LARRY ZOLF:
A school for scandal
CBC News Viewpoint | November 4, 2003 | More from Larry Zolf
It seems that in the dying days of the Chrétien government there has emerged a school for scandal. That school has the odour of dead fish about it. It involves five Chrétien ministers and an Irving jet that flew them into a lavish Irving recreational retreat on the Restigouche River in New Brunswick.
The five Chrétien ministers are in order of appearance: Allan Rock, the industry minister; Claudette Bradshaw, the labour minister; Robert Thibault, the fisheries minister; David Anderson, the environment minister; and Jane Stewart, the human resources minister.
The Alliance smells the rot of the dead Irving fish as the rot of the Chrétien government. The Alliance preoccupation is to drive the Liberals out of office by rolling them over an Irving barrel.
But the confessions of the ministers, their apologies to the House, the Alliance asking ministers who were not invited to the fishing lodge by the Irvings to stand up and be counted, then watching them do so in the House was all comic relief compared to real scandals that have plagued politicians in the past.
Pearson had to face the Rivard Affair. Rivard, a convicted narcotics smuggler managed to get a bribe offer to Pearson's parliamentary secretary and tried to bribe the government lawyer who was fighting to get Rivard extradited to the United States. Then Rivard escaped while he was outside the prison on work duty.
Pearson then had two cabinet ministers buying furniture from the bankrupt Sefkind brothers in Montreal without paying them anything for it. Another Pearson minister was suspected of getting $10,000 to facilitate a licence for a racetrack in his own riding. All these scandals led to the Dorion Inquiry and to the early death of Justice Minister Guy Favreau who was blamed or scapegoated for all the Pearson scandals.
Pearson survived all these scandals in part because revelations about a Tory minister's affair with reputed prostitute and security risk Gerda Munsinger put the heat on the Tories.
Pearson's handling of the Munsinger Affair totally poisoned his relationship with Diefenbaker. Dief felt that Pearson should have taken Dief's word as a prime minister that there was no security risk involved with Munsinger. Instead Pearson launched the Spence Inquiry, which confirmed Pearson's view, not Diefenbaker's.
Scandal politics occurred very early in Canadian history. There was the Pacific Scandal in which Sir John A. was in cahoots with the Canadian Pacific Railway. It cost Sir John his only defeat in the Pacific Scandal of 1873.
Corruption in the Customs Scandal cost Mackenzie King no end of trouble in the 1920s. The Beauharnois Scandal, involving huge donations by Beauharnois Power to the Liberal party coffers for the right to generate electricity on the St. Lawrence River, had Mackenzie King, by then in opposition, targeted as a personal friend of the Beauharnois promoters.
There was also a bevy of scandals that tamed the Union government in 1917: the rotten bully beef in the soldiers' knapsacks, the Ross rifle that was worthless and dangerous, the spavined horses that fell to the ground at Aldershot, the binoculars you couldn't see anything through.
The St. Laurent government had its share of scandals, the best being the horses on the payroll at Camp Petawawa. St. Laurent Liberals also made a deal on a gas pipeline with the Murchison brothers from Texas. The pipeline made the Tories the champions of Canadianism. The Mulroney scandals made Stevie Cameron's On the Take a runaway best seller.
Viewed in this context, what is one to make of the Chrétien scandals? The Auberge Grand-Mere business seems small potatoes compared to what Pearson had to face. Alfonso Gagliano trying to get a friend on the public payroll is hardly worth mentioning. Indeed, what really stands out with Chrétien is Airbus, where he maliciously tried to catch Brian Mulroney in a web of scandal politics hitherto unknown in Canada.
The failure of Airbus was a personal failure by Jean Chrétien to be the honest little man from Shawinigan he always pretended to be. Those watching Chrétien defending his Air Irving ministers in the House no longer see the real skilled wit and scorn Chrétien once enjoyed.
Now Chrétien looks like a weary godfather tired out by all the pranks of his cabinet children. The problem is that the Irving jets are making the Alliance look good in the House. Stephen Harper may indeed push the Irving Air Affair all by himself into a brand new place in history – namely, a contender for the prime minister's job.
The country can at least understand Harper's careful and gleeful exposé of Liberal temptations at the hands of the Irvings. No one in Canada really understands the Alliance love of direct democracy, referenda, plebiscites and an elected Senate, but Canadians do understand when five cabinet ministers get caught up in a conflict of interest charge all in the same way, all looking for a freebie crumb from the tables of the magnates.
All five ministers have done nothing that should mean their dismissal from office, but what they have done is so dumb and asinine that they have all disqualified themselves from seats in a Martin cabinet. Martin doesn't want to keep the Irving quintet because conflict of interest is not an area in which he feels comfortable.
Harper knows that Chrétien can't discipline his errant five ministers because to do so would be to admit he put five fools in his cabinet. The five who enjoyed the Irving hospitality all know that their cabinet tenure will be defended by Chrétien to the teeth while Martin will look away and aside.
Once Martin is officially party leader, he'll begin to play the prime minister-in-waiting game very seriously, indeed. He'll surround himself with a specific team of ministers-in-waiting and will begin to fight the democratic deficit battle. But Martin will shun the Irving Five.
Martin will know exactly what to say about them: There's no room for scandal in the new Martin team. The Alliance will have to deal with Martin, and not with five silly ministers who can't say no to a freebie.
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LARRY ZOLF
POLITICAL COMMENTATOR
Veteran journalist and Canadian political expert Larry Zolf is a regular contributor to CBC News Online. Larry has been a critic, reporter, producer and consultant for CBC news and current affairs since he joined the CBC in 1962. Born and raised in North End Winnipeg, the hotbed of general strikes and socialism, Larry has covered stories such as integration in Mississippi and the October Crisis in Quebec. He was one of the hosts of the CBC's flagship current affairs television show "This Hour Has 7 Days." He is now retired.
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