The death of Flora MacDonald is a reminder of a Canada where Red Tories were decent people, not mortal enemies to be engaged in endless ideological combat with

I grew up in Oshawa, Ontario from the late 1950s through the mid-­1970s. I was 13 when provincial Progressive Conservative “Big Blue Machine” leader Bill Davis (a.k.a. “Brampton Billy”), who is now 85, succeeded to the premiership in 1971, a job which had had been in the party’s hands since the days of George Drew, who had become premier in 1943. I wouldn’t have considered Davis anything but an establishment Conservative in those days, certainly not a Red Tory. But politics can be an exercise in relativity, both real-time and historically, as much as principle, sometimes more, and this was after all 35 years before Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper came to power federally.

In 1971, Ed Broadbent, not yet federal NDP leader, having lost that year to David Lewis, was still a backbench opposition MP for the federal riding of Oshawa­-Whitby, elected by a 15­-vote plurality in June 1968, during the spring and summer of Liberal “Trudeaumania” for Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, as Broadbent, now 79, dispatched seven-­term Progressive Conservative incumbent Mike Starr, a former federal labour minister, and Canada’s first federal cabinet minister of Ukrainian descent, along with Liberal challenger Des Newman, now 84, who had been elected as the youngest mayor in the history of Town of Whitby two years earlier in 1966.

As my parents liked to point out, Ed Broadbent had been their Oshawa Times paper boy, I believe in the late 1940s, when they rented a red Insulbrick asphalt-siding duplex near the top of Church Street (now part of Centre Street), and within sight of the south-facing Adelaide Avenue green wooden fence of Parkwood, where Sam McLaughlin, the Canadian automotive pioneer and later philanthropist, who turned 100 in September 1971, still lived. Adelaide was the name of his wife, who had died in 1958.

“Colonel Sam,” honorary colonel­-for­-life of the Ontario Regiment, had been president of the family­-owned McLaughlin Motor Car Company, which started in 1908 and was sold a decade later in 1918 to facilitate the formation of the Canadian operation of General Motors of Canada. Sam McLaughlin was named president of GM Canada and remained in the job until 1945 when he stepped down and was named chairman of the board, a position that he held until his death in 1972.

My dad, William Marshall Barker, on the other hand was an hourly-rated General Motors of Canada employee, and proud member of what was then Local 222 of the United Autoworkers of America (UAW). He always drove a GM car. Of course, you couldn’t buy a Ford, much less any other kind, new in Oshawa from a dealership when I was a kid. There were only General Motors dealerships, although in time a Ford dealership did open just across the municipal boundary in Whitby. During the lengthy fall strike of 1970, we carried on, which meant steak-and-fried onions for dinner every Saturday night, even if we had to tighten our belts elsewhere. My dad knew the difference between the “company” and the “union.” Between “white collar” and “blue collar.” He never had any confusion on those points. But at the same time, I never heard him have a bad word to say about our Parkwood neighbour up the street, Colonel Sam, also know as “Mr. Sam.” Such were the complexities of class relations in the world I became a teenager in in the early 1970s.

And it was also the world that Flora MacDonald in October 1972 won her first federal election in, as a Progressive Conservative for the riding of Kingston and the Islands, the riding represented by Sir John A. Macdonald a century before, and the only woman among the 107 Tories elected and one of only three women in the House of Commons during the Liberal minority government of Pierre Trudeau. She held the seat until her defeat by Liberal Peter Milliken in November 1988.

Milliken, now 68, it should be noted, a lawyer by profession and chosen by his peers to serve as speaker of the House of Commons from January 2001 until his retirement as an MP in June 2011, over that decade was one of the finest speakers Parliament has been served by. In a historic ruling on April 27, 2010, he adopted a Dec. 10, 2009 order of the  Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan compelling the Harper Tories to produce documents regarding Afghan detainees, which the government had previously refused to turn over to Parliament on national security grounds.

It was not the first time Milliken had acted decisively in making important decisions from the speaker’s chair. In November 2007, he issued the first speaker’s warrant, compelling Karlheinz Schreiber to appear before the House of Commons ethics committee to testify on his business dealings with former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, since February 1913 when R.C. Miller, of the Diamond Light and Heating Company in Montreal, was compelled to appear before the public accounts committee to testify about $41,000 in heating contracts. Miller, who refused to testify, was summoned before the Bar of the House of Commons, a brass rod extending across the floor of the chamber inside its south entrance and beyond which non-members or House officials are not normally allowed. He was found in contempt of Parliament and jailed in the Carleton County jail for the duration of the session until Parliament was prorogued about three and a half months later.

