Brian Mulroney is back

By John Geddes - Monday, January 21, 2013 at 5:00 AM - 0 Comments

Fred Lum/CP

His large, impressive head swims into view, as he makes his unhurried way through the luncheon crowd assembling outside the hall of a Fredericton conference centre. That jaw line, which once seemed cut from granite, now looks more moulded from clay. Even with its edges softened by age, though, you would know the profile anywhere. His silver-grey hair is immaculate. The rich hue and perfect drape of his blue suit set him apart—no offence to the menswear purveyors of the New Brunswick capital—from the local businessmen and provincial politicians pressing in to shake his hand, share an old campaign anecdote, and maybe pose for a photo. But what really triggers the memories, good and bad, is his voice. Its bass notes don’t so much cut through as rumble beneath the conversational din. The plummy laugh penetrates to every corner.

And Brian Mulroney has been laughing a lot lately. His one-day, mid-November visit to Fredericton—where he delivered a speech at the lunch, met privately with the provincial government’s cabinet, and spoke to students at St. Thomas University before a reception at its Brian Mulroney Hall—was typical of his extraordinary 2012. At 73, Mulroney spent the year being feted on the 25th anniversary of his Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, consulted on Quebec by the Prime Minister, who once shunned him, and even being called “a classy individual” by Justin Trudeau. Can it really be less than three years since Justice Jeffrey J. Oliphant’s commission of inquiry found that Mulroney behaved “inappropriately” in taking envelopes containing hundreds of thousands in secret cash payments from a certain German-Canadian arms lobbyist? Continue…

The Governor General and the Prime Minister

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 12, 2013 at 12:29 PM - 0 Comments

An anonymous government official explains why the Governor General wasn’t in the room for yesterday’s meeting between the Prime Minister and First Nations leaders.

Harper’s team did finally instruct the Governor General to hold a ceremonial meeting Friday evening at Rideau Hall. But there was no question of involving Johnston directly in the meetings themselves.

“Our real bottom line was that it couldn’t be the same meeting because that line can’t get blurred,” said the official. “We’re the ones responsible here, we’re the ones that can act and have to act. Not the Governor General. There’s nothing he can do constitutionally, so we didn’t want to give that impression.”

Here again is Emmett Macfarlane’s analysis of the demand that the Governor General be present.

A vice-regal compromise?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 10, 2013 at 12:02 PM - 0 Comments

With the Manitoba chiefs having just announced that they will not attend tomorrow’s meeting unless the Governor General is present, the Prime Minister’s Office sends out a statement.

The Prime Minister has asked the Governor General to host a ceremonial meeting with First Nations leaders at Rideau Hall following the working meeting on Friday afternoon, and the Governor General has accepted.

And Rideau Hall confirms.

“His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, has accepted to host a ceremonial meeting at Rideau Hall on Friday, January 11, 2013 at 6:30 p.m., where First Nations leaders will be welcomed following the working meeting with the Prime Minister and Government officials.”

The new Stephen Harper, safer than the old Harper

By Paul Wells - Monday, January 7, 2013 at 8:55 AM - 0 Comments

Mike Sturk/Reuters

So, Stephen Harper, what would you do if a brutal Middle Eastern dictator used chemical weapons against his own people?

“To be blunt about it, any military intervention in this part of the world, any talk of that, should be undertaken with great caution,” the Prime Minister told Global News anchor Dawna Friesen in a year-end interview. “There are enormous dangers here, enormous risks.”

The Prime Minister’s year-end interviews are always worth close reading. Partly because he gives few interviews. Partly because those interviews, widely spaced, show how his thinking changes as circumstances do. This year the changes are stark.

The part I’ve just quoted came when Friesen asked Harper about the possibility that Bashar al-Assad might use chemical weapons against Syrian opponents of his regime. Continue…

8 unlikely jobs held by future prime ministers

By Blog of Lists - Tuesday, December 11, 2012 at 9:27 AM - 0 Comments

Before they assumed the highest office in the country, these eight individuals held an unusual array of jobs:

1. Robert Borden, teenage classics teacher: Canada’s eighth prime minister studied Greek and Latin from a young age. When he was 14, the classics teacher at his private day school, near his home in Nova Scotia, abruptly left
for another posting and Borden was promoted from student to “assistant master” in charge of classical studies.

