Party of One (55 page)

But in typical Milliken fashion, the grave process unfolded with a light touch and an appeal to compromise. In making his ruling that the government indeed had an obligation to produce documents to Parliament, the Speaker deftly handed the issue back to the politicians, asking that all House leaders, ministers, and MPs work out a collective solution to hand over the required documents, but without compromising national security. Although the MPs took longer to work out a compromise than Milliken’s ruling
had stipulated, a solution of sorts was produced. An all-party committee would examine the documents to determine which could be made public without violating security or confidentiality requirements. If the committee disagreed, a special panel of three judges, including two former justices of the Supreme Court, would consider the matter. The NDP did not participate in the committee because they did not have confidence in the document vetting process. The party accused the government of trying to suppress the truth by keeping the vast majority of the forty thousand documents about prisoner transfers from Canadians. Instead, the NDP demanded a full public inquiry.

Less than a year later, Peter Milliken made a historic ruling, finding Stephen Harper’s government in contempt of Parliament—the first time in the British Commonwealth that a sitting government had been so judged. Milliken’s finding was sent to the Procedure Committee, which agreed with the Speaker’s ruling. On March 25, 2011, the full House of Commons voted non-confidence in the Harper government, triggering an election. Milliken remains convinced that the government had earned the ultimate rebuke in the Canadian system of government: “Harper deserved to be found in contempt of Parliament. Committees of Parliament have the right to demand the production of documents; the government didn’t oblige. The PM seems to have forgotten that the government is the servant of the House. And that is all governments.”

If it was a historic procedural defeat for a government whose first instinct was to flout the rules, it didn’t resonate with the Canadian people. In the ensuing election, Harper won his previously elusive majority government. One of the first things he did in June 2011 was to kill the all-party panel looking into the Afghan detainee issue.
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The NDP had been right about one thing: Canadians would never learn the facts about the detainee issue under the flawed process
that had been set up. The end came in the form of a declaration by Harper cabinet minister John Baird that the work of the all-party panel was over. Baird made two claims in his announcement: that the accusations of wrongdoing by Canadian forces had been “unfounded” and that the process had cost $12 million.

Neither statement was true. In the end, the government had released only four thousand of the forty thousand requested documents, and even those were censored—hardly the warrant to dismiss the serious allegations of Canada’s number-two diplomat in Afghanistan, Richard Colvin. And Baird’s $12-million figure was not just for the work of the all-party Afghan panel. It also included the costs of finding and redacting documents for two proceedings of the Military Police Complaints Commission, which the government had also stonewalled.

Andrew MacDougall, the then PMO director of communications, provided another slant to shift blame from the government over the fact that the panel was being disbanded long before its work was completed. MacDougall told reporters that the opposition parties had actually been responsible for killing the process, by supporting a non-confidence motion to defeat the Harper government. Like so many other things coming out of the PMO, this was simply not true. “I’ve never heard what happened on the [all-party Afghanistan] panel,” Peter Milliken told me. “I’ve asked Stéphane [Dion] but he’s been sworn to secrecy. As far as I know, the documents have never been produced. I guess some might think that the whole process was dissolved when Parliament was dissolved for the last election. That’s not so. The panel was not created as a committee of Parliament. It was set up by Order of the House. It still exists.”

Outside the cottage, we take a path to the point of land where Milliken’s small guest cabin sits. He talks about institutional developments that endanger Parliament as it has never been threatened
before. At the top of his list is the steady, disturbing, and pernicious growth of the power of party leaders in Canada, most especially the prime minister. Milliken notes that other prime ministers, such as Pierre Trudeau, certainly expanded the powers of the PMO and diminished the role of MPs. But Stephen Harper has become the “leader” of this democracy-killing centralization. This centralization is leading to a “qualitative” change in Canada’s governance model, Milliken told me. For every increase in the power of leaders and the prime minister, a corresponding reduction occurs in the status of MPs. “They are far less important today than they once were,” said Milliken. “I don’t think that’s the way it’s supposed to be. MPs are supposed to represent their constituents. They’re supposed to be free to speak on their behalf. They’re supposed to have diverse views within the party. Harper does not encourage that conversation. It used to be speaking in the Parliament and answering questions was an MP’s prerogative. . . . There are actually Conservative backbenchers who literally haven’t spoken for years in the House.”

