Hell or High Water

by Paul Martin

  It was clear that the public had no interest in an election so soon after the last. I mentioned in an earlier chapter that I had pledged in a televised address to call an election within thirty days of the final report from the Gomery inquiry, which was intended to make clear to the public that they would eventually get their chance to pass judgment on the sponsorship affair at the ballot box in an orderly way. But we had no illusions that if the opposition succeeded in forcing an earlier election that this would hurt them beyond the first week of the campaign. Jean Chrétien had twice called elections earlier than tradition would dictate. In the spring of 1997, he called an election while southern Manitoba was in the midst of an unprecedented flood, and our candidates there spent as much time in boats on flood relief as they did on the hustings. In both 1997 and 2000, the government was criticized in the media, by the Opposition, and to a degree by the public for going to the polls early. But in the end no one chooses a government on the basis of when the election is called, and the issue of election timing always quickly subsides.

  By April 2005, between the NDP and ourselves, we had 151 seats in total; the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois had 153; and there were three independents. With such a delicate balance, every vote counted. In this context, we couldn’t help but be intrigued when we got hints and soundings from Conservative MPs, which had begun almost as soon as the 2004 election count had finished, that they might be willing to leave their party. Word would reach us that so-and-so might be willing to “retire” if this or that attractive job opened up in his or her home province, or to cross the floor if there was a cabinet post. We weren’t dealing, and those wisps usually disappeared in the next puff of wind.

  On Friday of the second week of May, however, I received some startling news. Tim Murphy told me that he had received a phone call late the previous night from former Ontario premier David Peterson. David had been at an event that night and had been speaking to Belinda Stronach, who was a Conservative MP. David had tracked Tim down through the PMO switchboard long after even my burn-the-candle-at-both-ends staff had left their desks. Belinda had told David that she was unhappy with the direction in which Stephen Harper was taking the party, as well as his dismissive attitude toward those with other ideas, such as herself and Peter MacKay. She told him that Harper consulted only his personal inner circle and that members of caucus and other party leaders had almost no role to play. David told Tim he thought she might be open to crossing the floor. Tim suggested that David keep the conversation alive, but he was skeptical. So skeptical that he did not inform me of the conversation.

  The next day, however, David phoned Tim and said that Belinda was serious. David felt strongly she was an able individual who would bring a great deal to the government. Then Tim phoned me. My first reaction was that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance she would actually cross the floor. Still, Belinda Stronach would be a stunning political catch. She represented an important socially progressive strain within the conservative movement in Canada. She was, in a sense, the embodiment of a significant slice of the “progressive conservative” electorate, representing many women who were troubled by Harper’s leadership. She had been a leader of industry and a recent candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Although she was a virtual rookie in politics, she had quickly established herself as a high-impact player, both here in Canada and abroad. And she carried with her one badly needed vote in the House of Commons.

  David reported from his conversation that she was considering three options: quitting politics, sitting as an independent, or crossing the floor to us. She did not feel the government should be defeated on the budget vote, and she was very much interested in continuing to play a political role. It seemed obvious to me that if she did cross the floor, it would be sensible to have her in cabinet, given her business and political background, her stature in the country, and her symbolic importance in the contest with the Conservatives. Tim remained skeptical, but both of us were getting interested. With more trepidation than hope, we gave David Peterson our okay to pursue the discussion.

  Among ourselves, we began discussing the possibility of appointing Belinda minister of human resources. Some time earlier, I had asked the indefatigable and supremely competent Lucienne Robillard to occupy that job temporarily, in addition to her ongoing responsibility for intergovernmental affairs. Belinda’s business background gave her experience with issues of skills training that were central to the portfolio. We decided that neither Tim nor I would speak directly to her or even send signals indirectly about entering cabinet, until she had declared her firm intention to cross the floor. Tim arranged through David to meet Belinda at the Château Laurier on Monday afternoon at 4 p.m., on the condition that she would make that commitment. Tim, David, and Scott Reid attended for our part, and Belinda came with her adviser, Mark Entwistle. Once she said she was prepared to join the Liberal caucus, Tim told her I wanted to appoint her minister of human resources with responsibilities for democratic renewal, and would do so when her decision would be made public the next day. Scott and Mark Entwistle were there to work out the details of the press conference. Tim was very insistent that Belinda not talk with Harper, Brian Mulroney, or Bill Davis, as she wanted to do that day. He was concerned that the news would leak out, and also that they might succeed in dissuading her. Tim extended my invitation to Belinda (and to David) to dine with me at 24 Sussex that evening.

  Over dinner, Belinda talked at length about her frustrations with Harper’s leadership, both on specific issues such a same-sex marriage and more generally on his narrowly ideological approach to politics. When I asked her whether she had spoken directly to Harper about her intention to cross the floor, she said that she had not. She planned to tell him shortly before the announcement the next morning. No problem with that, I thought.

  Then I asked her whether she had discussed this with Peter MacKay, with whom she was personally involved at the time. “Well, I am going now to tell Peter,” she said. And at that point, I said to myself, Uh-oh.

