Jean Chrétien looks better now compared to the alternative
Episode Stats
Summary
In honour of his 90th birthday, a Who s Who of Canadian politics turned out for an event honouring former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. But not everyone is so impressed. A column in the National Post takes him to task on several fronts, including his handling of indigenous issues as minister and as PM.
Transcript
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the little guy from shawinigan le petit gar jean cretchen turned 90 recently and a who's who
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of canadian politics turned out for an event in ottawa to honor canada's 20th prime minister
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even stephen harper who once squared off against cretchen sent a video message that had the place
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in uproarious laughter as harper sang to cretchen in french hello and welcome to the full comment
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podcast my name is brian lily your host and this week we're going to look at the cretchen legacy
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in the time around his birthday there were no ends of accolades some media interviews and a lot of
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reminiscing cretchen is having a bit of a moment but not everyone is impressed chris ellie penned a
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column in national post titled more pearls of nonsense from jean cretchen with the subhead
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why is anyone still listening to this proudly a moral mediocrity in it he takes cretchen to task
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on several fronts including his handling of indigenous issues as minister and as pm like all prime
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ministers cretchen's reigns had its good points and it's bad he was famous for colorful turns of
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phrase for me pepper i put it on my plate next i don't know your proof is a proof what kind of
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a proof it's a proof a proof is a proof and when you have a good proof is because it's proven he
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famously balanced the budget and he put canada on a sound fiscal footing he was also pm during what
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became known as the sponsorship scandal he was pm of the country when it was nearly torn apart by a
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referendum in quebec but he was also pm when the side of national unity won so where does cretchen's
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legacy stand 20 years after he left office that's really only something that can be properly assessed
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years after he's gone and perhaps now's the time so to take a look at the cretchen legacy i'm joined
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by chris sellie of the national post also steven le drew a lawyer political commentator and a man who
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spent many years inside the liberal party and served as party president while cretchen was leader
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gentlemen thanks for the time good to be here thanks for having me chris let me start with you
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um your column took cretchen to task at a time when the liberal party was singing his accolades
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a big part of the focus but not the only part of your column was looking at his record on indigenous
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issues and i found it interesting that after singing his praises for for days the liberals were
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suddenly running away from cretchen when it came out that uh while he was prime minister he tried
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to weaken the language in the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples
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and they're calling that a a stain on canada's uh history the liberals seem to uh love and hate the
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guy all at the same time well yeah that was an interesting moment because that's far from the most
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damning thing uh in hindsight about his record on on indigenous affairs i mean frankly i would prefer
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to have a prime minister who tried to influence wording in an agreement like that that canada
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could actually support rather than what the current government has done which is essentially say
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oh no we agree with everything in this u.n declaration on indigenous affairs we're going to make it
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canadian law but really nothing's going to change um you know indigenous people in canada don't have
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self-determination just because we've said we agree with uh the um with the u.n declaration to me
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what's more remarkable is that his legacy uh his his sort of reputation has survived intact as we've
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really been kind of well canceling people who had anything whatsoever to do with the residential school
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system over the years well canceling conservatives who have had anything to do with the residential school
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system because you know there's still a mountain named after pierre trudeau there's still uh schools
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named after him a statue in toronto a statue in montreal an airport in montreal and he he opened the last
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residential school in canada yeah that's true although i mean one of the most notable people to be canceled
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was egerson ryerson who was a public education pioneer in ontario who had very little to do or upper
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canada as it then was who had very little to do really with the residential school system and he
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wasn't identified as a conservative uh or a liberal as far as i know i don't actually know what his
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political affiliations were so it was broader than that um and if anything but all i mean is if
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anything was going to make people say oh you know geez maybe we shouldn't be quite so um laudatory
