The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 7)

(Continued from Part 6, previous blog post)

If prime minister Jean Chretien could consistently get away with convenient political hyperboles which he probably only pretended to be serious, and with his “undemocratic practices” quashing Liberal internal dissent and discouraging debate on issues, that is likely because prime minister Brian Mulroney’s political schemes had often been viewed as sinister.

When Mulroney appointed 15 senators during August-September 1990 on his way to acquire a Tory majority in the Senate in order to defeat Liberal resistance to his unpopular GST bill, in typical Mulroney style some of his patronage appointments caused not just controversies but outrage.

Leading the patronage controversies was the appointment of then Nova Scotia premier John Buchanan, (not because Buchanan was the first-ever sitting provincial premier to be appointed senator but) because the Buchanan government was under active RCMP investigation for his alleged accepting kickbacks and giving government work to his friends. ²⁷⁹

One politician who came out strongly against Mulroney on the Buchanan appointment was, surprisingly, rookie Tory MP Stan Wilbee – two years before his 1992 leadership-review call when by that time he would be B.C. Tory caucus chair and chair of the Commons committee on health issues (as previously discussed). Wilbee said in 1990: ²⁸⁰

“… this (Buchanan’s appointment) is a flouting of a tradition of Canadian government and just a throwback to the days of (former Liberal prime minister Pierre Elliott) Trudeau, who had complete disregard for the people of Canada.”

Prior to attending a Tory caucus meeting in September 1990, Wilbee had announced he was ready to quit the party over the Buchanan issue and sit in the Commons as an independent; but Mulroney held a meeting with him and Wilbee backed down, stating that he realized the difficulty of getting re-elected as an independent and that he could be more effective working within the Tory caucus. ²⁸¹

So by the time when I got involved in the issue of Mulroney’s leadership in November 1992, being a B.C. MP and a medical doctor Stan Wilbee was actually sitting in pretty good parliamentary positions, albeit outside the government, considering his previous, highly publicized intent to quit the Tory party; and he was for a second time speaking out against Mulroney (not counting his opposition of the 1992 Charlottetown constitutional accord).

But Wilbee’s willingness to take open stands opposite Mulroney’s wasn’t enough to save him later from the nationwide tide sweeping away the Tories during the 1993 election, when he would come in third in his B.C. Delta riding behind Reform party’s John Cummins and Liberal party’s Karen Morgan; Wilbee placed the blame for his and the Progressive Conservative party’s election losses at Mulroney, and at “Mulroney’s campaign team” Kim Campbell inherited: ²⁸²

“She started off well but one of her problems was she inherited Mulroney’s campaign team”.

As previously discussed, in December 1992, i.e., two months before announcing his intent to resign, Mulroney had already given Campbell his entire campaign team made up of persons who had helped him win his leadership in 1983 – including Frank Moores. ²⁸³

Back in September 1990 when Brian Mulroney was under challenge on the GST from the Liberal-controlled Senate, and Stan Wilbee reacted to Mulroney’s tactics by talking about quitting the Tories, Mulroney was at a low point due to the failure of the Meech Lake constitutional accord, which had been reached by his government and the provincial governments in 1987 but failed to be ratified by the deadline in June 1990.

The late columnist Don McGillivray described certain ways in which Mulroney extracted agreement from the provincial leaders as ‘bait-and-trap’, in an article “Senate reform like bait in a mousetrap”, dated February 9, 1989: ²⁸⁴

“Mulroney may be stalling Alberta’s rush to Senate reform for two reasons. First, like all prime ministers, he likes patronage. And he doesn’t want to jump the gun because Senate reform is the bait by which he hopes to lure the provinces into approving the Meech Lake deal.

And it’s like the cheese in the mousetrap, to be seen and sniffed but not to be enjoyed. If Meech Lake is ever approved, Senate reform is dead forever.

This is because every province will get a veto over changes to the Senate.”

