OTTAWA — It’s time to go, probably past time.

My bent, as I write this last column for the Sun, is to be laconic about it. This skimping on sentiment probably stems from my early life in a railway family and years as an ordinary soldier in WW II. Saying farewells became banal.

My string as a columnist commenting on Parliament began with the late John Bassett’s Toronto Telegram in 1961. When the Tely died in 1971, I moved to the new Toronto Sun, courtesy of the late Doug Creighton, its founding publisher, and editor Peter Worthington — both fine men to work for.

I was an MP — the CCF member for Port Arthur — when I sought to write a column. I did it not because I wanted a personal platform for politicking but because I was drowning in debt from the high costs of being an MP.

We were paid $10,000 a year, with $2,000 more to cover expenses (the highest-paid bureaucrats then got about $26,000). Out of this, we had to pay for two residences — one in our riding, one in Ottawa. We had to pay our considerable long-distance phone bills — including collect calls from constituents!

And although we had unlimited railway travel passes, these only covered the cost of a day coach seat, not a berth for overnight travel. So the frequent trips back to the riding — and driving within the riding — were costly.

What’s more, freshmen MPs were packed two to an office where they shared a secretary — half a day each. I was the first MP in modern memory (in 1960) to ask for better pay and services, for which I was roundly criticized.

My columns went over well enough that I decided not to contest the 1965 election. I moved from House membership to membership in the parliamentary press gallery. Forty years later, I had outlasted all who were there when I joined — reporters and columnists like Charles Lynch (Southam), George Bain (Globe and Mail), Blair Fraser (Maclean’s), Norman Depoe (CBC TV), Judith Robinson (Telegram), Grattan O’Leary (Ottawa Journal), and many more.

I sometimes shudder when I consider how long I’ve been “columnizing,” and how much I’ve written — more than 2,400 columns for the Sun, running past 3 million words.

Any limits on content or opinions were my own. The editors at both the Telegram and Sun were excellent in their restraint when dealing with my copy — except those few times when they worried I might get them sued for libel.

I carried the opposition MP’s mentality into journalism. Over the years, my opinions have been more critical than approving of whatever government has been in power. By choice, I didn’t bring the NDP banner with me, in contrast to the late Dalton Camp, a Progressive Conservative in his columns as he was in life.

Because the Liberals were in power more often than the Conservatives, I’ve sometimes been tagged as anti-Liberal. If I am, it started back in the 1930s in reaction to my father’s deep respect for Mackenzie King and his party, and deepened during the wartime conscription crisis. And aging of course has made me more conservatively-minded.

The arrogance of government, its overwhelming control of Parliament, and the opposition’s weakness were a big theme during my four parliaments as an MP — much discussed on the Hill and in the press. I carried that theme with me to the press gallery and have often written about it.

After nearly 50 years, I can only say that government has become immense, the prime minister’s office is vastly bigger and more powerful, more attention than ever is paid to party leaders and in particular to the prime minister, and the House of Commons — whose weakness we bemoaned back in my time in it — has withered almost to insignificance. Stephen Harper is more supreme and absolute in the government, cabinet, House, and the country than John Diefenbaker was in my first House in 1957.

Today’s MPs are easily as able and hard-working as during the Diefenbaker years — as well as better educated and provided with far better facilities and support services. Paradoxically, they play a far smaller, less important role than MPs of yore, undermined over the years by a hardening of caucus discipline and by the swelling cadres of aides and spin doctors in the offices of the prime minister and the other parties’ leaders.

Diefenbaker and Lester (Mike) Pearson were the last two prime ministers to spend a lot of time in the House of Commons beyond the daily oral question period. In their day there was usually substantial attendance during passage of significant legislation.

Pierre Trudeau changed all that. He was frank in saying that time spent in the House was both a waste and a bore for him. His ministers took his cue, and after 1968 one rarely saw more than two ministers in the House other than during question period. Then evening sittings were ended and an annual schedule for sittings and holidays instituted. Any sense of camaraderie dried up.

GROWING IRRELEVANCE

The growing irrelevance of the House as the dramatic, dynamic stage of the federal parliamentary system can be traced to this downward shift in attendance and participation. Today, not even the volatility of minority government jacks up interest in what goes on in the House, outside of question period.

Who’s listening anymore to the debates we do have? Very few, although they are televised. Few listen, few report on legislative talk. Instead, the news media and politicians concentrate on the theatrical, often farcical, tussles of question period.

Hansard, the printed record of the House, never sold well. Today it is largely forgotten, outmoded by a televised House and political websites and blogs. In short, the floor of the House is a meaningless stage except during that British parliamentary holdover — the 45 minutes of highly-organized, ultra-competitive nastiness called question period.

The influence of cabinet ministers has declined most of all.

There were 22 in cabinet when I came to Ottawa 49 years ago. By the end of Jean Chretien’s regime, the total was up to 39, a considerable dilution.

Only one ministry still stands out: Finance. No longer do major cabinet ministers dominate a region or a field of particular importance. For years we’ve had no agriculture minister with the reach that Gene Whelan had just 30 years ago, no labour minister as important as Bryce Mackasey. It is unimaginable that we’ll again see a minister as dominant in western Canada as was Jimmy Gardiner from 1935 to 1957, or one like C.D. Howe, all-powerful in the realm of business and industry.

Cabinet government has given way to prime ministerial government, and the main power centre is in the dovetailed operations of the Prime Minister’s Office and Privy Council Office. PMO-PCO now has a staff of many hundreds. Compare that to the 20 or so who served Pearson, or the dozen who staffed Mackenzie King’s PMO.

If my comments so far suggest I’m dour and negative about the trends in our politics and government, let me point out that since 1957, governments have been creative and experimental. There has been an immense number of daring and wide-reaching initiatives.

The welfare state was largely completed by the end of the Trudeau period. There were many federal innovations for the economy as well as for culture — art, music, recreation and sport. Scores of federal boards, Crown corporations, foundations, and agencies were created and financed, and beginning with Brian Mulroney’s government, many Crown companies were also done away with.

Ad hoc, non-governmental organizations framed and fostered many of these ideas and programs. As a consequence, it is hard to think of an interest the federal government hasn’t dealt with, from subsidizing kids’ hockey equipment to providing better wheelchair scooters for the elderly.

What’s more, although the House of Commons doesn’t count anymore when it comes to debating important matters such as federal-provincial relations or the fiscal pickle facing Canada’s cities, debates still go on in other forums — among lobby groups and non-governmental organizations as well as at the other two levels of government, provincial and municipal.

In closing this farewell column, I want to ask and try to answer the great question: Where is Canada going?
My guess is that Quebec, so central to our politics during my time, is unlikely to depart (a decade ago, I thought it would).

The demographics on births, immigration, and language preferences forecast a steady slippage of “la francophonie” in Canada. Within a quarter century, I believe the West will be Canada’s most powerful region — the wealthiest, with the most federal clout. Meantime, Canada as a whole should be as prosperous as any country in the world, given our natural resources and people.

IMMEDIATE QUESTION

If there is any great and immediate question Canadians have to settle in the next decade it is this: How do we come to sensible, workable terms with the most basic animus now affecting our polity, i.e., our rampant anti-Americanism?

If we cannot contain it and divert its force into a national determination to know our neighbours better and make them understand our grievances, we could face organized hostility and major troubles from the U.S.

To conclude. I wince when Canadians brag of our vast land and our superior ways in health care and peacekeeping — because bragging is so un-Canadian.

