John Crosbie #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Left to Right:  Bill Doody,  Brian Peckford, John Crosbie, Jane Crosbie,
and Beth Crosbie at the 1983 federal PC leadership convention

The outpouring of praise in memory of John Crosbie, who died on Thursday, has been such a flood of cliché and, in some cases, fiction that it does a disservice to the memory of one of the most significant political figures from Newfoundland and Labrador in the 20^th century.

Remarks by Edward Roberts,  Joe Clark, and Brian Mulroney were closer to the truth of the man than most. Roberts once noted that Crosbie wanted to be leader of anything he was ever involved with, starting with the Boy Scouts. Certainly, that is a testament to Crosbie’s ambition and determination, but in his interview last week, Roberts spoke plainly of Crosbie’s considerable intellectual talents that went with his ambition and determination.  

Likewise, Clark spoke of the respect that public servants and cabinet colleagues in Ottawa had for Crosbie both for his ability and for the professional way he dealt with them.  The politicians understood that Crosbie would be tough to deal with when he wanted to get his way, but they understood that Crosbie never failed to deploy the same fierceness in defence of the team when attacked from outside. The bureaucrats appreciated someone who understood their briefs, especially in portfolios like finance.

By contrast, Rex Murphy, so long removed from Newfoundland and Labrador physically and mentally that his writings on the province are a unique brand of safari journalism, gave the National Post his trademark overwrought prose.  He appears, as well, to have used an equally overwrought imagination to cover over the considerable gaps in his memory of what actually happened now almost a half century ago.  

The one thing Murphy got unmistakably right is to credit Jane Crosbie for her role in John’s political career.  Not to eulogise her before her time but Jane is as much the political force, and understood as such, as John ever was. People in Newfoundland and Labrador today who claim they want to get more women involved in politics – many of them people who know nothing of politics in the province and care even less about it – would do well to spend some time talking to Jane Crosbie and others like her. To say that “Jane was every bit his equal” may well sell Jane short, although the crucial part is that “the only difference [between the two] being she chose the off-stage role.”

Politicians and Cars #nlpoli

The Liberals are touting their latest campaign-style television spot featuring Dwight Ball talking about accountability and connecting with voters.  In the spot, he’s driving somewhere in the driving province and as he talks the thing cuts to shots of him talking to people.

Remember that the latest poll shows that the Liberals own the accountability and leadership issue (48% to the Conservatives’ 13%).  This tidy little spot reinforces the Liberal strength and highlights the Conservatives’ weakness.

When you are done watching that, flip over the the Mother Corps’ online archive and watch a 1971 current affairs documentary on the provincial election that year.  Your mind will bend about a lot of things, not the least of which is the comment from New Democratic Party leader Jim Walsh. 

Yes, friends,  that Jim Walsh.  He’s out west somewhere now, a long way removed in every way from that 1971 election.

But when your mind gets back on its even keel again,  notice the portion of the documentary where Frank Moores is driving along a stretch of newly paved highway talking about the problems of the faltering Smallwood administration.  While it’s highly unlikely the producers of the new spot remembered or knew about the old documentary,  some would say there is a fitting parallel in there.

Let that be your Freak Friday political thrill for the week.

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Strings and all

Frank Moores was the second premier to hold office in Newfoundland and Labrador after Confederation.  He led the Progressive Conservative Party to victory in the 1972 provincial general election, defeating Joe Smallwood and ending Smallwood’s 23 year reign.

That was no mean feat and Moores didn’t do it single-handedly. He led a large group of people who organised themselves in a political party that was distinctly  different from Smallwood’s Liberals.  Until the late 1960s, the Liberal party had no district associations, for example.  Smallwood maintained a hand-picked fixer in every district who handled all the party business.  Smallwood himself picked candidates and until the 1969 convention, there’d been no leadership debate of any kind.

Moores won the Tory leadership at a convention held in May 1970.  A group of influential Conservatives, including Danny Williams’ mother and father spearheaded a drive to get Moores back from Ottawa where he sat as a member of parliament.

Now, in itself, that’s fascinating in light of the political outlooks of provincial Conservatives like Chick Cholock.  Ross Wiseman’s executive assistant wrote an e-mail to Brad Cabana, the Tory leadership hopeful back in late December.  Cholock wrote – you may recall – that “in an ideal world there will not be a leadership challenge.”  As Cholock saw it, a leadership battle “always hurt the party for years.  Any Party at all…”.

In the 1970 leadership convention, the Tories had a handful of candidates.  The list included Herb Kitchen, John Carter, Walter Carter and Hugh Shea.  Moores won handily and there was a minor controversy but for the most part, the party managed to sort out the difficulties and carry on.  Almost a decade later, the party held another leadership convention and managed to avoid any lasting controversy. The Tories stayed in power for another decade.

That hardly sounds like a series of unmitigated disasters, does it?