What McGillivray said was that one of the Meech Lake accord’s provisions, that of Senate appointments to be made from lists submitted by provincial governments, was still far from the goal of an elected Senate aspired to by many Canadians, particularly Albertans, and that if the provincial governments were enticed by this modest progress in ‘Senate reform’ to pass the constitutional amendment they would be trapped in a situation where real Senate reform would become impossible – due to the accord’s requirement of unanimous provincial agreement for future constitutional amendments; McGillivray felt that this ‘bait-and-trap’ was intentional because Mulroney liked the patronage Senate. ²⁸⁵

When Canada was founded as a British dominion in 1867, the British North America Act establishing it became its Constitution – updated only by the power of the British parliament – until prime minister Pierre Trudeau ‘repatriated’ a modern Constitution in April 1982 in a ceremony attended by Queen Elizabeth II. ²⁸⁶ The 1982 Constitution had a Charter of Rights and Freedoms with protection for the basic rights and freedoms, recognition of English and French as the official languages, and recognition of “existing” aboriginal and treaty rights of the native people; it also specified a future constitutional amending formula, under which major constitutional changes would require approval by the parliament and by at least two-thirds of the provincial legislatures representing at least 50% of the population of all provinces; but the 1982 Constitution left the national political institutions unchanged – including the appointed Senate modeled after the British “House of Lords” but without a peerage system and with a mandatory retirement age of 75. ²⁸⁷

In 1981 in reaching an agreement between the federal government and nine provinces (without Quebec) on the new Constitution, there was a “kitchen” episode involving a crucial compromise worked out among then justice minister Jean Chretien, Ontario attorney general Roy McMurtry, and Saskatchewan attorney general Roy Romanow, at Chretien’s Ottawa home and then in a fifth-floor kitchen of the Government Conference Centre in Ottawa, regarding what rights should be in the Constitution: at the time, Trudeau felt that minority-language educational rights (i.e., rights of French education for people of French heritage in an English region, and vice versa) were his bottom line and that the usual fundamental rights could be for a national referendum to decide, but he had difficulty getting agreement of the provinces and was thinking about the federal government going it alone; Quebec’s separatist Parti Quebecois premier Rene Levesque wanted both the minority-language rights and the fundamental rights to be decided by a referendum; then in late 1981 the “kitchen” players initiated a compromise whereby the federal government and the nine English-speaking provinces would accept the minority-language rights but would add a “notwithstanding clause” in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms so that the parliament or a provincial legislature would have the option to ‘suspend’ the “fundamental freedoms”, “legal rights” or “equality rights” in the Charter, i.e., to make a legislation exempt from the rights and freedoms; Trudeau agreed to this “McMurtry formula” on the ‘sunset’ condition that any ‘suspension’ would need to be re-enacted every 5 years. ²⁸⁸

The “McMurtry formula” later became known as the “Kitchen Accord” Jean Chretien was proud of; Chretien’s Liberal successor Paul Martin has expressed that he was ashamed of the “notwithstanding clause”, while Canadians have been divided about it. ²⁸⁹ In any case, controversies about Chretien’s convenient “undemocratic” tendencies date back to when he was a key member of the Trudeau government.

In late 1981 Quebec’s Levesque refused to sign the agreement for the new Constitution, claiming that his province had the right to exercise a veto based on English-French duality in Canada, or alternately unanimity among provinces was required for constitutional change; a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 1982 found insufficient evidence to support Quebec’s claim of a right to veto based on duality, and found the notion of a unanimity requirement among all provinces contradictory to that of English-French duality. ²⁹⁰

The new Constitution’s mention of existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the native people was won near the last minute in 1981, after years of native protests led by the National Indian Brotherhood (predecessor of the Assembly of First Nations) and intense pressure put on the British parliament by the Canadian natives; however the natives continued to seek recognition of “title” rather than “rights”, a veto similar to what Quebec claimed, as well as a greater political role. ^{291, 292}

During the 1984 election Tory leader Brian Mulroney expressed sympathy toward Quebec separatists who opposed the “Centralistic” attitudes of the Liberal government; after he became prime minister and in 1985 Quebec Liberal leader Robert Bourassa became premier (again), negotiations for a constitutional amendment to accommodate Quebec began with a 1986 summary of five demands from Quebec: recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, a guarantee of increased provincial powers on immigration to Quebec, limits on federal spending power in areas of provincial jurisdiction, a Quebec say in Supreme Court of Canada appointments, and a Quebec “right of veto” on future constitutional changes. ^{293, 294}