Nonetheless, at 86 and retiring, I am as positive about our country as I was in my 20s, coming home from the war.

In this century there will be as much opportunity as there was a century ago in the opening up of our West, with the promise of a better society to the fore — if we cultivate our politics sensibly.

Excelsior!

Source: BY DOUGLAS FISHER, TORONTO SUN

First, the expected Liberal contenders, ranked by the odds I would set for them, from the favourite to the longest-shot:

1. Michael Ignatieff (Odds 4:1) — An exceptional mind and lots of poise;
2. John Godfrey (6:1) — Informed, reform-minded, cities-centred;
3. Gerard Kennedy (8:1) — Young loaded with drive and talent;
4. Joe Volpe (8:1) — Will have big, hard-won gang of delegates;
5. Ken Dryden (10:1) — Has to put over national child care as his mission;
6. Denis Coderre (15:1) — He’s really staking out a future run;
7. Scott Brison (15:1) — Clever chap, but his income-trust e-mails blew away shorter odds;
8. Bob Rae (25:1) — The “worst Ontario premier” tag is a killer;
9. Stephane Dion (30:1) — Honest, rational, maddening in English;
10. Carolyn Bennett (100:1) — Likeable, kind-hearted, caring;
11. Maurice Bevilacqua (100:1) — Deserves better but no flare!

Now to the Conservative ministers. First, those most vulnerable to attacks in the House are: David Emerson (Trade), given his startling switch from the Liberals and his too-thin skin; Peter MacKay (Foreign Affairs), with his penchant for fuzzy talk and giving one man’s opinion on party positions; Stockwell Day (Security), deserving resurrection for good behaviour but still self-righteous; Vic Toews (Justice), also most righteous and a logic-splitter; and Gordon O’Connor (Defence), whose mastery of defence “history” reminds one he was a lobbyist for years after being a tank force leader.

The ones least vulnerable, and in time unlikely to be regularly taunted by the opposition are: Stephen Harper, a PM who can (like Pierre Trudeau) take care of himself; Monte Solberg (Immigration), well-liked for his kindly wit and sharp insights; Bev Oda (Culture), tough, stubborn, blunt, and honest; Jim Flaherty (Finance), who will walk on water for a few years because of his coterie of approving, business stakeholders; Tony Clement (Health), confident and very familiar with the field; Chuck Strahl (Agriculture), whose folksy directness is reminiscent of the farmers’ famous champion, Gene Whelan; Diane Finley (Human Resources), whose patient aplomb will help her handle harrying about child care; John Baird (Treasury Board), who is astute, aggressive, with a huge familiarity with Ottawa; and Lawrence Cannon (Transport), whose presence and acute awareness of what’s going on remind me of Marc Lalonde, Trudeau’s former lieutenant.

In sum, this cabinet is not trouble-proof, but still stronger than any we have had in years.

Finally, here are some Opposition MPs to watch:

Liberals: Bill Graham, the spirited and shrewd leader; Derek Lee, a veteran Scarborough MP and arguably the most savvy of all about federal politics; Mauril Belanger (Ottawa-Vanier); John McKay, another Scarborough MP and one of the few consistently thoughtful debaters in the House; Dan McTeague, another Scarborough MP, who is good on his feet and a broker between parties; Bonnie Brown (Oakville), as able an MP as one can find; Ralph Goodale, ex-finance minister and Irwin Cotler, ex-justice minister, both motormouths who in opposition could become stars; and Ignatieff, the next Liberal saviour — if he soon realizes he’ll make more impact through talk in the House than by chasing the leadership from one coffee klatch to the next.

Bloc Quebecois: Gilles Duceppe manages his flock superbly. He has good backing, particularly from Michel Gauthier, Yvan Loubier, Real Menard, Monique Guay, and Paul Crete.

NDP: Several MPs have the makings of Hill stars, in particular Charlie Angus from Timmins, Yvon Godin from Acadie-Bathurst, Peter Stoffer of Sackville-Eastern Shore, and Brian Masse (Windsor West). While Jack Layton continually over-praises his own and his caucus’s performances, he has had some fine backing from veterans Bill Blaikie (now deputy speaker), Judy Wasylycia-Leis, and Libby Davies — and he has half a dozen new female MPs, several of whom are tagged as comers, not least his wife, Olivia Chow.

In summary, three caucuses are rather well-fixed for House work. The fourth — the Liberals — are lighter than many think.

Source: BY DOUGLAS FISHER, TORONTO SUN

“The time of the two solitudes that for too long described the character of the country is past.”

Two Solitudes, the novel, has had much impact on Canadian opinion, because its plot updated the core Canadian dilemma going back to 1760.

Indeed, this dilemma of duality was summarized famously more than 100 years before MacLennan’s novel when, after the 1837 rebellions in the Canadas, Lord Durham reported to London of “two nations warring in the bosom of a single state — a struggle not of principles but of races.”

Anyone in our military in northwest Europe through the fall of 1944 and into spring of 1945 knew how desperately depleted our infantry ranks had become. This crisis at the front became a crisis in Ottawa over whether to send “the zombies” over. The latter were several thousand well-trained conscripts, most of them French-Canadians, who refused under great pressure “to go active” and be posted overseas.

Thankfully, the crisis in Canadian politics slowly eased as the Germans retreated. Eventually the “zombies” were sent and a few did fight in the last weeks of the war. The racial aspects of the crisis chilled political parties and (I believe) most thoughtful citizens. Lester Pearson retained his concern for the “two nations” issue. When he became PM in 1963, he launched a royal commission on bilingualism and biculturalism.

By the time of Pierre Trudeau’s succession in 1968, federal promotion of bilingualism had become a national goal, whatever the costs. Many federal officials would have to meet high bilingual standards. Grants from Ottawa helped promote “French immersion” in schools in every province.

There was, of course — and continues to be — a buzz of protest from those who felt the programs flouted the “merit” principle and gave an unfair advantage to French Canadians. But there was also — and continues to be — a rather astonishing high-mindedness and optimism that Canada was on its way to a genuine French-English bilingualism.

Nonetheless, a lot has happened to alter this vision of bringing the “two solitudes” together. Quebec has held two vivid referendum campaigns on sovereignty in which federalists won but separatists showed their movement strong and durable.

Clearly, one of the “solitudes” had an element that enjoyed the idea of solitude. What was happening in the other?

RETAINING ETHNIC VALUES

Well, the steady prate for bilingualism (i.e., French) began to give way to multiculturalism, which took its cues from the changed immigration policies under Trudeau. The number of immigrants coming, in particular from Asia, rose quickly while European immigration slid. With them and other immigrant groups came the promotion of multiculturalism, a policy which emphasized that immigrants could retain their ethnic and religious values; no need to drop them to adopt the majority’s values, whose roots go back to the two mother countries, Britain and France.

My hunch is that multiculturalism has weakened the anglo “solitude” in Canada — which has been further weakened by our deep absorption in American culture. The franco “solitude,” meantime, has retained its solidarity.

Consequently, it seems to me that only one of the heralded “solitudes” of old remains — the Quebecois in Quebec.

The other and more populous one is confused and in a dither, not much interested in Quebec and thinking grandly, yet vaguely, like our prime minister.

Source: BY DOUGLAS FISHER, TORONTO SUN

I think this is the poorest book yet in a score Newman has produced about Canadian politics, politicians, tycoons and companies. Poor, because it is so unfair. Neither man originally expected that this kind of use would be made of the tapes.

The greatest irony in the long relationship between the two men is that they are so alike as to be Siamese twins, bound together by high self-regard and hypersensitivity to criticism. Both are so thin-skinned!

