Oliver's Twist (33 page)

After that, I had dinner with Martin from time to time and occasionally our wives joined us. In our many conversations, I had to accept Martin's self-restraint on the topic of Chrétien's faults. If his facial expressions were any indication, the effort to stifle comment seemed almost physically painful. Yet his sense of mission and basic human decency inspired admiration.

Martin had never had to play hardball to achieve his political ambitions, but after 1990 his advisers told him it was time. He learned fast and gave his troops their head. No one would be allowed to remain neutral; everyone would have to choose sides. Even Jean Pelletier, brought to Ottawa as Chrétien's chief of staff in 1992, was asked to declare his loyalties. When he stuck by his new boss, he was, he said, added to Martin's enemies list.

Distinctions were made among journalists as well. After Allan Rock, another obvious contender for the party's leadership, made a northern expedition as a member of my canoe group, it did not escape me that phone calls and messages to Martin's finance department were not being returned. Martin himself seemed perpetually unavailable. This was a problem: As bureau chief, I needed access to the minister and his officials in a department that was at the centre of government and an important news source. Worse yet, my competitors at the CBC were getting stories that I wasn't.

Through a trusted intermediary, I arranged a dinner meeting with Martin at an expensive French restaurant. Neither of us raised any specific problems between us; rather, we gossiped and laughed over current events. As the evening ended, I told Martin as casually as possible that I had always thought it a mistake for reporters to take sides with political parties or indeed with individual political candidates. With a broad smile and a wave of his arm, Martin swept away such concerns, assuring me he had never doubted my fairness. The next day a finance official called and invited me out for lunch. Apparently I was back in Paul Martin's good graces.

Martin and Chrétien were nonetheless notorious for their ability to hold a grudge, and the ill will between them caught scores of colleagues in the undertow. Once when asked to help out a mutual friend who was down on his luck and seeking a government job, Martin replied that he would try. He warned against letting Chrétien find out about his efforts, however, since the prime minister would almost certainly quash any such appointment.

Party president Iona Campagnolo had earned the affection of
the Chrétien camp in 1984 when she told delegates at that year's leadership convention that although John Turner had won their votes, Jean Chrétien was first in their hearts. A few years later, Campagnolo concluded that time had passed Chrétien by, and she signed on as co-chair of Martin's leadership campaign. Although she had given the Chrétien camp no commitment of any sort, her support of Martin was seen as a betrayal not to be forgiven. She was one of the few Liberal party presidents never rewarded with a Senate seat, despite being a popular national figure.

Chrétien's animosity likewise affected reporters. For a time, then
Globe and Mail
bureau chief Edward Greenspon and I shared hosting duties on
Question Period
. Whenever major newsmakers came on the show, we interviewed them together, taking turns asking questions and signalling each other under the table when we wanted to hand off to the other. In 1996, Greenspon co-authored a book titled
Double Vision
with Anthony Wilson-Smith of
Maclean's
, which the Chrétien crowd condemned as nothing but a puff piece for the finance minister. Chrétien had agreed to an appearance on the show, but shortly after Greenspon's book launch, the Prime Minister's Office called with a new proviso. The interview could proceed, but only on condition that Greenspon not be part of it. I rejected that condition and the interview never happened.

Once out of the Cabinet, Martin was in great demand as the prime minister-in-waiting. The political cognoscenti were abuzz with talk of no one else. Liberal candidates across the country wanted to have their pictures taken with Martin, and since they would all be delegates at the next leadership convention, he was pleased to oblige. At a public reception at a golf course in Hartland, New Brunswick, the scene was one of full-scale
Martin mania. Next day, making an unannounced stop for a coffee at an Irving gas station in Nackawic, Martin was greeted with a spontaneous standing ovation from the customers when he came through the door.