The Meech Lake accord reached in 1987 by the federal government and all provinces gave Quebec better concessions in most areas of the five demands than Bourassa had originally asked for, but it was achieved in accordance with the Mulroney Tories’ decentralization agenda; thus, whereas Quebec alone would be recognized as a “distinct society” for its unique French culture, in most of the other areas the same or similar concessions would be granted to all provinces; in particular, future constitutional changes concerning the Senate, the House of Commons and the Supreme Court would require consent by every province in Canada. ²⁹⁵

The Meech Lake accord also featured a small step of Senate reform whereby Senate appointments would be made from lists of candidates submitted by the provinces.

In retirement from politics, Pierre Trudeau was very critical of many aspects of the Quebec demands, of the Meech Lake accord acceding to these demands, and of the Mulroney government’s decentralization objectives. Trudeau said of the decentralization and the provincial veto: ²⁹⁶

“For those who – despite all the Canadian government’s largesse with power and with funds – might still have been hesitant to sign the Meech Lake accord, the prime minister had two more surprises up his sleeve. From now on, the Canadian government won’t be able to appoint anyone to the Supreme Court and the Senate except people designated by the provinces! And from now on, any province that doesn’t like an important constitutional amendment will have the power to either block the passage of that amendment or to opt out of it, with “reasonable compensation” as a reward!

…

What a dark day for Canada was this April 30, 1987! In addition to surrendering to the provinces important parts of its jurisdiction (the spending power, immigration), in addition to weakening the Charter of Rights, the Canadian state made subordinate to the provinces its legislative power (Senate) and its judicial power (Supreme Court); and it did this without hope of ever getting any of it back (a constitutional veto granted to each province). It even committed itself to a constitutional “second round” at which the demands of the provinces will dominate the agenda.”

Some others, including Liberal leader John Turner who gave cautious endorsement to the accord, expressed opposition to the provincial veto; in an article first published on February 20, 1988 in The Gazette and The Vancouver Sun and two days later in The Windsor Star, the late columnist Christopher Young of The Ottawa Citizen pointed to the potential break-up crisis developing in Yugoslavia where Mulroney’s wife Mila was from, and warned Canadians to take a look in relation to the provincial-veto issue before deciding to accept the Meech Lake accord: ^{297, 298}

“Prime Minister Mulroney in particular should take a look, in the light of his decision at Meech Lake to concede a constitutional veto power to every Canadian province.

He may soon have the chance. At meetings in Ottawa and Calgary last week, Mulroney told Yugoslav Prime Minister Branko Mikulic that he and his Yugoslav-born wife, Mila, may accept an invitation to visit the country in September or October.

…

Yugoslavia is in a deep crisis, both economic and political, a crisis aggravated and made more difficult to solve by a constitution that allows each of the country’s six republics and two provinces a veto on major constitutional change.”

Despite these and a few other voices of opposition, prime minister Mulroney forged ahead, fought and won the 1988 election campaigning on the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement and the Meech Lake accord, stating during the election campaign, “A vote for the [federal] Liberals on Nov. 21 is a vote to kill Meech Lake”. ²⁹⁹

Although Mulroney won a second majority term, afterwards a larger chorus of voices in the media could be heard dissenting on the Meech Lake accord, as the more conservative began to join Trudeau and the small band of leftwing voices opposing it, pointing out that the provincial-veto issue was a serious sticking point making the accord unacceptable and dangerous to Canada. ³⁰⁰

The opposing opinions were bolstered by changes in the provincial political landscapes ahead of the 3-year timeline to ratify the accord by June 1990.

On October 13, 1987, New Brunswick Liberals under Frank McKenna toppled premier Richard Hatfield’s Tory government and won all 58 seats in the legislature; in 1988, Manitoba Tories under Gary Filmon defeated the New Democrats under premier Howard Pawley, winning a minority government; and in 1989, Newfoundland Liberals under Clyde Wells defeated Tories under Tom Rideout who had succeeded premier Brian Peckford, although in this case it would take a while for Wells to act tough as he was humbled by the loss of his own seat on April 20 and had to stand in a by-election – but unopposed as both the Tories and the NDP chose not to run against the new premier-elect. ³⁰¹

All three new provincial leaders objected to the Meech Lake accord as it had been, and became holdouts requesting major changes.