2. Jean Chrétien, black market chocolatier: While attending school at St. Joseph Seminary in Trois-Rivières, Que., Chrétien earned spending money by peddling illicit chocolate bars to fellow pupils. A friend on the outside bought the bars wholesale, and Chrétien sold them at a steep markup, hiding the goods from the authorities in the lining of his red raincoat. Continue…

The 5 longest-serving Opposition leaders who never became prime minister

By Blog of Lists - Monday, December 10, 2012 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments

Opposition leader Robert Stanfield. (Ted Grant/CP)

1. Robert Stanfield (Nov. 6, 1967– Feb. 21, 1976): The former Nova Scotia premier lost three elections to Pierre Trudeau between 1968 and 1974. In 1972, his Tories were three seats short of toppling the Liberals, but it was not to be.

2. George Alexander Drew (Oct. 2, 1948–Nov. 1, 1954 and Feb. 1, 1955–Aug. 1, 1956): A former Ontario premier and mayor of Guelph, Ont., Drew left provincial politics in 1948 to lead the Progres- sive Conservatives in Ottawa. He left politics for good after two election defeats and later served as the first chancellor of the University of Guelph.

3. Edward Blake (May 4, 1880– June 2, 1887): The founder of one of Toronto’s most prominent law firms, Blake served as premier of Ontario before entering federal politics. He lost elections as federal Liberal leader in 1882 and 1887. He later went on to serve in the British House of Commons as an Irish Nationalist.

4. John Bracken (June 11, 1945– July 20, 1948): Trained as an agricultural scientist, Bracken served five terms as the premier of Manitoba. Recruited to lead the Progressive Conservatives in Ottawa in 1942, he was elected to Parliament in 1945 before losing the party leadership to George Drew in 1948. He lost his own seat in the general election of 1949.

5. Preston Manning (June 2, 1997–March 26, 2000): The founder and first leader of the Reform party, Manning took over as leader of the official Opposition after the federal election of 1997. He lost the post to Stockwell Day in 2000 after the formation of the new Alliance party.

Sources: Parliament of Canada; Canadian Parliamentary Guide

Have you ever wondered which cities have the most bars, smokers, absentee workers and people searching for love? What about how Canada compares to the world in terms of the size of its military, the size of our houses and the number of cars we own? The answers to all those questions, and many more, can be found in the first ever Maclean’s Book of Lists.

Buy your copy of the Maclean’s Book of Lists at the newsstand or order online now.

Trudeau’s big leap—like father, like son

By Peter C. Newman - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

Fred Chartrand/CP

Justin Trudeau’s expected move into contention for the Liberal crown revives memories of a half-century ago, sitting around a polished table in a refurbished farmhouse near Ottawa, when I was part of a small knot of media junkies quaffing sangria and talking politics. This was in 1968, when it was his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, about to hurl himself into the political snakepit, who was the topic of intense speculation.

There is a disconnect between the storied political campaign of the intellectual gunslinger who put us on the map with his macho pirouettes and devil-may-care gestures, and his eldest son, whose entry owes more to boxing than thinking outside the box. One vague link occurs. The year that the senior Trudeau was crowned coincided with Ben Tre, the Vietnamese city that the Americans, then at war, had to “destroy to save it.” Unless Justin as leader applies some harsh medicine to the remnants of the Liberal party, he will end up like Ben Mulroney, hosting entertainment shows. (Already the politician, Justin invited Ben to his wedding to glamorous CTV talk show correspondent Sophie Grégoire.)

