Tragedy in the Commons (29 page)

Chuck Strahl’s comments at the May 15, 2001, press conference were taken from Sheldon Alberts’s article “Leadership has exercised consistently bad judgment,” published in the
National Post
on May 16, 2001, page A1.

Eoin O’Malley’s research was found in his article “The Power of Prime Ministers: Results of an Expert Survey,” published in the
International Political Science Review
28, no. 1, 2007, and available at:
http://dcu.ie/~omalle/070398_IPS_7-27.pdf
.

The information on Sir John A. Macdonald’s tenure was found in a
National Post
article by the historian Allan Levine, entitled “A brief history of Canada’s parliamentary whips.” Levine sources the “eighteen times” statistic to a 1985 study by Eugene Forsey and Graham Eglinton. The article appeared in the
National Post
, on April 3, 2013. A more thorough examination of Macdonld’s life is available in two biographies by Richard Gwyn—
John A: The Man Who Made Us
, published by Random House Canada in 2007, and
Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times
, published by Random House Canada in 2011.

Information on the changes Pierre Trudeau made to his PMO were found in Bruce Wallace’s article “Chrétien, a Closet Autocrat?,” published in
Maclean’s
on October 19, 1998, and available at:
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/macleans/chretien-a-closet-autocrat
.

The quotes from Allan Levine on Pierre Trudeau came from Levine’s
National Post
article cited earlier.

Information on Jean Chrétien’s decision to vote on the Kyoto Accord, the quote from Gordon Robinson and the quote on the centralization of power in the PMO came from Elizabeth Thompson’s article “PM’s power threatens to make even Cabinet irrelevant,” published in the
Montreal Gazette
on September 30, 2002, page A1.

Jeffrey Simpson’s comments on the autocratic nature of the PMO came from Simpson’s article “After the storm,”
published in the
Globe and Mail
on December 5, 2008.

Donald Savoie’s quotes came from his book
Power: Where Is It?
, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010, page 130.

Andrew Coyne’s comments on Mark Warawa’s 2013 motion, cited at two points in this chapter, came from Coyne’s article “Mob rule versus Mark Warawa,” published in the
National Post
on March 31, 2013.

Most of the colour here came from the Samara exit interviews. For a newspaper report that indicates the tortured history of Canada’s endangered species legislation, see Kate Jaimet’s article “Liberals demanded favours to pass bill,” published in the
Ottawa Citizen
on December 27, 2002, page A1. Thank you also to Paul Genest for reviewing the account.

Brent Rathgeber comments came from his blog, entitled “I Stand Alone,” published on June 6, 2013, and available at:
http://brentrathgeber.ca/wordpress/i-stand-alone
.

Kevin Page’s article was called “Why being Canada’s first parliamentary budget officer may have saved my life,” and was published in the
Toronto Star
on April 1, 2013. The book he references,
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
, was written by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson and was published in New York by Crown Publishers in 2012.

CONCLUSION

The audit of political parties’ riding association websites was conducted by Samara in the fall of 2013. Complete results are available at
www.samaracanada.com
.

Andrew Coyne’s comments on changing the culture of politics came from his article “The people are what’s wrong with our politics,” published in the
Ottawa Citizen
on September 22, 2012, page A2. The reference to his suggestion that leaders voice-over negative advertisements was drawn from his column “Attack ads are political deathstars but their target is democracy,” published in the
National Post
, April 17, 2013.

Susan Delacourt’s book,
Shopping for Votes
(Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2013), is an invaluable resource in the evolution of Canadian political culture and contains practical suggestions for how advertising standards could prevent further deterioration of political discourse. These suggestions are elaborated further in her article “Political Reform: Let’s overhaul the ad game while we’re at it,” published on December 6, 2013, in the
Toronto Star
.

The research on Canadians’ views of their MPs is taken from the report “Who’s the Boss? Canadians’ Views on their Democracy,” published by Samara on December 3, 2012, and available at:
http://www.samaracanada.com/what-we-do/current-research/who’s-the-boss-
.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A
project of this size and scope is not possible without the hard work, helpful advice and encouragement of a wide variety of people. We are particularly indebted to the generous support of the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians, and in particular to Léo Duguay, Francis LeBlanc, Jack Murta, Doug Rowland, Susan Simms and the late Honourable Douglas Frith, for supporting this project from its very early days, and to Jack Silverstone for continuing with that support.

Thank you also to the eighty former Members of Parliament, whose names are listed in the back of this book. They gave generously of their time and willingly shared their experiences and perspectives. We were told to expect reluctance on the part of many to participate in this project, and we were delighted to learn that this wasn’t the case.

We are also grateful to those who worked with us to organize and conduct the interviews. Mariève Forest and Vincent Raynauld interviewed former MPs in French Canada. Reva Seth interviewed some of the MPs in southern Ontario, and Morris Chochla interviewed those in northern Ontario. Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan interviewed everyone else.

Peter McNelly provided interview training to ensure
consistency in the interviewers’ approach. We are also indebted to Professor Mary Ann McColl for her training on qualitative research methods. Thank you to Ruth Ostrower, who coordinated the transportation and other logistics required to visit so many communities across Canada. Thank you also to Donna Banham, who transcribed the bulk of the interviews.

Thank you to Patrick Johnston for suggesting we get advice from former parliamentarians in the first place.