Among the three, premier Frank McKenna was the least demanding, asking only for a companion accord to strengthen minority rights (he would serve as premier for 10 years, similar to Chretien later did as prime minister, and has been active in the national scene – in particular as Canadian ambassador to U.S.). ^{302, 303}

Premier Gary Filmon became opposed only after the Manitoba New Democrats under new leader Gary Doer joined the provincial Liberals under Sharon Carstairs to demand changes to the accord or defeat of Filmon’s minority Tory government; but once committed, Filmon called for a full Senate reform for the Senate to be elected and equal (an equal number of all-elected senators from every province), preferably with the same powers it already had, and that if this could not be achieved within a short timeframe the provincial-veto provision be dropped and negotiations continue under the 1982 Constitution’s amending formula, i.e., approval by two-thirds of the provinces representing at least 50% of the population. ³⁰⁴

Filmon’s opposition to the accord rekindled a debate over whether there could be a veto formula that would not be either a Quebec-only veto or a veto for every province; Quebec premier Robert Bourassa and incoming Liberal leader Jean Chretien had favored a regional-veto approach in which the large provinces of Quebec and Ontario would each count as a region and every other province part of some region; it was an old idea dating back to the 1971 Victoria Charter time when a relatively fresh prime minister Trudeau and first-time Quebec premier Bourassa were trying their hands at constitutional reform, but in May 1990 the all-party parliamentary committee on the Meech Lake accord, headed by future Tory leader Jean Charest, included it as well as McKenna’s idea of a companion accord among 23 recommended changes to the Meech Lake accord. ³⁰⁵

Filmon continued to insist that no province should have a constitutional veto.

Premier Clyde Wells put forth some carefully thought out ideas, including a reformed, equal and elected Senate, and a provincial veto exercised in the Senate by Quebec senators only and limited to matters affecting Quebec’s linguistic and cultural rights and its civil law: ³⁰⁶

“Extending a constitutional veto to all provinces would effectively halt all significant future constitutional change.

Newfoundland recommends that Quebec’s proposal for a constitutional veto be addressed through special votes in the Senate. Quebec, through its senators acting at the national level, would have an effective veto over constitutional amendments affecting linguistic or cultural rights, or civil law judges on the Supreme Court of Canada.”

In early June 1990 ahead of the deadline, prime minister Mulroney managed to use pressure and promises of future constitutional reforms including Senate reform to get an agreement from all provincial premiers to ratify the Meech Lake accord by the deadline without any change – all except Clyde Wells who said he would either hold a provincial referendum and let the outcome decide or allow his Liberal members of the House of Assembly a free vote in the legislature. ³⁰⁷

But when the deadline of of June 23 arrived, Clyde Wells had done nothing to put the accord to a vote in Newfoundland; he made the decision after an aboriginal people’s campaign – with Manitoba Legislative Assembly member Elijah Harper as their point man – had prevented the accord from being introduced in the Manitoba legislature, with the natives objecting to the negotiations’ exclusion of native participation and the accord’s exclusion of aboriginal issues; at that point Wells decided to rebuff Tory Senate leader Lowell Murray’s proposal of extending the deadline and let the accord expire. ³⁰⁸

That act of ‘good riddance’ by Clyde Wells became such a lasting sour point between Mulroney and Wells that later on February 24, 1993 when announcing his intent to retire, Mulroney again criticized Wells for not putting the Meech Lake accord to a vote in 1990 and thus betraying a written promise, and Mulroney also revealed that he would have retired in August 1990 – (just in case people were glad to see him go!) – had it not been for the Meech Lake accord’s failure and a number of other issues, including the emerging GST fight with the Chretien Liberals in the Senate and the discovery that Robert Bourassa had cancer. ³⁰⁹

Mulroney’s disappointment with Wells for the latter’s role in the failure to ratify the Meech Lake accord is understandable given the Newfoundland Tories’ prior gesture in 1989 not to oppose Wells in a by-election after the incoming Liberal premier had failed to win his own seat in the general election.