I first met Brian Mulroney in 1958. He was 19 and I was a recently elected CCF MP from northwestern Ontario. Two years later I came to know Peter Newman. Then 31 and a writer-editor for Macleans, he was fairly new in Ottawa.

I’ve had on-again off-again relationships with both until recent times. In 1960, it wasn’t hard to figure that career-wise, the two would make it big. Each shared the other’s fascination with and great expectations of tycoons and “power.”

Since my first encounters with both men, I have had considerable to do with them, in part because of my quickly-given regard for their immense talents and ambitions. Nonetheless, Newman has several times sent me to “Siberia” for less than favourable mentions of one of his productions.

It wasn’t that I’d decided he was no longer the ablest, most interesting political writer of my years in Ottawa; simply that I disagreed with a lot of his judgments, especially his fascination with and reverence for corporate heroes like Conrad Black and Paul Desmarais.

[SinglePic not found]Peter Newman, Roy Peterson illustrations.

Once, in 1962, Newman and I were walking together through a restaurant. We passed a group of Conservatives gathered around a Tory cabinet minister who asked me in a loud voice why I was with a “Jew-boy.” I was dismayed. Peter was very hurt. I advised him to toughen up. He couldn’t do his kind of political analysis without arousing the ire of politicians.

He seemed to agree, but his skin never seemed to get thicker. I recall that the late Dalton Camp told me once that he’d given similar advice to both Newman and Mulroney.

As for Mulroney, I was more constantly but less intimately connected with him than with Newman. From well before he entered electoral politics in 1976 to the end of his parliamentary days in 1993, Mulroney helped me several times as I tried to advance reforms in forestry practices, Indian programs, and Canadian participation in world-class sport.
I was fascinated by how he kept on growing in public performance, demonstrating an oratory more commanding even than that of the polysyllabic wonder, Stephen Lewis.

Unfortunately, Mulroney has never been able to let go of the public’s view of him, insisting that Canadians really did not hate or distrust him and that his achievements as prime minister have been ruinously downgraded by a hostile media and an academe mesmerized by Pierre Trudeau.

The puffing up in Newman’s book of these so-called “secret tapes” combined with almost random opinions about Mulroney from rivals and some party colleagues, is engaging at times, but historically the book is of marginal import. Far less import, say, than Mackenzie King’s once-secret diaries.

Yet today fewer than two in 10 would know who King was, and far fewer would have any inkling of his diary’s contents. Sic transit gloria!

Source: BY DOUGLAS FISHER, TORONTO SUN

I found the latest, telling example of such pithy opinion last October, elicited by the troubles at sea of the Royal Canadian Navy’s submarine, Chicoutimi, that caused the death of Lieutenant (Navy) Chris Saunders. The author was Christie Blatchford, writing in the Globe and Mail. She is as frank a Canadian working journalist as I have read. The heading of her column expressed the core sense of what our defence policy should seek to be. This is her summary admonition: Let’s Figure Out What We Are, And Be That Thing.

The following two paragraphs from her story are a measure of Blatchford candour.
“Whenever young men and women of the Canadian Forces die in service of their country, federal politicians are there to preside over the corpse, just as they have for decades presided over the systematic reduction of a once-magnificent fighting force to its skeletal remains….

“That undoubtedly they genuinely feel badly, that absolutely they ought to be present, that Canadians and even perhaps Lieut. Saunders’ family would be wounded if they were not there—none of this reduces the breadth of their galling hypocrisy, or the rage that the sight of them invokes in me.”

After this cameo of the funeral’s effect on her, the columnist turns to the acquisition from Britain of four submarines, emphasizing how the Canadian minister of defence at the time had declared it “a great purchase for Canada, giving our navy a vital capability at a fraction of what it would otherwise cost.” She gets into the nub of the purchase with this: “the bargain basement find of a nation baldly looking to equip its military on the cheap.”

Our government can do this “because in this country defence spending is seen by influential players within the Liberal Party, and increasingly among Canadians themselves, as inherently immoral.” The grand Canadian efforts in two world wars matter less and less, and at budget time “the military is treated as just another department, as subject to budget cuts as any other, though the fat was trimmed long ago …”
Blatchford notes the most popular theme of politicians, that “the nation’s best sense of self comes from the sprawling, dysfunctional health-care system, and the majority of Canadians accept this as truth, forgetting that the national identity was forged in battle …”

One of Blatchford’s friends has a simple motto: “Know who you are and be that thing.” It is a good prompting phrase for a deliberate national ‘think-in’ on the military we should have.

And we should have the “fortitude” for a deep examination. Here Blatchford comes out close to where I reached a year or so ago after almost six decades of pondering as a veteran of WW II what had been happening in our foreign affairs and our defence programs.

As a democrat I believe by and large that our nation’s policies ought to be what a majority of Canadians believe in and want. An instant criticism of defining sensible military roles for Canada is that doing it is far harder than saying it, primarily because it requires a credible analysis of the central external factor in our international affairs policy—the United States of America.
Historically this factor has been in play since the early 19th century, and it became a continuing factor in our politics, relevant to Confederation in 1867, when it became clear from the Union victory in the American civil war that the U.S. had immense military powers.

As Desmond Morton, one of our shrewdest military historians, has said, the overriding factor in the security of Canada as a nation was openly recognized by Sir Wilfrid Laurier as resting on the United States. Morton said this merely confirmed what our first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald had recognized without trumpeting it. The U.S., whether we wished it or not was our shield; and a shield which relieved Canadians of facing the future with a developed and maintained military capability. This scenario of a shield for Canada was crystallized in 1940 in the deal Mackenzie King negotiated with Franklin Roosevelt. It created the Permanent Joint Board of Defence. As the historian put it: “Canada had moved from the British orbit to the American.”

One has to be a happy-go-lucky Canadian today not to appreciate the recent and current surge in antagonism of so many Canadians against American foreign policy and military power. It gained impetus after the end of the Cold War doused the Communist menace. Since the advent here in the British colonies of the United Empire Loyalists there has always been some harsh critics of Americans. Like them many Canadians are suspicious of or alienated by the twinned American instruments of domination: free-market economics and a saturating pop culture.

So many Canadians today see Canada as a more caring, sharing and cherishing community than the United States; and as one which only needs to be militarily dedicated to maintaining forces enough for aid to the civil power, ceremonial functions, patrolling our borders, and to stints abroad serving as peacekeepers or where natural disasters have been savage.

Not for Canada any more tough, trained-to-kill forces equipped with ever more deadly weapons and capable of well-trained co-ordination with American forces and other allies. Canada, relative to its resources, spends much less than all but one member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As one minister of National Defence in Jean Chrétien’s years told me: “You’ve obviously no idea of the skepticism and bubbling hostilities there are in both our cabinet and caucus to military spending. Other interests—health, welfare, even culture—rate well ahead.”

He went further, making the case that except for a scatter of conservatively minded members of Parliament, the majority of MPs in recent parliaments have been against scarce money going into a much more up-to-date and larger military.

So the American factor is a dicey one. It demands priority in our thought on what to do about a military, now in a relative shambles. Above all a quick recall of our possible economic miseries should be to the fore before we decide roles for Canada’s military. A century and a half ago Montrealers burnt much of their city in protest of American trade barriers. Ever since the substance in that protest has been a keen Canadian concern. Many of us thought the die had been cast in the 1980s and later with the North American Free Trade Agreement. In 2004 it is likely we would soon be in Third World shape if NAFTA was forsaken. Losing even a quarter of our export trade with the U.S. would be catastrophic. Why would we lose it? Well, as I see it, the Americans are neither blind, deaf, or gullible, and increasingly they are aware a majority of us are fierce critics of their nation and its values.

