bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1989), pp. 41–42
Spoils of Power: The Politics of Patronage
by Jeffrey Simpson, Toronto: Collins, 1988,
413 pp., $27.95.
Canadian journalists are unquestionably better on the average today than used to be the case: better educated, better trained, and less likely to be party-lining hacks. But it is a rare journalist in Canada now or ever who has a genuine scholarly bent and the capacity to dig into the past to better illumine the present. The Globe and Mail’s columnist, Jeffrey Simpson, is one of those rare ones, and his Spoils of Power shows him at his best.
This book is not a full-blown attack on the patronage sins of Brian Mulroney, though those are mentioned at the beginning and end of the book. Instead, what we have here is a dispassionate academic treatise on the evolution of patronage from the struggle for Responsible Government down to yesterday. Moreover, each province has its own patronage peculiarities noted and examined. In other words, however the book may be sold and however much the publisher may have wished it, this is research and scholarship, not sensationalism.
All the better for it too. Simpson understands that patronage historically has been used to bind men not just to the machine but to the country. In the first years after Confederation when provincial loyalties far outweighed any links to the new Dominion, Sir John A. Macdonald employed patronage with great skill to tie his friends and even some enemies to the federal government. Postmasterships, work in the Customs posts or on the locks were prizes that rewarded the faithful, to be sure, but they were also the necessary grease to keep the political wheels turning. Patronage, in other words, was not all bad
Over time, patronage grew less attractive. In the 1930s, Mackenzie King’s Government ran an efficient tollgate system on contracts. For all practical purposes, no construction or supply contracts were let without a standard percentage fee going directly to the Liberal Party. Senator Norman Lambert, whose diaries at Queen’s University’s Archives are one of the most important sources on patronage (and electoral fundraising), collected the money and banked it away for future needs. No one blew the the same intentions if and when they made it whistle, likely because the other parties had to power. Certainly they tended to act as if they did.
Some appointments were especially prized. The bench used to be a party reward, though the Canadian Bar Association has recently horned in to spoil the unfettered exercise of patronage. The Senate was the traditional resting place for bagmen and key party organizers, and Simpson has some good sport here. But even the Senate has now been ruined, yet another good thing (along with our system of government) destroyed by the Meech Lake Accord.
About all that is left is the foreign service, a subject of especial concern to PAFSO and its members. Simpson notes that the diplomatic service has been a party tool from the first days. High Commissioners to Britain and representatives in Paris were party appointments from the days of Macdonald and Laurier, and when Mackenzie King and O.D. Skelton began to create a true foreign service in the 1920s, the ministerial appointments almost always went to party-lining friends. The result, as the acerbic Hume Wrong noted bitterly in the 1930s, was that Canada was represented abroad by the deaf, the dumb and the blind. The deaf was Philippe Roy in Paris, the blind was Randolph Bruce in Tokyo, and the dumb was Sir Herbert Marler under whom Wrong has been condemned to serve in Washington. In other words, (and I explicitly include Vincent Massey in this general comment) the earliest patronage appointments abroad were pathetic. Thank heavens there was usually little business of importance.
As Simpson points out, matters grew somewhat better as the Department of External Affairs developed. King made 18 patronage appointments in 22 years of power, Bennett two, St. Laurent four, Diefenbaker four, and Pearson three. Trudeau, in power for almost 16 years, reverted to the old style by appointing 18, including four members of his personal staff and seven former ministers. Brian Mulroney promised to do better, and this was one promise kept. In his first year and a quarter in power, the Conservatives named nine party supporters to diplomatic posts, as Simpson notes, sometimes over Joe Clark’s objections. More would follow. Curiously, however, Simpson says that PAFSO’s complaints about these appointments exaggerated the effect on foreign service morale, and he cites the naming of Jean Drapeau to UNESCO. That to Simpson was a poor appointment, but not a party reward: “Drapeau had never tendered service to the Conservative party, nor would he in recompense for the Paris post.” And the appointment of Lucien Bouchard, Mulroney’s law school friend, as Ambassador to France Simpson describes as “inspired”
Whether that is true or not, the foreign service officers who served in France had best decide. The one certainty is that the foreign service is going to be used for patronage more in the current Mulroney term of office than in the first. If Senate posts are now in provincial hands, if the press is watching the boards and commissions, where else can a struggling prime minister turn to reward his friends and get rid of his party enemies? Jeffrey Simpson’s book, calm and judicious as it is, explains how this all came about, and undoubtedly there will be ample justification for a new chapter before the election of 1992.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1989), pp. 41–42. Read the rest of this issue →
