Author:
JOE CLARK per jfh
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Date Posted: 11:37:07 04/01/03 Tue
Author Host/IP: d150-99-156.home.cgocable.net/24.150.99.156
OTTAWA, Ontario
March 31, 2003
Check against delivery
No one in the Liberal Party is troubled by the Billion dollars wasted on the gun registry, or the deliberate starving of the Canadian military, or the incalculable cost we will pay for a Prime Minister who is afraid to visit our largest trading partner.
For most governments, the motto is: Do the best you can.
For the Liberals, the motto is: Do whatever you can get away with. And then go straight to Denmark.
Because the Liberals - the party of cynicism - think those memories will all wash away, when they bring out their new miracle detergent, Paul Martin.
I think it is time Canadians took a closer look at Miracle Paul.
We have to cut through the hype, because there is a thriving little mini-industry geared to the deification of this man.
If Brian Tobin was Captain Canada for the Chrétienites, then Paul Martin is Admiral of the Fleet for this shadow Party.
And why not? He has more ships than the Canadian navy.
Of course, there are more submarines in the West Edmonton Mall that in the Canadian navy. And Paul Martin was the Finance Minister who approved the purchase of Canada’s second-hand submarines. The ones that go down in the water - but can’t come up again. A little like Miracle Paul’s leadership campaign, when it hit its first squall.
But Paul Martin sat at the dark heart of this government through all its worst decisions. He was, far and away, its most influential Minister.
Had Paul Martin wanted to stop the scandals of Group-Action and Shawinigate, he could have stopped the scandals.
Had he wanted to shut down the gun registry, he was the strongest Minister on Treasury Board, and he could have shut down the gun registry.
Had he wanted to plug the sinkhole of the GST corporate rebates, he could have done that. Instead, he got rid of the inspectors we set up to protect against fraud.
Had he been serious about investing in health care, or in education, or in the Canadian military, he - more than anyone - had the power.
Depending on your generation, it’s not clear whether he was Abbot or Costello, Cheech or Chong, Dr. Evil or Mini-Me. But, indisputably, he was one of the two heads of the monster. He can’t separate himself from the body of his work.
The well-paid Martin Lobby wants to hide all that. Instead, they want us to believe that Miracle Paul single-handedly saved the nation from economic ruin. That means he introduced Free Trade. He brought in the GST. The well-paid Martin Lobby claim that but for Miracle Paul’s powers of alchemy Canada would have gone bankrupt.
Well let’s have a quick look at the results of some of this alchemy.
During the nine years Paul Martin was finance minister:
The dollar dropped to record lows.
Canada’s growth performance fell to levels not seen since the 1930s.
Government spending and tax levels rose to near-record highs.
There’s nothing new in any of this, of course.
Liberals like high taxes. They’ve always believed they are better at spending your money than you are.
Conservatives know differently. We know, as Winston Churchill once said, that a nation trying to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket trying to lift himself up by the handle. It just doesn’t work.
Martin and Chretien - Cheech and Chong -- have never accepted that common sense logic.
In fact, they have never liked common sense.
They prefer what they call Liberal values.
And as we have all seen, these values often have little to do with common sense and much to do with dollars and cents. Our dollars and cents. A billion to the gun registry. Half a million chunks to Liberal Ad Agencies every time they photo-copy a report.
And millions of dollars that flood into the Miracle Paul campaign, which pays for stables full of spinners, conscripting the country’s media to buy into the Martin myth.
They have the CBC on speed-dial. They have leading columnists writing biographies. They portray Miracle Paul as the man born to be Prime Minister. Like John Turner.
He has the royal jelly.
Ladies and gentlemen, the only royal jelly Paul Martin has is in his spine.
The man abhors taking difficult decisions.
Every time there is a contentious issue, Paul Martin has his two feet firmly planted on both sides of it.
If he were a food, he’d be a giant waffle.
Since 1993, he’s been allowed to get away with it.
But that is fast coming to an end.
You can duck and bob and weave and hide your position on important issues, when all you are is second fiddle.
But if you want to conduct the orchestra, you’d better be ready to point your baton clearly in one direction or another. On the record, Miracle Paul’s baton would be either a weather vane, or a Slinky.
When was the last time Miracle Paul stood up and took responsibility for his actions, or the actions of his department, or his colleagues or his government?
His refrain instead is: “What blind trust?” Or “Its the bureaucrats’ fault.” Or “The media have it wrong.” Or, wait for it, “we inherited the problem from the Tories.”
Miracle Paul likes to talk about the importance of loyalty.
He claims loyalty to the leader is one of the Liberal party’s greatest strengths.
I learned that from my father’s knee, he has been quoted as saying.
So why, then, has he spent the past decade scheming, conniving, undermining and discrediting the man who was duly elected leader of his party and prime minister of this country?
