Jean Chretien

Jean Chretien, who led Canada's federal government from 1993 to 2003, is my least favourite Canadian Prime Minister ever.  He was the most inept P.M. since Diefenbaker and the most unimaginative since I don't know when, but he was also the luckiest since Mackenzie King.  His period leading Canada's federal Liberal Party coincided with the schism between the Progressive Conservatives and the upstart Reform Party, which all but guaranteed Liberal governments in that time.

A big crisis in his first term was the second Quebec separation referendum of 1995, which the separatists lost by a very narrow margin.  All Chretien could think of in response was the Clarity Act, which said that if a third referendum produced a close victory Ottawa would prevent Quebec from separating, or something like that. (Clarity was the wrong word for it.) It was just an empty bit of tactical cleverness that didn't really do anything to solve the national unity problem.  It may be that in a third referendum Quebec voters will choose the yes side because they think Ottawa will still prevent separation somehow. But that makes me a Doomsayer, so just ignore me.

I'm particularly angry about Chretien's "My indecision is final" approach to global warming.  He signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, then dithered for five long years over whether to actually ratify it.  He didn't even appoint a Royal Commission to look into the matter, as Lester Pearson or Pierre Trudeau would have at least done.  He finally decided to ratify it near the end of his period as P.M., because he wanted it to be his "legacy." But because he waited so long, till shortly before the Liberals would lose their majority and then their government, it was too late to put it into effect.  Today his current successor Stephen Harper thumbs his nose at climate change action. Chretien's true legacy is inaction.

And of course, there's the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-Operation Conference in Vancouver, 1997.  Canada played host to such unsavory heads of state as Indonesia's Suharto, and the conference attracted demonstrations.  Some protesters thought they could hold up posters at a place where the passing motorcade of dictators could see them, but the P.M.'s security team declared that they might be thrown at the dearest leaders.  Of course, the real reason was that Chretien didn't want the Big People from Asia to be made uncomfortable by seeing that there were Little People exercising their western right to free speech.  Later, some protesters staged a sit-in across the route where another motorcade was going to pass and got pepper-sprayed by the Mounties on nationwide TV.  Jean C. tried to defuse the controversy with habitant folksiness: "For me, pepper, I put it on my plate." Ugh.

Under Chretien's successor Paul Martin Jr. the Liberals lost the government to the reunited Conservatives, and under Martin's highbrow successor Michael Ignatieff they lost the Official Opposition position--that's second place, for you Americans--to the New Democrats. (We'll see if they do any better under Justin Trudeau.)  But Chretien deserves to be remembered as the leader who wrecked the federal Liberals in the long term.