Brooke Jeffrey - Divided Loyalties: The Liberal Party of Canada, 1984-2008

Brooke Jeffrey

Divided Loyalties: The Liberal Party of Canada, 1984-2008

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010

xvi +689 pp. Cloth. ISBN 978-0-8020-3848-7. Paperback. ISBN 978-1-4426-1065-1.

Hired in 1985 to run a Liberal research bureau, Brooke Jeffrey found herself at the heart of a
Party pole-axed by its biggest election defeat in 26 years. Her massive book chronicles the internal tensions of the next quarter century, in a fast-moving, well-researched style reminiscent of Peter C. Newman at his most atmospheric. Interviews with around seventy activists supplement the author's own memories and record-keeping. Jeffrey's ability to transcend her own role is impressive: over the years she was not only a key insider, but also a candidate and a supporter of leadership aspirants. Her personal links were to politicians such as Charles Caccia and Sheila Copps, and her views on the Paul Martin camp are politely negative. Indeed, one theme of the book is that the Martin-Chrétien split was a continuation of the Turner-Chrétien stand-off. Jeffrey's message is that the party must reassert the Trudeau vision of national unity, with the sub-text that a return to the principle of loyalty to the leader would help. In a longer and wider context, it is not so simple. Post-1960, it was never going to be easy to combine a Quebec power base with a centralising philosophy. Trudeau managed the illusion for sixteen years; Chrétien could still just touch the buttons in 1995. But even without Meech Lake, Quebec would have challenged Ottawa hegemony. As a national unity party, the Liberals needed an electoral base outside Quebec and this they failed to find. A burgeoning welfare state not only fuelled provincial ambitions to deliver services, but widened the split between social and business Liberals. It was no longer a matter of paying taxes for the baby bonus, but rather of wrestling with a blossoming deficit. (To their credit, the Chrétien-Martin 1990s armed truce dealt with the Mulroney debt burden.) Then there was the 'democratic deficit'. If this meant wider participation, it opened up riding associations to special-interest subversion. MPs found themselves fighting for their careers and, with convention delegates at stake, grass-roots battles stoked leadership rivalries. But if the imperative was to bring in women and ethnic minorities, then headquarters dictation was required. At a time when other campaigns were mobilising the Internet, Liberal recruiters were restricted to one paper membership form at a time to guard against packing. Three candidates spent over $5 million on the 1990 leadership campaign, when the party itself had a $2 million debt. Once feared as Canada's most ruthless machine, headquarters lacked even a reliable national membership list. One disadvantage of Jeffrey's 'insider' account is over-reliance on jargonistic abbreviations. Many campaign bit-players are dutifully listed in the text, but few make it to the index: some of them may be running Canada ten years from now. Divided Loyalties reminds us that Canada is not an easy country to govern. National unity strategies are inspirational, but maybe they start at the wrong end.