An incipient hostility to our criticism of the American way of life may harden and become ever more punitive if Canadians continue to talk up the plans and behaviour we reject. Most of us recognize the mockery abroad in all the sweet talk of our two peoples, standing together against terrorism on this continent. So many of us see the Americans as super-patriots, hipped on themselves as the bastions of global liberty and democracy. Further, more and more Canadians are irate as they suffer from U.S. embargoes of such basic products as lumber, beef, wheat, etc.. There are those here ready to have Canada bargain hard for a fair deal, even to denying our commodities like oil, natural gas, base metals, lumber, and maybe water.

The most telling Canadian item in the present estrangement of Canadians and Americans, is the obvious majority opinion in Canada that we should not enter into a partnership with the U.S. for a defence system designed to secure the continent from rocket-carried nuclear bombs.

Obviously a Canadian rejection of partaking in the missile defence system may have grim consequences for our big trade exports. Such a prospect should set us to consider a refurbished military, more effective in numbers, equipment, and training for good service abroad for the UN or for NATO or in concert with the U.S. as in theatres like Afghanistan and the Balkans.

In the mid-1960s I recall Lester Pearson, then prime minister, rejected a suggestion during a public discussion that Canada end its economic dependence on American trade. He rejected it; it might appeal to Canadian idealism but it would mean a drop of 25 per cent or more in our Canadian standard of living, one that would last a long time.
Something as brutal as that estimate of the havoc that would be wrought here from Canada having its exports to the U.S. reduced may be needed to counter the present Canadian distrust of the U.S. and its presidents. It is also hard to see how we can continue to be hostile and almost isolationist towards the U.S. in our defence policy without shouldering the burden of providing our own security.

Now let me to turn to the one book I want to recommend—Soldiers Boys by Gary F. McCauley, published by General Store Publishing, Burnstown, ON, K0J 1G0, (phone 1-800-465-6072) This long novel would exasperate a literary critic but I enjoyed it very much despite its inordinate length, huge cast of characters, and many insertions of deeds grand and minute from far and wide that trace the course of WW II among Canadians from brave despair in 1941 to victory over Germany in mid-1945.
The core locale of the novel is literally a moving one: the Algonquin Regiment, recruited largely in Northeastern Ontario, and eventually a part of the 10th Infantry Brigade, 4th Canadian Division.

I recommend Soldiers Boys to any ex-service person who wants a playback of the war through the military and recreational doings of plain infantry soldiers and what they did while they trained, guarded, entrained or sailed. Eventually, after some three years preparing they fought until over half of them were gone—either dead or severely wounded.

The central character, a sergeant taken prisoner near Bruges after being severely wounded and barely surviving a grim prison, was the uncle of the author, Gary McCauley. The latter was an Anglican pastor before he became a Liberal MP in 1979 for Moncton , a seat he lost in 1984. Much of his time since must have been spent in deep, wide research. I can vouch for the authenticity of so much in the activities and locales as this small group of stick-together local lads lived and grew dependent on each other, training at Camp Borden, guarding German prisoners of war near Monteith, training at the Lakehead, guarding power plants at Niagara Falls, then some Newfoundland shoreline, then more training at Debert, then moving to, and around England before going into Normandy in July 1944 and costly action later in the Low Countries until early May 1945.

I used to drive Algonquin fellows into Port Arthur from their camp early in the war, and McCauley has it right: they loved their Lakehead months and the people there loved them back.

In the fall of 1944 our squadron was dismounted to fill a part of the front at a quaint village, Damme, just east of the medieval city of Bruges, Belgium. It was as the allies eventually advanced along the canal east of Damme into the Breskens Pocket that the author’s uncle was badly wounded and taken prisoner. As a reader who’d been at Damme and has gone back several times since the war, MCauley’s story is true to the housing, the skylines, the poplars, the canal, the weather, and the diversities in German fire. It’s as if you were there—though perhaps with more details than a reader needs.

Source: BY DOUGLAS FISHER, LEGION MAGAZINE

]]> http://douglasfisher.ca/2005/01/januaryfebruary-2005-between-ourselves/feed/ http://douglasfisher.ca/2004/12/pauls-first-year/ http://douglasfisher.ca/2004/12/pauls-first-year/#comments Sun, 12 Dec 2004 15:17:47 +0000 Douglas Fisher http://douglasfisher.ca/?p=179 THE PM HASN’T IMPRESSED, BUT NEITHER HAVE THE OPPOSITION LEADERS

PAUL MARTIN has been prime minister for a year, and his second ministry, five months old, has sat in the House of Commons just 43 days.

Time for a general “take” on the PM, the other party leaders and the new MPs from last June’s election.

The new MPs have not been getting much media coverage but it is hard not to be cheered by their obvious eagerness, determination, and by-and-large preparedness, particularly in the Bloc Quebecois and Conservative caucuses.

But all four parties have some impressive recruits, including the governing Liberals: for example, in four new ministers never before in parliament — Irwin Cotler (Justice), David Emerson (Industry), Ken Dryden (Social Development) and Ujjal Dosangh (Health). Perhaps they are so appealing because the three truly pillar personalities from the previous Martin ministry, i.e., Anne McLellan (Deputy PM), Reg Alcock (Treasury Board), and Ralph Goodale (Finance), continue on, bumptious and hard-shell confident, respected but unalluring to those Liberals wanting a solid, straightforward leader.

Which leads me to the failure by the prime minister to improve either his self-marred reputation or the stock of his party.

It’s hard at this stage to envisage a majority Liberal victory in the next election. There seems almost no regard among the Liberal contingent on the Hill for the Martin team. His handlers’ strategy of reducing the PM’s showings in the House but flying the circuit of continents playing high-minded “goody two-shoes” is supposed to raise Martin’s stature at home; meantime, the senior federal bureaucracy is in confusion and many domestic and international issues demand attention.

In particular, the glaring weakness of the 21 Liberal MPs from Quebec, when contrasted with the numbers and confidence of the 54 BQ MPs, underlines the Martin weaknesses.

Most anglo journalists on the Hill give scant attention to how well organized and capable the Bloc as a parliamentary force seems to be, compared, say, to the Conservatives or the New Democrats. It seems clear that Gilles Duceppe, the Bloc leader, has become an important personality in Quebec politics.

Anyone reading beyond the daily cynical circus of the oral question period will notice how much more bounce and variety in ideas there has been from the MPs of the Opposition caucuses, a lot of it by freshman MPs. In particular, the new ones seem to be expectant for what so many Liberals and a lot of ordinary voters thought was Paul Martin’s prime undertaking — i.e., snuffing out “the democratic deficit.”

REMARKABLE FAILURES
But one cannot close a fair review of Martin’s deficiencies and not take notice of what are also remarkable failures by Stephen Harper and Jack Layton to make sharper impressions as leaders.

Harper, the Conservative leader, does not come through effectively as a prime minister in-waiting. Rather, he’s a carping moralist, bent on outing Liberal ministers who should resign or be fired. On the one hand he’s obsessed with Liberal immorality and extravagance; on the other, he’s waiting for the Liberals to unveil their intentions before setting out, for example, the military establishment his party would institute.