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about jean kratria over his record of indigenous affairs it would be you know the fact that he introduced
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the 1969 white paper which was essentially going to write special status for for um indigenous people
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out of existence you know an assimilationist document that eventually got withdrawn but you
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know just a few years ago or two years ago uh he gave this horrendous interview in in quebec where he
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basically it sounded like he didn't even really understand what the residential schools were he sort
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of compared them to his own experience at boarding school um where he had not you know his parents had
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not been forced to send him there uh and it was this was an academically elite seminary school
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obviously so there was so much on his record to make people pause and and and so it was i found it
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remarkable that it was that story about uh the negotiators on the u.n declaration that finally got
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people liberals you know as you say a stain i mean that's a pretty harsh word i i uh i'm not a fan of
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canceling people um in general and and definitely not over um historical uh positions but steven uh
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what would you uh say in response to to chris on this front well i mean this is going to sound heresy
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to most of your listeners but quite frankly residential schools were not a big issue until just in the last
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few years in the past few years it was um pierre elliot trudeau as uh as chris said opened up the the
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last school he as um minister of justice and then carried on as prime minister uh brought them totally
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under the the auspices of the federal government they were still considered to be uh better than the
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alternative in some cases and there's no question i mean you can't question the fact that there are some
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horrific experiences particularly around the turn of the last century uh no question about that but
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i mean when you have someone as enlightened as pierre elliot trudeau saying well listen it's better
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than the alternative in some cases and that went on for years and years and years that's why i say
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um it will sound like heresy to some people but put yourself in the context of the time and then put
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yourself as chrachin did let's not forget chrachin when he was in the indian affairs as it was called then
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um made extensive visits uh throughout the communities he made a whole new community
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and for davis inlet when he went there and saw what terrible conditions he spent tens of millions
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of dollars we're going to build a brand new community with everything uh for you people in
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davis inlet um and move you over there so you have a better life chrachin actually adopted and i'll use
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this because i'm in a part of ontario where there's a reserve nearby and the people on the reserve
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call themselves indians so chrachin adopted an indian boy i brought him into his family and treated him
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like a son so yes there were some inadequacies but i don't think there were uh nobody should be
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canceling chrachin for what he did on the indian file it's interesting you say that uh what you're
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saying is heresy now i remember covering the residential school apology that stephen harper
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gave and speaking to people who had gone to the residential schools and hearing from those who had
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gone through horrific ordeals but also people who said i actually had a good education that's not the
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story for everyone but mine was good you can't tell those stories now that you can't tell those stories
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at this point better than the alternative i've spoken to people like that too brian that would
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be great if attendance had been voluntary uh i don't think you can really excuse taking people's
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kids away uh even in the benefit of hindsight but it was the uh the most enlightened minds of the day
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said it was the right thing to do and as often as the case the most enlightened minds of the day
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didn't know what they were talking about chrachin's biggest legacy though that most people remember him
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for they talk about his fiscal record and that's one where he continues to get accolades even though
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you know there's qualms about that like balancing the budget on the backs of the provinces but it is
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something that people still talk about and they say well at least chrachin balanced the books well
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chrachin was a liberal and when you say when you say brian that people now there's some people who are
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supporting and some people are not that's because of the great division uh right now in the liberal
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party chrachin was a not a classical liberal but he was a traditional liberal and uh he knew that you
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have to balance the books and he knew that you had to have programs in certain circumstances but he was
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not a radical uh or nor nor was he a socialist and the people who um are not supporting him now are the
