt from within his own party led by, among others, Chuck Strahl and our old friend Deb Grey. For a while, the eight renegades called themselves the Independent Alliance Caucus (IAC). Then they became the Democratic Representative Caucus (DRC), which formed a coalition with the old Progressive Conservative Party (PC) to become the PC-DRC.

  And again Talkback wanted to help out with the naming of the new (breakaway) party:

  More CRAP

  The Block Stock—or BS—Party

  The Dissident Original Reformers in Segregation—or DORIS—Party

  Eight Days in the Stock-ade

  The Regressive Conservatives

  The Day-nouement Party

  The Annual Party (You just assign a number to it, so

  it might be the Fourth Annual Party one year and

  the Fifth Annual Party the next year.)

  A Giggle (“since all of the Alliance are a laughing Stock”)

  Rebels without a Clause

  Eight-Point Stock Plunge

  Chuck and the Day-Breakers

  Octa-gone

  A Rabble of Rebels

  Day’s End

  By this time, people inside Stockwell Day’s party were suing each other. As It Happens, May 17, 2001:

  Barbara Budd: It was a typical day in the life of the Canadian Alliance: members of the Leader’s office threatened to sue an Alliance MP; the new Communications Director resigned; and the divisions within the party grew even deeper. A lawyer representing Day’s Communications Office demanded an apology from Chuck Strahl, who they say defamed them when he talked about “dishonest communications” coming from the Day office. We reached the former Communications Director, Ezra Levant, in Ottawa.

  ML: Hello, Mr. Levant.

  EL: Hi, Mary Lou.

  ML: Did you resign or were you fired?

  EL: I resigned. I offered my resignation voluntarily.

  ML: Under what circumstances?

  EL: Well, I think it was becoming apparent to me that my forceful style of politics—an aggressive, loyal style—was becoming at odds with the new stance of reconciliation and diplomacy that is required to have harmonious relations between the Leader and the caucus. In other words, I was starting to get between Stock Day and the MPs, and that’s totally not what I wanted to do. So out of loyalty to Stock and the party, I said, “If I’m getting between you and the MPs, if I’m rubbing them the wrong way because I’m such a loyalist, let me pull myself out of the equation.” And so I did.

  ML: Was there any discussion of this letter that you sent to Chuck Strahl?

  EL: Ah, that was, uh—

  ML: A catalyst?

  EL:—a very minor matter in the whole scheme of things. Essentially, as you know well, the past few weeks and even months have been very challenging for our party. There’s been a lot of internecine bickering—it’s been unfortunate—and my approach through this time has been a forceful and aggressive one, and this letter to Chuck Strahl was just one example of that.

  So I guess my answer is, “Sort of. Yeah.”

  ML: So you wrote this letter—

  EL: No.

&nb
sp; ML: What?

  EL: My lawyer did.

  ML: Okay—and you and three other people signed it, threatening legal action against Chuck Strahl if he didn’t apologize for talking about dishonest communications. Have I got that right?

  EL: Pretty much right. Again, we didn’t sign the letter; it was signed by our lawyer. It’s a typical demand letter, basically saying to Chuck, “You said something that was false and defamatory, so please apologize and retract.” I actually spoke to Mr. Strahl personally earlier in the day, and I sent him a personal note, asking him the same thing. As you saw, he refused to.

  And you know what, it’s just unacceptable for a man of Mr. Strahl’s stature to go on national TV and make a slur like that, and I believe it was in my interest and in the interest of my shop here—the communications shop—to let Mr. Strahl know that you simply can’t go around and defame people.

  ML: Same problem Mr. Day had with the Quebec judge, I think.

  EL: Well, I’d say it’s more analogous to the Goddard matter; here’s a case where Mr. Strahl was asked to apologize politely, privately, in advance. Instead, out of pride, Mr. Strahl dug in his heels. He doesn’t want to admit that he was wrong. So if he’s digging in, I’m afraid he’s going to have to face the consequences, and it’s a shame that just as Mr. Strahl’s little party’s getting started, it’s embroiled in his own Goddard-style defamation fiasco.