In the 40 years since Moores’ convention victory, the provincial Conservatives have certainly changed.  They’ve become – in essence – a fairly typical local political party for Newfoundland and Labrador.  Now, as before Confederation, the parties aren’t programmatic. They don’t have ideologies or set agendas.

And, at least as far as the province’s Conservatives have shown over the past few weeks, they certainly aren’t driven by grass-roots members.  They are most certainly not, as Danny Williams described them last year, a Reform-based Conservative party.  The Reformers believed very firmly that political parties ought to be directed by their members.  Policy used to get set at regular conventions.  District organizations picked candidates.  The party constitution laid down clear and unmistakeable rules and people paid attention to the rules.

No one could mistake the difference between that approach to politics compared to the provincial Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador.  Sure the party has a constitution and bunch of people have titles.  But even the rules about something as crucial as membership aren’t clearly spelled out in the party’s fundamental document. And when it comes to deciding what those rules mean, only the insiders get to decide who the insiders can be.

In that sense, you could say that the local Tories aren’t democratic.  Now before anyone goes off the handle, understand that is not the description offered up by your humble e-scribbler.  A Tory supporter posted a comment on Twitter last week that said exactly that:  “a political party is not a democratic institution.”  Open Line host Randy Simms said exactly the same thing last week as well.

While you can disagree about what democracy means exactly, it is rather striking that two politically aware and presumably politically astute people in the province could state that political parties are not democratic organizations.  They weren’t troubled by the idea, apparently.  They didn’t find it odd.  In fact, it would seem that they found it perfectly natural for a political party to be run by an inner cabal accountable only to themselves.

And, as it seems comments online, provincial Conservative supporters seem to think every political party operates this way.  They don’t, but that is another matter.

What’s really striking is the way Frank Moores viewed political parties 40 years ago. You can find this quote in Janice Wells’ recent biography of the former premier:

Political parties are what people make them.  We’ve got to get people involved who don’t even recognise the need that they be involved in their own welfare, their own future, who perhaps after twenty-one [sic] years don’t even realize they have that right, and we have to get our best people involved, our best academics, artists, businessmen, educators.  I want these people to become totally involved in the work that faces us, and to know that they won’t be manipulated like puppets but will have major roles to play in reviving the province.

Political parties are indeed what people make of them.  In some bizarre twist, the people who make up the provincial Conservative Party in the early years of the 21st century have managed to turn Frank Moores’ party into something he most likely wouldn’t recognize.

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Nose-puller alert: Frank and Brian never spoke after 1987

Via the National Post,  a description of a bit of Brian Mulroney’s testimony at the inquiry into the whole Airbus mess:

His relationship with Frank Moores, at one time a great friend, was “nonexistent” after 1987, when Moores trashed Mulroney’s government. “I simply severed communications with him completely.”

Does anyone else find it hard to believe that Brian Mulroney and Frank Moores didn’t speak – even once – during the period after 1987?

Like say, maybe around the time of Meech Lake?

Maybe September 1990?  Frank was here for the Hibernia signing but the poor old e-scribbler brain can’t recall if the Prime Minister at the time made the trip as well.

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Moores linked to Airbus before 1984?

That’s the gist of documents found by CBC [ Globe’s got it too.], according to a story on the cbc.ca website:  former premier turned lobbyist Frank Moores dealt with KarlHeinz Schreiber about Airbus and political donations as far back as 1983.

Expect to see the Gin and Tonic Biographer – whose biography of Moores has a few gaps and errors in it as it is – in the media sounding more like an old friend of the family than the person who wrote the book on Frank.

It’s not like this situation hasn’t arisen before.

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The Gin and Tonic Biographer

Controversy helps sells books.

Janice Wells has certainly had her fair share of controversy in the first few weeks her book on former Premier Frank Moores has been in the bookstore.

First, it was her contention that Frank Moores had erred in walking away from a deal on Labrador hydro power that would have turned over 800 megawatts to the province.

In an interview with CBC radio's Jeff Gilhooley, Wells admitted she didn't know too much about the mega- or kilo-wattage involved.  On reading the brief two page account in her book it quickly becomes clear she didn't know too much else about the context of the discussion beyond perhaps what Frank himself had told her during one of her interviews with him.

She even starts out the section by referring to it as a previously unknown deal.  That despite a paper written for the Young royal commission - and cited here several times before - which includes a fairly detailed discussion of it. Wells does not make it clear whether the 800 megawatts was Churchill Falls power - which would have been deliverable immediately - or contingent on the Lower Churchill being developed.

Wells doesn't make it clear because, apparently she does not know.  yet nothing stopped her from claiming it to be a great tragedy to have scuttled the deal base on Brian Peckford's objections.  Wells even goes so far as to get Wade Locke to work up an estimated value for the power.

