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Pique n' your interest

Happy 10th Cretch!

Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his party faithful choked back a few tears last week as the plucky politico from Shawinigan celebrated his 10 th year as the leader of Canada.

His accomplishments are many.

Chretien brought an era of deficits to an end, pulling in surplus after surplus while bringing some sense of financial responsibility back to the Government of Canada.

He presided over the GOC during the Quebec referendum, winning a narrow victory of 51 per cent and all but killing the separatist movement in that province.

He led the Liberal Party to three consecutive majorities in Parliament, and faced 11 different opposition leaders.

And… and… umm…

Did I mention the budget surpluses?

As the Chretien era draws to a close, it’s difficult to know exactly what to think about our erstwhile leader and the fractured party he leads.

We know he has never dropped below 50 per cent approval in the polls, which is no doubt a result of the fact that no political party has been able to offer much more than token resistance over the past decade.

Under his leadership, Canada has weathered a couple of economic recessions. In the two years after Sept. 11, Canada even managed to lead all industrialized nations in economic growth.

But while he has helped to foster a kind of economic stability in Canada, you wouldn’t call Chretien a firebrand.

We all know our Prime Minister is a fighter. Over the past 10 years he has shamelessly rewarded loyalty and punished detractors within the party, ruling with an iron fist. Machiavelli could have learned a lesson or two from Chretien.

He didn’t fight all of his battles in the House of Commons, either.

When a demented individual by the name of Andre Dallaire broke into the Prime Ministers’ home in 1995 wielding a hunting knife, Jean and his wife Aline held the man off with a piece of Innuit art until they could lock and secure the door to their bedroom.

When an angry protester named Bill Clennet somehow elbowed his way past Chretien’s security retinue at a Flag Day celebration, our Prime Minister literally picked the man up by his collar and pushed him aside.

At times like that it was hard not to be a little in awe of the tenacity of our Prime Minister, whatever you thought of his policies.

But it’s a little strange that he waited until the end of his tenure, after 10 years of majority governments and overwhelming public support, to finally start acting like the big ‘L’ liberal he always made himself out to be.

The last year has been a more fitting legacy for Chretien than any of the previous nine years, when you couldn’t tell whether his first allegiance was to the people or to big business.

Since this time last year, Chretien has managed a complete 180.

He kept Canada out of the Iraq war, and refused to back Bush’s piecemeal coalition of supporters for that adventure.

He came out in support of same-sex marriages and the decriminalization of marijuana.

He gave the thumbs up to campaign finance reform and at last passed the Species At Risk Act after nine years of debate. He ratified the Kyoto Protocol, committing Canada to a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Chretien’s government has also steadily reduced its budget surpluses, putting the extra money into health care, education and more health care, and coming to the aid of our always cash-strapped provincial governments. (They’re cash-strapped because the federal government downloaded more responsibilities onto the provinces, because that’s what the provinces were asking for – another Chretien legacy.)

You could argue that our Prime Minister has finally looked into history’s mirror, and is making a last-ditch effort to ensure he is remembered as the people’s Prime Minister, the man who proved he could balance a budget while strengthening Canada’s vaunted social programs.

Bill Clinton did the same thing in the States by signing off on dozens of benevolent bills in his last weeks as President, knowing full well that many of those bills wouldn’t survive the next administration.

If Clinton and Chretien really believed in these laws, you have to wonder why they waited until the 11 th hour of the 11 th month of their tenures to enact them.

Can a year of solid leadership make up for nearly a decade of dodging issues and playing it safe?

The answer might be ‘yes’ if all of these new laws had a hope in hell of passing through Parliament before the next election.

For the Chretien’s government, it may be a case of too little, too late. The House of Commons adjourned on Nov. 7, leaving a stack of bills in a state of limbo. They Commons is supposed to reopen on Nov. 17, when it’s expected that the House will end the session immediately because Prime Minister Jean Chretien will no longer be the leader of the Liberal Party – Paul Martin is expected to take that position by a landslide in a party convention on Thursday.

Among the bills not yet passed:

• The Bill to decriminalize possession for small amounts of marijuana;

• Legislation to change the rules for Aboriginal self-government;

• An amendment to drug patent laws making it easier to ship AIDS drugs, malaria drugs and others to developing countries.

A number of Bills, including a redistricting plan that would grant B.C. and Alberta two more seats each in Parliament, have been stalled in the Senate. As a result, B.C. and Alberta may not see those two new seats – which were added as a result of the 2001 Census – until 2009.

The decision to legalize same sex marriages in Canada is also on the backburner until the Supreme Court of Canada can reach a decision on the issue. That’s not going to happen overnight.

Most of Chretien’s new bills will likely have to wait until after the next election to become law, when Paul Martin will be able to take the credit – those that don’t get killed, that is.

One way or another, Chretien’s legacy is nearing the end. How that legacy is to be remembered is still up in the air.

Do we remember his last-ditch effort to serve the liberal base, or the nine boring years that preceded the last-ditch effort.

Most of all I’ll remember the choke-hold on Bill Clennet. Now that’s leadership.