  ML: So you’re going ahead with this.

  EL: Of course.

  ML: Did you show the letter to Mr. Day?

  EL: No.

  ML: You didn’t think he should know?

  EL: I had gone through other procedures here, you know, in the office. Mr. Day’s a busy man. We do hundreds of things a day through our office and not all of them are cleared by the Leader.

  ML: Mr. Day, apparently, has seen it now. Did you have a conversation about it subsequently, when it came to light publicly? You leaked it to the paper, right?

  EL: Yeah, only in the most glancing way. You’re emphasizing this letter as the reason for my resignation. It’s only part of a larger picture—my aggressive approach to defending Stockwell Day—

  ML: I’m also interested in what Mr. Day’s reaction was to the letter, though.

  EL: Well, this morning when I met with Mr. Day, the subject of the letter—I mentioned it only in passing when I offered him my resignation. I basically started the discussion with Mr. Day: “Stock, I’m here to help you and the party. I think, given my style and the current situation, since I’m a bit of a pit-bull and you need someone who’s a bit more of a diplomat, I’m going to offer you my resignation and my best wishes.”

  ML: Did he try to talk you out of it?

  EL: He reluctantly accepted.

  ML: Given that people who have been complaining these past few weeks about the Leader’s office, given that much of what they say relates to how the Leader consults or doesn’t consult with them, do you think that you’ve been the problem?

  EL: You know, until a couple of weeks ago, the Alliance was actually doing pretty well in the polls; we were still in the 20 percent range. Only when we saw Chuck Strahl’s Hamlet shtick—“Oh, what do I do?”—day after day after day…

  The damage being done to the party has been done by this “loyal band.”

  ML: And not at all by you or Stockwell Day.

  EL: Well, because it has turned into a civil war, there’s been shooting back and forth. But my point is, a modern, professional, disciplined, mature political party keeps that sort of stuff behind closed doors of caucus.

  And the other kind of political party is what makes our day—so to speak. The Quebec judge reference, by the way, had to do with Stockwell Day’s having criticized a judge in the Shawinigate case, thus leaving himself open to either another lawsuit or a contempt of court charge.

  Ah, Shawinigate! Another juicy story about shenanigans in politics, but too complicated to go into here. Enough to say that the story is set in a hotel next to a golf course in Shawinigan, Quebec, Jean Chrétien’s old riding, and the characters include a Prime Minister, a bank President and a convicted felon from Belgium.

  Canadian politics boring? Pshaw.

  There was, in time, another leadership race in Stockwell Day’s party, which Day lost to Stephen Harper, causing the DRC to break away from the PC-DRC coalition and rejoin the Alliance. Shortly afterwards, the PCs replaced their Leader, Joe Clark, with Peter MacKay, who won a hotly contested leadership race by promising never, ever, ever to join up with the Canadian Alliance—and promptly did just that. They jettisoned the word “progressive,” and the newly reunited Tories became known simply as the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC—or is that the Communist Party of Canada?). And that’s the story so far except that a rump of the old Progressive Conservative Party, consisting of members who didn’t want anything to do with the merger, went to court to try to have it declared null and void. They lost.

  Another thing that’s fun to watch in Canadian politics is all the switching of partners. Not talking about sexual partnerships here—though, goodness knows, there’s enough of that to keep the rumour mills grinding—but about the individuals who for reasons high and low and sometimes rather obscure decide to leave the Liberals and join the Conservatives, or leave the Conservatives and join the Liberals. By sheer coincidence, the switcher often lands a plum job in his new party—a Cabinet post, say—but he makes it clear to everyone that his switch was a matter of conscience.

