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| Gushing over Martin is premature - Monday, December 15, 2003 at 10:21 |
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PUBLICATION: Edmonton Journal ------------------------------------------------------------------------ As I write this, it is only Day 2 of the Paul Martin prime ministry and already I am sick and tired of news stories telling me how wonderful Martin has been to the West. How the West's influence has grown. How his cabinet appointments mark a new era of Western power in Ottawa. How B.C.'s influence, or Edmonton's, or Regina's, or Winnipeg's has been enhanced by Martin's appointment of this or that minister to his cabinet or even -- oh, dare we say it -- his "inner circle." Fourteen of Martin's 28 full ministers -- 15 if you include him -- are in his "inner" circle. It's no big deal. Get over it. Most reporters' response to Martin's appointments has been gush and swoon. Even the normally very reliable Calgary Herald cooed from its front page Friday: "Martin lets the West in." Not only premature, but also a direct dig at the Reform Party's old motto: The West wants in. Blush. Eyelash flutter. Oh, Paul, you're too good to us. Now granted, compared to a Jean Chretien cabinet, Martin's is chockablock full of "powerful" Western ministers. And, admittedly, it's too early to say conclusively that Martin's cabinet will be bad for the West. But if it's too early to say how bad it might be, it is also too early to say how good. So spare me the over-the-top adulation and hasty pronouncements of the end of Western alienation. Westerners are not going to be bought off by where ministers hail from, but rather will wait to see if a Martin government actually produces policies pleasing to the West's ambitions and ideals. Cabinet appointments are nothing but tokenism until we can see what ministers do with their positions. Case in point: The Mulroney cabinets. Friday's appointments aren't even the first time in recent memory that Westerners have occupied "cabinet's two most important portfolios" -- finance and deputy prime minister. An Albertan -- Don Mazankowski -- was both deputy PM and finance minister until just 10 years ago. Mazankowski was also nicknamed "the minister of everything" for the number of high-profile tasks he was assigned simultaneously by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. At the same time as Maz was the most senior minister in cabinet after Mulroney, other Westerners were also variously holding down national defence, constitutional affairs, external affairs (now foreign affairs), agriculture, wheat board, transportation, justice, natural resources and more. I mention this not to vindicate the Mulroney era nor to argue that Prime Minister Mulroney was more the West's friend than Prime Minister Martin. Rather I raise it as a cautionary tale to the gushers, swooners, cooers and blushers who have already crowned Paul Martin the best friend western Canada has ever had in Ottawa. My caution is this: Westerners will not care that powerful Liberal ministers are from the West if the Liberal federal government keeps imposing programs the West dislikes. We will not be happier to be done in by Ottawa just because more senior Westerners are in on the doing. Recall the West's falling out with the Mulroney government, which had many more powerful Western ministers than the Martin cabinet. Recall Prime Minister Kim Campbell. She was from Vancouver, but that did nothing to keep her party from being shut out in the West in the 1993 election. She even lost her own seat. Now jump ahead to the new Martin cabinet. Yes, yes, Edmonton's Anne McLellan is the deputy prime minister, vice-chair of the priorities and planning committee, and chair of the government operations committee of cabinet. She's as powerful as Mazankowski was. So? She's also back in charge of the gun registry. As justice minister from 1997 to 2002, she presided over most of the registry's $1-billion expenditures to date. She never disclosed the program's true costs to Parliament, even though internal government documents revealed that she knew expenditures were spiralling up and up. In September 2001, her department even declined to comply with an auditor general's request for a full breakdown of monies spent. It was during McLellan's tenure at justice that the registry's computers started to malfunction, making the "simple task" of registering guns a monumental nightmare. The problems still aren't fixed and will require at least another $300 million to correct. The fact that an Albertan was justice minister when all this was happening didn't make Westerners any happier with the gun registry, nor will the fact that that same Albertan is now the deputy PM and back in charge of the firearms scheme. That Victoria environmental radical David Anderson is still the environment minister, and is also on priorities and planning, is also disturbing for the West. Anderson is as pro-Kyoto as any elected official in the world. Even though he is from the West, his views are anathema to most Western premiers (of whom he is utterly contemptuous), and he is dead set on implementing Kyoto even if it harms Canada's economy, costs tens of thousands of Canadians their jobs and ultimately proves to be ineffective in preventing climate change. As I said, it's too early to pronounce the Martin cabinet a dud for the West. Policy, not place, is the key to winning over the West. Place didn't matter under Mulroney and it won't matter now. |