His “consultation with Canadians,” as Martin called it, took him across the country in triumph. The strategy was to create an aura of inevitability around his ascendancy to the top job and to discourage all other comers, chief among them Allan Rock, John Manley, and Sheila Copps, whom the Martinites particularly disliked. The PMO could only fume as Martin developed policy and expressed positions on topical issues, curried favour with an eager media, and built a leadership campaign war chest. He was creating a parallel Liberal party, one that seemed able to embrace his native Quebec, rural Alberta, and conservative Bay Street.

I had to blast my way through layers of self-important staffers to win a one-on-one meeting with Martin. I felt as if I were being ushered into an audience with a head of state when I arrived one rainy night at a ritzy restaurant across the Ottawa River in Hull. Martin was waiting for me in a private room with two fidgety aides just outside the door.

As always he greeted me warmly, but he appeared to be suffering jangled nerves. He had agreed to this sit-down, no doubt in his mind for future considerations, though his nervousness—perhaps a fear of making some verbal gaffe that might cost him the prize—was palpable. Martin peppered me with questions, shifting focus frequently, though always concerned with my work and interests, as if trying to avoid hard questions or to eat up the allotted time.

Eventually Martin spoke about the processes of managing government and public policy, which he believed was being
done in a haphazard and unintelligent manner. I reminded him of Pierre Trudeau's near-fatal excursion down that road. Trudeau and Michael Pitfield, Clerk of the Privy Council, had spent their first term in the engine room, determined to make the machinery of government run better. But there was no one up on the bridge, plotting the ship's course. I thought to myself that Martin seemed to love the details of policy more than the tough business of making decisions. He left the crucial but messy business of politics to others, preferring the tidier precincts of planning and process.

Behind the scenes, the Martin gang was using strong-arm tactics to sweep aside anyone with the temerity to challenge their man for the leadership. Those who might be tempted were made to understand that there would be no jobs, no contracts, and no access if they did so. The smart ones, like Brian Tobin, Allan Rock, and Frank McKenna, knew it was hopeless and did not try. Sheila Copps was enough of a renegade to leave her name in the ring in what many regarded as a foolhardy but principled bid to stop the Martin juggernaut. Martin always pleaded innocent when such things were brought to his attention.

No one doubted that Martin would make quick work of the hapless Stephen Harper. Some commentators debated whether or not the massive majority they expected Martin to win in his first election as prime minister might skew the political balance in Ottawa for years to come. So it was that in November 2003, Martin was essentially crowned leader with 94 percent of delegate votes.

Up in the broadcast booth at Toronto's Air Canada Centre, Lloyd Robertson asked me for an assessment of Martin's acceptance speech. Amid the clamour of victory celebrations, I could
not bring myself to rain on the parade and replied rather lamely that Martin had done what he had to do. In fact, I felt it was a speech devoid of any vision for the country. In his moment of triumph, Martin had offered nothing of substance that might reveal his convictions or values in government. Later we learned that the address was the work of a committee whose members couldn't agree on its content. He had left this pivotal statement in the hands of others and the result was an inconclusive mess and a harbinger of worse to come.

Chrétien took his leave earlier than he'd initially announced, giving the prime ministership to Martin on December 12. At the same time, Chrétien handed Martin a poisoned chalice. For some months Auditor General Sheila Fraser had been preparing a report on the sponsorship scandal; in February 2004, she released her findings that approximately one hundred million dollars in federal funds had been misspent, some of it ending up in the hands of Liberal supporters in Quebec. Chrétien's supporters insist he was prepared to take the heat and make the report public before Martin took over. He would simply have handed it to the RCMP, who would have buried the story for at least a year. In the event, the report was scheduled to be made public two months into Martin's watch, and many insiders claim that Martin's brain trust deliberately chose the timing. They considered handing it to the Mounties too, but all the research showed that Canadians wanted to put Chrétien behind them, if not to punish him and his minions. Martin needed to be seen as the agent of change. The strategy was to lay all responsibility on the departed Chrétien, creating a sharp delineation between the two Liberal regimes.

