POSTING # 27

Bird Bangers Start in Virgil; Organizing Prime Minister Trudeau’s 1972 Conference of First Ministers on Social Policy; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Bird Bangers Start in Virgil

A week ago, we heard in the distance the first bird bangs since last fall when the vineyards were protecting their crops of ripening grapes from flocks of blackbirds.

I was puzzled---there are no grapes yet, hardly even blossoms---but a neighbour explained that the farmers were now protecting their sweet cherries from hungry birds.

It seems that the fruit farmers this year are worried about more than birds. Reports are that the sweet cherries will be smaller and less sweet than usual. And if the cool, wet weather continues, the peaches will be spongy with excess water.

So it looks as though high quality cherries and peaches are going to be few---and expensive.

But perhaps the Hudson Bay Low (or whatever it is that is causing this weather) will take itself off to Greenland, or somewhere.

By the way, I must apologize for not being more precise about the meteorological factors that are causing our current weather. Whenever the Weather Channel comes on, I get distracted by the outfits the men and women forecasters are wearing. The men’s clothes don’t fit and look like they were designed by a Soviet-era tailor while the women’s clothes resemble those found on the street corners of downtown Toronto.

My poor head can’t cope with all that mixed input and in the end I’m not sure whether the weather systems are too high and the skirts too low, or vice-versa.

I would be grateful if the Channel’s management would increase the clothing budget for these otherwise estimable people and arrange for some fashion advice.

Then, perhaps, I will be able to pass along a more valid explanation of why the weather is so lousy.


Organizing Prime Minister Trudeau’s 1972 Conference of First Ministers on Social Policy

The latest Canada-Russia hockey matchup happened in May, with Russia taking the World Championship for a second year in a row. I was thinking about how little media attention the series received compared with the great 1972 battle---Paul Henderson’s goal etc.

While the 1972 series was being played, I was working with colleagues in the Federal-Provincial Relations Secretariat of the Privy Council to organize a conference of the Prime Minister and the ten provincial premiers. The conference was to discuss some social policy initiatives the Federal Government wished to take and discuss some problems that had come up in existing social programs.

Perhaps it will be helpful if I digress for a moment and provide a bit of organizational context. A Prime Minister has two organizations under her/him: the Privy Council, staffed by career public servants, that gives advice on the substance of government policies while the Prime Minister’s Office, staffed by (usually) short-term appointees, that provides advice on political issues.

I spent most of my 32 years with the Federal Government working in departments concerned with immigration, employment and employment insurance. I was, however, seconded for a three year period to the Privy Council, from 1970-1973.

It was during this secondment that I became responsible for the day-to-day planning for the 1972 First Ministers’ conference on social policy. This meant consulting Federal Departments and the premiers’ offices about what should be on the agenda. Once the agenda was set, I was responsible for coordinating the briefing material to be given to the Prime Minister and to those Federal ministers with social policy portfolios.

I should say that I can’t talk about the substance of the discussions (Official Secrets Act, and all that). Not that I would want to—boring stuff---but I think I can tell a few stories about what went on behind the scenes.

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In my canvassing of the premiers’ offices to identify issues they would want to raise at the conference, I left British Columbia to the end. The NDP party under Dave Barrett had just unseated the Social Credit government in September 1972, and I thought it would be a good idea to let the new government ‘get its feet under the desk’.

Now, everyone in Ottawa was interested in what changes the new government would want to introduce. The former (Social Credit) government, which had been in power for years, took a distinctly conservative approach to social policies

I had just started chatting with one of Premier Barrett’s senior people (we were just finishing a comparison of the weather in Victoria and Ottawa, a subject that always had to precede the ‘meat’ of a call) when the official said, “John, could you hold on. The Premier wants to talk to you.”

Whoops!

Members of the Privy Council Office didn’t talk to premiers. This was unprecedented.

The Premier’s opening remarks were also unprecedented.

“Mr. Hunter, I want you to tell the Prime Minister that we are fed up with all the Federal horsesh-t.”

He went on for about five minutes in the same colourful vein, punctuating his points with good, solid Anglo-Saxon oaths. He told me that the new government had a mandate from the people of BC to introduce change, and that as a former social worker he had plans to re-shape the Province’s social programs.

When I tried to identify specific areas he wanted to change, he brushed off my questions. That would come later, he said.

He closed by demanding that I tell the Prime Minister that there would be no more business as usual between BC and the Federal Government.

He hung up.

I tried to collect my thoughts. The first one was that he made it sound as though I was in the habit of dropping into the Prime Minister’s office, throwing a leg over a chair and saying “Pierre, we have a problem with BC’.

In my time at the Privy Council, I can only recall speaking with the PM on three occasions. Two of them were during conferences when I had to clarify some minor administrative points. The other time was at a reception for the PCO staff and partners at the PM’s residence, 24 Sussex Drive, which Pat and I attended. (A little side note: the PM had just married Margaret Sinclair---March 4, 1971--- and they were obviously very much in love. At one point in the reception, the two, smiling at each other, put their heads together as Margaret helped fix a cuff-link that had got stuck. Later on, when the relationship soured we liked to recall that tender moment.)

So, like all the officials in the Privy Council, my communications with the PM were through memoranda that were passed up a formidable chain of command.

