Égalité ou indépendance: a Canadian TL

GAGNON: Robert Lussier was frustrated by his inability to find a suitable candidate to oppose Jean Doré in the November municipal election, with a wrecked Civic Party at sea in opposition. Drapeau had never found a suitable successor, and the Unionists were convinced that a new party, perhaps headed by a non-politician, was needed. Doré was still broadly popular even as progressive dissatisfaction had already begun to set in, as Quebec City happily encouraged developers in their fight against environmentalists for influence over zoning policy. Sauvé did not take direct part in these battles, leaving them to his Montreal ministers, while taking a greater interest in the small-town web that formed his party’s regional backbone. Outside Lévesque’s native Gaspe, Liberal power had been steadily waning despite persistent attempts to strengthen their rural support. Sauvé and his regional ministers had explicitly designed this system as a modernized version of Duplessis’ old one, whose closest English Canadian equivalent was the Albertan Tory network. For his part, Doré hoped to mobilize progressive voters behind Lévesque, even if there was little ideological or personal love lost between them. Fore Not since Drapeau’s first term had there been such visceral hostility between Quebec City and Montreal City Hall, even if it was mostly conducted behind closed doors.

TIMMINS: 1990 saw a mild resurgence in Anglophone language activism, albeit not of the sort that would disturb the long linguistic peace nor cozy relations between Pierre Sauvé and the Anglophone establishment. These were mostly professional activists campaigning to loosen sign restrictions and promote a more flexible immigration system, rather than challenge any fundamentals. Insofar as the government were concerned, these questions had been settled 15 years earlier and did not even merit acknowledgement. Sauvé’s generational theory, which he had first expressed to Charles Bronfman in 1976, was being born out in public and private polling data. All Unionists had to do was wait, and like his friend Alex Campbell, Sauvé would brook not the faintest hint of dissent on such a key issue. Besides, Guy Ingres told me, Anglophone dissent was nothing they hadn’t heard nearly 20 years earlier. Moreover, Anglophone positioning was much weaker demographically than they had been then. Not a single Anglophone was in the government caucus, and even in the Liberal Party Anglophones had limited influence. Jean-Paul Beaudry did not even mention the sign protests except when asked directly by journalists, and the Liberals did not since they had a division between Francophone and Anglophone members as 20 years earlier.

ROY: Both parties were pleased with how the session unfolded, and were a bit more confident than they had been a few months earlier. While the Liberals had voted against restoring vocational training and pledged to abolish it again if they won government, it would not be a central issue in the upcoming campaign. Lévesque wanted to focus on the economy, healthcare, environment and open governance. In healthcare, Sauvé had pushed Medicare’s outer limits similarly to Don Getty, though their nonexistent relationship prevented formal collaboration on the issue. Lévesque had agreed to a more progressive platform than 1987 not only to please progressives but also to deflect Unionist attacks that he was offering another dose of the Garneau government’s failures. Another big vulnerability was on federal ties, for despite a bipartisan pension stance and cultural space, Lévesque agreed with Campbell on environmental regulations loathed in rural Quebec. On cultural issues he expected “the usual” Unionist scorched-earth strategies that had been a key component of their electoral arsenal throughout their party’s history. Being more nationalist and less liberal than his colleagues on cultural issues, Lévesque was planning to label culture wars a distraction from the poor economy which Sauvé was doing nothing to ameliorate.

LEE JACKSON, MONTREAL STAR OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF: Spring 1990 was a rather calm time for the federal Liberals, preparing for a battle which would be joined October 22. Campbell had made this decision at a May 4 meeting of the Cabinet’s Planning & Priorities Committee and said he planned a 6-week campaign, as was now becoming increasingly the norm. Cabinet was cautiously optimistic about their chances, even with polls showing a slight Tory lead and a stagnant NDP vote. Chretien and other senior ministers wanted a bold new agenda that would energize their base and please swing voters, but none had been forthcoming. Campbell had been rejected on pensions and was reluctant to wage another Medicare battle with the provinces. Daycare had already been rejected due to cost concerns, so he decided that an infrastructure program would be their platform centrepiece. It would entail deficits, but at an acceptable debt-to-GDP ratio that satisfied his economic team. Not all were convinced, including Solicitor General Bob Rae and Environment Minister Paul Martin, but they had faith in their leader. In his quarter-century in politics, Campbell had never lost an election and he was seen as more prime ministerial than his Tory rival, as evidenced by his continued lead in leadership preference polls. Moreover, while personable, O’Sullivan lacked his Liberal rival’s charisma.