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justin liberals as i pull them i say and they are quote either progressives or socialists and they
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don't like what chrachin did because they have a very new uh viewpoint of the world which i would say
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over at least over half the party does not support chris yeah i i think uh i mean i noticed over the
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past couple weeks i saw a couple people in interviews asking about his his top achievements and he says
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balancing the books both times i saw uh number one and absolutely um you know that's pretty much an
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unimpeachable um part of his legacy although you know obviously as you say the provinces would
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would uh would uh have some have some quibbles with that but it's it's you know it's fascinating how
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out of fashion that has now become um and i don't even really get the impression that uh you know
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the conservatives now pierre probably have talks talks about balancing the budget but it's not sort
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of it's not like a balance the budget at all costs kind of message that you would sometimes get uh or
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not at all costs but you know until quite recently like even the ndp would have their platforms uh
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promising balanced budgets and at some point we're gonna have to get back to that
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mulcare ran on a balanced budget in 2015 and jack layton did in 2011 and at some point we're gonna
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have to get back to that and at that point gretchen will probably you know people will look to what he
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did um yeah i can't quibble with with that part of his legacy as far as i'm concerned
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uh steven you were around at that point um you know maybe you've heard this story maybe you've
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heard others but i'm told that um when ministers would go and they'd have this great idea and you
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know because gretchen would allow ministers to go out and come up with policy ideas and then pitch them
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to him and so they'd they'd be like oh boss i got something i got something really good i just need
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an increase of x number of dollars or x percent in the department's budget and he would i'm told he
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would sit there and listen and say uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh and then the minister would leave and he
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would call martin and treasury board and say cut them by double what they asked for and that stopped
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ministers from asking for money have you heard that story or others like it well i have heard that
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story i have a story um well actually it was when he was a minister of justice but kretchen is a
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was and is a consummate political animal and so the story you just recounted brian is about finances
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but he would always look at something from in those days finances because he was trying to balance the
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budget but in in other circumstances he would look at the politics of it is this going to be a problem
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down the line is this new program going to be worth it is this uh question that you want addressed
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really you know going to be uh stirring up trouble for me and for my government uh he would rather let
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things lie than be a uh a real disturber of the the status quo well that's unlike the conservative i might
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say well well he was he was a traditional liberal that way in other words he would say if it's not
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broken we aren't going to go in there and stir this but let me compare that to the current guy
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because we've got a story out of the montreal gazette where they're going after wood-fired
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pizzerias and bagel shops over pollution and climate change and you're like really you're going to take on
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this this this is what's going to save the world is taking on that's something to me the kretchen would
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look at and say you know that might make the people angry you know you're absolutely right but that's
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how kretchen that's how kretchen judged matters and whether it was worth it or not and uh that's why
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uh many people in the party now say gosh wish we had that guy back because he wouldn't be going
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off on these cockamamie schemes which are i think probably well they're they're ill-advised at best
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and the probably part of the problem with them is that it's to um deflect criticism of the failures
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of this government so let's have something new that somebody might like that's what that's what
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trudeau's so you're talking about someone who's very pragmatic now chris your subhead and i don't
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know if you wrote it but it's in your column as well you you describe kretchen as amoral you didn't
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have any guiding principles um tell me why you're saying that what what is it that makes you jump out
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and say this guy's completely amoral not immoral but amoral well i think stephen kind of hit on it
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there is is that he had an uh an acute sense of what the public wanted and what the public didn't
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want uh and that's a good thing but i think it led him uh it it it his pragmatism i think