Martin then made the decision that ultimately doomed his
government. His key advisers debated fiercely about whether or not to launch an inquiry. The most experienced of the Quebec MPs were set against it, as was the national director of the Liberal Party, Steve McKinnon. On the Friday before the Auditor General's report was to be released, Martin seemed to have been swayed by their arguments. By Monday, however, he had changed his mind and the government went into damage control, announcing both a judicial and a parliamentary inquiry. Justice John Gomery would head the former, and his commission hearings in Montreal soon became the hottest ticket in town.

Despite other measures designed to demonstrate swift and righteous retribution against the architects of the sponsorship program, including the firing of the presidents of the Business Development Bank, Via Rail, and Canada Post, the polls showed that in the minds of most Canadians, Liberals were Liberals. Martin's government never did succeed in distancing itself from its predecessor on this issue.

A wise observer of politicians and a friend of Paul Martin's once told me he sensed in Martin an insecurity at the centre that made him easily manipulated by those who advised him. To me, it appeared that Martin had never been his own man entirely. Was he the creation of other people, a son who had captured the mantle that had eluded his illustrious father, or a respectable face for a group of ambitious policy wonks bent on their own purposes? Others less charitable saw Martin as an instrument of the giant Power Corporation of Montreal for which he once worked and that backed him politically all the way to 24 Sussex Drive. (Ironically, that company had backed Chrétien as well in his time. John Rae, a long-time political adviser to Chrétien, was
also a senior executive with the firm. “Power,” as everyone calls it, came by its name honestly.)

Once in the prime minister's chair, Martin handed over considerable responsibility and influence to a crew that was dubbed the “Board,” a group that in other administrations might be known as the “kitchen cabinet.” Many of them had no official position in government; one was Michael Robinson, a long-time intimate of Martin's and a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group, then one of the most powerful lobbying firms in Ottawa.

Lacking confidence in his own political instincts, Martin farmed out the necessary plotting and strategizing to this inner circle and in the process, some believe, he also relinquished his better judgment and principles. These dozen or so aides, pollsters, and assorted hangers-on prescribed the direction and recommended the decisions that guided the political agenda of the Martin government, but the need to settle old scores and punish old enemies forever influenced their counsel. They prolonged the hostilities within the party and the caucus.

Those who held positions both as close advisers to the prime minister and employees of lobbying firms also drew attention. One deputy minister told me of his astonishment at finding himself answering to Martin aides who worked full-time as private-sector lobbyists. Naturally, bureaucrats were reluctant to discuss privileged government plans in front of individuals whose clients could potentially benefit from inside information. The relationship was so intimate that on a number of occasions when I called the PMO to ask for certain people, I was transferred directly to the reception desk at a prominent lobbying firm.

Eventually the Gomery Commission exposed the dark underside of the Liberal Party in Quebec and cost Martin his popularity with Canadians. Martin called an election for June 2004, too late according to his critics, who believed he should have gone to the polls before the commission's revelations provided the new Conservative leader, Stephen Harper, with the rope to hang him.

The campaign was bruising, with Martin's coterie desperate to hang on to the majority they'd inherited from the despised Chrétien, and Harper eager to make his mark in this election debut. Both leaders made extensive use of strategists, spin doctors, and consultants for whom this campaign was not just about policy and platforms but about their very jobs. Victory meant access to government contracts and saleable influence worth millions. Bad press coverage could endanger the financial futures of scores of the party faithful in both camps. Knowing that I would have to deal with whichever party formed the government, I was determined that our CTV coverage and my commentary be fair and above partisan reproach. No chance of that. The Liberals turned on me with a fury after the nationally televised leaders' debate.

I had been chosen as the leadoff questioner, and Martin had won the draw for the first question. I knew that the hotheads of Martin's media operation would never forgive anything but a softball question, but I could not bring myself to throw an obviously easy lob. I asked Martin why anyone should believe that, as a finance minister from the province of Quebec, he knew nothing about the payoffs and skulduggery among Liberals in his home province. He stammered out a weak reply and was on the defensive for the next two hours.