Chretien memoir likely to rip open old Liberal wounds
By Elizabeth Thompson, CanWest News Service
Published: Saturday, October 13, 2007
OTTAWA -- Former prime minister Paul Martin is responsible for Canadian troops ending up in the "killing fields" around Kandahar because he took too long to make a decision, former prime minister Jean Chretien charges in a new book.
In a memoir likely to rip open old Liberal wounds and exacerbate divisions within the party only days before a possible plunge into a federal election, the former Liberal leader attacks Martin on several fronts, from his scheming to force Chretien out of office to Martin's handling of Canada's Kyoto environmental protocol commitments. He also argues that Martin has only himself to blame for the grief he suffered as a result of the sponsorship scandal.
And the former prime minister offers intriguing tidbits about such figures as former media baron Conrad Black and Queen Elizabeth II.
But Chretien, long described as a political brawler, takes off the gloves when it comes to Martin. He says manoeuvring by Martin and his supporters to push him out of the prime minister's office actually steeled his resolve to stay on.
He doesn't mince words.
"I was damned if I was going to let myself be shoved out the door by a gang of self-serving goons," Chretien writes after describing the hurt and betrayal he felt upon learning in the spring of 2000 about a meeting Martin supporters had held in a Toronto airport hotel. "By trying to force me to go, they aroused my competitive spirit, ignited my anger, and inadvertently gave me the blessing I needed from Aline (his wife) to fight for a third term. For that, ironically, I owed Paul Martin a great deal of thanks."
Chretien also recounts that after the Taliban government of Afghanistan was overthrown, he carefully engineered things so Canada's soldiers were stationed around the safer area of Kabul, helping to rebuild the Afghan capital.
"Later, unfortunately, when my successor took too long to make up his mind about whether Canada should extend our term with the International Security Assistance Force, our soldiers were moved out of Kabul and sent south again to battle the Taliban in the killing fields around Kandahar," Chretien writes.
Jim Pimblett, a spokesman for Martin, said his boss did not receive an advance copy of the book and was "not in a position to react in any detail, nor is he inclined to do so today or in the foreseeable future.
"Obviously, it is disappointing to hear reports that old divisions are being revisited at a time when the Liberal Party needs to stand unified behind (Liberal Leader Stephane) Dion. Pimblett acknowledged that the two men had their differences at times "but their partnership in government generated tremendous achievements."
Chretien was originally scheduled to launch his memoirs in person in Ottawa Monday, but is currently recovering from emergency heart bypass surgery earlier this month.
Although the tension between the two men was one of the worst kept secrets in Ottawa when they served together in cabinet, Chretien has, since leaving office, maintained a low profile and kept to the high road, generally keeping to himself his thoughts about the man who took his place as Liberal leader and prime minister in November 2003.
However, in Jean Chretien, My Years as Prime Minister, Chretien blasts Martin's handling of the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas reduction and accuses him of lying to the Liberal caucus.
Chretien says when he left office, Canada was on track to meet its commitments under the Kyoto accord.
"Unfortunately, whether for political or ideological reasons, my successors succumbed to the fears and threats of the anti-Kyoto forces and did serious damage to Canada's progress and our reputation in the process."
Chretien reveals that he contemplated removing Martin from the finance ministry, firing the conspirators on Martin's staff and cancelling the government contracts with Martin's friends and advisers at the Earnscliffe strategy and communications firm, but was talked out of it by his top advisers Jean Pelletier and Eddie Goldenberg.
"Both were to regret their advice, and I soon regretted my decision to keep him."
In his memoirs, Chretien paints a picture of Martin as a scheming, ambitious man ready to tell anyone anything they wanted to hear in order to get support for his leadership aspirations. For example, when the minister of agriculture asked for an extra billion dollars in 2002 to help Western farmers cope with a serious drought, Martin offered less than $500 million. Chretien says when he ordered a compromise of $700 million, Martin then told farmers and members of caucus it was Chretien's fault they didn't get the full $1 billion.