As for the NDP, it includes two veterans of the House, Bill Blaikie and Ed Broadbent. They may not radiate the showbiz smarts of their leader, Layton; however, they do cast an aura of leadership without trying. Their presence and contributions in the House underline how much hyperbole and self-importance there is in what Layton insists the Canadian people believe.

Once again it looks like another Toronto municipal giant is to flop on the Hill — see the careers there of Phil Givens, David Crombie, Art Eggleton, Paul Cosgrove, John Nunziata, etc.

My summary: Five months since the voters chose this minority House, three of the four parties have inadequate leaders.

Source: BY DOUGLAS FISHER, TORONTO SUN

Secondly I have some suggestions on the minister of Veterans Affairs, in part because of the talents of Albina Guarnieri, a Liberal MP for a Toronto riding, first elected in 1988.

Lastly there are thumb-nail reviews of three books.

I met Benamou two years ago in Ottawa through his friend George Blackburn, author of The Guns Of Normandy. Blackburn had found the Battle of Normandy Museum in Bayeux useful in filling him in about both on-the-ground civilian witness and many of the battle’s artifacts. The museum’s program follows the paths of each of the Allied armies from the beachhead on D-Day.

I was taken with Benamou’s grasp on the Canadian army’s thrusts and his responsibility as a Frenchman to honour those who served and were killed or wounded in freeing France. He now needs support to stave off a triumph by latter-day peace zealots over those who envisaged and developed the museum. If you have an interest and the time please send a card or a short letter to him at the following address. Ask him to table you as one who supports the central purpose in the museum as it is: to explain and so remember the invasion and its aftermath as a liberation of people and a mortal blow to fascism. The address is: Dr. Jean-Pierre Benamou, Conservateur du Musée Mémorial de la Battaile de Normandie- Bayeux, Conseil en Histoire, 9, rue de Bayeux, 14250 Tilly Sur Seulles, Normandie, France, benamou.jp@wanadoo.fr.

We’ve had a department of Veterans Affairs since the end of WW II and, except for brief intervals, the political minister for it has only represented the department at the cabinet table. The exceptions were when a minister of National Defence also headed Veterans Affairs. Several times since 1945 there was talk of enveloping VAC in the Department of National Defence and once I recall Hill chatter about slipping Veterans Affairs Canada under the mantle of what is now Health Canada.

As my memory has it there has never been much speculation publicly about abolishing VAC as an entity with a full member of the federal cabinet, even though—again, as I see it—the role of the post has largely become ceremonial and representational at commemorations of our military past, onerous largely because there are so many trips abroad.

Not since the days of George Hees in the mid-1980s has there been any significant identification of the Veterans Affairs minister with a new program for veterans. In his case it was the Veterans Independence Program.

At its inception and for a decade or so the department had an obvious constituency in the one million to 1.2 million Canadians who had served in the military in WW II, plus 150,000 some veterans of the Great War. The latter are down to a handful; the WW II veterans are nearing the 200,000 mark. The growth factor that continues is in the responsibility towards retired regular forces personnel since the close of the Korean War.
The bureaucracy which serves the veterans seems to have been adaptable and is both well experienced and by and large well regarded by its clients, whether individuals or the various associations.

The question I pose is inspired by a growing dismay over the inordinate clutter of a ministry with two score politicians, banked by an almost as numerous array of 40 parliamentary secretaries. That’s an assembly, not an executive. Some of the secretaries go beyond being an aide to a minister to assignments as spokespersons in parliament for a specific interest like aiding refugees or intervening for Canadians in trouble abroad.
More and more it’s commonplace to identify what used to be called lobbyists as stakeholders or parties “with a main interest” or as one of a specific group tagged as NGOs or non-government organizations. What has been one consequence of this proliferation of secretaries and ministers of state beyond extra pay, expenses, and staff for them?

The core consequence has been more power to the most central of all agencies, the Prime Minister’s Office. The PMO is surrounded by the Privy Council Office, headed by the No. 1 public servant, the clerk of the Privy Council.
The shaping of legislation and the spending agreed upon is less and less a matter for most ministers and more and more of issues managed by the PMO-PCO establishment in concert with the senior mandarins of the central agencies.

So a lot of the present 40 odd ministers are more figureheads than policy framers and decision makers, including the Veterans Affairs minister. Guarnieri is an MP whose vigour, sharpness, and industry I will vouch for, indeed one of the ablest MPs in the score or so of veterans ministers I’ve known since 1957. Not all such ministers since then have been as able as Guarnieri, indeed almost half of them seemed to have been chosen because of either their geography or there being no other alternative MPs in a small province which doesn’t merit a minister with a heavy portfolio.

It seems to me VAC is a good place to start a trial discussion on drastically reducing the so-called executive arm of the federal government. It has a constituency inevitably eroding. It has an experienced, rather well regarded bureaucracy working under long-tested legislation. And its commemorative side is still of such worth it is too sensitive to be manipulated much for partisan purposes. Further, such a discussion on folding VAC as a department would comport with the general national tenor to a global role for Canada under the aegis of United Nations institutions and charter and a phasing out of close military alliances like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the North American Aerospace Defence Command. In short, this would shift us towards what so many Canadians now idealize: i.e., “soft” power, strong in cherishing and sharing, while de-emphasizing militarism and Canada’s past military successes as largely irrelevant in the 21st century world.

Operation Apollo is a lengthy, lucid, photo-rich account of operations by today’s Canadian Navy during its responses to terrorism. The author, Richard Gimblett, is a retired Royal Canadian Navy officer, and the book was published by Magic Light Publishing of Ottawa.

The forward by Vice-Admiral Ron Buck, chief of the maritime staff, makes clear this work is not the official history of Canada’s naval contribution to the post-Sept. 11, 2001 campaign against terrorism. “It is an authorized account of it … an accurate overview of … the navy’s contribution to this major conflict, through the eyes of an informed but independent author.”

Close-up knowledge of the RCN has never been a strong point of mine, so I learned much that shook me up about the range and quality of our navy’s capabilities and the diverse skills of its personnel, plus the importance of decisions pending in Ottawa on keeping up such strength by replacing worn or out-of-date ships and equipment. In short, for Canada to make a fist of competent, inter-allied service in the next decade or even in guarding its own shores, there has to be much renewal. Indeed, the author suggests the Apollo Operation may have been “the apex” of the modern Canadian Navy in putting to distant seas a multi-purpose, interoperable force. A submarine component is far from ready; the replenishment ships are due retirement; both patrol aircraft and modern helicopter support need much bolstering; and the command and control destroyers are close to the end of operational life, plus the frigates are late in mid-life.
So author Gimblett concludes with a serious question: “When the next threat or contingency operation arises—and there is always a next one, and it is always unexpected—will there be a Canadian Navy with the capabilities necessary to be first in the fray yet again?”

Two other books I want to recommend, particularly to those hooked as I have been on knowing more about what our German enemy in WW II was doing and what his machines, guns and supply systems were. The first is a made-in-Canada product of high quality, Another Place, Another Time: A U-Boat Officer’s Wartime Album by Werner Hirschmann with Donald E. Graves, and published by Robin Brass, Toronto; the second, published in England last year by Aurum Press, is titled Panzer: The Illustrated History Of German Armour In WW II, and was written by military historians Niall Barr and Russell Hart.

