The High Road (31 page)

On Monday morning, after I spent two hours Sunday afternoon prepping him, Norman Sanderson appeared on
Canada AM
, the biggest morning talk show in the country. He skillfully used his own company as a microcosm of the Canadian economy. He
mentioned the word “infrastructure” twelve times in his seven-minute interview. Best of all, they ran a clip of the interview in the show’s frequent newscasts and also referenced the three industry associations’ call for more money in the Budget for roads, bridges, and ports.

The pièce de résistance? Bob Philpot’s 1,200-word op-ed piece ran in the
Ottawa Citizen
on Tuesday, bringing academe’s depth and objectivity to the debate. I loved the headline.

CANADA’S ECONOMIC PROSPECTS FELL WITH THE BRIDGE

I hadn’t really expected all of my overtures to have yielded such results. I had cast my net wide, believing that only one or two of my external support ideas would work out. I didn’t know why I’d batted a thousand on them but Angus was certainly pleased. When I saw how chuffed he was at all the coverage, I revealed my hand and explained that there had been some orchestration behind the timely stories.

“You are a wonder” was all he said.

This was unfolding far too well.

I met with Bradley Stanton that evening. Our report was not quite there yet but the major sections were done. With no prospect of convincing Emile Coulombe of our position, we needed the Prime Minister to flex his muscles on the Budget. I brought an incomplete draft of the report for Bradley and the PM in the hopes it would prompt a call to Coulombe. We met in a dim bar on Bank Street not far from the Hill. It was not a popular spot for political types and that’s why we’d chosen it. Bradley was already there in a booth at the back, thumbing madly on his BlackBerry.

“Danny boy.”

“Bradley. How’s life at the top?” I asked, genuinely interested.

“I gotta say, it’s even better than I expected. You can actually feel the power of the office. I knew it was there. I didn’t know it was so palpable – that it would vibrate right inside you.”

I’d never heard Bradley use a word like “palpable.” But then he was back to the old Bradley.

“It is too fucking awesome for words,” he blurted, shaking his head and dropping his BB to the table. I paused for a moment, then slid over the stapled draft.

“It’s not yet done, but the important part of our report is complete. It is not for anyone else’s eyes but yours and the PM’s. You wouldn’t believe the gymnastics I had to perform to convince Angus to let you have this draft. But if we’re going to have any say in the Budget, the PM needs to engage now on this.”

“Bottom-line it for me,” Bradley directed, leaving the stapled paper on the table between us.

“Twenty billion in infrastructure investment over the next ten years, front-loaded. So eight billion in the next two years, then twelve billion in the following eight years. That’s the bottom line,” I reported. “If we wait two more years and do nothing, like Coulombe is proposing, it’ll cost us upwards of thirty-five billion over the following eight years, and who knows how many catastrophic failures. The choice seems clear to us.”

“Fortunately, you don’t get to make the choice,” Bradley replied through gritted teeth. He looked mad. “Are you and mountain man dipping into the magic shrooms? You’re not serious about twenty billion over ten, and eight over the first two. You can’t be. Even you’re not that twisted.”

“Bradley, the bridge fell all by itself. No one blew it up. No one crashed into a major support column. There was no earthquake. It just fell because we didn’t inspect it and fix it. That scenario is going to play out across the country and cripple our economy. You … we don’t want that, do we?”

“So we toss around a couple billion, plug a few holes, change a few bolts, slap on some paint, and we’re good for a few more years and can spend our dough on stuff that’s going to keep us in power. Twenty billion over ten is a non-starter, so why don’t you head back to the drawing board and sharpen your pencil.”

I was speechless. Unfortunately, Bradley wasn’t.

“And by the way, did you cook up this little infrastructure media fest? If you made all or even some of that happen, you’re headed for pain and misery. We have a national media strategy already and you better not be getting in the way with your little ‘save our bridges’ crusade.”

“Bradley, you think I’m that good, that I could have orchestrated such a perfect storm? You give me too much credit. I had no idea those stories were in the works.”

“Not even your friend Sanderson on
AM
yesterday morning?”

“He was on
Canada AM
? I haven’t seen or spoken with him since E-day. You’d think he’d have let me know.” I shook my head with brows furrowed.

“Look, Daniel, just because Angus is still pulling some great numbers for us doesn’t mean you have carte blanche. We’ve got stuff to do in this Budget and splinting aging bridges ain’t on the agenda. So get with the program. We’re in government now.”

Stanton slid out of the booth and stood next to me, leaning down to whisper in my ear. He’d had garlic for lunch.

“One more thing. You’re going to get a call from the Secret Service, so be nice to them and answer their questions,” he said.

“The Secret Service? As in the United States? What for?”

“Well, just to complicate our ‘To Do’ list, the Pres is making a one-day stopover in Canada on his way to London to meet with the British PM, and wants to bring greetings to our newly elected Prime Minister, welcome him into the fold as it were, ensure that we’ll still do whatever he says on international affairs, and so on.”

“That’s interesting. But where do we come in?”

“Well, the former PM hasn’t yet moved his stuff out of Harrington Lake so we can’t entertain the leader of the free world there. So instead, it’s all going down at McLintock’s house, largely because the PM loves it. From a security perspective, the RCMP guys think Angus’s house, being right on the river, is very easy to defend. Anyway, the Secret Service squareheads are going to call you. They want to come up to do the advance work and we gotta keep the Pres happy.”