Campbell, 2nd from left, poses with his aides on a golfing trip.


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PAULSON: Ontario Tories decisively broke with their past on June 22 when they picked Scott Barton as their new leader over Dennis Cochrane, proving that Miller’s election was not a fluke. Flamboyant, charismatic and mercurial, “Scotty” Barton was often likened by his enemies to Mitch Hepburn. That was far from the entire story. Barton was the son of Bob Barton, a leading Bay Street investment broker, a product of Upper Canada College and University of Toronto Law School. Raised in Simcoe County’s tiny Georgina, he was first elected in 1977 as a rookie real estate lawyer and entered Cabinet 6 years later. Promoted to Natural Resources under Frank Miller, the right wing’s natural leader made a name for himself as an industrious but publicity-hungry minister, which sometimes strained his relationship with the low-key premier. Barton was also an old friend of Sean O’Sullivan’s – the men were the same age and had first met at Young PC events in the early 1970s – and wanted to work closely with his federal counterpart. Among his first decisions w to fire Norm Atkins and other Big Blue Machine stalwarts, believing they were factionalist and had undermined Miller. Cochrane pledged his loyalty, but was still undecided whether to run in the next election.
 
SHEILA COPPS: I was quite happy with our positioning that summer, with the Tories having gone through a nasty leadership race and Scott purging many moderate staffers. I’ve known him and Sean [O’Sullivan] for a very – longer than I’d care to put a number on – long time, and it would be dangerous to underestimate them. We were fully committed to Alex’s re-election, committing as many resources as we could and having our MPPs appear with Ontario MPs if they so desired. Alex and I agreed on several joint appearances all across the province, starting with a rally in Mississauga where several vulnerable Liberal MPs needed all the help they could get. I knew that Scott and [NDP leader] Ben Craddock would be doing their part for their respective parties. Partisanship aside, Ontario would reap considerable benefit from Alex’s infrastructure plan, which was attractive to many progressives who had been starved of policy inspiration at points in Alex’s second term. I was unveiling my own infrastructure and skills training agenda at the same time and we wanted to coordinate with the federal government and municipalities to ensure the best possible rollout. We also wanted to find a MST fix which did not involve a GST, and I urged Alex to be a bit more flexible on the issue.

TIMMINS: While vacationing in Europe, Pierre Sauvé had issued instructions to his party for full mobilization in preparation for the federal election, the first time since 1958 this had been done. While the Tories ran their own campaign in the province, Unionist help lurked just far enough below the surface for plausible deniability. Both Sauvé and O’Sullivan knew the Tories had to win it on their own, and Tories had prepared well. They offered Quebec a UNESCO and Francophonie deal as Sauvé had demanded, while promising to phase out supply management, which coincided with Sauvé’s light reduction in agricultural subsidies. That double-whammy was seized on by Liberals as sign of conservatives taking their rural base, but these subsidies had been targeted wisely: only on the largest farms were subsidies being reduced. Both leaders saw such subsidies as another form of corporate welfare, a type which could be easily dealt with without causing serious political harm. Unionists liked to boast about their introduction of farm credit over 50 years earlier, and they had assiduously maintained their rural-suburban coalition throughout their decades in power. Both leaders were confident that the Tories would do very well, winning as many as half of the province’s 75 seats. While Quebec had long voted for Liberals, their connection had waned throughout Campbell’s second term.

SAUVE: To me the question was what the Liberals had done for this province recently, and the answer: nothing in nearly 20 years. If Alex spent half as much time here as he did on the West I’d be more worried. It wasn’t an oversight and it wasn’t ill will, so I’m still mystified why he didn’t put in the work, which he could have easily done. I think he stopped listening to his own decentralizing instincts and listened to Jean [Chretien] too much on these issues, which wasn’t where swing voters were or the provincial party. Rigid centralism will never sell here, especially if you’re not offering anything to compensate, which Alex wasn’t except for infrastructure. Even so, they had a formidable organization here and as always, there’s a long tradition of what Americans call ticket splitting. Rouge a Ottawa, bleu a Quebec, as was said in M. Duplessis’ time. As always, none of us would be appearing with Tory candidates – we are not affiliated with any federal party and never have been, even if the Tories are obviously our ideological partners. The Union Nationale has always tried to work with both Liberal and Conservative governments in Ottawa, and we kept our end of the bargain.