Lack of accurate and adequate information did not stop Wells from leaping to an unsubstantiated conclusion when it suited her purpose.

Odd then that she tries to suggest that Canadian journalists  have it wrong when they linked Frank to the Airbus scandal based on testimony and documentary evidence.  The trigger for Wells' comments is a criticism of the portions of her book on Airbus which ignore anything that does not present Moores in a favourable light. 

Wells admits she is not an investigative reporter.  That is painfully obvious.  She admits she has advanced an Airbus theory with no evidence.  That, too, is obvious.

Her job, says Wells, is to present a fair and balanced view of Moores.

That is not so obvious.

What Wells has done in her book on Moores is presented an account based primarily on her three days of interviews with Moores, bolstered by some other interviews. It is not really a biography as we might expect a bit of critical commentary based on research. Such a work need not condemn the subject;  it could be quite favourable and Moores deserves favourable treatment. However, in the arms-length attitude between subject and writer some credibility attaches to the writer's conclusions. 

What we have in Wells' book is the gin and tonic biographer at work.  It presents neither a fair nor balanced view and the research for the book appears to be extremely light.  Hers is a fawning account which raises Moores up in places by  tearing down others, or, in others,  attributing to Moores their ideas. She knows the meaning of proof and hard evidence, apparently, since she avoids both.

Frank Moores deserves a genuinely fair, accurate and well-researched account of his time as premier.

Janice Wells hasn't provided it.

The controversies, however, should help move a few books in the Christmas rush.

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The 800 megawatt controversy

Former premier Brian Peckford tried to set the record straight today on a controversy over a deal in a the 1970s to bring 800 megawatts of power from hydroelectric power in Labrador to the province.

Peckford appeared in an interview [link to podcast] with CBC St. John's Morning Show host Jeff Gilhooley.

The deal is mentioned in a new biography of Frank Moores, premier from 1972 to 1979 in whose administration Brian Peckford served as energy minister.  The book by Janice Wells - author of the Gin and Tonic Gardener books - contends that Peckford scuttled the deal between Moores and Quebec Premier Rene Levesque.  The deal required that the province, which had nationalised the Churchill Falls Labrador Corporation, cease any legal efforts to contest the 1969 Churchill Falls contract in exchange for the power or revenues equal to that much energy.

Wells claims that Peckford was in tears with agitation and threatened to resign taking with him half the cabinet.  She reportedly includes a valuation of the deal by Memorial University economist Wade Locke that the 800 megawatts would have been worth $4.0 billion over time. Wells discussed the supposed deal in an interview with Gilhooley that aired on October 23 [link to podcast] and refers to the episode as a failure on Moores' part.

Since the book isn't generally available in bookstores yet, it is difficult to know what sources Wells relied on for her version of events or if she cites any specific references.  Peckford contends he did not speak with her beyond a single conversation.

There is confirmation of the episode and of the general interpretation offered by Peckford in his interview.  That confirmation comes from Jason Churchill's summary of hydroelectric development in Labrador that he completed for the Vic Young commission.  Churchill writes:

Meanwhile, there were numerous other attempts and near-breakthroughs during Moores’ premiership. In the late 1970s, Quebec Premier Rene Levesque made a special trip to St. John’s to attempt to entice Moores into accepting a deal to start hydroelectric development on the Lower Churchill River. Levesque’s proposal involved a trade-off; Quebec was willing to be generous, in terms of benefits, in exchange for Newfoundland and Labrador relinquishing any future rights to challenge the 1969 Churchill Falls Contract. Meetings appeared on the verge of success as the two Premiers were planning on making a joint announcement. There was, however, a rub. On this occasion Moores’ Minister of Mines and Energy, Brian Peckford, was only informed of the Premier’s plans just previous to the proposed announcement. Peckford
emphatically rejected the idea of giving up in perpetuity any rights to seek redress of the infamous 1969 Contract. His emphatic objections were sufficient to thwart the proposed deal.54

On another occasion, Peckford was engaged in positive negotiations with his Quebec provincial counterpart Guy Joron. Peckford described Joron as being “extremely understanding of [Newfoundland’s] situation”. With the tacit permission of Premier Levesque, Joron had appeared willing to contemplate changes to the 1969 contract as long as it was part of a broader project to develop the Churchill River Basin. However, this idea of linking changes in the Upper Churchill contract to develop the sites on the Lower Churchill River brought strong opposition from Hydro-Quebec officials who thwarted the efforts of the Quebec Cabinet Minister.55

The footnotes for these paragraphs reveal the sources. Note that Churchill interviewed senior public servant Vic Young for his account.  Wells states that a portion of the intense discussions took place in Young's office.

54 Interview Jason Churchill with Brian Peckford, 3 December, 2002. Interview Jason Churchill with Vic Young, 18 December, 2002.

55 Interview Jason Churchill with Brian Peckford, 3 December, 2002.

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