In fact, until Milliken’s successor, Speaker Andrew Scheer, ruled differently on the matter, the Harper PMO decided who would speak in debate in Parliament, drawing up lists of Conservative MPs who were authorized to speak.
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It was also the leader who unilaterally threw members out of caucus, and retained the dubious ability to trump the decisions of riding associations on candidates. “Another extraordinary thing that Harper did was to throw Helena Guergis out of caucus,” Milliken recalled. “She was kicked out by a party leader. I feel strongly that this should be a caucus decision. I also strongly believe that no leader should have the power to veto a candidate who is chosen by their riding association. Leaders should never be allowed to choose candidates.”

Milliken, like Sheila Fraser, was appalled by the government’s extensive use of omnibus legislation. Loading huge amounts of unrelated legislation into one indigestible bill not only made it
impossible for opposition MPs to discharge their fundamental task—the scrutiny of the government’s legislation program—it also turned the budget process into a farce. Scores of bills that had nothing to do with the budget were being tacked on with one purpose in mind: to introduce radical change without debate, scrutiny, or financial information. From Peter Milliken’s perspective, the practice could collapse Parliament unless reforms are brought in to regulate how omnibus legislation is used. His misgivings were nicely expressed in an intriguing question: “What are we going to do when a private member brings in a bill that amends fifteen or twenty pieces of legislation?”

When Milliken retired after serving ten years as Speaker of the House of Commons, he received accolades from both sides of the House. One of the highest came from the then government house leader, John Baird. Stephen Harper’s right-hand man recounted how the Speaker of the British House of Commons had told him that he and Speakers from around the Commonwealth saw Milliken, six times elected MP and favourite son of Kingston, as their leader and model. That day on Hurds Lake, the consummate parliamentarian and passionate Canadian offered an appraisal of his own about the government in which Baird plays so central a role: “Parliament can hardly be weakened any more than it already is. Harper can’t go much further without making the institution dysfunctional. He is trying to control every aspect of House business. In fact, it will have to be returned to its former state by someone if we are to have a democracy.”

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at 220 Elgin Street was a good place to meet the man who just can’t seem to retire—Robert Marleau. Dunn’s is just a hop and skip across the street from his latest office: he is now the integrity ombudsman at Ottawa City Hall. During his thirty-one years in the federal public service, Marleau has
faced plenty of problems, but a lack of job offers has not been one of them.

In fact, he may hold the record in Ottawa for paths not taken. Consider the posts that were offered and declined: clerk of the Ontario legislature, 1986; privacy commissioner, 2003; ethics commissioner, 2004; access to information commissioner, 2005; and the Senate seat of retiring franco-Ontarian Senator Robert Gauthier. Marleau did accept an offer of Senate ethics commissioner from the then government leader in the upper chamber, Jack Austin, but doubt crept in. “A few days later, just before the motion for appointment went on the notice paper, I withdrew. Sober second thought . . . narrow escape in hindsight,” Marleau told me.

But all the refusals did not stop Marleau from becoming one of the legendary figures of the federal public service. He is a kind of commissioner of important nouns, having served in the country’s top job in Privacy and also Information at the federal level— after initially turning the posts down. Marleau was also clerk of the House of Commons for thirteen years, making him one of the keenest experts on parliamentary practice in the country. (A manual he published is now a reference book on house procedure in many parts of the Commonwealth.) Ironically, he never applied for the post that came his way in 1987. “I was called in one day and told I was now the Clerk [of the House of Commons].”

Marleau had certainly come up in the world since his student days when he worked at the Central Experimental Farm, Animal Division. His main task was forking manure, a chore he quipped was “good prep” for his future career. As healthy as the work sounded, it was not without its perils. “When we would pass out from methane exposure in the manure pens, Barn Boss would send us up the mow to haul hay bales. I was deadly allergic to hay dust, but I needed the $1.65 an hour.” A strong work ethic was ingrained in the Cornwall native by the francophone family
he grew up in. His father, Roland was a dental technician, and his mother worked as a checkout cashier and sometime waitress. Robert attended Cornwall Classical College, where he got what he described as “Jesuit” training from people who “knew how to educate and build strong character.”