This project began with a series of short reports, published on Samara’s website. This helped us identify the interviews’ major themes and draw wider public attention to the MPs’ experiences. Many people helped analyze transcripts and worked with us on these earlier summaries, including Heather Bastedo, Sarah Blanchard, Grant Burns, Suzanne Gallant, Shira Honig, Joshua Knelman, Andreas Krebs and Myna Kota.

Thank you to the team at Random House Canada for recognizing that there may be a book in all this, and in particular, to Brad Martin, Louise Dennys, Anne Collins and our tireless editor, Craig Pyette. Thank you also to copy editor Jane McWhinney and proof reader Liba Berry.

Samara’s small and mighty team was critical to bringing this book to life. Kendall Anderson was involved from day one, helping to shape the initial proposal all the way through to providing invaluable comments on the final draft. Jennifer Phillips, Jane Hilderman and Laura Anthony brought their own substantial knowledge of politics to bear, providing comments, context and helping check critical facts. Chris Shulgan’s elegant prose brought the MPs’ stories to life and helped make this book much more than we’d ever imagined. We feel very
fortunate to work among such passionate, kind and thoughtful Canadians, and are so grateful for everything they’ve done to make this, and much of Samara’s work, possible.

We’d also like to thank Samara’s advisory and governance boards for their commitment to the organization, many since our initial days. Thank you to Sujit Choudhry, Heather Conway, Scott Gilmore, Kevin Lynch, Robert Prichard, Charles Sirois and Perry Spitznagel, and to Stephanie MacKendrick, Ratna Omidvar, Ruth Ostrower, Kasi Rao and Bill Young.

Our families have also been tremendously supportive to us during the founding of Samara and the writing of this book. Thank you to David Skok, Chris and Trish Loat, Cathy Spoel and Mary MacMillan.

As befitting a country with as large a geography and as diverse a population as Canada’s, every MP’s experience was in some ways unique, but we found they had more in common than we’d ever imagined at the outset of this project. We’ve done our best to tell their collective story and reflect their collective advice in the hopes that it reminds us all of the importance of public leadership and service to the well-being of our country. We encourage you to discuss and debate what the MPs have said, but please remember that any errors, of course, are our own.

Samara, the think tank we started in 2009 that has resulted in this book, is a charity and the proceeds from this book will go to support Samara’s future work. Please visit
www.samaracanada.com
to learn more about what we do and how you can get involved.

PARTICIPATING MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT

We wish to express our sincere appreciation to the former Members of Parliament who participated in this project:

The Honourable Peter Adams The Honourable Reginald Alcock Omar Alghabra

The Honourable David Anderson The Honourable Jean Augustine The Honourable Eleni Bakopanos The Honourable Susan Barnes Colleen Beaumier Catherine Bell Stéphane Bergeron The Honourable Reverend William Blaikie Alain Boire

Ken Boshcoff

The Honourable Don Boudria The Honourable Claudette Bradshaw The Honourable Edward Broadbent Bonnie Brown

The Honourable Sarmite Bulte The Honourable Rick Casson Marlene Catterall Roger Clavet

The Honourable Joseph Comuzzi Guy Côté

The Honourable Roy Cullen John Cummins

Odina Desrochers The Honourable Paul DeVillers The Honourable Claude Drouin The Honourable John Efford Ken Epp

Brian Fitzpatrick Paul Forseth

Sébastien Gagnon The Honourable Roger Gallaway The Honourable John Godfrey
James Gouk The Honourable Bill Graham Raymond Gravel Art Hanger

Jeremy Harrison Luc Harvey

The Honourable Loyola Hearn The Honourable Jay Hill The Honourable Charles Hubbard Dale Johnston

The Honourable Walt Lastewka Derek Lee

Marcel Lussier The Honourable Paul Macklin Inky Mark

The Honourable Keith Martin The Right Honourable Paul Martin Bill Matthews

Alexa McDonough The Honourable Anne McLellan Serge Ménard

Gary Merasty

The Honourable Peter Milliken The Honourable Andrew Mitchell Pat O’Brien

Christian Ouellet The Honourable Stephen Owen The Honourable Denis Paradis The Honourable Jim Peterson The Honourable Pierre Pettigrew Russ Powers

Penny Priddy

Jean-Yves Roy

Werner Schmidt The Honourable Andy Scott Bill Siksay

The Honourable Carol Skelton The Honourable Monte Solberg The Honourable Chuck Strahl The Honourable Andrew Telegdi Myron Thompson The Honourable Paddy Torsney Judy Wasylycia-Leis Randy White

Blair Wilson

Alison Loat
is a regular commentator on Canadian politics, a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a former consultant with McKinsey & Company. For her work as a co-founder of Canada25, she was recognized as a young leader by
Maclean’s
and the Public Policy Forum. She was also selected as one of the top 100 women in Canada by the Women’s Executive Network, and received both the Gold and Diamond Jubilee Medals for her service to Canada. Alison is also an associate fellow and instructor at the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto. Follow her on Twitter
@AlisonLoat
.

Michael MacMillan
is the CEO of the Canadian-based company Blue Ant Media. He was previously the executive chairman and CEO of Alliance Atlantis Communications. MacMillan co-founded the original Atlantis Films in 1978, which won an Oscar in 1984 for its short film
Boys and Girls
. A recipient of the Gold and Diamond Jubilee Medals for service to Canada, he is also a co-owner of Closson Chase, a vineyard and winery in Prince Edward County, Ontario.

Alison Loat
and
Michael MacMillan
co-founded the think tank Samara in 2009 (
www.samaracanada.com
). Follow Samara on Twitter
@SamaraCDA
.