After Dave Barrett hung up, I wrote a memo outlining the substance of the conversation. I left out the picturesque language but tried to convey the strength of the Premier’s feelings.

I handed the memo to my boss, saying that it was about a chat I had just had with the Premier of BC. He turned a little white, until he understood how the conversation had come about.

He passed the note along to his boss and it eventually ended up with the Prime Minister. The Privy Council had been wondering about the approach the new BC government would take. My memo was welcomed as the first indication of what that would be.

I had my Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame in the Privy Council---as the person who had talked to Dave Barrett.

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Having written chunks of the briefing material and editing the rest, I then had to oversee the assembling of the Prime Minister’s briefing book, a thick black binder with three-inch rings.

Each agenda item had its own divider, from the PM’s opening remarks, through each of the discussion items, ending with his concluding remarks. The background and Federal position were printed on paper of one colour, questions which the premiers might raise in another colour, and a set of suggested responses in a third colour.

In an era before word processing, there was an enormous amount of typing and retyping---every time a change was made in a document it had to be totally retyped. It is easy to forget how word processing has simplified our business and personal lives.

Finally, we had a hundred or so piles of different coloured pages of approved text sitting on every available desk, table and chair in a large room. The pages had to be collated and inserted in the binder for the PM, and in the 20 or so extra binders for Federal Ministers and senior officials.

The binders had to be ready for the following morning and there was no choice but to work through the evening, until the job was done. Working evenings was not unusual at the Privy Council but this was the evening of one of the early Canada-Russia games---a game that everyone wanted to watch.

As Privy Council people, we prided ourselves on being both dedicated and creative. Some colleagues ‘liberated’ a television set and brought in a case of beer. With one eye on the game and the other on our beer, we went round and round the piles of pages, handing our pages to a secretary who inserted them in the binders.

Early the next morning, I went through each of the binders to make sure that the game and the beer hadn’t fouled things up.

Apart from a couple of beer stains, things were fine.


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The conference went well.

Unlike the stereotypes that some people had of Mr. Trudeau as an impatient, arrogant, imperious person, he was a relaxed and effective chair. He listened carefully to the premiers and responded in a thoughtful way to their comments.

There were two or three issues that involved some spirited give and take but compromises were worked out in each case.

The plan was to finish the agenda items on the morning of the final day, have lunch and then spend part of the afternoon reviewing the communiqué that would be issued later to the media.

The agenda items were finished well before noon and the PM asked the premiers if they had any questions they would like to raise, since there was some free time.

There were no takers.

The PM decided to play with them a little. He pointed out that in his binder he had green pages that listed all the questions his officials thought the premiers might want to raise. Some had come up in the meeting but others had not.

He read one question, as an example. The premiers nodded, indicating they thought that was a reasonable question.

Then he said that his binder also had suggested responses. Flipping to the pink pages, he read out the response to the question he had read.

The Prime Minister adopted a mock gunslinger pose that said,’ C’mon, make my day, ask me a question.’

The premiers laughed, and in that jovial mood they and the PM went off to lunch.

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While they had lunch a group of us huddled over the draft communiqué, sandwiches in hand.

We had started the communiqué weeks before the conference, trying to anticipate the decisions that would be made. A copy of this draft was given to the translators so they could have a head start on the French version.

We updated the communiqué and had a version ready for the PM and premiers when they reassembled after lunch.

Most of the communiqué was accepted with little discussion but the portions that dealt with the contentious issues were a problem. Words had to be found that left some wiggle room for the two orders of government. It was a time for some creative ambiguity and vagueness, not as blatant as Prime Minister King’s famous “Conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription” but of the same genre.

Formulations were finally found that satisfied everyone. The PM thanked the premiers and the meeting broke up.

I took the re-worked communiqué to the translation section. A few minutes later, the head of the section came to see me. He had flagged the contentious sections and said that he couldn’t understand what they meant, precisely. The sentences weren’t clear.

I explained that the vagueness was intentional, and gave him some background on the discussions.

“So, I said, “That’s why those sections are a bit ambiguous”.

“But’, he replied, “French is a precise language, you can’t be ambiguous in French, words have to mean something.”

I sympathized with him but said the PM had approved the communiqué and was expecting a French version before the end of the day. Could he try his best?

The translator went off, muttering. In the end, he too was creative and the PM approved the French version.

After the communiqué was finished, a few of us went out for a drink.

It had been weeks of hard work but the conference had gone well.

Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Years ago, I was taking some officials from a southern European country on a sight-seeing tour of Ottawa. We drove past the Parliament Buildings, the National Gallery and the Museum of Civilization but the visitors didn’t show much enthusiasm.

I then drove them along the canal, around Dows Lake and into the Arboretum in the Experimental Farm. Suddenly one of the visitors shouted, “Stop car, please. Take picture”

As soon as the car stopped the visitors jumped out and ran toward some squirrels that were cavorting on the lawn among the trees.

The visitors were laughing, pointing and taking pictures of the little gray and black fellows.

“They are beautiful”, one visitor said.

I asked if they had squirrels in their country.

“No, we had them, but we ate them all.”

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See you next Sunday for Posting #28 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.