Meetings in airport hotels. Delegate selection proceedings rigged and cooked. Whispers to his friends condemning the government. Quitting Cabinet.
Where’s the loyalty here?
Miracle Paul says he has a new vision for Canada.
That’s wonderful news. But where was this vision over the past ten years?
Where was the vision of national pride as his government gutted our military?
Where was his vision of ethics in the Auberge Grand-mère scandal?
Where was his vision of compassion when Allan Rock denied help to whole categories of victims of tainted blood?
If Paul Martin were a man of vision, some glimmer of that would have shown up in the decade he sat a the center of the Cabinet table, and controlled the purse strings. Look at the record of Miracle Paul.
Gun registry? Yes.
Gagliano? Yes.
Challenger jets the bureaucrats said weren’t needed? Yes.
A blind trust you can see through? Yes.
Money for the military? No
Money for health care? As little as possible.
Support for John Herron’s bill to fight student debt? No.
But Paul and the Spinners want us to forget all that. Talk about blind trust.
So Miracle Paul has been running around the country making more uplifting speeches that the Archangel Gabriel.
He says we need a better environment, more affordable post-secondary education, and cleaner government.
But if we do a quick reality check, what do we find?
What is Paul Martin’s position on Kyoto? It depends.
Did he vote against proposals to offer tax credits based on repayment of student loans, and to establish a federal student grant programme? Yes.
Did he systematically, willfully and over a long-period of time conceal from the Canadian people the degree of access he had to his financial assets? The answer is yes again. And emphatically so.
Mr. Martin’s actions in the blind trust affair starkly reveal the man himself.
When we asked him if he had ever had access to his blind trust he replied, “My hands are clean.”
“Nice hands” we said. “But have you ever had access to your blind trust? Just answer the question.”
“Ahh,” he said. “Scandal-mongering Tories. I told you, my hands are clean.”
“They may be clean,” we replied, “but they are remarkably dusty. Have you perchance been peeking through the slats of your Venetian blind trust?”
“Perish the thought,” he said. “Well, maybe once.”
“Maybe once?”
“Well, maybe twice.”
“Maybe twice?”
“Well, maybe twelve times.”
This is a story that is just beginning. The multi-millionaire, who wants to be Prime Minister, and who thinks its OK that he was running the Finance Department and being briefed on his multi-national, multi-faceted international shipping corporation, at the same time, can’t count for long on the fog of war. He is going to need some miracles.
There is a pattern here.
Actually there are two patterns, both equally troubling.
The first is Miracle Paul’s distaste for clear positions.
Every time he thinks an issue will win him some points, he tells everyone he is in favour of it.
But when pressed for specifics, he suddenly goes foggy.
Last year, for example, he gave a speech to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
He said to them ‘I am aware of the serious problems facing you people. And I know I am probably the major cause of those problems. But now I have a solution. What we need to do is this.’ And here I quote the man himself: “We need to be open to considering all options.”
Now there is a definite position.
An article in Canadian Business earlier this year hit the nail right on the head: ‘The more speeches Martin gives, the hazier his positions become.’
The second part of the pattern about Paul Martin is that he is a cream puff. He folds in the face of pressure.
After weeks of hiding, Paul Martin came out to say “Canada Steamship Lines is mine, and I’m going to keep it.” Then he disappeared.
He peeped out again, to say “I love ships.”
Then he said “I love ships, but I’m selling them.”
In each and every case, when he came under criticism Paul Martin changed his mind. He refused to stick to his principles. He tried to please everyone.
Think of it! This man spent nine years in Cabinet. And yet there is not one, single identifiable issue people can associate with him except the deficit.
To use a hockey analogy, Paul Martin is a hot dog centre. He doesn’t like going in the corners. He’d rather hang around the slot, pot the easy goals and skate around the ice with his arms in the air.
Jean Chrétien knows this. I suspect at least some of his former cabinet colleagues do as well.
And I think this is one of the chief reasons why Chrétien has been so opposed to Martin’s ever becoming prime minister.
Because whatever you might feel about Chrétien, he is a wily and knowledgeable politician. For better or for worse, had he owned Canada Steamship Lines, you wouldn’t see Jean Chretien caving under pressure in just 29 days.
The Liberal leadership campaign has eight more months to go.
We have just opened the book on the Venetian Blind Trust. Miracle Paul will be Miracle Whip.
And that makes it all the more urgent that we continue to build on the natural, national strengths of this Progressive Conservative Party.
We have won the trust of the people of Canada.
We now have a field of candidates for the leadership who not only see this country whole, but see it through fresh eyes, who bring experience and innovation.
We will elect a leader two months today. But we will also display a team of able people to work with that new leader. And that new team reaches beyond the very strong group of formal candidates for the party leadership.
Some of those candidates will tell you about themselves later tonight. I wanted to spend some time speaking about the Myth on the other side - a Myth we must all continue to take apart.
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