A high school teacher when he wore a cropped version of a Johnny Depp beard, Justin reached out to the country only once before, at his father’s funeral: voicing the most poignant of the elegies, ending his prayer with the heart-rending, “Je t’aime, papa.” Prayers will come in handy should he be charged with rescuing the Liberals, who haven’t been the country’s Natural Governing Party since Noah launched his ark, or so it seems. The state of the Grits in the past decade adds up to an act of supreme self-immolation. They have lost every power base they once commanded: Quebec, the Maritimes, rural Ontario and Toronto. Their record in the past four elections, as they spiralled toward political purgatory, was to lose an average of 30 seats at a time in the past four elections. The downward momentum increased in the last election, when they gave up 43 constituencies, including that of the enigmatic Michael Ignatieff, the party’s previous instant messiah. The best brain of his generation he may have been, but without any discernable focus, he became the Titanic of his party and hasn’t surfaced since.

Continue…

Why Harper wants to take on the world

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 234 Comments

SEAN KILPATRICK/CP

“When I have something to say, I’ll tell you,” Stephen Harper said at one of his first news conferences as Prime Minister in 2006. Very well then. What has he been telling us since he won a majority on May 2?

In two important speeches and an interview with my boss at this magazine, Harper has given important hints, and left open important questions, about his plans for the country. A surprising amount of what he’s said has to do with foreign policy.

I don’t want to overstate this. In two speeches to Conservative partisans, at the party’s Ottawa convention on June 10, and again at the Calgary Stampede on July 9, Harper spoke first about more familiar subjects: his party’s electoral success and the economy. But Canada’s place in the world has grown as a theme until these days foreign policy is one of Harper’s big applause lines. He clearly sees it as a way to sharpen the contrast between his party and its opponents, to Conservatives’ advantage.

Continue…

The reserve power

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 9:38 AM - 15 Comments

Earlier this year, Nicholas MacDonald and James Bowden argued that the Governor General has no discretion to refuse a request to prorogue Parliament. In the latest issue of Canadian Parliamentary Review, Peter Russell counters.

On that question, it is my view, and it is a view that I believe is shared by a great many constitutional scholars, that “in this democratic age, the head of state or her representative should reject a prime minister’s advice only when doing so is necessary to protect parliamentary democracy.” Those words of mine are quoted, with what I take to be approval, by MacDonald and Bowden in their article. The justification for the convention is to ensure that parliamentary government is democratic and not controlled by an hereditary head of state or her representative. It follows that if a prime minister’s advice seems seriously adverse to the functioning of parliamentary democracy, it should not be followed. An authoritarian prime minister might be as much a threat to parliamentary democracy as an authoritarian sovereign.

Canada's best prime ministers

By Norman Hillmer and Stephen Azzi - Friday, June 10, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 62 Comments

CP; Chuck Mitchell/CP

Stephen Harper has his majority government. The Liberal party is in tatters, and the Bloc Québécois is devastated. The NDP, inexperienced in the limelight and leaning to the left, is a reliable target. No one now doubts the Prime Minister’s capacity for raw politics, or his staying power.

Harper is one of a select few Canadian leaders to have won three consecutive federal elections. When his current term ends, he will have been in office longer than many past titans, including Brian Mulroney, John Diefenbaker, and Lester Pearson.

All that remains, and it is a great deal, is to discover what Harper will make of his new lease on parliamentary life, and what history will make of him. To set a benchmark, we’ve undertaken Maclean’s second rankings survey on Canadian prime ministers, to determine the greats, near greats, and also-rans, as well as the ingredients of success and the reasons for failure.

Continue…

The damage done by doing so little

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, January 28, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 152 Comments

Photograph by Ian Barrett

Most of our prime ministers have been scoundrels: the successful ones, almost exclusively. They say Arthur Meighen was quite a stand-up guy. Alexander Mackenzie, the same. Possibly John Turner or Kim Campbell or Joe Clark might have proved brave and principled leaders, given time. But that’s the thing: they weren’t given time, dispatched instead at the first opportunity by their more unscrupulous rivals. Whether of necessity or simply tradition, in Canadian politics, nice guys really do finish last.