Oh how splendid the quality and range of the photos, a wondrous spread of Tigers, Panthers, Mark IIIs and IVs, mostly caught at or near the front in North Africa, Normandy, Italy, and on the long Eastern Front from Poland to the Balkans. The text sketches the use and the utility of German armour in the campaigns.
The scenes and the vehicles, whether whole or holed and abandoned, somewhat overpowers the narrative, even though the latter is cogent and graphic. I wished for more information on the crews’ duties and training; even so, I was satisfied, in particular with the authors’ emphasis on the quality of the guns and the gunnery, and the worth in the thick weight of the German tanks’ front and side armour against anti-tank weapons.
The story of Werner Hirschmann, for many postwar decades a comfortable Canadian citizen, covers his training and service in the undersea forces of Hitler’s Reich, beginning in 1940 at 18 when he became a candidate naval officer. He was trained thoroughly, then served in action, then trained some more, becoming both a specialist officer and a relative veteran before he was 22. His book, on the text alone—ignoring the splendid photos, maps, and documentation—may become a classic personal memoir of one sailor’s war. Its author eventually became the chief engineering officer of a U-boat. He experienced a number of depth-bomb attacks during sorties in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic before his boat and crew surrendered to the RCN after the war in Europe ended in early May 1945. His boat had sunk HMCS Esquimalt.

This memoir is not overladen with the dangers and their anguish and dread for those who manned the U-boats, particularly after the Battle of the Atlantic turned against the Germans by late 1943. Much of the dour bleakness implicit in the most dangerous of all war roles to its combatants was broken by leaves with his family and romantic encounters with girls who loved a sailor. Through the war there was a genuine esprit de corps in this arm of the German navy.

He recaptures life from boyhood to relishing Canadian citizenship for some 40 years. He began his Canadian days at a pleasant, well-run prisoner of war camp at Gravenhurst, Ont., and soon decided he would find “the girl” back home, marry her, and come to Canada. After he did that he came to know and exchange experiences and build friendships with Canadian veterans of the Battle of the Atlantic.
Naturally I was looking for some appreciation by the author of Nazism, Hitler, the Holocaust, the racism and the brutality of the regime. He doesn’t duck it; indeed, an interesting early chapter is of his “boy scout-like” experiences in the Hitler Youth movement’s programs. He writes that he bears the shame with his fellow generations in Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, and both accepts and grieves about it. He also stresses that he and his own family were never really clued in to the scope, dastardliness and wanton cruelty at the core and at the head of Nazi Germany.

Source: BY DOUGLAS FISHER, LEGION MAGAZINE

Files of press clippings I built up long ago make for a crude measure of national opinion about Canadians at war. Generally we have had lesser memorializing of great happenings in our history than the Americans, British, and French. Nonetheless, I generalize after comparing clipping files from the 40th and 50th anniversaries of D-Day, or Operation Overlord, with my notes about the 60th anniversary to this effect: Six decades after WW II, Canadians in this new century seem to have a wider, somewhat deeper historical interest than ever before in what their soldiers, sailors, and aircrew did—and its significance—in the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.

Why at this late date, 2004, more press coverage, biographical recall, and documentaries than in 1984 and 1994? It seems to me much of this coverage was given the basic stimulus of more informed content 10 to 15 years ago following a relative rush to recall publicly what serving men and women were witness to in WW II and who in retirement and their old age turned back in time to tell their grandchildren and the rest of us about the war of their early prime. Some of such recall was robustly defensive, for example in responding to the defamation by those anti-military and anti-British critics like Brian and Terence McKenna with their denigration of Canadians at Hong Kong, in Normandy, and in bombing Germany—i.e., the film series The Valour And The Horror in 1992.

Some of it surely came from the studious zeal and late maturing of a vigorous, substantial cadre of Canadian military historians, many of whom like Jack Granatstein, Terry Copp, and David Bercuson, aiming for, and getting big readerships, not just of fellow academics—and so were top-flight journalists like Pierre Berton and Ted Barris in recalls of such semi-forgotten battles as Vimy Ridge or against the Chinese in Korea. Much of such works were revisiting and revising—mostly upward—the worth of Canadian participation, in Italy and Northwestern Europe, within Bomber Command, or in the harsh, costly battle against the German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Also, a lot of the opportunities to recall this greatest of wars came to Canadians as major voyeurs and so critics of America’s historicity as presented in a lot of recent films such as Saving Private Ryan.

One must also add that the aging factors in the present population, including WW II veterans, has tweaked what penchant there is in Canada for anything sentimental beyond hockey. The more than 1 million in a population of around 12 million who served in WW II, most as volunteers, have dwindled below 300,000, and the average age of the survivors is 82 to 83. It is a rare obituary list in the dailies nowadays without notice of some veterans. Further, at recent nationally televised occasions there have been so many moving cameos of aged and proud folks in, or marching past, ceremonies of honour and remembrance, getting their due from what now seems a commonly held patriotism which neither they nor several following generations would display a few decades ago with such prideful interest.

Probably I make too much of this latter-day exposition and recognition but the dearth of it over the years from 1945 to the mid-to-late 1980s always bothered me, and I put it down to several factors, beginning with the rush of those discharged to get on with civilian living and its rounds after the demobilizations of 1945-46, which, to the surprise of so many of us, went so much better in social and economic terms than expected. Another factor is still a sensitive topic politically, and that was the undoubted mind set of the government led by Mackenzie King not to make too much postwar of the glorious victory and the huge military contribution to it by Canadians. Why not? National unity! That is, the relatively smaller input to the military of French Canadians, particularly those in the province of Quebec.

This issue of the smaller Francophone contribution has elements in it which made it quite unfair there should be either governmental soft-pedalling or Anglo-Canadians still fuming over the desperate, infantry reinforcement crisis of the army in Europe by the fall of 1944. Why so? The answer is in the sterling record of so many French Canadians in the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Canadian Navy, plus the valour shown and the heavy casualties suffered in Europe by such Quebec regiments as the Royal 22nd Regiment, the Chaudiere Regiment, and the Fusiliers Mont-Royal.

My own bother over the low level of recall and remembrance for the bravery, endurance, and so much achievement was not, so far as I recall, centered on those of us who came home intact and well, but on those killed and mostly buried out of country or those who came home severely handicapped because of wounds, nor did it have much to do with any major shortcomings in the rehabilitation programs provided veterans by our federal government.

The latter programs were generally sound, and in our posterity we can thank the governments and the parliaments then and since, and the veterans associations, led by the Legion, which critiqued and lobbied for wider and better provisions.

And those readers who know well the history of benefits for veterans appreciate that those of us who got them after WW II could thank those who came home from WW I and then queried, lobbied, marched, and by and large won the basics in the programs which were to benefit so many of us engaged in WW II. I, myself, had the backing for seven years of university.

What significance, indeed what stamina, is there likely to be in and from the rise and expanding spread of notice and interest among Canadians about war and preventing wars?

We should not go overboard in expectations. There is interest in the military past but not much enthusiasm, as I read the federal political parties, for the current and future forces beyond that they have a capability from training and equipping to be geared to peacekeeping, and not to the combat roles which peacemaking requires. Also the rising pressure from the United States to join in a common defence of the continent may seem a pragmatic necessity for over-all Canada-U.S. relations but this prospect of missiles in space seems opposed by majority opinion in Canada.

Now to the three books I recommend, each of which is splendid in its paper, print, layout, illustrations, and maps. The first is titled: More Fighting For Canada; Five Battles, 1760-1944, edited by Donald E. Graves, with each battle analysed by a military historian. The publisher is Robin Brass Studio, Toronto.

The second is titled Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945, written by a British journalist, Frederick Taylor, and published by Harper Collins, N.Y.
The third is titled A Question Of Honour The Kosciusko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II, by Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud, and published by Alfred A. Knopf, N.Y.