He also showed a strong athletic side. Marleau was a hardtackling corner linebacker in college football and was the Most Valuable Player on his team in 1965. He finished off his university days at the University of Ottawa in 1969. After graduating, he joined the House of Commons in 1970, planning to stay for two years. His calculation was slightly off; he left in 2001.

Marleau escapes from the stresses of his high-pressure jobs into his tightly knit family. He met his wife in 1964 on a swimming raft in the St. Lawrence. The girl in the bright orange onepiece made quite an impression. They started “going steady” in 1965. Two sons, four grandchildren, and forty-three years later, they are “still going strong.” For deeper escape, Marleau built himself a wilderness cabin. To this day, it is off the grid and has no running water. Like his former colleague, Peter Milliken, Marleau likes an early-morning canoe paddle.

Information commissioner of Canada from January 2007 to June 2009, Marleau has seen a lot changes, many of them for the worse, over his three decades in public life. He is a firm believer that the quality of a democracy can be measured by the depth of information its citizens hold about their government’s actions. Long-time public servants like Marleau remember a healthier time in Canadian governance: a time when releasing public information was actually done by getting answers to questions on the Order Paper in the House of Commons. A time, before changes brought in by Pierre Trudeau, when the old Committee of Supply went through the budget estimates, or the Blue Book, line by line—no matter how long it took. Now the “guillotine” date of
June 30 must be met and, in Marleau’s words, “The House has abandoned its constitutional obligation with respect to reviewing the estimates. . . . There is a very tight hold on information.”

The man who has had a front-row seat to the sea change in Parliament’s traditional morphology thinks the public was better served by the former methods of getting information out. Getting direct answers to direct questions was much better than resorting to the codified provisions of today’s Access to Information Act, freighted as it is with tools for manipulation, delay, and inconvenience. “The federal government used to be the best at sharing information,” Marleau recalls. “Now we are last in our own confederation. Mexico has a better record than Canada.”

Marleau first met Stephen Harper when Harper worked for Calgary MP Jim Hawkes and Marleau was clerk-assistant in the House of Commons. Marleau’s main job was to call votes, so the two men were often thrown together. At the time, Hawkes was the chief party whip for the Conservatives. The “whip” could substitute people on committees by signing a form and giving it to the clerk. Harper’s duties with Hawkes included keeping Conservative MPs who sat on parliamentary committees in line. In those days, Marleau didn’t particularly see Harper as a control freak; working for the whip, control was merely his job. “The idea was to populate committees with friendlies, move in your goons, and get things done,” Marleau told me.

On a personal level, Marleau’s first impression of Harper was that “he did not fill a room with charisma.” But he had a professional demeanor, and was a solid political staffer loyal to Hawkes. He even had an eye for better office space for his boss, or so Marleau suspects. As clerk-assistant, Marleau had a prime, ground-floor office on the west side of Centre Block. After having some dealings with Harper, he coincidentally received notice that he was to move to new quarters—a cubbyhole on the north side of the
building. The new occupant of his old office was none other than Jim Hawkes—along with his faithful employee, Stephen Harper.

Suspicions of strategic evictions aside, the working respect between the two men continued after Stephen Harper was elected as a Reform MP. Marleau noted that Harper’s demeanour did not change from his days as a staffer with Jim Hawkes. Marleau regarded Harper as a professional politician reminiscent of Joe Clark—a person whose early experience outside politics was narrow and unremarkable. As for Harper, he must have been impressed with Marleau. Just before the election that made him prime minister, Harper confided in the then-retired Marleau, “I’m having a hard time getting people to fill senior positions.” Marleau advised Harper to “give it some time,” pointing out that while he was still leader of the Opposition, any truly non-partisan candidates for public service positions would be hesitant to commit to him. But all that would change if he became prime minister. Harper made no offer to Marleau, but did probe for his intentions. The man who had retired in January 2001 told Harper he was “content in retirement.”