With that, he walked out, leaving me agape with the bill resting atop the draft report, still undisturbed on the table. True to his word, they called a half-hour later as I drove home.

I kissed Lindsay goodbye as she assembled a banana smoothie in the kitchen. With one hand on the blender lid, one finger on the
Frappé
button, and her neck turned and tilted to complete the smooch, I taxed her early morning coordination. She was due on campus in an hour and was moving fast. I slipped out the door with the feeling that we’d been living together for two decades, not two months. Such comfort.

I climbed the snowy path to meet Angus. We were huddling at home to eliminate distractions and planned to hammer out our last unwritten section, the Executive Summary. I was pleased with the state of the report. Angus and I had spent hours and hours on the writing. We’d been brutal and hard-headed when it came to editing. There were no wasted words. Though our earliest draft had been over fifty pages, the entire report was now only twenty-two pages long. With full footnoting, it ran to almost thirty pages but the story was told in the first twenty-two. Reducing it to that length had been a struggle but we’d done it. The task brought to life a quotation often attributed to Mark Twain: “I apologize for the length of this letter. If I’d had more time, I would have written less.” It may be apocryphal, but the point is valid. We wanted this report to be read. So making it short, but powerful, made sense.

With that in mind, this last piece of writing was particularly important. Many of the people who will claim to have read a report, any report, will only have read the Exec. Summary. It is
perhaps not surprising that this is the reality of government reports, and had been for decades. I would guess that there have been more readers of the Cliffs Notes edition of
King Lear
than of the great bard’s original text. So in two short pages of bulleted points we had to make our case in a compelling and convincing way, while ably supporting our conclusions and recommendations.

Our formal, public deadline was still eight days away, but we wanted to submit the report early to better the odds that our findings would influence the Throne Speech and Budget. We were close, and both Angus and I were happy with the way it was shaping up.

At precisely 10:00, not 10:01 or 9:59, but at the stroke of 10:00, there came a knock at the door. I could almost picture them on the front step counting down the seconds until “knock activation.” I opened the door, leaving Angus at the dining room table where we’d been gathered around my laptop. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, never having met a Secret Service agent, but I was a little surprised to find Barbie and Ken standing before me. I looked over their shoulders expecting to see Barbie’s Sports Camper in the driveway complete with surfboards on the roof rack, but there was only a dark blue, nondescript Ford sedan. Or maybe it was a Chrysler. The cars driven by Secret Service agents never actually have model names like Impala or Grand Prix. They’re always simply referred to as sedans.

“Good morning, sir, I’m Clayton Leyland and this is Jennifer Fitzhugh, U.S. Secret Service.”

“Are those your real names?” I quipped.

They looked bewildered.

“Ahhh, just kidding. Please come in. We were expecting you at, um, exactly this time. You’re very punctual.”

Ken, or Clayton rather, wore a white dress shirt starched to a plywood stiffness, a nondescript grey suit with a darker grey tie, black socks, and shiny black brogues. In other words, he was wearing the wardrobe equivalent of the dark blue Ford or Chrysler
sedan he’d driven to the house. His dark brown hair was cut close to his head with a side part seemingly made with a T-square. His finely chiselled face ended in a solid chin lifted directly from Mount Rushmore. It would be an insult to describe his eyes as blue. Even sapphire seemed inadequate. He was built like a brick shithouse that had just undergone major renovations to reinforce perimeter security. When he shook my hand, it felt as if he could have killed me just by squeezing.

Barbie, sorry, Agent Fitzhugh, wore the feminine version of exactly the same outfit, although the bottom of her jacket flared to accommodate her narrow waist and perfectly proportioned hips. She didn’t really wear a tie, but a more feminine version thereof that I’m not really sure I can describe, but think Colonel Sanders. Her hair was so blond I had to look away every few seconds or so, as if protecting my vision from a solar eclipse. It was piled high on her head in a bun, or rather in what looked more like a six-braid challah loaf. She wore just a touch of makeup on her lovely symmetrical face, which crossed Brigitte Bardot with Betty Cooper, my longstanding comic book crush. Her eyes, well, they were the same colour as Ken’s. It made me wonder whether they were both sporting standard Secret Service–issue bionic blues. She was taller than Agent Leyland, and in a sympathetic gesture that confirmed she was in fact human, she wore shiny black flats at the end of her Amazonian legs.

I introduced Angus and offered coffee, which they both declined, before we all settled in the living room. It was essentially a security briefing. They explained that normally, such security reconnaissance would have been undertaken weeks ago, but the President’s brief stopover in Ottawa had only just been added to the schedule. So the security preparations would be telescoped into three short days. The two agents described their approach to securing the immediate area and gave us important tips on how to avoid arousing the hypersensitive observational powers of the two dozen Secret Service agents on the presidential detail for the formal visit four days hence.

The list of restrictions placed on us was long, but seemed reasonable enough. To avoid being considered a “clear and present danger” during the power couple’s visit, we were instructed to avoid sudden movements; to keep our hands out in the open at all times; not to carry swords, machetes, ninja throwing stars, or any object with a pin you could pull; and never, ever to pass a knife to the President with the blade presented forward. Good to know.