In 2000 Robin Brass published Seven Battles, 1758-1945, a forerunner to this 2004 edition. In each volume most of the battles are local, immediate, and rather brief, not operations of grandeur like Vimy Ridge or Overlord. The aim is for succinct narratives which cover the strategic, tactical, and operational aims and eventualities.

My favourite is the Battle of Sillery in which the French defeated the British in a more fierce contest with higher casualties than Wolfe’s famous triumph over Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham. But this victory came too late and was almost meaningless because the British navy had such close control of the St. Lawrence.

Of the second battle that much intrigued me—that of a 5th division force crossing the Melfa River in Italy in the spring of 1944—this was a circus performance in heroism and see-sawing fortunes, featuring close-up tank and anti-tank fights, confused communications, and bad weather. Rough terrain and chaotic roads held up fire support for the Lord Strathcona and Westminster regiments surrounded in their bridgehead.
The strangest battle in the book was an encounter at Cut Knife Hill in Saskatchewan during the Riel Rebellion. In it some 400 or so soldiers, mostly militia, were led by Colonel William Otter, a Torontonian. The troops had been rushed from Eastern Canada in the spring of 1985 largely along an incomplete railway. Their impetuous charge was ambushed at Cut Knife Hill by several hundred dismounted Indians and Métis led by a Cree chief, Poundmaker. The stories of the battle and its aspect of an Indian victory of sorts dominated eastern papers for weeks with much controversy. Political Ottawa and the Toronto and Montreal press appraised the heroes, the bumpkins, and the less than brave.

Both the other books have sharp critiques for Winston Churchill, the most heroic leader of the Allied nations. In Dresden he gets low marks for the way he reacted to the widespread horror in the West at the deaths and destruction at Dresden. This was first fanned by Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda regime and eventually taken up by the East German communist government as a prime example of Royal Air Force and U.S. Air Force “terror bombing.” Dresden, until then little damaged, was a handsome city, rich in art and historical buildings. The estimated death count from this one raid ranged from 25,000 to 30,000, the more accurate range, to several hundred thousands. This knockout raid came with the Russian army less than a hundred miles to the east. Arthur Harris, the Bomber Command chief, was instructed to stop such area mobbing. Thereafter, Churchill figuratively turned his back on the RAF which had done so much early in the war to buoy British spirits and which had weakened Germany, not least by diverting so much in air and artillery power from the ground war to defend German cities and industries.

Dresden, the book, is a model of wide, thorough research presented fairly and crisply. It revisits the ill-famed raids on Coventry and London by the Germans, and the burn out of Hamburg in July 1943. Its survey of high quality weapon and aircraft components made in Dresden for the Nazi war machine blows away the insistence that Dresden merited an “open city” status.

The book about the Polish squadron is much more than an inspiring account of the contribution some 14,000 Polish aircrew and mechanics made to the Allied cause, largely in RAF squadrons, including a squadron with the highest score of downed German aircraft. This is also, substantially, the story of the short, cruel shifts Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt gave Polish interests from the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union. They wanted Russia and Joseph Stalin to survive and become major factors in defeating Germany, and Stalin wanted a permanently divided and Communist-governed Poland to his west.

And so the men in the several Polish divisions which fought in Italy and Normandy for the Allies and the thousands who did so well in the RAF faced a dismembered Poland at the end of the war, and a Communist dictatorship in charge of the rest.
The tale woven in A Question Of Honour is sad, and because Poland’s return to democracy was not to come for some four decades and by then so many of them were buried in Britain, Canada, the U.S. and Australia, not on home ground.

Source: BY DOUGLAS FISHER, LEGION MAGAZINE

The accused had made overtures to another soldier, been repulsed, and then was brutally beaten. Consequential inquiry led to charging the NCO with unlawful acts. Eventually he was convicted and then dishonourably discharged.
My ignorance of homosexuality turned to something like disbelief at the exposed details of homosexual sex. I learned in a hurry from books of the prevalence—both current and through history—of men and women whose sexual attitudes and behaviour were different in their same-sex nature from what I had taken to be the common course of relations between males and females.

During this hullabaloo in Surrey in 1943 I began to take a more personal interest in the case when I found from squadron gossip that the NCO in question had family back home. Indeed a much younger sister of his had been in the same school as I, and we’d once been in a group putting on a school variety show, and I remembered her as a splendid person—eminently likeable and smart. Her good qualities put the offending brother into a different context for me in trying to understand the phenomena of homosexuality. Sixty years later I’m still learning, and a lot of it has come in following a particular career since 1979. That year a young lawyer in Vancouver, Svend Robinson, won his way into the House of Commons as an NDP MP, and almost immediately began to shock parliamentarians of all parties.

Almost from Robinson’s start in the House I knew he was a closet homosexual. In 1987 he became the first sitting MP to reveal this. Much about his antics and his causes have been personally distasteful to me but through his quarter-century as an MP I’ve recognized his dedication, cleverness, and shrewdness in using the parliamentary system. However excessive and often crass Robinson has been, he has also been a superb private member. I think only the late Stanley Knowles surpassed him as an effective MP in the post-WW II decades.

Many in politics and many ordinary folk have had reason to be hostile to Robinson because of his causes. Some opinion polling last April indicated more were “con” than “pro” regarding his worth as a politician. This was after he’d announced tearfully on national TV he would not be running in the next election because of his acknowledged theft of an expensive ring from a jewelry sale collection.
Let me now come rather indirectly to the Robinson phenomenon, and its gains and its costs, by sketching a new book by a man whose promising career as an MP ended in only one term, in part because of Robinson.

This book is an untraditional sort, authored by one of Canada’s retired major-generals, Bob Ringma. Its title is MLBU: Full Monty In Korea. It is a well-illustrated and mapped paperback of 170 pages, published by General Store Publishing House, Burnstown, Ont.
A MLBU is a mobile laundry and bath unit. The author of this book was born in 1928 and grew up in B.C. At the University of British Columbia he became a cadet officer, and after graduation he joined the army ordnance corps. Remarkably soon he found himself a volunteer in the ground fighting force, the backbone of which was American. His task was commanding the mobile laundry and bath, mainly for the benefit of front-line units. The objective of the allied force, largely set by President Harry Truman and backed by the infant United Nations, was to throw back the relatively successful invasion of South Korea in 1950 by communist forces from North Korea.

The prose in MLBU is clear and often vivid, with the unit and its course more excuse than anchor of a journalistic-like reprise of the forming, training, dispatch, assignments, and accomplishments of the Canadian contribution to the Korean War, eventually totalling almost 30,000 soldiers, laced with the major international and national story-lines of the time.

In short, a reader finds a synopsis of the war explained by a man in retirement who has a grasp on both world history and Canadian politics. Few books on our military at work have put so clearly and succinctly the make-up and needs of our land forces and how our political parties came to give equipping and maintaining effective forces such a low priority in their budget making.

After Korea, Ringma as a soldier had diverse experiences—domestically, in Europe, and in the United States. He picked up a ready usage of French and held senior administrative posts in the army for years in Quebec. In the first mandate of Jean Chrétien’s government he served as an MP for the Reform Party from 1993 to 1997 in the riding of Nanaimo-Cowichan. He did not contest the election of 1997. Across the spectrum of political partisanship in Canada it was assumed he did not run again because of the media hullabaloo created by public remarks he had made in 1996 in replying to a Vancouver Sun reporter who insisted he answer a conundrum question: “If you had an employee who was black or homosexual and his presence was costing you the business of bigoted customers would you move the employee to the back of the store or dismiss him?”