"It was irresponsible behaviour on his part and it made the government increasingly difficult to manage," Chretien writes.
In fact, Chretien says, if Martin hadn't been in such a hurry to take over the PMO, he wouldn't have had to worry about the sponsorship scandal.
Knowing Auditor general Sheila Fraser's report was going to be "tough," Chretien was prepared to receive it, thank her for her work and then say if there was evidence of theft or fraud that the police should catch the crooks and the courts should put them in jail.
"Of course, I expected to have to take some hits in the press for a couple of weeks, but that hadn't frightened me in the past and it didn't frighten me now. By the time Martin was to take over, the whole issue would have been history and he could have begun his mandate without that albatross around his neck."
But Pimblett challenged Chretien's memory. "Undoubtedly there are clear differences in recollection between the two men - not the least of which would appear to be Mr. Chretien's decision to prorogue Parliament, and not accept the auditor generals report on sponsorship personally," he said.
Chretien said he had also been willing to stay in office until the end of January to deal with it, requiring only that Martin ask him officially.
"I never even had a phone call from him, with disastrous consequences for him and the Liberal Party."
Chretien deals briefly with the reasons for setting up the sponsorship program in the wake of the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty and blames the scandal on a few bad apples, who, unbeknownst to him, decided to line their own pockets. Chretien also points out that of three people charged with crimes to date, Paul Coffin and Charles Guite had ties to the Conservatives and Jean Brault is described as a Parti Quebecois supporter.
Chretien admits that in earlier drafts of the book he planned to write "at some length" about Martin's decision to launch the inquiry into the sponsorship scandal presided by Justice John Gomery, the commission's work, its findings and its ramifications, however it was not included because the matter was still before the courts.
Instead, Chretien quotes a newspaper columnist's assessment that the sponsorship scandal was "a mouse of an affair" and that Martin reacted like an elephant panicked by the sight of a mouse, creating havoc in all directions.
Chretien's views on Martin are only one part of a wide-ranging, 412-page memoir that recounts his decade as Canada's prime minister. Passages include observations on the 1995 referendum and his conviction that Canada would be pulled into the United States if Quebec were to separate, as well as his government's nervousness about introducing the Clarity Act.
Chretien also reveals some of his behind the scenes conversations with international leaders on the world stage - particularly former U.S President Bill Clinton.
The former prime minister also describes his meetings with U.S. President George W. Bush, who was trying to overcome Chretien's misgivings about Canada joining the planned U.S invasion of Iraq but who, Chretien says, didn't have enough evidence to "convince a judge of the municipal court in Shawinigan." Chretien says he tried, over a beer in Johannesburg, South Africa, to talk to Tony Blair, who was then British prime minister, out of invading Iraq. Chretien pointed out that the U.S. was choosing to replace a leader like Iraq's Saddam Hussein instead of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe because Iraq had oil and Zimbabwe didn't.
Chretien also reveals that media baron Conrad Black, desperate to persuade the Canadian government not to block his appointment to the British House of Lords, proposed an unusual solution.
"You could allow me to become a lord in England and at the same time make me a senator in Canada," he quotes Black as saying. Black ended up renouncing his Canadian citizenship in order to be able to take the British appointment. "I'd serve in both. I'd even be willing to sit as a Liberal," Black is also quoted as saying.
Chretien reveals he had an opportunity to enter the media business in October 2003 when CanWest founder Izzy Asper told him, a week before Asper's own death, that he wanted the prime minister to become chairman of his media empire once Chretien got out of politics.
"I took it as a jest, but he made the statement at a dinner table in front of other people, and his family later told me he had been serious."
Chretien recounts that Queen Elizabeth II, however, once took a jest seriously when she was taken in by a Quebec radio announcer who, posing as Chretien in 1995 during the referendum campaign, got through to her on the telephone.
" 'I didn't think you sounded quite like yourself,' she told me, 'but I thought, given all the duress you were under, you might have been drunk' ."
Montreal Gazette
© CanWest News Service 2007