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is to a fault and it's still to a fault i mean when you look for example at his relations with with
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the chinese um you look for example where you know when uh we were trying to get the two michaels out
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and he was just out there flapping his gums saying oh let's let's just you know free
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meng wing chao you know never mind the rule of law we'll just we'll just do a prisoner exchange like
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we're in the middle east or something um his record on on china overall is chris well it's chris what
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what would have been the matter with that if there had been just an as you say an exchange of prisoners
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forget about the rule of law because we have an agreement with the united states because we have it
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because we have an agreement with the united states on expedition we could have gotten around that
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agreement easily talked to a number of lawyers and they there's ways to get around that but the
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government was just so doe-headed they didn't have any operatives they didn't have anybody who knew
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what the heck they were doing and chretchen you know i mean you can point it out chris as it was a
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fault but he was very practical and i dare say so we had some judge in vancouver who spent months of
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not years trying to figure out whether she should go back or not or be released and we had two
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canadians in prison in china for many more years then would have been the case if we had just made
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an exchange whatever two years earlier let me push back on you a bit there steven um you know to chris's
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point there is an extradition agreement with the united states wouldn't this have been just giving
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into hostage diplomacy um all the time when you're dealing with hostages even though you don't say it
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you don't admit it um we know that there is a certain giving in to hostage diplomacy and you you
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you couch it in different words but clearly the united states they didn't want to go ahead with this
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either if we had had some smart operatives going to washington saying look here's an easy way out of
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this thing they could have sold it it would have been done legally and chris chris i i agree with
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you on on china being a a bad spot for chretchen but also unfortunately an awful lot of retired
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canadian politicians in the last quarter century they all seem to get they all seem to get rich off
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of china and and and their their their judgment on the issue i think goes out the window but but at
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home i mean don't you want some pragmatic transactional politics you know it look the
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the knock against the liberals is if you don't like their principles hang on five minutes they've got more
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uh and that really they're only about power but there is something to be said for just getting things
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done as opposed to arguing the way that at times the ndp and the conservatives can be
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too doctrinaire i i mean i i agree look i mean pragmatism is is uh a canadian trait and i think
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that's one of the reasons why canadians like chretchen but as i say i think you can take it
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and it looks good now as you say because there's just so much we just so much weirdness coming out
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of ottawa just just you know bagels and pizzerias just i mean that's not like a cabinet decision that's
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some kind of regulatory body doing that but i mean at the same time like what why are we
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plastic straws you know we don't we don't send any plastic into the ocean why are we
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why okay why are we doing these things and yeah absolutely i mean i bless you for that bless you for
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that even though the government would would be probably crawling down my neck right now if they
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heard me bless you for that because there does need to be a degree of pragmatism in this government
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some common sense of good judgment that most canadians now i dare say are saying is absent
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well so wayne easter a long-time liberal mp cabinet minister under with i think he even held a post
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under trudeau if i'm not mistaken if not he was at least you know uh committee chair and such but a
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long-time upstanding liberal he turned around a little while ago and he said i'm a member of the
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liberal party not the justin trudeau moment so before we take a break let's take a couple of
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moments and talk about the difference between the liberal party as it once existed and and justin
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trudeau's cult of personality or as somebody recently put it to me they called it the keelberger party
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this is this is we for politics it's about getting up on stage making you know grand statements and doing
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nothing except getting rich while feeling good about yourself yeah i mean i i have this expression i i
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don't know if i coined it or if i saw it somewhere and i've used it but but with the liberals with these
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guys it's like the announcement is the policy they announce something and that's that and it's like well