  As we dined at 24 Sussex, Karl Littler was having dinner with Martha Hall Findlay, the Liberal candidate who had lost to Belinda in 2004 by the narrowest of margins, and who hoped to run again in the riding. Karl was under instructions not to say anything to her until he got the word from Tim that the deal had been sealed, leaving Martha a bit mystified, no doubt, why Karl had been so anxious to dine with her that night and yet seemingly had nothing much of substance to say. Finally, as their dinner was nearing its end, he got a call from Tim, and had the tough task of breaking the news. As she has subsequently shown in many ways, Martha is a woman of great quality, with a real future in the party. She was taken aback, as anyone would be by this very difficult news, but she accepted it with dignity.

  The arrangement for the next morning was that Tim and Scott would meet with Belinda and Mark Entwistle at 7 a.m. at the Château Laurier to iron out last-minute details. I would pick Belinda up at the side door of the hotel fifteen minutes before the press conference. When Tim and Scott arrived for their meeting, only Mark was there. According to him, Belinda was having second thoughts. Understandably, perhaps, after having worked out all the logistics, she was beginning to deal with the emotional weight of her decision. Tim sent a BlackBerry message to John Webster, one of the few others who knew what was happening, saying, “She has cold feet.” Webster’s reply was brief: “Rub them.” Mark Entwistle disappeared for a time and returned with the news that it was back on.

  Still, when I got to the side door of the Château at the appointed time, Belinda was not there waiting for me. Five minutes passed. Then ten minutes. Long enough for me to wonder whether Peter MacKay had succeeded in dissuading her after all. In my mind’s eye, I could see the media gathering at the national press theatre a few blocks away, and I began to think about how to explain the fact that I was a no-show, if that turned out to be the case. And then Belinda appeared. She and Peter MacKay had had a long talk, but she had made up her mind. Ha
rper, on the other hand, had received the news without emotion when she called him, and had made no attempt to dissuade her.

  It was such a stunner, stepping out of the car and walking into the national press theatre with Belinda Stronach at my side, I cannot deny feeling a childlike delight in the sheer element of surprise. At the news conference, I overplayed my hand a bit, saying that the significance of Belinda’s defection was not the vote she carried with her from the Tory benches, which triggered a wave of laughter from reporters, and I couldn’t help joining in just a little. What I guess I meant to say was that Belinda was much more than just an ordinary Tory MP — she was a political star. And something else that should have been obvious to the media: even with Belinda on board, we still did not have the numbers to win the confidence vote.

  Of course, Belinda Stronach was accused of cynicism for her decision to cross the floor. This is nonsense, if you think seriously about her situation. The political as well as personal differences she had with Harper were well known. Moreover, she might have set herself up for the shortest-ever period in government, since at the time she made her decision, no one knew whether the government would survive even a matter of days. Winning re-election in her riding in these circumstances — with a Liberal riding association that had just run a campaign against her the year before — was by no means a forgone conclusion. As for the sexist and often sexual slurs she suffered at the hands of some of her former colleagues and some people in the press, they did not deserve to be dignified with a reply, and Belinda did not do so. But they must have hurt. The decision she made was a courageous one.

  Even with Belinda on board, we needed several more votes to survive the confidence motion. Carolyn Parrish had stated publicly that she had not been elected to bring the government down, and would vote with us. Kilgour was against us. So the fate of the government hinged on Chuck Cadman.

  Although we had sat across the aisle from each other in the House of Commons since 1993, I barely knew him. Cadman was a unique character in Parliament. He was a former professional musician and electronic technician who had been propelled into politics by the murder of his sixteen-year-old son in 1992 and his determination to change the criminal laws. He was elected from Surrey, British Columbia, in 1993 as a Reformer, and later sat as a member of the Canadian Alliance, but he was unlike his colleagues in many respects. He often wore his hair in a long ponytail — a reminder of the days when he was a professional guitarist, sometimes backing up the Guess Who. Because he came to politics very briefly before entering Parliament, he did not necessarily share every element of the Reform/Alliance ideology. He was his own man and someone you had to respect. In 2004 he lost the Conservative Party nomination to a well-organized opponent, but ran as an independent and won. About the same time he was diagnosed with a fatal form of skin cancer, and was often absent from the House of Commons to receive therapy.

  Ujjal Dosanjh, who was minister of health at the time, knew Cadman well, and arranged for the three of us to meet. Cadman decided to come to Ottawa a few days before the confidence vote so that he would be well rested on the critical day. We met with him and his wife, Dona, at their apartment. He never asked for anything, and I never offered anything.

  Visibly frail, he was at a stage of his life when it took some physical courage even to show up for the vote. Everyone would have understood had he stayed home. Still, he was also under enormous pressure from his erstwhile colleagues and friends in the Conservative caucus — some elements of which have only begun to dribble out over time. He told me his personal view was that the government should not be defeated, but that he felt bound to respect the wishes of his constituents, whatever they were. There were a number of straw polls in the riding suggesting that people there did not want an election, and then a more scientific poll that reinforced that impression. Still, Chuck Cadman kept his own counsel and so, on the day of the non-confidence motion, May 19, 2005, we were hopeful but uncertain about how he would vote.