As well, on May 19, 2005 Milliken cast the-tie breaking vote on a confidence motion determining whether the Liberal minority government of then prime minister Paul Martin, who is now 76, would continue or fall when the House of Commons was deadlocked 152 to 152. The speaker only votes in the case of a tie.

With classic precision and reserve, Milliken explained his vote simply by saying, “The speaker should vote, whenever possible, for continuation of debate on a question that cannot be decided by the House.”

Flora MacDonald, who was born in June 1926 in North Sydney, Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island, died yesterday in Ottawa at the age of 89. You can read all kinds of well­-written obituaries,
tributes and other remembrances of her today online at places like the Globe and Mail
(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/conservative­trailblazer­flora­macdonald­dies-
aged­89/article25714535/) and The Whig­-Standard in Kingston
(http://www.thewhig.com/2015/07/26/macdonald­a­true­pioneer)

Lots of ink will be quite properly spilled today on how MacDonald rose from being a proudly-trained secretary from Empire Business College in Sydney and a bank teller with the Bank of Nova Scotia to being appointed by former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Joe Clark as Canada’s first female secretary of state for external affairs in June 1979. While the Clark minority government was short-lived, MacDonald played a pivotal, but at the time secret, role early in the Iran Hostage Crisis in Tehran from November 1979 to January 1980, authorizing false Canadian passports and money transfers for the six American diplomats ­­ Robert Anders, Cora Amburn­-Lijek, Mark Lijek, Joseph Stafford, Kathleen Stafford and Lee Schatz ­­ being sheltered by Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor and John Sheardown, former first secretary at the Canadian embassy in Tehran.

Flora MacDonald’s death represents part of the inevitable passing from our midst of a generation of Canadian politicians from an era in all parties when they could disagree with each other with civility, and us with them, as voters, without being disagreeable and when not every utterance was calculated for its value as ideological blood sport. MacDonald, her father a trans-Atlantic telegraph operator, grew up during the Depression in one of Canada’s poorest areas. By the time MacDonald came of age, Red Tory was a label worn as a badge of honour, not a Scarlet Letter, and the word “progressive” actually proudly preceded “conservative” in the old Progressive Conservative Party. Even some of us who are more likely to be thought of as democratic socialists miss those days.

While the Canadian political system does little to encourage or reward voters who depart from partisan voting along party lines to support candidates seeking office as MPs federally or MLAs, MPPs or MNAs provincially, I’ve often thought, as heretical as it sounds even to me, that had I lived in Kingston and the Islands when Flora MacDonald was MP, say in the 1979, 1980 or 1984 federal general elections, I’d have quite likely been marking my “x” beside a PC candidate for the first time.

Mind you, Flora MacDonald knew better than most Canadian politicians just how unpredictable actually getting that “x” on the ballot, when push comes to shove, can be. At the February 1976 PC leadership convention, where she lost to Joe Clark, tracking by her operatives and surveys by several television networks had found 325 delegates who insisted they would cast first ballot votes for her. Of the 325 delegates who entered the polling stations wearing “Vote-for-Flora” buttons, 111 of them cast ballots for someone else it was soon discovered when the votes were tallied. The phenomenon became known as the Flora Syndrome, and Clark, who is now 76, went onto to defeat Claude Wagner of Quebec on the fourth ballot.

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Steve Ashton: Manitoba’s longest-serving MLA since 1981 resigns from cabinet to seek premiership for a second time

Thompson NDP MLA Steve Ashton, minister of infrastructure and transportation and the marathon man of Manitoba politics, met with Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger this morning and submitted his resignation as minister to run for the leadership of the party and premier’s job. It is Ashton’s second bid to become premier. He lost to Selinger in October 2009. Ashton’s resignation from cabinet is effective at midnight tonight.

Ashton had served as minister of infrastructure and transportation since November 2009. In October 1999, Ashton was first appointed to that ministerial portfolio in what was then the job of minister of highways and government services (the department was renamed in January 2001 as transportation and government services) and he held the post until a September 2002 cabinet shuffle when he moved to to conservation – and so on around the cabinet table over the years –  until he returned to infrastructure and transportation more than five years ago.

