Peter Black
Local Journalism Initiative reporter
peterblack@qctonline.com
Jean Chrétien, at 90, seems a safe distance from having a foot in the grave. He even boasts he is in better shape than 81-year-old U.S. President Joe Biden. Indeed, there’s a famous video of Chrétien slalom water-skiing when he was the same age as Biden is now.
So, while it may be premature to roll out the obituary reflections on the long career of Canada’s 20th prime minister, his public birthday appearances, media interviews and a big Parliament Hill party have prompted some reflections on his legacy, some of them harsh.
Perhaps the most scathing came from the National Post’s Chris Selley, one of the newspaper’s stable of generally Liberal-loathing, Pierre Poilievre-loving columnists.
In a Jan. 16 piece titled “More pearls of nonsense from Jean Chrétien,” Selley takes apart the words and deeds of le petit gars de Shawinigan with gleeful viciousness. Quite frankly, though, one would be hard-pressed to dispute much of his criticism.
Selley takes specific aim at Chrétien’s handling of Indigenous issues, particularly residential schools. Chrétien has claimed that as minister for “Indian Affairs,” as it was called during his tenure in the late 1960s, he knew nothing about anything amiss going on, contrary to the recollections of other officials involved in the issue back in the day.
Selley referred to a 2021 appearance Chrétien made on Radio-Canada’s Tout le Monde en Parle, where “[h]e likened abuse at the residential schools to his own at the academically elite Joliette Seminary. He made light of child sexual abuse, suggesting he mightn’t have been interfered with at Joliette because he hadn’t been ‘pretty enough.’”
“It was disgusting,” Selley writes.
Maybe so, but it was vintage Chrétien, whose 10 years and 38 days as prime minister, on top of the 23 years he spent as MP for Shawingan and minister in Pierre Trudeau’s and briefly rival John Turner’s government, was rich in controversy sparked by his cocky attitude and street fighter reputation.
Look up the “Shawinigan handshake” for one example. There’s even a beer named for it.
It seems implausible now, but Chrétien won three consecutive majorities, a feat bested only by Canada’s first francophone PM, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who won four straight. Even his mentor Trudeau the Elder managed only three, with a minority and a defeat between 1968 and 1980.
This unlikely prime minister, who cultivated his rough-hewn image yet was an aficionado of classical music, had the great timing to arrive at the helm of the Liberal Party when the voting public was bone-weary of nine years of Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives.
The 1993 election saw the utter demolition and fragmentation of the once proud and intermittently progressive conservative movement into the western-based Reform Party, the tiny surviving PC rump (hello Jean Charest) and the Bloc Québécois under Mulroney’s star Quebec recruit Lucien Bouchard.
Such was Chrétien’s good fortune that the opposition forces at the time were almost numerically incapable of forming a government. Hence you had the wacky situation of Bouchard, a fiery separatist, as leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition, the Bloc having won the second most seats – 54 to Reform’s 52.
In various birthday interviews, Chrétien said his proudest achievements were balanced budgets, not joining the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the Clarity Act. The latter was the response to the razor-thin federalist win in the 1995 referendum, which, depending on who you believe, could have gone the other way were it not for some shady tactics on the Non side.
Mired in scandal (Shawinigate, the sponsorship mess) and hounded by the impatient mutinous forces of Paul Martin, Chrétien read the room and retired from politics in November 2003.
What advice does the Liberal éminence grise offer Trudeau the Younger with a federal election possibly a mere 18 months away? Stay or go? You’d be at a loss trying to glean a straight answer from the man whose autobiography is titled Straight from the Heart.
All this carping about Chrétien’s legacy aside, it’s quite possible this enduringly popular populist prime minister could have won a fourth straight election in 2004, although probably not a majority.
After all, his less charismatic successor Martin, hobbled by the sponsorship scandal, still pulled off a win over new Conservative leader Stephen Harper in the election that first brought Pierre Poilievre to Parliament, nearly 20 years ago.
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