So if the past five years seem a peculiarly ugly, depressing episode in our nation’s political history, it is not because Stephen Harper is unusually unencumbered by principle. Rather, it is the absence of compensating achievement that distinguishes his tenure—if by achievement you mean something more than simply holding onto power. Scoundrels our past prime ministers may have been, but scoundrels with a purpose. Harper’s record, by contrast, is rare in its combination of longevity and vapidity. Seldom has a government lasted so long that did so little.

WATCH COYNE V. WELLS ON FIVE YEARS OF HARPER (VIDEO)

Let us dispense at the outset with some of the more common critiques. It is not true, as the Liberals claim, that the Harper years have been marked by an unending decline in living standards and rising unemployment—or, to the extent either is true, that a massive worldwide recession could be laid at the feet of the government of Canada. To the contrary, the recession here has been notably less severe than in virtually any other developed country, which if you follow the Liberals’ logic should be accounted to the government’s credit.

Continue…

The founding fathers?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Robert Baldwin (left) and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine brought a new approach to government in Canada; John Wycliffe Lowes/ June Forbes McCormack/Archives

It is on page three that John Ralston Saul’s new book might first shock its readers. There, in the midst of describing a riot that clogged the streets of Montreal on an April afternoon in 1849, Ralston Saul describes Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine as “the first real prime minister of a democratic Canada.” John A. Macdonald does not turn up for another 178 pages.

With all due respect to John A., the story of LaFontaine and his kindred spirit Robert Baldwin—set out in the latest instalment of the Penguin Extraordinary Canadians series edited by Ralston Saul—is about how we got to 1867. It is about how two complicated and burdened men brought Canada to responsible government. “If you got [George-Étienne] Cartier and Macdonald on the phone and said, ‘Okay, how do you explain Canada?,’ they’d say, ‘Oh, it’s really, really easy, LaFontaine and Baldwin.’ Their idea was LaFontaine and Baldwin’s idea,” says Ralston Saul. “It’s a technical, constitutional, boring detail as to how many votes and how you get a majority. Of course, in politics, you have to worry about these things. But that’s not what it was about. It was actually about a different kind of relationship between peoples, between religions, between languages. A different approach toward the public good, non-violence and so on.”

Indeed, in lavish detail, Ralston Saul revives not only Canada and Canadian life at the moment of this new beginning, but these two men as they found their respective ways as individuals and allies. It is a dramatic time, but it is amid the tumult that much of what has come to define Canada—much of how we define ourselves—was established. As Ralston Saul writes, “The ongoing dramas of Canada—positive and negative—were shaped and energized as if in perpetuity by these two men and their great friendship.”

Continue…

Ichiro Ozawa: 'Wily, Machiavellian, amoral'

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Japan, it seems, it set to dump its prime minister. You’d be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu. If scandal-tainted power broker Ichiro Ozawa knocks off Naoto Kan in a challenge for the leadership of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) on Sept. 14, he’ll become the country’s third leader in 12 months. Kan has been in office for all of 90 days. His predecessor, Yukio Hatoyama, who decamped, as he explained, because a “little bird” told him it was time, lasted less than nine months. Indeed, Japan has seen six leaders in four years, its spin-cycle politics spitting out new prime ministers with frightening speed.

“Although I am unworthy, I have decided to run in the leadership election,” Ozawa said last month, announcing his intent. Few pundits disagree. “He’s a wily, Machiavellian, amoral player—and he knows where all the bodies are hidden,” says former Canadian ambassador to Japan Joseph Caron. Three months ago, the 68-year-old veteran power broker was forced out as the DPJ’s secretary-general, the party’s No. 2 position, because of his links to a campaign funding scandal for which he may still face indictment.

Continue…

We get the feeling you’re tuning out, Steve

By Scott Feschuk - Saturday, August 14, 2010 at 2:17 PM - 0 Comments

Dear Steve,

We’re just going to come right out and ask. Are you bored with being Prime Minister? Are you bored with us? After four years, it feels as though the magic is gone from our relationship. You seem about as interested in your job as John Baird is in nuance.

