Review of: Stirring The Pot

Nothing shy and retiring about this man. Fact is, he is retired... from the office of this country's premier seat of power, but he would have the public see his time in the prime ministership as he would have it, not as events unfolded demonstrating him to be a self-righteous wielder of the public weal - as he would have it.

When, around 1985 the Liberal party selected John Turner to head the party into a new election - post his mentor, Pierre Trudeau's retirement - rather than Jean Chretien, he had everyone's heartfelt sympathy.

His earlier memoir, "Straight From The Heart" gained him much public acclaim as "the little man from Shawinigan" who had been so hard done by, and the Canadian public in turn done out of the services of a man of folk wisdom who could guide the country to our faultless destiny, a world-respected middle power whose population was heterogeneously and comfortably Canadian to the core.

How kind of fate to offer us a second chance, and how meet it was for Jean Chretien to finally take the helm of governance on our behalf. The street fighter with the long history of public office who had, in the interregnum, joined corporate Canada and polished all the right contacts came out swinging. Out with the old, in with the decrepit (vision, that is). A mediocre leader for an unsuspecting country.

His contacts, through business and familial outreach, brought him into comforting (to him) proximity to the other movers-and-shakers within the country. The influential law firms, the bankers and investment houses, the corporate heads of international conglomerates. We thought because we wanted to, that he was one of us.

Canadians learned to love his America-bashing, his unabashed flirtation with the press, his teasing malapropisms that simply rendered him more folksily, foxily close to the population; he was one of us. A modest man with a large vision, but with the smarts to govern wisely. A decent and compassionate man, an honest man.

And then he proceeded to invest in his future, not ours, by all manner of neat little tricks. Sending costly government projects to his home riding of Shawinigan, even setting up an expensive museum display for the locals there, to the detriment of the need in the National Capital. Fobbing off his local investments at inflated prices and blackmailing bankers to do his will.

Waylaying the needs of the underprivileged in this country by short-changing us all on needed social spending, all the while intoning the sacred obligation of the government - particularly his government - to uphold our most basic social values. Down-sizing government payroll, then inflating it as public servants were dismissed, then re-hired under new countracting-out rules.

Slicing transfer payments to the provinces so that universal health care, education, subsidized housing would all feel the nasty pinch and begin to falter, leaving people in desperate straits. His aggressive verbal pyrotechnics, amusing on the surface, revealing the core meanness of the man. Accosting a relatively frail representative of the poor and the homeless, revealing the street fighter in the prime minister, by throttling the man.

Taking the public pulse on whether to join the United States in its grand sweep of allies, then opting out of the "coalition of the willing", as though the decision was his, unfettered by public opinion averse to having Canada invade a foreign country on a pallid excuse by a cerebrally challenged, ethically questionable leader of our neighbouring country.

Entitled to all things at all times, breezily sloughing off any and all criticisms, he took great umbrage at the time-inclement demonstration of impatience on the agenda of Liberal leader-inheritance, viscerally calling up the street fighter to claim another electoral victory when a leader more interested in the country's furtherance than his own agenda would have stepped down.

Finally, playing the sad little game of not being treated any differently than any other Canadian with an urgent health need for corrective surgery, being admitted instanter for heart bypass surgery when older, more frail, just as seriously afflicted seniors must wait weary months for same, and then be shunted off pre-surgery to wait again, for lack of operating-room space and hospital beds.

Did I say finally, up there? Wrong. Finally, the final insult, the publication of yet another memoir, this one to really stir the pot at a time when his beleaguered party can ill afford it, to cast slings and arrows at one and all, renewing animosities, relieving himself of bile, exonerating himself from the ultimate responsibility of his prime ministerial actions.

Worse yet, it's the most inauthentic of books, self-serving and vitriolic, cast in language he is utterly incapable of mustering, the narrative not his voice, but the intent and purpose, most certainly.