Jean Chretien — Canada’s streetfighter

Dubai: Shawinigan in Quebec is the type of Canadian town where you go to a fight on a Saturday night and a hockey game breaks out, where brews are cold and the only source of work is the bush — or the wood that’s logged from it and sent to the paper or pulp mill.

The winters are long and cold, the summers are short and full of black flies that suck the blood from those who fell the trees in the bush, and the only entertainment of note is when a neighbouring hockey team comes for a fight and, maybe, a game.

That Jean Chretien was known — and carefully crafted the image — as ‘the Streetfighter from Shawinigan’ says a lot about the man who holds the record of being Canada’s longest-serving prime minister. Someone who wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t veer away from a scrap, and who has the guts and guile to tough it out. Yep. But that’s just the carefully crafted side. At the core, he is a highly intelligent, natural politician and deeply principled lawyer who loved all things Canada.

But there’s also a deep irony in that it was he, as Anglophones with a deep distrust of all things French and Quebecois like to point out, came within a whisker of “losing Canada”.

Ever since the French first set foot in North America, established Quebec as its base in the New World, and were humiliatingly defeated on the Plains of Abraham in 1757 by the British Red Coats, the very existence of Canada has been a balancing act between English and French speakers.

Chretien himself grew up only knowing French — it was only when he met his future wife Aline and she tutored him in English, that he learnt the majority tongue — even if he did mangle it badly and purposely so for deflective and political effect. He was born in 1934, the 18th of 19 children — itself homage to the influence of stanch Roman Catholicism.

Stubborn? When he was a child, he convinced his school, family, doctor and hospital that he had appendicitis and underwent its removal, all to avoid boarding school and try and get sent home to be with his ill mother. His father was also a Liberal Party of Canada organiser and big happy family all squeezed into a small apartment that was owned by the local pulp and paper mill where he, and most of the rest of the town, worked.

But young Jean was also smart — he earned a scholarship to study law at the university of Laval in Montreal and returned to work his summer holidays at the mill. He gained entry to the Quebec bar in 1958, a year after he married Aline.

In the general election of 1963, Chretien stood for the Liberals in his home constituency of St Maurice-Lafleche — a seat he was to take on 10 separate occasions. Despite his poor English, he did catch the attention of Prime Minister Lester Pearson and Finance Minister Mitchell Sharp. They liked his quick mind, genuine Canadian patriotism and commitment to a strong national government. Sharp made him a minister of national revenue in January 1968 and, when Pearson was replaced as prime minister by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Chretien was appointed Trudeau’s minister of Indian affairs. It wasn’t a natural fit and by then Chretien had learnt that if you wanted real power, finance portfolios was where to be.

He was president of the Treasury Board, 1974–76; minister of industry, trade, and commerce, 1976–77; and the first French Canadian minister of finance, 1977–79. When the province of Quebec elected a government that called for policies to give the province more independence, the federal government used Chretien to make the point that people living in Quebec had real power in Ottawa, and that their problems could be solved in a national setting.

With a separatist Parti Quebecois government in power in Quebec under Premier Rene Levesque called a referendum to decide on its place within Canada, Chretien — then minister for Justice — was tasked with the responsibility to lead the federal side. After an acrimonious and divisive campaign, the federal side won, putting the separatist genie back in the bottle for the time being.

With Trudeau’s resignation, Chretien ran for leadership of the liberal Party. He lost to John Turner in 1984, a British Colombia lawyer with all the personality of a blancmange. Chretien’s Quebecness and his association with the Trudeau era was seen as an impediment. He was, however, appointed deputy prime minister. Turner failed to make an impression with voters while a new, slick Quebec lawyer, Brian Mulroney, was able to lead his Conservatives to power. Following the election defeat, Chretien turned to private law practice, watching the political action in Ottawa from the sidelines.

After Turner’s resignation in 1990, Chretien again ran to become the Liberals’ leader — this time winning easily even if the national media dubbed him ‘yesterday’s man.’

But Chretien was far from finished. As the federal deficit soared and the Conservatives reeled from a fiscally sound if politically suicidal decision to introduce a seven per cent Goods and Services Tax — Chretien’s wily leadership and street-smart appeal with voters led to the biggest majority win ever in Canadian history in 1993. The Conservatives were annihilated, returning just two MPs in the House of Commons.

His experience in matters financial showed instantly, with his budgets slashing the public service and setting Canada on track for two decades of growth based on prudent management while paying down Ottawa’s national debt.

But his toughest moment came again with the threat of a second Quebec referendum, this time being led by Premier Jacques Parizeau, a rotund and boorish academic with the personality of a cheese grater.

And it was a close run thing — the federal side just about winning by the slimmest of margins — a bitter loss that Parizeau blamed on ethnic voters.

The streetfighter from Shawinigan won three straight elections, set Canada on course for prudent growth and advanced social and health care spending — but he faced growing sniping from within his party — with Finance Minister Paul Martin as the often-thwarted heir apparent — that he was in power too long. Chretien? He loved it, deciding his time and his place to go. Yes, there were scandals over how he used federal money to support the Liberal cause, but for Chretien, that was his patriotic duty — and his upbringing as the son of a party organiser: the two were indivisible, and twice his federal Liberals had seen off the separatist threat.

After the terror attacks of 9/11, Chretien showed his leadership in logistical support in the immediate aftermath. He also committed troops to Afghanistan — a mission that was to cost the Canadian military more than 150 lives during its 12-year mission there.

But that’s where he drew the line. In the late winter of 2002 he arose in the House of Commons and declared to thunderous applause that Canada would not assist in any invasion of Iraq — it was an illegal and unwarranted move based on dubious intelligence.

How right he was. But what else would you expect from the streetfighter from Shawinigan? Besides, every hockey player knows it too: A good fighter knows when he can win.