We don’t communicate like we used to, that’s for sure. Despite the turbulent times, you haven’t delivered a major speech to us since the first week of March—and the content of that address, to mark the return of Parliament, could be reduced to two words: “Olympians? Yay!” How are we supposed to understand what you want, or know what you believe in, or remember what you look like?

Continue…

As to the situation of Richard Fadden

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 5:25 PM - 0 Comments

After an announcement in Waterloo this afternoon, the Prime Minister managed to get through a brief session with reporters without a single question about the director of our national spy agency. Nonetheless, I had previously filed a couple questions, via e-mail, with the Prime Minister’s Office:

1. “Does the Prime Minister feel that Richard Fadden has violated the CSIS Act?”
2. “Does the Prime Minister still have confidence in Richard Fadden as the director of CSIS?”

And now, some responses. Continue…

Waiting for a leader

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 10, 2010 at 12:11 PM - 44 Comments

We pause from our usual polling moratorium, to consider the current federal leadership standings according to Nanos.

As you may know, Michael Ignatieff is the leader of the federal Liberal Party, Stephen Harper is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Jack Layton is the leader of the federal NDP, Gilles Duceppe is leader of the Bloc Quebecois and Elizabeth May is the leader of the federal Green Party. Of the following individuals, who do you think would make the best Prime Minister?

Stephen Harper: 29.5%
Michael Ignatieff: 17.3%
Jack Layton: 15.6%
Gilles Duceppe: 6.3%
Elizabeth May: 5.5%
None of them: 11.3%
Unsure: 14.5%

The peace of this kingdom

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:51 PM - 64 Comments

Brian Topp makes the case for the import of last week’s House vote on prorogation.

This is how Parliamentary and democratic conventions are made in our parliamentary system. A clear statement by the House, after a clear abuse. The House has spoken, and the Crown and its counsellors must now so govern themselves, except at their peril.

In future, a Prime Minister who advises the Governor-General to padlock our Parliament in order to avoid accountability on a great public issue (as opposed to a routine proceeding) is in violation of a direct order from Canada’s only legitimate and elected democratic body — the House of Commons.

In future, a Governor-General who accepts such advice is therefore inviting a wide debate about the future utility of her office — which would also raise fundamental issues about the future of the Crown in Canada.

The will of the House

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 5:54 PM - 15 Comments

The NDP’s motion calling for a limit on prorogation has just now passed the House by a 139-135 vote.

Over then to the constitutional scholars to debate what this meaning, its precise significance undefined, one supposes, until some Prime Minister dares test it.

The secret to electoral success: Jetpacks!

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 9 Comments

Sometimes you’ve got to feel for Stephen Harper. Consider his changing-the-national-anthem fiasco: the guy finally takes a shot at appealing to women and what does he get? Glares, insults and mockery. It’s his high school Sadie Hawkins dance all over again.

But Harper brought it on himself. The Prime Minister set aside two long months to “recalibrate” his agenda and still he failed to embrace the word that would ignite his electoral prospects—the one word that would rally the people of Canada to his cause and assure him of the majority he so desperately seeks.

Jetpacks.

Do the math, people. For years now, the PM has been mired in the mid-30s in polls. But political scientists unanimously agree that pledging to commit our nation’s resources to the development of a National Jetpack Program would win the votes of 100 per cent of Canadian men who are me.

Continue…

This Week: Good news/Bad news

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

A week in the life of Yulia Tymoshenko
The prime minister of Ukraine, Tymoshenko is set to face Viktor Yanukovych in second-round
voting for the country’s presidency, expected to be held next month. Tymoshenko was a leader of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, the popular uprising against Yanukovych in the aftermath of the country’s 2004 presidential election. While Tymoshenko blamed Russian interference back then, she is now seen as being in favour of closer ties with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Correct punishment
A Canadian man who conspired to commit mass murder in the name of Islam has been handed the harshest punishment possible: life behind bars. The judge who delivered the sentence said it best: “It is difficult to put into words Zakaria Amara’s degree of responsibility. He was the leader and directing mind of a plot that would have resulted in the most horrific crime Canada has ever seen.” The confessed ringleader of the “Toronto 18”—a man obsessed with detonating truck bombs—was hoping for a 20-year term, which, with credit for time served, may have put him back on the streets by the end of the decade. But the life sentence ensures Amara will remain in prison until the day he dies, or the day the National Parole Board decides he is no longer a threat to fellow Canadians. We hope that’s a very, very long way off.