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is it going to work oh i don't know like we'll deal with that you know months down the line we're just
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trying to win this 24-hour media cycle here so we've got this announcement and and you know then
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we'll chuck it to the minister and we'll see if it works or not i mean you know losing control of
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immigration um for god's sake like it's quite amazing that justin trudeau set to lose um set
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to lose power and part of his legacy at this point would be fracturing not not totally but somewhat a
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really excellent consensus that we've had about immigration um you know we can quibble over numbers
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but the fact is we want we generally all want a lot of immigrants we can't build houses for them
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they're bringing in you know they brought in so many uh foreign students they didn't know what they
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were doing i mean what this this to me is something that i would not expect a crutchian government to do
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and um you know chris chris part of that steven and you say you would not expect a crutchian government
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and i think you're absolutely right on that because crutchian had a number of very solid ministers in his
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cabinet he was not afraid um of having someone else who might be as smart as he is or might be as
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practical unlike our current prime minister who seems doesn't want anybody in his cabinet who has
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uh announce the brains which would be more than what he has so i mean when you have these um you
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know these policies coming out of this uh this government uh you don't have ministers who are
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are going to be pursuing it you're right you have an announcement by the prime minister usually not by
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other ministers by the prime minister they say oh how how good are we uh we're investing in the middle
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class we are building the middle class we are building houses he's going across the country now
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with announcements of how many houses he has built total bs well and and he'll make these
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announcements you know oh we're we're building uh 140 units here in guelph ontario 140 units
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have you looked at the numbers here this has nothing to hold a press conference about i mean it's good
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but holy cow like we need like housing starts in this country are going down we're building fewer
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homes now year over year as the housing crisis gets worse and worse yeah to your point about
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competent ministers steven uh was interesting to see john manley come out about canada's position on
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the world stage and uh i know you disagree with john on um on china uh chris so do i don't worry
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but you know he stood up and he said we used to be listened to and and we were manley was going
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back and forth across the border in the days after 9 11 keeping the border open when the americans
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wanted everything shut he was dealing with the afghan issue for stephen harper on a uh a bipartisan
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committee looking at where we should go in the war people used to seek out candidate's opinion and i
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don't think anybody does now unless they happen to be scrolling by on twitter yeah i'm not so sure
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i mean that was an interesting article uh i read the article i read about about john manley's uh
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comments was interesting because it didn't mention a single example of canada actually seeking us out
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and you mentioned a couple there but i've always i've always thought that that's somewhat exaggerated
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um the idea of canada as this sort of leading honest broker in the world and and one of the things
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when when when kretchen just when when kretchen a few years ago actually i think it was on the
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occasion of his 80th birthday um he was talking about how how you know when he went abroad when
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he was a when he was prime minister everyone was oh you know canada we need you to do this and do
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that i mean the most the most famous foreign policy um well the most famous foreign trip i i would
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think of kretchen's career was we went to israel in 2000 and just made a complete jackass out of
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himself for like five days in a row and like he left and the palestinians were angry the syrians were angry
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the lebanese were angry the israelis were angry he was just a a bumpkin on the world stage and it was
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truly embarrassing and and so to to me to hear him he to hear him talk about how great things were when
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he was in charge look the man has an ego and he's entitled to it but uh it it it really gets up my
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nose well chris you're absolutely right about that visit it was an embarrassment and you can't um
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you can't have uh perfection and that was you're right it was that was just a a dog's breakfast that
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visit from from beginning to end but he had very few of those and canada notwithstanding a failure or
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two by the prime minister you still had weight it still had gravitas and certainly had more now
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largely because of the numbers of circumstances one because our prime minister is a flake he is a