Ashton recalled in a conversation with me a few years ago how much satisfaction he had as minister getting to re-jig the Official Highway Map of Manitoba to better reflect Manitoba “North of 53,” pointing perhaps to that interesting mix of policy wonk (he knows his facts and then some) and proud Northerner that he is.

He’s the second NDP MLA to toss his hat into the ring, along with former health minister Theresa Oswald. Both are running to replace Selinger, who is also expected to run for this own job. Last month, five Manitoba NDP provincial cabinet ministers, the so-called Gang of Five, made up of Oswald, Jennifer Howard, Erin Selby, Stan Struthers and Andrew Swan, resigned on the same day, citing concerns over being able to speak their minds in government. Ashton did not join them at the time in resigning.

The deadline to join the race is Jan. 6 and voting is expected to happen in March during the NDP convention.

In his resignation letter to the premier, Ashton writes:

“I would like to thank you for the opportunity to serve in your cabinet as Minister of Infrastructure and Transportation and as Government House Leader. It has been an honour and a privilege to serve the people of Manitoba in a number of senior roles within the Legislature and government as an MLA and Minister.

“Like many others, I regret the public conflict within both the government and party and confusion and negativity this has created with the general public.

“I understand that within all parties, caucuses and cabinets there are always legitimately and strongly held differences of opinions between individuals. I also have respected the long standing traditions of both the party and parliamentary system where those differences have been dealt with internally. If the differences were irreconcilable, the honourable action was for resignations to be offered and Cabinet and caucus solidarity and confidentiality upheld.

“Although we haven’t agreed on all issues over the years, I have respected your position as Premier and the positions of fellow cabinet and caucus members. I believe that you have acted with principle and integrity in your role as Minister and Premier.

“Our government has many accomplishments to be proud of. We have brought in many important initiatives that have enhanced the quality of life for all Manitobans. We should all take credit for the successes we have shared and responsibility for the times we have fallen short of the mark. We all know that we have much more to do, but unfortunately the events of the past few weeks and months have temporarily distracted us from that goal.

“I believe that we are at a crossroads as a party and a government. I believe we must reconnect with Manitobans and put forward a clear vision for our province. We must lead our party and government through this current crisis and beyond. That is why I am entering the leadership race.

“I believe we need to give the party membership the opportunity to choose a Leader who can engage our membership, bring the party back together and reconnect with Manitobans.

“Greg, my entry into the race should not be interpreted as any reflection on your personal commitment and the hard work you and our government have done over the past six years. I have particularly appreciated working with you on such critical issues as fighting major floods and building our core infrastructure. We should be proud of what we have accomplished and I believe that the NDP can continue to enhance the quality of life for all Manitobans.

“I will be tendering my resignation from Cabinet effective 12:00 midnight December 22, 2014 as I believe that it is inappropriate to continue to be a member of Cabinet while competing for the leadership of a party in government. This will enable me to put forward my ideas, hopes and aspirations for a united party based on the principles and long traditions of the NDP and a return to government that translates those fundamental beliefs into positive action.

“I assure you that whatever the outcome of the leadership contest, I remain committed to working with the NDP, our caucus and within government, no matter who the Leader is, to continue to create a better Manitoba.”

There has never been a Manitoba premier from Northern Manitoba. Former NDP premier Gary Doer stepped down in 2009, before being named by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper as Canada’s ambassador to the United States, Ashton ran for the party leadership and premier’s job in 2009 against Selinger and former justice minister Andrew Swan, who dropped out of the race early making it a two-way Ashton-Selinger contest.

While Ashton outspent both his rivals in the leadership race in 2009, Selinger  took almost two-thirds of the ballots cast and sailed to victory in the two-way race with 1,317 votes to Ashton’s 685. None of Ashton’s cabinet colleagues, some who had sat around the cabinet table with him for a decade, supported his bid to become premier in 2009, but this may well be a different sort of race in 2015. Ashton is expected to get at least some benefit in certain NDP quarters for remaining loyal during the Gang of Five crisis this past fall, where Selinger named him to replace Swan as government house leader.

There have only been a dozen provincial general elections since the Thompson riding was created in June 1969. Ashton has won three quarters of them – or the last nine – which is every one he has contested.

Ashton, a native of Surrey in England, came to Canada at the age of 11 with his family. His dad was unemployed, he noted in April 2008, when they arrived in Toronto in 1967, and they moved the same year to Thompson.

