The High Road (39 page)

“No, we’re not, not by a long shot, but the Throne Speech isn’t meaningless. It commits the government to action. It remains to be seen how much action we’re going to get, and what dollars are set aside.”

The game progressed in the usual fashion. I made four sensible and reasonable moves in a row before offering up a humiliating blunder that luckily cost me only a bishop.

“Can you not carry on a conversation without your chess game going to hell in a handcart?”

“Not usually, no. Why do you think you always pound me into the ground when I start talking?”

We played three games. I lost the first two, yakking away the whole time. Actually, Angus crushed me in a handful of moves. In the third game, we maintained radio silence. I fought him to a draw. Clearly I’m not wired for multi-tasking. After the first two, a draw in the third game was as good as a win for me.

It was a clear night. The stars hung in the sky like backlit diamonds. We both sat on the couch so we could see the light show. I kept waiting for a shooting star to streak across the black, but they all remained fixed. On the coffee table in front of us, I noticed one of Marin’s books lying open, a bookmark off to the side. I’d never seen Angus reading one of his wife’s works.

“Are you holding up?” I asked.

He’d seen me eyeing the book and knew what I was asking.

“Most days,” he replied. “It’s not yet been twelve months. For some reason, gettin’ to one year seems important, though intellectually I know that’s rubbish. Still …”

“It’s a loss I cannot imagine. I didn’t know you when she was alive, but I think you’re bearing up admirably.”

“Now that the hovercraft is finished, the collapse of the Alexandra was the best therapy ever prescribed for an agin’, grievin’ engineer newly elected to the House of Commons. I know it could have cost lives had it dropped without warning us first, yet I think it may have saved mine. I was headed down into
the darkness again. The task given us by the Prime Minister brought me back to the surface.”

“You’re supposed to grieve. It’s unnatural not to.”

“Aye, it is. But I’m still doing my fair share of grievin’, every day. So don’t fret. It may be that I’m left walkin’ with a limp, but I’ll still get around. Some days are worse than others but I’ll still get where I’m goin’. Most of the time, where we’re both goin’.”

On cue, Lindsay’s headlights flashed through the living room window as she drove up the driveway and parked as close to the boathouse as she could.

“If you hurry, you can meet her on the landing,” Angus suggested. “But be careful. You’ve been down once tonight already.”

I stood and slipped on my coat. Lindsay was rooting around in the trunk of her car, so it looked like I might just beat her to the staircase.

“Are you ready for Wednesday?”

“Aye.”

Wednesday dawned dark and dreary. February is surely a bleak time of the year. I can barely stand that there is never light in the morning. I sat at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Cheerios and reading the
Ottawa Citizen
. The stories we’d orchestrated on the need for infrastructure renewal had pretty well dried up. Perhaps we’d shot our bolt too early. I turned to the editorial page in the hopes that the
Citizen
might come out in our favour. Nothing. But wait, there was something. The lead letter to the editor was headlined “Rebuild bridge, rebuild Canada.” Harold Silverberg, the Deputy Minister twenty years ago, had weighed in with a thoughtful, articulate, and impassioned plea. Unlike the other unrelated letters that day, Silverberg’s was long and accompanied by a head shot of the author. It was very nearly an op-ed piece rather than a garden-variety letter to the editor, and held pride of place above the fold. You want to be above the fold. I ripped the page down the centre crease, badly, and shoved it in my pocket to show Angus.

Lindsay emerged from the bedroom and dropped into the chair beside me. She shook out her hands and breathed deeply.

“Okay, I guess I’m ready,” she sighed. “My stomach feels tight.”

“Relax. You’re going to be fine. This is a walk in the park,” I soothed, taking her hands in mine. “There’s no call for anxiety.”

“Yeah, right,” she said. “Should we synchronize our watches or agree on a secret coded message or something?”

“Good idea. Okay. When Angus and I are on our way, I’ll call your cell and use the secret phrase ‘Angus and I are on our way.’ Got it?”

That earned a punch to my shoulder.

“You won’t be by yourself. You know what to do. We’ve gone over our routine. You’ll do fine. We’ll see you at the appointed hour. And thank you for doing this.”

I kissed her and headed out the door.

Angus and I drove to Ottawa in virtual silence. I knew he was mulling over his pitch and I didn’t want to disturb him. Still, I’m sure he was somewhat distracted when the deer darted out in front of us. Mercifully, the deer had much quicker reactions than I. It leapt safely back into the woods at the last instant while I clamped my eyes shut, gritted my teeth, and drove dead straight.

“Excellent reflexes and fine evasive action, laddie,” chided Angus.

That was my signal to open my eyes again.

“Would you rather we were on our roof in the ditch?” I asked. “I was counting on the deer’s athletic prowess and will to live. And now that I can see again, I find I was right. That was a deer, wasn’t it?”

In my office, I made a final call to confirm the arrangements before knocking on Angus’s door.

“It’s time.”

“Must you make it sound as if you’re leadin’ me to the electric chair, laddie?”

I’d noticed that in moments of stress or in private conversation, Angus tended to drop his g’s more often and become more Caledonian in his speech.

We walked through Centre Block to the Cabinet room. It was very quiet, even peaceful. Time for a little Vince Lombardi.

“Okay. Coulombe will not support this. He cannot support this. He’s so committed to his tax cuts that he’s left himself no room for retreat. He can’t back away an inch. So don’t even
acknowledge him. Ignore him. Focus completely on the Prime Minister. We’ll never have Coulombe, so write him off and bear down on the PM. You know what to say and how to say it.”

“Aye.”