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lightweight the other world leaders um you know just say oh geez they treat him like canada's
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version of berlusconi when he was prime minister of italy you know here comes here comes the joker
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and so we have a joker as prime minister and no flake is the right word okay flake and uh i'll uh
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accede to you on that chris but the other thing is then that we have nothing in canada to back it up
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i mean we don't we are not in the five eyes anymore when united states britain um you know
00:25:43.500
australia get together to deal with defense issues they don't even call canada anymore it's not because
00:25:49.840
necessarily the prime minister we don't have any ships that float we have very few planes that fly
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we don't have soldiers or sailors there's nothing that we can bring to the table we're going to take
00:26:01.940
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responsibly we've talked about jean cretchen's legacy when it comes to fiscal sanity the indigenous
00:28:15.880
issue uh how the party's changed but what about some of the scandals that hit him and the way the
00:28:22.020
country was managed show in a gate is not one that most people would remember involved a golf course
00:28:28.620
and a grant to a business in his riding but most people remember sponsorship even if they don't know
00:28:33.880
all the ins and outs and even though the gomri inquiry found that didn't find blame for cretchen
00:28:41.120
it's still a stain on his legacy um steven you were there at the time how much was this
00:28:47.720
hurting the liberal party when you were still involved by the way for people that don't know
00:28:53.260
steven is not involved in the current rendition of the liberal party if you can't tell but
00:28:57.900
back then back in the early 2000s how much was this hurting this institution that you and so many
00:29:05.540
others had worked hard to uh to build up over the years well i was uh i was president of the liberal
00:29:11.620
probably at the time and uh i was uh i presided over an executive committee of about 50 people
00:29:17.580
from coast to coast to coast who met four times a year and i can tell you it was um a serious problem
00:29:24.220
and at the time but this let's remember cretchen's advice to his ministers if they had a problem
00:29:31.580
don't react right away don't go out there and flap your arms he said when a bird comes along
00:29:40.100
and has a has a dump on your your shoulder for instance or on your on your coat if you wipe it
00:29:48.240
away right away it's going to be a greasy mess if you just let it sit for a while and dry and then
00:29:55.440
you'll just what you'll flake it off it'll just uh go away and uh that was a bizarre metaphor okay
00:30:04.800
that will that's that is what he said that is what he said many times i remember one time
00:30:12.340
jane stewart uh remember her she was a very confident minister and she had a political problem one time
00:30:19.080
she's outside the second the prime minister's offices on the second floor of the uh of the center
00:30:26.000
block and she's talking to the press and she's not going that well he just walks in and takes over
00:30:33.200
and says wait wait wait wait wait what are we doing discussing this now we have things to talk
00:30:38.180
about that are important and we're just going to let this issue dry for a while of course with the
00:30:43.000
compliant ottawa press oh sure mr prime minister jane the prime minister walked away they all looked at
00:30:51.480
each other and of course just like cretchen saying with the bird dropping drop drying on your coat
00:30:57.600
in a few days you just flick it away and you go on your merry way so yes there were scandals
00:31:04.540
but you know most people i dare say now chris and brian most people don't remember those at all they
00:31:11.040
remember cretchen balancing the budget and they also remember which is a political party problem
00:31:17.260
of cretchen um leaving office now that was that was a that was a tough situation but um he left with
00:31:25.380
his uh head high and he left the party uh having won three majorities to uh a guy who oh what what was
00:31:33.200
he gonna have he or what was he what did susan delacorte call oh right juggernaut jugger yeah that
00:31:39.380
didn't work out um christy do you think well it didn't but part of that christy i think sponsorship
00:31:45.260
still resonates today i mean we're 20 years on and you know it's going to be 20 years worth of new
00:31:52.500
voters who have no clue what we're talking about no i think that's probably right you'd have to be
00:31:59.840
this isn't watergate or something like that you have to be a certain age for it to um for it to
00:32:06.100
resonate i think it was it was the perfect liberal scandal i've always thought in that it it it conflated
00:32:12.420
it conflated the national interest with the party's interest right and it was it was so easy for people
00:32:19.440
obviously to get sucked into it right we're trying to save the country ah but you know
00:32:23.680
you know give a little kick back to the liberal party and they'll save the country too um you know
00:32:29.860
it was gross it was absolutely uh greasy nasty scandal but no i i don't think it i don't think
00:32:39.400
it still resonates i mean i you know and why like honestly it shouldn't resonate i mean there's no
00:32:44.080
reason to not vote liberal because of the sponsorship scandal um you know no one no one still left
00:32:50.980
let me come in here you mentioned watergate and watergate still resonates even if most people who
00:32:58.180
are not of our advanced years uh don't know the specifics of watergate they know that it was it was
00:33:05.600
nixon it was republican and it wasn't good that's what they really know about it sponsorship i dare say
00:33:11.520
when you're you're exchange with brian a few minutes ago most people don't have any idea what
00:33:16.980
it was the other thing i'm going to say which will be controversial is that it was for the it was
00:33:23.320
intended to be for the the greater good and you have to understand quebec politics and i think you use
00:33:33.040
the word greasy and uh quebec politics can be very very very greasy look at snc lavalent and our current
00:33:40.520
prime minister in that situation uh a few years ago and it was run by uh quebecers in the pmo and then
00:33:48.560
the other offices in quebec it's a different if it's it's a very different set of politics i think
00:33:54.460
when you use the word adjective greasy you uh you may very well be um very too kind chris too kind
00:34:01.400
because it's very different well i think greasy is a good word but let's talk about how he handled
00:34:07.480
quebec uh there were times when he you know in in my view would acquiesce uh there were times when he
