bout de papier, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2018), pp. 30–31
ALLAN J. MACEACHEN – THE CONSUMMATE PARLIAMENTARIAN — was a great Canadian.
Allan MacEachen taught me and the many who worked with him that politics is much more than a competitive sport, that ideas do matter, that elections have consequences and that it is your duty to influence, shape and make public policy in support of the common good. He never abandoned his faith that government should make society better, especially for the sick, the poor and our children. Our job, he told us, was “to help those who need our help to put bread on their table”.
In his eulogy to MacEachen, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remarked: “Canadians are living in a country that Allan J. built, and they like it. Seniors are living in dignity because of the old-age supplement. We all enjoy health care according to our needs, rather than our ability to pay.”
Born July 6, 1921, this son of a coal miner grew up in depression-struck Cape Breton. The young MacEachen was profoundly influenced by the Antigonish movement – self-help through group interaction and life-long education — of Father Moses Coady, and the development of cooperatives and credit unions for Maritime farmers and fishermen. After graduation from St. Francis Xavier, he undertook graduate work first at the University of Toronto, then the University of Chicago and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before returning to St. Francis Xavier as Head of the Department of Economics and Social Science.
First elected to the House of Commons in 1953, he won 10 successive elections. He was defeated once. by 16 votes, in the Diefenbaker sweep of 1958. He spent the next four years as advisor to Opposition Leader Lester Pearson and then won his Cape Breton seat again in 1962. Judy LaMarsh described the relationship between Pearson and MacEachen as that of father and son. MacEachen always described himself as a Pearson Liberal and a photograph of a smiling young MacEachen riding with Pearson in a convertible with the top down, during a campaign tour in the early 60s, occupied a place of honour in MacEachen’s parliamentary offices.
MacEachen profoundly believed in the redemptive power of government and the moral duty of the state to look after the sick, the poor and the elderly. These were themes of his campaign for the Liberal Leadership in 1968. In his chronicle of the period, Distemper of our Times, Peter Newman described MacEachen during the campaign as “the authentic voice of the Liberal left”. As the Laird of Cape Breton, he left as his legacy new roads, airports and harbours, improvements to the steel and coal industry, a heavy water processing plant, and even the nation’s passport office.
As a master of The Commons and parliamentary tactician, Allan MacEachen had no peer, an adroitness applied with skill after the Pearson government defeat on a budget bill in 1967 and during Pierre Trudeau’s minority governments between 1972 and 1977. Pierre Trudeau made him Canada’s first Deputy Prime Minister in 1977. Trudeau would later write in his memoirs that MacEachen was always “a source of shrewd advice” and “was the kind of man I respected, because he had no ulterior motives; he said what he thought, and the reasons he would give were always his real reasons.”
MacEachen was Foreign Minister from 1974-76. During his second term as Foreign Minister, from 1982 to 1984, he began quarterly meetings with the US Secretary of State, George Shultz, whom he knew from his MIT days, because he recognized that the Canada-US relationship was the most important for Canada. It was a period of East-West tension — the Grenada invasion, the shooting down of the Korean airliner. Much of his energies were devoted to supporting Prime Minister Pierre Trudcau’s peace initiative. “Pipsqueaks in the Pentagon”, as Trudeau described them, dismissed it as impotent grandstanding but it demonstrated to the non-aligned and those in the Soviet bloc seeking renewed détente that there were western leaders who put shared humanity before Cold War divisions.
Appointed to the Senate in 1984, MacEachen led the Liberals through the bulk of the Mulroney years, where he was forthright in scrutinizing government legislation. His interventions were not always appreciated but MacEachen deserved the sobriquet the “Celtic sphinx”.
I served as his legislative assistant from 1982 to 1984, having won the assignment probably because I wore my clan’s tartan tie to the interview. Shortly before Question Period I would enter his cavernous office, across from the House of Commons, to brief him while he finished the plate of cream cheese and fruit prepared by his indispensable assistant and gatekeeper, Pearl Hunter. (Pearl had started her career in the office of Justin Trudeau’s grandfather, Jimmy Sinclair.) MacEachen would listen to me, nod and then slowly walk over to the House.
Three months had gone by and he had — __— not said a word to me. I had asked Sean Riley, who later became President of St. Francis Xavier University, if I should do anything. “Three months… it was at least that for me. Just wait.” Finally, one day when I had given him a particularly obtuse response on a Middle East issue, the Sphinx stirred. The deep, rumbling baritone asked: “Would you really say that? Would you really say that in the House of Commons?” _~ Pondering my loyalty to the Department against my service to its Minister, I blurted “No Minister.” There was a pause. “What would you say?” I burbled something. He nodded and went into the House. A variation on the question was asked but his answer bore no resemblance to what the Department or I had offered. It was erudite, informed and obfuscatory, earning him admiring laughter but leaving nothing for the opposition to chew on.
MacEachen also knew how to manage the mandarins. He would keep a piece of paper with tw6 columns: What They Wanted and What He Wanted. Their list was always much longer and they would constantly push to get things done. He had some projects he wanted done – for the constituency and for Atlantic Canada, as well as policy initiatives around North/South relations or trade. He would take out the piece of paper and remind them the score was very much in their favour but his “asks” were still outstanding. It got results.
Canny, shrewd and wily, Allan J. MacEachen knew how to get things done. He legislated Medicare for all Canadians and a national minimum wage. MacEachen would later write of a visit with a rural constituent who told him “You certainly kept bread on the table here in the north all those years”: “As a compliment it was enormous; as a summation of one’s political career from a citizen who made a living the hard way, it was heartwarming.” Bread continues to be on the table and, thanks to Allan J. MacEachen’’s legislative prowess, Canada is a better place to live and work.
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2018), pp. 30–31. Read the rest of this issue →
