A11

Richard Wilbur
Commentary

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Our history does repeat itself - almost. The city of Calgary has elected two Conservative MPs who became prime ministers. Both could trace family roots to New Brunswick. Both had to cope with a deep economic depression/recession. Both took command of weak political parties. Both held very tight reins on their respective cabinets. Both watched as a new and highly popular figure became president of the United States.

This is where the comparison begins to falter. R. B. Bennett went west from his native province to carve out a lucrative career as a corporate lawyer, arguing cases before the Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council, then the highest court in the Empire. At the same time, he worked closely with his friend Max Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook, to create several corporate entities that became cash cows, especially for the bachelor Bennett who remained single despite several close female friends.

Stephen Harper, whose family came from New Brunswick, grew up and was educated in Toronto before moving to Alberta. He eventually took an economics degree and served as a back-room advisor to Preston Manning before going on to restore the present Conservative Party by bringing together elements from two warring factions. His wife and young family joined him in Ottawa when he was elected in 2003 and have remained very much in the background as he copes with his role as leader of a minority government struggling with a near-global economic slump.

Bennett responded to the rapidly deteriorating world economic scene in 1930 by trying first to re-build and expand trade relations with Britain. When that failed, with the persistent pressure from his brother-in-law William Herridge, whom he appointed our ambassador in Washington, he tried to remove the U.S. trade barriers erected a few years earlier. Thanks largely to Herridge's persistent efforts, Canada did negotiate a friendlier trade agreement that was signed shortly after the Liberals swept back into power in 1935.

Fast forward to the present, and we find Harper placing his hopes on his new man in Washington, former Manitoba premier Gary Doer, whose first priority is likely to be to try and convince the Obama administration to scrap its 'Buy America' policy.

As I concluded in a paper presented to the Canadian Historical Association in June, 1969, "with the notable exception of the 1930 general election, his rival Mackenzie King upstaged [Bennett] at every turn and walked away with the honours. ...A closer study might reveal that of all the administrations governing Canada in this century, the most conservative have been led by Mackenzie King and the most reforming by R.B.Bennett."

The question political pundits are raising today is whether Prime Minister Harper, if and when he wins a majority, will follow Bennett's example and shift his legislative sights to the left to cope with this current economic mess. Considering his record so far, this seems increasingly unlikely, even though his supporters would correctly argue that Bennett had an easier time leading a majority government throughout his five-year term.

Harper and Bennett share one common personal trait. Harper is notorious for keeping his cabinet on very short leases and for muzzling his back-benchers. Still, his Commons performance could never match the way Bennett dominated every debate while he was in the House. And he was there far more often than is Harper, currently out of the country until the House adjourns shortly before Christmas. The only regular trips Bennett took throughout his five years were semi-annual ones to visit his mother at their family home in Hopewell Hill.

If Harper manages to get a clear majority at the next federal election, his record so far shows no signs of him becoming a reformer prime minister. By contrast, Bennett's five years as prime minister left us with the Bank of Canada Act, the Canadian Wheat Board, the Farmers' Credit Arrangement Act and legislation leading to the creation of the CBC. And while his Employment and Social Insurance Act was declared ultra vires (beyond the scope of legal authority) by the Imperial Privy Council, it brought us closer to the Unemployment Insurance Act passed later by Mackenzie king's Liberals. By the end of his mandate, Bennett clearly had failed to make much of a dent on the depression and he certainly had lost the confidence of the electorate. But his government accomplished some much-needed and lasting reforms without running up a massive federal deficit.

As I wrote in an article published some time ago, "his party's crushing defeat... and the fate of his legislation in the Privy Council should not obscure the fact that the man who vanquished him in 1935 later laid claim to much of that same legislation."

New Brunswick's only native son to become prime minister deserves a better image.

Richard Wilbur of St. Andrews is the author of The Bennett New Deal and a former professor of Concordia University.