GAGNON: Pierre-Marc Johnson took charge of the Unionist federal campaign, coordinating with his counterpart Marie Boivin, who was O’Sullivan’s Quebec lieutenant and would become finance minister if the Tories won in October. They worked well together and usually spoke a couple of times a week, usually about logistics and sometimes financial issues. No Liberal Quebec ministers were targeted, since all were deeply personally entrenched and would be almost impossible to remove barring a massive wave. In provincial politics, another nuclear expansion had been initiated to replace remaining coal plants, which was scheduled to begin in September. Jean-Guy Cardinal had presided over the Gentilly reactors’ construction in the 1970s and Sauvé would finish the job his predecessor began. Politically it was an easy way of complementing hydro power while tweaking environmentalists even further than he already did with his staunch support of the fossil fuel industries. No Eastern premier was a greater advocate for the resource sector, and energy was a frequent topic of discussion whenever he met with his Western counterparts. On this there was not much distance between the parties, though as usual, Liberals had vociferously opposed his privatizations as diluting local economic power in favour of multinationals and English Canadian companies.

PAULSON: Conservatives felt confident as dissolution approached, not only because of their comfortable lead in private polling and steady lead in public polling. They believed that their opponents were essentially in the same position that they themselves had been in during the 1982 campaign: without much to offer for a third term during a recession and focused on disqualifying the opposition. O’Sullivan, like his allies, believed that his right-wing platform was an asset, proving that a Tory government offered a decisive break from both parties’ recent past. Core voters would be energized and swing voters could be persuaded to try something new rather than revisiting the 1970s. “I’m running for my first term, not Stanfield’s fourth” made its way around party headquarters. Campbell had used the same strategy in PEI, an irony which was not lost on Maritime reporters or Campbell’s Atlantic ministers. The Grits decided to make their infrastructure pledge their centrepiece, which would be unveiled in Vancouver as part of their campaign launch. Unlike O’Sullivan, Campbell did not have any frontbench departures to consider, and planned to keep his entire existing Cabinet in place if he won. He would also appeal to progressives to unite behind the Liberal banner and disaffected Red Tories disappointed in their leader’s right-wing platform.

Prime Minister Campbell at a Fredericton fundraiser, Aug. 30, 1990.

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TIMMINS: Campbell’s announcement at Rideau Hall set the campaign’s tone: this would be an ideological election, while sharply contrasting the years of Liberal prosperity against the recessionary Tory 1970s. “Tory times are tough times” was a frequent Liberal refrain, and Campbell upped the ante by declaring that the election was about values. In 1986 he had run a mostly positive campaign as the popular incumbent, a pragmatic progressive. His progressive side was much more visible in 1990, desiring a flash polarization at NDP expense, which is ironically what O’Sullivan wanted. Both men believed they could win a direct ideological confrontation, and O’Sullivan had been planning such a strategy since 1975, when he had first written a long memo on the subject. Campbell’s platform, apart from infrastructure, was largely an update of his 1986 platform while O’Sullivan ran from the unambiguous right. Tory proposals included privatization of CN, Air Canada, Canada Post, an optional Rand formula, expanded nuclear power and a phaseout of supply management. Both Campbell and Broadbent made good hay of the Tory proposals, with Broadbent saying O’Sullivan wanted to “stick a pitchfork in farmers’ backs” and Campbell shouting that O’Sullivan would “screw farmers right across this country.” In the first 2 weeks, Conservatives held a stable, moderate lead that fluctuated only slightly.

GAGNON: In Quebec, Liberal backbenchers were prepared for the Tory offensive, knowing their party’s popularity had waned during Campbell’s second term. They also anticipated Unionist organizational assistance, if not its full mobilization. O’Sullivan’s dogged determination and friendly platform, combined with a strong French debate performance, gradually brought swing voters into the Tory fold, and now dozens of Liberal seats were at risk. Jean Chretien and other Quebec ministers toured the province campaigning for their endangered colleagues, even as polling showed O’Sullivan’s Tories pulling into a dead heat with Campbell’s Liberals. Not since 1958 had the Tories done that well in this province, as Campbell and Sauvé well remembered. Paul Sauvé and Daniel Johnson had played major roles in the Tory 1958 campaign, just as their sons were doing 32 years later. While attacking Sauvé and the Unionists played well among English Canadian progressives and some Red Tories, it would be foolish on the popular premier’s home turf. For his part, Sauvé refused all comment on the federal election except to say that he had confidence in Quebecers’ political judgment. Privately, he got daily updates from Marie Boivin and Pierre-Marc Johnson for the duration and sometimes phoned candidates in tough races to encourage them.