00:34:15.240
would just tell the separatists to go pound sand there was an anglo living in montreal in the early
00:34:20.880
2000s i was always thankful that on the language front he took a strong stand unlike the current
00:34:26.180
prime minister who seems to think anglos don't matter as long as they vote liberal um you know the
00:34:32.140
the remember the the party quebec wall was always screaming about the english the bilingual english
00:34:40.100
and french traffic warning signs on the bridges well the bridges are federal they wanted it in
00:34:45.900
french only just like all the highway signs and cretchen would tell them well there are bridges go to
00:34:50.440
hell uh i appreciated that but you know do you when you look at the the referendum do you look at it
00:34:58.020
and say cretchen kept the country together he won the referendum or do you say he almost lost the
00:35:05.220
country that was too close for comfort i would say the latter i would say the latter more than the
00:35:12.660
former um i mean he didn't almost lose the country i mean it's kind of a it's there's this myth that if
00:35:17.860
it had been 50 plus one on that ridiculous like 150 word question that suddenly quebec would
00:35:23.140
have a right to secede that's just not that's not a thing you know it would have it probably would
00:35:28.540
have led to negotiations but they would have been negotiations between all the members of the
00:35:32.260
federation not just between quebec and ottawa but yeah i i think he was too complacent uh going into
00:35:38.540
that campaign and i would think that my impression is that most historians don't see him as the
00:35:44.100
as the real winner of that it was more jean charret and and uh
00:35:49.140
uh people less less sort of antagonistic to the nationalist cause who uh who pulled that out of
00:35:59.080
the fire uh but you know it was tough like you know that was a real moment for the for the separatist
00:36:04.840
cause so up against the incredibly charismatic lucien bouchard um who uh you know is cretchen could
00:36:14.480
hold a room because he was uh the ah shucks little guy bouchard just had a different charisma that drew
00:36:21.040
people to him but steven is there um uh a parallel between how cretchen was pm and people say he almost
00:36:30.880
lost the country other people had to go in and and fight the the battle and the 1980 referendum where
00:36:37.420
pierre trudeau was prime minister and things weren't going well and he had to send in jean
00:36:43.220
cretchen as his justice minister to fight the battle well that's why i was just thinking about
00:36:48.320
that 1980 uh battle i was in ottawa then not very involved at all with uh with quebec but i remember
00:36:53.780
uh trudeau's speech at the uh paul sauvet arena in uh in montreal which uh was viewed as a um as a
00:37:02.680
turning point um in in the public mind about uh staying in canada uh cretchen was heavily involved
00:37:11.980
that was what gosh i mean virtually everybody in the federal government was uh was sticking their
00:37:16.580
oar in the water for that one i think that uh there was a bit of complacency with uh with uh the last
00:37:23.420
one i um i i know that um people didn't think it was a real threat until almost too late and then
00:37:35.720
they mobilized remember uh chris and brian the busloads of people going from toronto to that big
00:37:44.000
uh rally in montreal say we love you don't go i i i could not get on the buses there were that many
00:37:51.060
people lined up they turned hundreds of us away if not thousands uh but i was here in toronto waiting
00:37:57.880
to get on one of those buses that was going to take you overnight and it wasn't going to be
00:38:01.660
comfortable but that many people showed up right yeah no i was living in montreal all the time that
00:38:06.780
was an absolutely incredible scene and it's kind of hard to imagine something like that happening now
00:38:11.320
when you think about it um like just just that level of attachment um
00:38:18.540
i think people would say fine go yeah well some people yeah right now but i mean cretchen
00:38:25.940
once he got motivated and yes you can be um chris people can be critical they say well you know he
00:38:34.720
almost lost it yep the numbers show that but um and you can be critical for saying well i didn't pay
00:38:41.460
enough attention to it at the start but once people started to realize you know holy doodle this is a
00:38:48.420
serious matter he threw his guts into it he threw his uh his back his mouth his guts and all the
00:38:54.900
lieutenants and um and quebec politics are not an easy situation to deal with quebec politicians
00:39:01.380
uh even those in the liberal party are not always easy to deal with but uh he did and so listen the
00:39:07.980
bottom line is um he got through it you know some people if you want to argue about churchill world
00:39:13.840
war ii people say he almost lost the war too yeah he almost lost the war sometimes but he won it so
00:39:18.700
there you go so you've been very complimentary of mr cretchen today uh steven and and let's be
00:39:25.960
honest with everyone you're one of the people that forced him out you were president of the party and
00:39:31.220
went public and said the guy's gotta go tell us the story of how that happened but why did you say
00:39:37.580
he had to go well first of all um the constant all i did i wasn't against cretchen i'll tell you what
00:39:45.660
was going on oh you've been described as a horrible martinite by uh by some of his people i'm sure
00:39:50.860
oh oh oh as one very wise judge who uh knew politics well told me a few years later
00:39:58.920
he said steven um the the cretchenites think that you were for martin the martinites think you're for
00:40:05.140
cretchen they all don't like you you did a great job so i followed the law and the law of the
00:40:12.460
constitution of the liberal party has been changed when martin was in there because he didn't want to
00:40:17.320
happen to him what happened to cretchen is that in the constitution i had to call a convention and a
00:40:24.520
vote within a year of every election and in the first after the first two elections they were called
00:40:32.500
cretchen easily got through but after the last election his people let him down he um he was not
00:40:40.120
well served by particularly by people in some people in toronto and many people in montreal
00:40:45.020
and uh i had to go to 24 sussex we had a chat his chief of uh staff his principal secretary knew what
00:40:53.280
i was doing others knew what i was doing and i said you know prime minister you have to go or
00:40:57.880
i will call the convention but you're going to lose the convention and rather than lose the convention
00:41:03.820
and the vote you have to go and he couldn't he was godsmacked he couldn't believe it my people tell
00:41:09.220
you i said will you go back and ask your people the tough questions which i gave them and uh two
00:41:13.780
months later he phoned me and said yes i i hear your point and i'm going to resign he was let down by his
00:41:19.400