Ashton, 58, is a leap-year baby, born Feb. 29, 1956. A graduate of R.D. Parker Collegiate in Thompson and the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, he received his M. A. in economics from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and is an economist. He was president of the University of Manitoba Students Union in 1978-79 and has lectured in economics for the former Inter Universities North in Thompson and Cross Lake.

At the age of 25, Ashton was first elected to the Manitoba legislature in the Nov. 17, 1981 provincial election for the NDP in the Thompson riding, defeating one-term Progressive Conservative Labour Minister Ken MacMaster, the 47-year-old incumbent elected in 1977, by 72 votes in a race that has entered the realm of local political folklore.  Ashton garnered 2,890 votes to MacMaster’s 2,818. Liberal Cy Hennessey finished dead last with 138 votes. At the time of his first election, Ashton was involved in an Inco strike as a member of Local 6166 of the Steelworkers. Ashton still gets a kick out of pointing out his shift boss voted him for him, saying he would make a better politician than a miner.

In November 2006, looking back at having served 25 years as Thompson’s NDP MLA, Ashton noted, “What matters is getting results,” he said, pointing to former Premier Ed Schreyer and Joe Borowski as two people he looked to for inspiration.

Borowski, Thompson’s first MLA when the new provincial riding came into existence in June 1969, defeated former Thompson mayor Tim Johnston’s father, Dr. Blain Johnston, by seven votes in the Feb. 20, 1969 byelection in the old provincial riding of Churchill. He went on four months later to win the newly created riding in the June 25, 1969 general election.

Ashton joined the NDP because he says he was inspired by what “Joe Borowski and the NDP had done in the North, particularly in terms of highways and what Premier Ed Schreyer and the NDP had done in the North and provincially.” He volunteered in the 1973 campaign and canvassed around Pike and Pickerel crescents where he currently lives.

He worked at Inco numerous times – either as a summer student or full time between 1972 and 1981. This included working in transportation, process technology, maintenance, the smelter and refinery, and finally in 1981 T-1 underground.

To understand the longevity and the consistency of Ashton’s left-of-centre democratically socialist ideology, look back to two key years – first, 1977, and then the fall of 1981 and his first victory as MLA: “To understand 1981 you have to go back to 1977,” Ashton told me in October 2011. “Schreyer and the NDP had been defeated. A few weeks after the election Thompson was hit by major cuts in jobs at Inco. It was also hit with major cuts and layoffs by the Tories. This initially included initially eliminating the Inter Universities North, which was the only university presence we had in the North at the time. Construction on the Limestone Dam was also stopped. The combination devastated Thompson.”

Ashton did not serve in the cabinet of Howard Pawley for the seven years he led the NDP in Manitoba as premier from 1981 to 1988, but easily won re-election in 1986, 1990, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011.

The NDP were defeated in the provincial election of 1988 and Ashton served for a time as house leader for the NDP in opposition. He served as labour critic, health critic and led the fight against the privatization of MTS in 1997.

When Doer became premier in October 1999, Ashton was appointed as minister of highways and government services. Following a cabinet shuffle in September 2002, Ashton became minister of conservation. In June 2003, he was also made minister of labour and immigration with responsibility for multiculturalism and administration of The Workers Compensation Act.

In November 2003, he was named as the province’s first minister of water stewardship and in 2007 was shuffled to the post of minister of intergovernmental affairs and minister responsible for emergency measures.

Hari Dimitrakopoulou-Ashton, his wife,teaches mathematics in the business administration program in the Roblin Centre at Red River College in Winnipeg. She is also the author of Women Entrepreneurs in the North. She moved to Thompson with Steve in December 1979.

The Ashtons have two children. Daughter Niki Ashton is serving her second term in the House of Commons as NDP MP for the federal riding of Churchill here in Northern Manitoba. She was first elected to Parliament in October 2008 and re-elected in the May 2011 election. A former instructor at University College of the North (UCN), she is married to Ryan Barker, a local school teacher and an up-and-coming Thompson Playhouse thespian and audience favourite. Steve and Hari’s son, Alexander Ashton, Niki’s younger brother, recently completed a four-year term on the board of trustees of the School District of Mystery Lake, including a stint as board chair. He is a civil technology instructor at UCN and has been living abroad in Europe for the past few months.

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