My seniority in the party had earned me access to the Cabinet room for the show. We waited in the anteroom. Eventually, several senior Department of Finance officials emerged with bulging briefcases and the biggest binder I’d ever seen. It was large enough to deserve its own special trolley but a particularly strapping bureaucrat carried it instead, stopping to rest every twenty metres or so. That was undoubtedly the federal Budget, due to be presented the next day.

“Why wouldn’t Cabinet hear our case before sending the Budget boys back?” Angus asked, a little ticked. “Makes our briefing seem moot.”

“There’s plenty of time to amend the Budget. Besides, maybe our stuff is already in it.”

Bradley Stanton appeared at the heavy doors and waved us in. Just as we were headed into the inner sanctum, I sent Lindsay a prearranged text message from my cell. Timing was critical. Bradley looked like a coiled cobra sizing up his prey. I’ve always hated snakes.

“You’ve got twenty minutes, no more.”

Angus needed only fifteen. He was so focused, the glory of the room seemed barely to register on him. The large table, upholstered chairs, wood panelling, and Canadian art made it a dignified and serene place to make momentous decisions about the nation’s future. The full Cabinet had turned up. Angus stood at the head of the table and spoke to the PM as if they were alone in the room together. He’d refined his pitch since the caucus meeting. He spoke with power, conviction, the occasional flash of humour, but most often with a gravitas that demanded attention. I was very proud as I watched him get into his performance. He wore it like a comfortable jacket. Years at the front of the lecture hall had served him well. I watched the PM as
much as I did Angus, and he could not conceal the impact the presentation was having. He caught himself nodding in agreement early on and stifled it. By the end of Angus’s performance, the PM’s face was impassive, but his eyes seemed brighter than usual. I also watched Emile Coulombe. For every slight nod from the PM, there were several emphatic head shakes from Coulombe. At one point, I heard Coulombe mutter in exasperation, “Oh come on, that’s ridiculous.” The PM heard it too, shot a glare Coulombe’s way, and raised his hand to calm the waters.

Angus closed with this:

“Do you see this iron ring I’m wearing? You may not know the story. Each and every Canadian engineer wears an iron ring on the pinky of his or her working hand. The ring symbolizes the iron from a beam in a bridge near Quebec City that collapsed in 1907, killing seventy-five workers. It fell because the engineers who designed and built the bridge were incompetent. Each engineer in Canada wears this ring as a constant reminder of our commitment, of our duty, to serve and protect the public. We’ve just witnessed the collapse of another bridge. This time due to the incompetence of politicians, not engineers. This ring means a great deal to me. So you picked the wrong man to investigate the collapse of a bridge if you planned on doing nothing with my report.”

Rather than sitting down at the same level as the Cabinet members, Angus stayed on his feet, above the fray. When he was finished, Coulombe was on his feet. Perfectly bilingual, with only the slightest trace of a French accent, he smiled and walked slowly behind his colleagues on one side of the table to calm himself.

“That is a lovely little story, Mr. McLintock, but we’re not here to discuss history.”

“Aye, you’re right there, sir,” Angus interrupted. “I’m not here to discuss history. I’m trying to make sure we don’t repeat it.”

That prompted some righteous nodding from a few ministers around the table.

“We cannot make the infrastructure investment that you seek, Mr. McLintock, for two reasons. Number one, we promised we’d cut taxes. And number two, we need the tax cuts to stimulate the crashing economy, and that’s what will be in tomorrow’s Budget. Period, full stop, end of story.”

Angus had been calm up to that point but the flickering flame behind his eyes seemed suddenly to burst into an inferno. He was on him in an instant, yet kept his gaze fixed on the PM.

“Speakin’ of
number two
, minister, with great respect, your argument is full of” – Angus paused – “it.”

Snickering from many ministers had Coulombe glaring. But now Angus was too angry to care.

“Is there no beginnin’ to your common sense, sir? Have you not been readin’ the advice that’s been comin’ in from economists across the country? Have you not spoken to your own officials? Economists don’t agree on much, but there seems to me to be a clear consensus that investment in infrastructure renewal is a better way to stimulate the economy than your much bally-hooed tax cuts. It will put more people back to work, it will put more money in Canadians’ pockets, it will do it all faster, and in the end, we’ll have the infrastructure this country deserves and needs to support economic growth. History shows that in a recession when you give citizens tax cuts, many of them just sock it away and don’t head to their nearest Canadian Tire to buy that new washin’ machine. Beyond all of the economic benefits of infrastructure renewal, we simply cannae wait until another bridge collapses, perhaps next time with no warnin’ at all. Perhaps next time, with taxpayers amidst the rubble. We have four years to cut taxes. But in tomorrow’s Budget, you have the opportunity to do what’s right. Not because we promised it in a fluffy campaign brochure, but because the situation we’ve discovered since arrivin’ in office utterly demands it.”

Angus paused for a moment to gather himself before continuing. No one filled the silence. He returned his gaze to the Prime Minister.

“Sir, it may not be glamorous. It may make some people mad. It may give the opposition a reason to attack us. It may even yield a non-confidence motion that we could lose. But no one will argue that we did not act in the nation’s interest. So we’re not suggestin’ we renege on our promised tax cuts. We’re only pro-posin’ that they be delayed until we can afford them, and until bridges stop fallin’ into rivers.”

Coulombe just shook his head and looked to the PM.

“Prime Minister, the Budget is put to bed. We can’t change it now, and if we did, we’d be exposing ourselves to defeat in the House. And that surely is not in the nation’s interest.”

The twenty-minute allocation stretched to ninety minutes as the discussion went back and forth. Except for a few angry exchanges with Coulombe, Angus presented cogent and reasonable arguments in a steady and patient tone. Conversely, the Finance Minister grew more agitated as the meeting dragged on. At one point, the PM asked him to keep his voice down.