people um but i was going to follow the law of the party and both the cretchen forces and the martin
00:41:26.560
forces uh allowed me to extend that period of time before i had to call a vote at a convention
00:41:34.480
and um you know it was it was messy but uh ultimately everybody knew it was you know i'm a
00:41:42.040
lawyer i tried the law is very clear on this thing i followed the law and everybody got pissed off with
00:41:47.040
me but that's the way it goes sometimes excuse my french now i'll ask you to both comment on this
00:41:53.760
um you first even then chris uh when he stepped down he was 70 years old uh this is a guy who was
00:42:01.500
called yesterday's man before he was even prime minister and then staged a water skiing photo op
00:42:07.760
so that uh he could show that he he wasn't yesterday's man but he leaves at 70 and was
00:42:13.600
considered past his best before date we've got two octogenarians running to be president of the united
00:42:20.960
states right now and you know cretchen looks about as spry as they do um you know have we changed
00:42:29.460
our view on how old politicians uh you know can be or are still effective i mean donald trump and
00:42:36.560
and joe biden um they're going to be wandering around the retirement home soon and americans
00:42:42.200
that that's their only choice between those two you know and i think that uh no one's going to say
00:42:47.440
that uh biden is an example of a knock of jerryan who is uh in in peak form uh remember years ago in
00:42:54.600
1980 uh people thought ronald reagan uh was too old to become uh president i don't know what he
00:43:00.960
was he was probably in his early 70s or late 60s cretchen at 70 was in good shape he used to like to
00:43:08.500
hear the stories of gladstone the british prime minister who was prime minister um for another
00:43:14.200
10 years after cretchen he said well i could do this and i dare say brian and chris i dare say
00:43:21.260
he could do it he was uh doing a pretty good job cretchen was let down by his staunch supporters i
00:43:29.080
was in the middle i was neutral but i think that uh you bring up the point of 70 um you know right now
00:43:36.640
uh 70 is the old 60 i think that uh he could have continued on and done a good job i think that uh
00:43:43.900
and look at about 90 i was wasn't it just a few years ago brian he was uh skiing down not water skiing
00:43:50.160
he was snow snow skiing he's going down the hills apparently he's playing pickleball which is all
00:43:56.660
the rage these days ah gosh you won't you won't catch me or chris playing pickleball i don't know
00:44:03.000
chris do you play pickleball and how do you feel about octogenarians running for office well i've never
00:44:08.260
played pickleball but i would happily try it if uh if i was invited uh for a round it's an interesting
00:44:14.700
question i i think as i as i recall and and this is just an impression i felt like trudeau or sorry
00:44:21.740
cretchen uh as he got older was getting less and less coherent in both languages um not that i think
00:44:29.360
that he that his brain wasn't functioning but just i felt like hearing him talk was more and more of a
00:44:37.480
of a challenge to try to figure out what he's saying and you look at some of the quotes no no no
00:44:42.780
and you look at some of the quotes that that uh just over the past couple of days um that have
00:44:52.900
been printed and uh what was it there's there's just some great lines uh right it was asked um
00:45:01.040
uh vastly capitalists on on ctv asked asked him whether he thought justin trudeau should run
00:45:07.220
you know should stay on and he says uh you have to make the right decision a decision is a decision
00:45:12.020
when you're in the your car you have to make a decision either a truck is coming down turn left
00:45:17.520
you have to turn right a truck is coming so every decision is important
00:45:21.160
this is i don't know what that means you couldn't write this stuff no but uh but put it on an
00:45:31.120
inspirational poster yeah i got needlepoint or something like it's just you know he had some
00:45:39.880
kind of special he had some kind of thing that just not very many politicians have um that he can just
00:45:49.860
he can charm he could charm a room but like if you asked me to describe what his charm was
00:45:57.300
i mean i never found him charming uh but uh i mean i i guess i did i sort of understood i'll say this
00:46:06.760
is as someone who's who scrummed him who covered him uh both as a local reporter in montreal and then
00:46:13.240
on the hill um sometimes he sometimes he would get tough questions steven and sometimes you'd be
00:46:19.680
going at him hammer and tall and he would just come out with the the weirdest thing to say and he
00:46:24.940
would charm you by the end chris is right like he'd come up with these sayings about brushing bird
00:46:30.920
shit off your shoulder and people would laugh and okay smile and move on okay yeah i put it on my plate
00:46:42.540
let me uh one observation that not that many people know about is that if kretchen were going
00:46:49.860
to speak to a room of a thousand people and in advance of that he was in you know a waiting room
00:46:56.320
of three or four people he would get and he'd get sort of bored and he would go out and deliver a flat
00:47:04.360
speech if you brought him into that room of a thousand people and people were cheering and he was walking
00:47:11.480
down the aisle and people were sticking their hands out you know and women trying to kiss him and he
00:47:17.380
would get fired up and and we did this we learned we learned he would be fired up and he would go out
00:47:23.360
and he would give a stem winder of a speech it was unbelievable he did have as as chris put it some
00:47:29.940
some charm and as you put it you know he would he would just uh brian he could be extraordinarily
00:47:37.900
persuasive and even if you disagreed with him i feel people say god you know what i don't agree
00:47:44.100
with anything he said but i sure liked listening to him people would do that so yeah he does have a
00:47:51.740
yeah kind of like a ralph klein or a doug ford today or and it's just it's right on the edge of arrogance
00:48:00.480
it's it's a you know there's a few people like that ralph klein was like that doug ford is like
00:48:04.920
that today um it's a rare commodity and uh i bet that political consultants wish they could bottle
00:48:11.500
it uh gents thank you very much for uh your time today i'm not sure we figured out what cretchen's
00:48:16.960
legacy was but we'll leave it there and uh and allow the uh the audience to weigh in and let them
00:48:23.020
decide on on how it is so thank you again very much my pleasure bye chris full comment is a post
00:48:32.140
media podcast my name is brian lily your host this episode was produced by andre prue with theme music
00:48:37.200
by bryce hall kevin libban is the executive producer remember you can subscribe to full comment on apple
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00:48:49.160
your friends about us thanks for listening until next time i'm brian lily