PAULSON: By the final 10 days, O’Sullivan had accelerated to a double-digit lead which he maintained through election day. Towards the end, Alex Campbell had privately told reporters that while he would fight to the end, he had already begun preparing for a possible transition. O’Sullivan was perfectly confident he would win when he spoke to reporters on election day, and validation was not long in coming. On October 22, a cold and rainy day, Canadians rendered their verdict on 8 years of Liberal rule, handing Sean O’Sullivan the biggest majority since Diefenbaker in 1958. Alex Campbell immediately announced his resignation as Liberal leader and imminent retirement from politics, saying that it had been a honour to serve Canadians as prime minister and wishing his successor well. During the transition period he phoned foreign leaders such as Bush and Thatcher to say goodbye, as well as the premiers to thank them for the work accomplished together. He was unhappy about leaving politics so abruptly, having planned to stay for “quite a bit longer” but slowly reconciled himself to a return to private life. O’Sullivan was sworn in on Nov. 7, at 38 Canada’s youngest prime minister and the first Catholic Tory since John Thompson in 1894.

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O'Sullivan Cabinet

Deputy Prime Minister: Don Mazankowski
Finance: Marie Boivin
Justice: Paul Vaillancourt
Foreign Affairs: Vanessa Redmond
Defence: Allan Lawrence
Agriculture: Jim McGrath
Public Works: Ray Hnatyshyn
Environment: Frank Oberle
Energy: Jake Epp
Transport: Don Mazankowski
Veterans Affairs: Véronique Hahn
Immigration: Claire Malraux
Intergovernmental Affairs: Patrick Boyer
Indian and Northern Affairs: Stephanie Bishop
Solicitor General and ACOA: Elmer MacKay
Heritage: Perrin Beatty
Health: Paul Yewchuk
Treasury Board: Valérie Berthiaume
Labour: Mike Diaz
Fisheries: Ron Ponce
International Trade: Kim Caron
Revenue: Tim Gentile


SAUVÉ: Late November was quiet here, and though I don’t normally follow British politics, I was astonished if not surprised at Thatcher’s defenestration. It’s a different culture – here you don’t remove a prime minister even if they’re a certain electoral loser – but a reminder that you have to treat caucus properly, as Diefenbaker found out. You can be a CEO without being overbearing on your colleagues, which is what I’ve always tried to do throughout my career. Simply put, you can be authoritative without being authoritarian, as you learn very quickly in this business. There’s this great misconception that people are happy slaves, to you use Laporte’s phrase about Duplessis’ government, one which bears absolutely no relevance to our party’s reality. You don’t hear much talk about the flip side, which is what Thatcher called a “weak, floppy thing in the chair.” At least not since Pearson, as you and I well remember – and the 1965 election call is my favourite example of that. For me, Stanfield was too consensual, while Alex [Campbell] and Sean [O’Sullivan] had the right mix, as I think history will eventually record. At one of the year’s final Cabinet meetings, we discussed federal politics and how despite a favourable outcome, we needed to keep our guard up.

ROY: 1990 ended as a wash in provincial politics, which in Lévesque’s view was a win. For years he had received less media attention than he felt he deserved as opposition leader due to his rival’s popularity, but a weakening economy gave him an opening. Nor was he under any illusion that the campaign would be a breezy, relatively sedate affair like his previous 2 campaigns. It would be Hobbesian: nasty, brutish and long, as dictated by Unionist tradition. Having served in the Assembly since 1956, Lévesque knew those rules perfectly well and was eager to dispel impressions of Liberal weakness that were continually fanned by the government. Swing voters were unhappy with the economic situation yet were not convinced it required a change in government, as had been the case 7 years later. Lévesque would have to close the sale and explain why his party would do better than a government which had presided over 6 prosperous years. His model was 1978, another election where voters were uncertain about substantial shifts in the policy status quo but blamed the government for their economic woes.
 
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