But in any case columnist Don McGillivray’s metaphor of “bait in a mousetrap” in 1989 referred to a situation with the Meech Lake accord – and later with the Charlottetown accord also though to a different degree – where prime minister Mulroney tried to coerce the country into accepting an amended Constitution that would have been profoundly lacking or contained serious flaws (in its reform of the national political institutions) and yet nearly impossible to be further amended.

Back on New Year’s Day 1990, columnist Andrew Coyne of the Financial Post had offered his view that the type of constitutional veto in the Meech Lake accord was there for the political interests of Brian Mulroney and Robert Bourassa: ³¹⁰

“Quebec’s present “veto” is a construct of emotional blackmail on the part of Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa and the political interests of the Prime Minister.”

Among the 23 changes recommended by a parliamentary committee headed by Jean Charest to improve the Meech Lake accord was public hearings by the parliament and provincial legislatures in the future for constitutional reform; in November 1990 Mulroney took a bolder first step toward post-Meech Lake constitutional reform, appointing a 12-member royal commission, headed by prominent academic and journalist Keith Spicer, to hear the views of ordinary Canadians across the country on the future of Canada; Mulroney said: ³¹¹

“Every Canadian who wants to will be able to have a say.”

Reactions to the Citizens’ Forum on Canada’s Future from politicians and the media were mixed: some felt that by using this forum to preclude other concrete constitutional steps he had previously promised Mulroney was actually stalling the new reform; some others felt that due to Canadians’ “divergent aspirations” the forum would lead more to cacophony and anarchy than to constructive inputs on constitutional reform; Spicer viewed it as a kind of collective therapy for the country, a quest for the Canadian soul and values. ³¹²

Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells said that it would be more effective to convene a gathering of elected/appointed politicians from the federal and provincial levels – a “constitutional convention” – to focus on concrete constitutional proposals. ³¹³

Columnist Don McGillivray believed the Spicer forum was just “window dressing” by Mulroney, and predicted that once the process was over Mulroney would revert to his accustomed, behind-closed-doors discussions and negotiations for the Constitution. ³¹⁴

The forum took the form of both public hearings held across the country and telephone inputs, over a period of five months; the participation results turned out to be mixed as well: forum moderator Lloyd Brown-John had several hearings in Southern Ontario in which he sat alone in an empty room, and when a hearing at the town of Tecumseh was cancelled due to heavy snowfall it was not rescheduled; in some other instances the forum drew comments that were bigoted or racist. ³¹⁵

In the end, the Citizens’ Forum consulted about 300, 000 Canadians compared to Spicer’s original goal of one million, via public hearings, telephone lines, and mail; the Spicer commission report released in June 1991 declared that Canada was in a crisis, of identity, understanding and leadership, and of national unity; in his forward for the report, Keith Spicer stated that (despite all that about crises) the report’s consensus editing did not reflect enough the depth of people’s anger toward Mulroney and Mulroney’s role in the national unity crisis; Spicer also noted that the degree of decentralization contemplated by Mulroney was out of step with the English-Canadian (though not with the French-Canadian) values. ³¹⁶

After the report’s release, national polls indicated that two-thirds of Canadians felt it had been a waste of time, and two-thirds of Canadians also wanted Mulroney to step down. ³¹⁷

Although the forum’s discussions were often not focused on constitutional reform, some important themes did emerge early as to what Canadians would like to see in that respect: they wanted Quebec to be part of Canada, wanted to go a distance to do the right thing and fix the problem of the aboriginal people, and wanted more or less decentralization but definitely not more centralization. ³¹⁸

The commission was however taken aback by how much dissatisfaction people expressed toward the official English-French bilingualism policy (enacted by Pierre Trudeau): they called it divisive and unnecessary. ³¹⁹

Many Canadians also expressed desires for more direct democracy – fundamental changes to the political system that would include “referendums, impeachment, recall, proportional representation, free parliamentary votes, an elected or abolished Senate, direct election of the prime minister and the convening of a constituent assembly” ³²⁰ – a plethora of changes far beyond the Meech Lake accord and its process in the past, and in fact beyond the elected politicians’ visions for post-Meech Lake constitutional reform.

 

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