"… integrity is more than just nice words and a photo-op, it is a way of life."
– Jean Chrétien, June 16, 1994
"What a catalyst you turned out to be, loaded the guns and run off home for your tea."
"Gladstone came back – he was 86. So I say to all of you, watch me."
Jean Chrétien, November 6, 2003
Ah, Jean, what a fucking joker you turned out to be, eh?
At the end, you left the House amid laughter and applause. After 40 years of service in the federal arena, you finally – perhaps – bowed out with your head held high and with the words of your erstwhile political foes ringing praise in your ears.
"Time and again, he did the heavy lifting," said former Tory PM Joe Clark. "Time and again, he took the hard decisions which Canada in the end supported." John Reynolds, House Leader of the Alliance (or whatever it is right now) offered similar words of valedictory obsequiousness. "We are aware of his musing about staying on as a backbencher," he remarked, and in reference to the impending coronation of Paul Martin added, "where all the power will reside when the Ancient Mariner takes the helm."
Oh Lordy, Lordy….
Jean – will you not just fuck off once and for all?
Ten years ago, I remember lying on my couch on election night. The polls had shut some time earlier and the results were beginning to come in. I watched – first with amusement, then with glee, then with astonishment. The early Tory numbers were not budging. All told, on that momentous day they garnered just two seats. Two seats! The once mighty Conservative Party – which had thrust upon the nation such leaders as Sir John A. Macdonald, Robert Borden and John Diefenbaker – had been reduced to a bare rump. Nay, the rump of a rump.
After nine gruelling years of putting up with all of his oily lies and cronyism, after the utter debacles of Meech Lake, the Charlottetown Accord, free trade and the GST, the Canadian public finally got to piss on the record and memory of Brian Mulroney. It was too bad, of course, that the man himself had ducked out of the contest, leaving patsy Kim Campbell to carry the can, but clearly Canadians were not of a mind to appreciate or worry about such niceties.
At the time, like everyone else, I rejoiced in the election of Jean Chrétien and the Liberals. Not only was Mulroney finally dispatched into the dustbin of history, but the Liberal "Red Book" promised to undo all the untold damage his junior brand of neo-conservatism had vomited upon the country.
How wrong we were. How wrong I was….
Jean – I don’t know where to begin. All the years, tears and beers have blurred your decade of broken promises, abject indifference to public sentiment, complete surrender to political expedience and – above all else – your arrogant contempt for anyone outside your little cadre of supine lackeys into one foul-tasting memory of an era best forgotten. If only we could.
Where do we begin? The basic "Red Book" pledges, maybe? The promise to renegotiate free trade? To revoke the GST? The decade-long failure to replace Sea King helicopters, leaving the navy and coast guard reliant on pre-8-track technology? Your setting up and then rapidly closing down the Royal Commission inquiries into Somalia and APEC? Your dismissal and physical assault of anyone who challenged your views or who, literally, got in your way? Your elevation of complete dunces to political high office, leaving vital decisions in the hands of the likes of Herb Dhaliwal, David Anderson, Sheila Copps, Jane Stewart and – above all – that two-time loser David Collenette?
Or, in a related manner, your complete indifference to repeated abuse of ministerial office, your acceptance – if not outright endorsement – of conflict of interest as a modus operandi (exhibited stunningly in recent weeks in relation to the Irving backhanders)? Or your effective transformation of Ethics Counsellor Howard Wilson into a latter-day eunuch, powerless even to slap your wrists?
Or how about that oh-so-cute baby speech you’ve perfected over the years, rendering any serious debate of any serious matter with any serious interlocutor impossible. Yes, I know that all the mimics and comics love your "wacky" malapropisms and non sequiturs, but it would have been nice for the head of government to have been at least partly intelligible once in a while.
And so you leave us, Jean, with a dismal record and bitter taste to reflect upon. The poor, the unemployed, children, students, workers, women, immigrants, even true liberals – all worse off, much, much worse off now than when you took office. And then leaving us with no better prospect than the Age of Martin to look forward to….
So forgive me if I can’t belly up to the bar and join in the yuck-yucks as you exit, stage left. It’s not funny and neither are you. But then again, you never really were, were you?
Let’s not say adieu. Let’s make it farewell. |
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