  When he rose in the House, a little unsteadily, to support the government, it was a moment of great drama and dignity — and more than a little relief for us. With Cadman’s vote, it was a tie, broken by the vote of the Speaker, Peter Milliken, according to tradition, in the government’s favour. Cadman later explained that he supported the budget because his constituents felt an election was unnecessary at the time. Less than two months later, he passed away at home with his family.

  In the context of these dramatic events, I should say something about the Gurmant Grewal farce. Ujjal Dosanjh phoned me to say that Grewal, a Conservative MP from British Columbia, was making noises about doing something, and I asked Tim to connect with Ujjal directly. We might have been willing to take Grewal into our caucus, but when word came back that he was making demands, later reported as a diplomatic post for him and a Senate seat for his wife, our position was a flat “no” — a reiteration of the position that Ujjal, Tim, and I had reached without debate when Grewal made his initial approach. When his “negotiation” failed to lead anywhere, Grewal publicly released an ineptly edited version of his secretly taped conversations with Tim and Ujjal — an act intended to embarrass us. That kicked off Grewal’s slow-motion descent into political oblivion as his hoax was revealed, and under pressure he discovered progressively more complete versions of the tapes, each one more embarrassing to him than the last. Still, some of the first clod of mud he threw at us stuck.

  Another result of Grewal’s hijinks was that Tim came under tremendous attack from the Opposition for his role in the discussions. It is one of the drawbacks of public and political life that you expose yourself to this kind of attack. Given the delicate political situation and the embarrassment the Conservatives must have felt at having Grewal as one of their own, it is understandable, in a way, that they tried to deflect the controversy by attacking Tim. The truth is that Grewal was asking, and Tim was refusing, which is why Grewal never left the Tory side of the House. But the Tory attack was furious enough that Tim considered resigning — something I refused to contemplate.

  In fact I’d like to take a bit of time right now to say why I reacted that way. Tim is a tireless worker, someone who is fascinated with public policy as well as gifted with a shrewd political mind. Before joining me at Finance, Tim served for several years in the Ontario legislature, where he distinguished himself as a defender of human rights, in particular those of same-sex couples. It is a shame that he is not still in public life. He was a huge asset for the government, whether it was negotiating the special agreement with Ontario signed by Dalton McGuinty and myself, the invaluable and close relationship he formed with the White House staff, or his deep understanding of political calculus. I don’t know what I would have done without him. It pains me that Tim, like some others close to me, have had to pass through such harrowing periods out of commitment to the public good, as well to me personally.

  By the fall of 2005, Jack Layton’s situation had changed from the previous spring, when he had made an agreement with us to support the budget. He had come to the conclusion that the best way to ensure his party’s future was to get rid of us and help Stephen Harper get elected. His far-fetched plan was then to have the NDP displace the Liberal Party as the natural alternative to the Conservatives. The fact that it also meant doing away with many policies his supporters favoured — such as the Kelowna Accord, the national child-care plan, and the cities agenda — did not appear to me to concern him.

  On the other hand, Layton obviously was concerned about preserving the veneer of a politician who wanted Parliament to work rather than one always itching for the next election, as Harper and Duceppe so plainly were. He approached us again for a negotiation, but in a much different spirit than earlier in the year. It was clear that there was going to be an election, sooner or later. The only issue was when. At the time of the budget the previous winter, Layton wanted to make something work. This time, it seemed to me that he wanted our discussions to fail, with us taking the blame. When we me
t at 24 Sussex, he had a long list of demands, as before, but wanted to speak only about health care. I said that we were willing to give his proposals serious consideration and that we would get back to him after we had analyzed them. But he was not interested. After a meeting of less than half an hour, he up and left, telling the media, as he had evidently planned all along, that we were not interested in addressing his concerns about health care.

  After that meeting, it was obvious that Layton had an election in his sights. It was only because we publicly embarrassed him over the fact that an early election would strangle the Kelowna process, on which NDP provincial governments had worked hard alongside others, that his caucus was able to stay his hand until the late fall.

  Intellectually, I had prepared myself for the coming election campaign. Over the summer of 2005, I decided that I needed to set out as clearly as I could the objectives of my government amid all the clutter of the Gomery inquiry and noise of the minority government. In my mind this was not to be a narrowly political exercise, but a roadmap for the public service. It was a plan for governing after an election I believed we could win. The people who worked with me most closely in fleshing out my ideas were Alex Himelfarb on the public service side and Peter Nicholson from the PMO. I brought in my principal speechwriter, Scott Feschuk, whose eloquent pen so often fashioned my ideas into words so much better than I could alone. Along with Scott Reid, we crafted what was in my view one of my most important speeches as prime minister. I gave the speech in September to a meeting of senior public servants in Gatineau, just across the river from Ottawa.

  Domestically, I talked about the demographic change Canada was experiencing as the baby boomers aged and new populations of immigrants moved here to enrich our society. Getting the health-care system right, which we were on the road to doing, was an important part of preparing for the retirement of the baby boomers beginning in 2011. But we also needed to lift up the youngest and fastest growing segment of our population — the Aboriginal peoples — not only as a matter of justice but also as a matter of economic and social growth.