  Switching allegiance is nothing new, of course. People throughout history have found it expedient at some point—or rather a matter of conscience—to change party affiliations, Winston Churchill being a notable example. And the practice was not unknown in Canada before now. Pierre Trudeau’s politics were closer to the NDP’s than to the Liberals’ before he joined the Liberal Cabinet of Lester Pearson and then became, himself, the Liberal PM. Lucien Bouchard was sympathetic to Quebec’s separation before he was appointed Canada’s Ambassador to Paris by Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Then Mr. Bouchard became a Conservative Cabinet Minister, which was just before he became Leader of the separatist Bloc Québécois, which he co-founded. Jean Charest was the PC Leader in Ottawa before becoming Liberal Premier in Quebec.

  But hard as it was to keep track before, the practice seems to be gaining momentum. There were several Alliance MPs who switched to the Liberals when Stephen Harper beat them in the leadership race. Stephen Harper himself once worked for a Progressive Conservative MP, and before that he belonged to a Liberal student club. In the 2006 election, a Liberal candidate in British Columbia who romped to victory while portraying the Conservatives as scurrilous rats more or less found soon afterwards that he’d been sadly mistaken and what he’d meant was that the Conservatives were fine people and he’d be honoured to join them and fill a Cabinet position in the new Conservative government.

  Much of the fun seems to have gone out of federal politics for the moment, in part because Prime Minister Harper is a rather humourless and careful man and keeps his ministers on a short leash lest they do or say something embarrassing. There was a funny moment, though, when Gilles Duceppe, Leader of the separatist Bloc Québécois (the party that sits in the Parliament of the country it’s sworn to break up), announced that he was stepping down as BQ Leader so as to run for the leadership of the PQ, or Parti Québécois (that’s the Quebec provincial separatist party for those of you from away), but changed his mind before the print was dry on the newspaper headlines. I can’t remember what reason he gave, but the pundits said that when Duceppe realized he wasn’t a shoo-in as PQ Leader, he decided to keep the job he had, along with its very handsome salary and pension, rather than risk getting the old heave-ho from Quebec voters. The man he’d thought to replace, by the way, was a young gay guy who had openly admitted to sniffing coke in his youth, which in his case, happened to be while he was already in government—none of which deterred the Parti Québécois from choosing him as their Leader. But when he lost an election,
the party decided to turf him.

  So it’s not as though there’s no more humour to be found in the halls of power, and we all know it’s just a matter of time before Tory lips start flapping again on the Hill, whether the PM likes it or not. But I think the main reason we are not so amused these days by our Honourable Members is that Canada today is a country at war. The shadow of Afghanistan—Canadian lives lost, our young men and women maimed, the agony of the Afghans themselves—means that we cannot view the political scene with an altogether light heart. Now the stakes are high, it is a matter of life and death and we really must hope and pray that our government and public servants—and all of us—are up to the new challenges we face. The war has its roots, as far as Canada’s concerned anyway, in that second day that will live in infamy—the day we usually refer to simply as 9/11. And what a hell of a shock that was.

  FOURTEEN

  Millennium Madness

  Radio that asks, Why 2K?

  Does anyone remember how the world was going to end when the calendar turned over to January 1, 2000? “Y2K” was the term we adopted for the problem, which had to do with computers and how they weren’t programmed, many of them, to recognize any date past 1999 and so would probably go into a big snit, the way computers do, and crash all over the place, ending Western civilization as we knew it. That didn’t happen, whether because we put about a million IT guys on the case and updated all the critical software or because it didn’t pose that much of a threat in the first place. At any rate, we got past the witching hour of midnight without a catastrophe, and lots of people had a grand party to usher in the new millennium.

  Some people pointed out that January 1, 2000, wasn’t actually the beginning of the new millennium, only the beginning of the last year of the old millennium, and we should wait a year to ring in the new era, but numbers have a magic all their own, and that fresh-looking 2000 was not to be denied recognition. The way I think of the change is that the old millennium ended with one of the best stories I’ve ever covered, and the new one started with the worst story—both of them in the U.S. I’m referring to the presidential election of November 2000 and the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001.