Despite the Victoria University president’s opening protestations that the talk would be on small-L liberal values, the speaker would have none of it. As Jean Chrétien told a packed Bader Theatre, he’s still the biggest of big-L Liberals. “I’m a proud Liberal, and I’m here because I wanted to honour a proud Liberal,” said the former prime minister during the 12th annual Keith Davey Lecture, held at Vic on March 6. His audience might as well have said the same thing.
“The only thing I’m missing in life is to not have Question Period!” he exclaimed, opening up the question and answer session after his speech. As a former prime minister, Chrétien has the luxury of choosing his questioners, and he enjoys the wiggle room on topics he would prefer to avoid—which amounts to most of current politics.
“I’m not in political life anymore. It’s a hard problem, to shut up, but I do.” An inveterate politician, he still knows how to work a crowd,addressing criticisms from his reign with a jovial attitude. After all, his critics weren’t on stage with him.
“Remember, people were telling me all the time, ‘Why don’t you tell China what to do?’ […] I said, ‘Wait a minute, guys. You want me to go to the Chinese, 1.3 billion people, and tell them what to do, but you don’t want me to tell the Premier of Saskatchewan what to do?’”
That’s another of his traits: weaving in rhetorical questions like a storyteller with a good yarn. On “the difficulties” in the former Yugoslavia: “Do you remember how delicate it was?” On the Clarity Act: “Do you remember the controversy that I survived because I said ‘No, you can’t break up the country with a one-vote majority?’” His speech was also a lesson, however, in just how experienced Chrétien is.
“There isn’t a public policy problem he hasn’t grappled with,” said David Peterson, U of T chancellor and former (Liberal) premier of Ontario. Aside from being Prime Minister, during his 41-minus-eight years as an MP, Chrétien headed six ministries.
The crowd, with its cheers for Chrétien’s decision keep Canada out of Iraq, reserved boos for Conrad Black and refrained from mentioning pepper spray and other unsavoury scandals. With the Honourable Frank Iacobucci (the eighth Keith Davey Lecturer) rumoured to be in attendance, and senators and former ambassadors scattered about the theatre for good measure, the event was decidedly elite.
“I want you to think about public service,” he said in his concluding remarks. “Don’t think it’s terrible to be in politics. We have a lot of fun in politics.” The advice he would give student politicians? “To run. If you don’t try, you will regret that.”
Chrétien held up as an example the Liberal senator after whom the lecture series is named. “Keith Davey is a good example of public service.” Davey, who graduated from Vic in 1949, became national organizer of the Liberal Party in 1961 and served as senator for 30 years, most notably in chairing the Senate Committee on Mass Media. Past Keith Davey Lecturers have included John Kenneth Galbraith, Michael Ignatieff, Louise Arbour, and David Miller.