The Ringma reply was “Yes … as I would any employee who was hurting my business.”

This response was quickly and overwhelmingly taken by reporters and editorialists to reveal a racist bigot. There was political correctness at its fiercest. Demands rippled the country that Ringma be expelled from his party, even that he be prosecuted for bigotry. His answer was seen as broadly and deeply offensive to Canadian thinking and our humane multiculturalism. For days there was public furor over this “ homophobic” and “racist” MP in the Reform Party. Preston Manning, then Reform leader, suspended Ringma from the caucus and removed him as party whip.
These rebukes and Ringma’s subsequent decision not to run were hailed by those leading the campaign for homosexual rights and perpetuated as important in the long, increasingly successful campaign by gay males and lesbians for constitutional recognition of their human rights. The outing of Ringma as a bigot and his departure from politics was colloquially registered as a victory for political correctness over prejudice, harassment, and an unCanadian political party.

At the time and since, I have seen this assessment of Ringma as unfair. As I followed his work as an MP he was unusually useful to the House and public debate as an MP from the West who was familiar and positive about Quebec and the stresses there on national unity and who also knew more about our military and its decline in scope than any other MP during my time in Ottawa.

While engaged and admiring Ringma’s reminiscences of the Korean War along came the admitted theft of a ring by an MP from B.C., Svend Robinson. The first shock came from Robinson’s disclosure on national TV that he had delivered the ring to the police several days after taking it. The second shock came when it was revealed that the day before Robinson “inexplicably cracked” and walked off with the ring he had been in another jewelry store candidly telling a gay salesman he was looking for a fine engagement ring to give his partner. This latter snippet of news added to an aura of dubiousness around Robinson’s tale of the ring. It firmed attitudes of many exasperated over the years with his strenuous, much publicized antics for causes such as gay and lesbian rights, pro-abortion, pro-aborigines, legalized suicide, and forest conservation.

In the years of my open admiration of Robinson for his zeal and persistence as an MP I had often found he was a gracious achiever, less mean-spirited and contemptuous of those whose beliefs and principles were opposed to his. This was personal, I think, because of my own awareness, roused by the dishonoured NCO in 1943. At least this had given me sympathetic understanding and, on some matters, support for what the Robinsons of our era have been after. But as the successes of lesbians and gays with our political parties and in the courts have mounted, it much bothered me that the pro-gay forces, symbolized by Robinson, were so dismissive and unforgiving about any person or organization openly opposing any of their objectives.

One of the prime causes of the now famous “democratic deficit” of Canada which Paul Martin vowed to erase has been the growing contempt for the conservatively minded people of Canada for their “bigotry” and “racism” by the “liberally minded” people. So much, for example, that a sensible, needed national debate on immigration goals is impossible. Seemingly, the reigning righteousness in the attitudes of those in the media and the artistic, literary, and educational communities has become very liberal, even arrogantly so, regarding family relationships, lifestyles, and social behaviour.
And so, while working at this column I tracked Ringma to his place of retirement on Thetis Island, B.C., and asked him if it was true that his widespread damning as a racist and homophobe in 1996 had brought him to leave politics.

No, it had not. Yes, the nasty notoriety had been very trying, but shortly after his unanimous nomination for the coming election he and his wife faced a crisis in her health, and she needed his continuing attention. He withdrew from the nomination and his party’s successor candidate handily retained the seat.

I asked him for some recall of the conundrum put to him by the Vancouver Sun, and he said he regretted his response. He hadn’t taken time to consider it carefully and had been spare and awkward in response. I also asked how the interview had come about. Had Robinson anything to do with prompting the reporter to raise a question so much more complex than it seems at first, hearing both it and his reply?

He said the reporter had been aggressive and persistent. He was sure the origin of the question had been an interview with him as a new MP in 1994, which had appeared in a Vancouver Island weekly. He had stated in that wide-ranging interview that he did not favour changes in the status of gays and lesbians as citizens, for example, legalizing same-sex marriages.

Not long after the 1996 onslaught over this alleged homophobia he was told by a source he trusted that copies of this 1994 interview had been on Robinson’s House desk at the time of his “disgrace.” He regretted what had happened thereafter but much as he disagreed with Robinson on many political issues he does not harbour a grudge against Robinson.

Good for him. And for myself, I wish only that in his absence from the next parliament Robinson will come to recognize from his own case that a decent democracy needs much in grace and understanding both from those in politics who win their points and those who lose them. Even the politically correct should never gloat.

Source: BY DOUGLAS FISHER, LEGION MAGAZINE

Thinking back on other new governments in Ottawa, it strikes me that Harper has had the most successful first half-session of any new minority prime minister. Yes, more successful even than John Diefenbaker’s, 49 years ago.

But a caution. Today’s Conservatives ought to remember that although Brian Mulroney had a huge majority and got off to a grand start in 1984-85, his government sputtered in less than a year, mostly because of the antics of the Liberal “Rat Pack,” abetted by a limp House Speaker. Sheila Copps, Brian Tobin and gang sustained weeks of noisy, mean and effective personal attacks on Mulroney’s honesty and his ministers.

This past fortnight, about a dozen Grit MPs, most of them newcomers, seemed to mimic the Rat Pack, boldly slanging Conservatives for alleged ethical lapses. If they keep going, Harper will be stuck with Rat Pack II from this fall through to the arrival of the new Liberal leader in January.

That aside, Harper seems to be in the good books of most Canadians, notably with the near-majority of voters without fast ties to a particular party. To them, he looks and speaks as a prime minister should. His poise does not seem posed.

OPPONENTS’ RESPECT
Even those antagonistic to him for his allegedly reactionary social values and his intention to shrink Ottawa’s role in the federation, readily admit Harper and his team will be harder to defeat than they expected late last winter.

Sticking to five priorities has helped: Cleaning up government; reducing the GST; cracking down on crime; paying parents a child care allowance; and working with the provinces on a wait-time guarantee for medical patients.

Add to these that Harper speaks in understandable sentences, gushes less than Paul Martin, and publicly reasons more clearly than Jean Chretien did. He addresses the lunchbox crowd far better than those polysyllabic profundities Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff — indeed, even better than those world-class orators, Stephen Lewis and Brian Mulroney.

The tough-minded among his partisan enemies think Harper is doing well because he so quickly and directly demonstrated that he is boss. He is in charge — of himself, his ministry, and his caucus. He openly follows a strategy of keeping the ball rolling, making progress on his undertakings without moaning about the difficulties posed by a shortage of MPs.

NO CABINET DISASTERS
It helps that the exposure of his ministers has not to date resulted in a string of disasters — as Pearson had in 1963, and Mulroney in 1984. Finance Minister Flaherty, for example, comes across as warm, affable, and at home in his portfolio. Four of the toughest jobs are held by articulate, confident persons — Jim Prentice in Indian Affairs, Tony Clement in Health, Vic Toews in Justice, and John Baird at Treasury Board.

Meantime, the opposition uproar over David Emerson switching parties and Senator Michael Fortier’s appointment to cabinet has faded. And, despite all the mud thrown at Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, she looks able enough to redeem herself in the fall with new anti-pollution programs.

A good cabinet is important to a government’s stability. So is a backbench sticking to the PMO’s disciplinary line. But the best thing going for this government — the prime agent of its achievements and standing in the polls — is Stephen Harper, a more engaging prime minister than seemed possible just months ago.

Source: BY DOUGLAS FISHER, TORONTO SUN