Continue…

'It is time … for Parliament to be restored to its position as the ultimate sovereign body for Canada'

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 9:35 AM - 57 Comments

The Globe editorial board calls for reform.

It is time the rules governing prorogation changed. Canada’s Parliament has shown itself vulnerable to an excessive concentration of power, and hence is hampered in fulfilling its role as the “ultimate sovereign body.” The prorogation of 2008 has now been followed by another, this time simply for partisan tactical convenience. The Prime Minister is misusing the power to shut down Parliament, and in the process destabilizing Canada’s democracy. For that reason, prorogation should be made subject to legislative controls.

How to go about this (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 4:29 PM - 31 Comments

Spoke to Ned Franks just now. Here’s the essential gist of our conversation.

Q: So if the NDP comes in and says, just lays out legislation that says, essentially, the Prime Minister cannot prorogue Parliament without a majority vote of the House of Commons, a majority of members, that effectively limits, from that points forward the Prime Minister can’t prorogue Parliament without a majority vote of the House of Commons?

A: Well, they wouldn’t say it that way. What they would say is the Prime Minister cannot advise the Governor General to prorogue Parliament unless a motion to that effect has been passed in the House of Commons. So it’s limiting the Prime Minister’s power to advise rather than the Governor General’s discretion … It would leave the Governor General open to prorogue without the advice of the Prime Minister.

Q: I thought it would require some sort of constitutional wrangling.

A: The Conservatives might argue that Parliament cannot legislate limiting the Crown’s discretion and reserve powers, but Parliament isn’t as long as it’s limiting the Prime Minister’s powers to advise. Advice within the meaning of the constitutional meaning of advice to the Governor General.

When the going gets tough (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 9:36 AM - 27 Comments

Talk of proroguing Parliament may not be grounded in fact, but it is apparently grounded in the advice the Prime Minister is receiving from his advisors.

MPs are not due to come back to Parliament until Jan. 25. One scenario under consideration by Harper’s inner circle would be for the prime minister to prorogue Parliament a few days before that, have MPs return to Ottawa as planned on Jan. 25, and then quickly roll out a speech from the throne followed by the presentation of the 2010 federal budget — all before the Winter Olympics get underway in Vancouver on Feb. 12.

Still, if he does choose to prorogue, Harper would open up himself to some other potential political problems, primarily because prorogation has some similar effects to a general election: it would kill 40 pieces of government legislation — including the government’s own tough new bills on consumer product safety and on harsher sentences for drug traffickers — and it would disband parliamentary committees.

Fixing the system

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 1:29 PM - 59 Comments

Starting with the premise that last December’s proroguing of Parliament was “entirely inappropriate, democratically illegitimate and improper,” Brian Topp uses the last installment of his coalition series to suggest two changes.

First, the House of Commons could and should legislate to direct the prime minister to never provide advice to the Governor-General that interferes with the functioning of the House when a confidence motion is before it. This would hopefully make it more difficult for a prime minister to avoid democratic accountability to the House of Commons through a politically illegitimate and improper use of the Royal prerogative.

Second, the House of Commons could (and I think should) legislate that confidence votes must come in one of two forms. Option A: the government is defeated and an election is called. Or option B: the government is defeated and immediately replaced, at that moment, by a new one, specified by the House of Commons in its confidence vote. Subject of course to final approval by Her Majesty, as represented by our Governor-General, who in these circumstances will hopefully be more attentive to the views of the House of Commons.