By Barry Stagg
February 1996
TITLE: Clyde Wells
Every premier of Newfoundland deserves to be noted with proper respect on his departure from office. Clyde Wells is no exception to that rule of journalistic politeness nor is he an exception to the ordinary rules that regulate the ascendancy to the province's political summit. Wells was a politician whose time had come in 1989. He was no newcomer or dashing white knight from the mansions of the private gentry. Rather, he was a political lion from the litter of the legendary J.R. Smallwood. With his departure in 1996 , there effectively goes an era of politics that began in 1949 with Confederation. John Crosbie was Well's political partner in the tumult of the mid-sixties Smallwood cabinet. Those two and their break with the aging autocrat in the premier's black limousine defined opposition politics in Newfoundland until the Conservatives were able to marshal behind Frank Moores in 1971-1972 to drive the "ancien regime" into retirement.
Wells has an entirely different image once the Gulf is crossed and mainland Canada acknowledges the pressing eastern insistence on recognition coming from across the Cabot Strait. The outgoing premier is seen as a constitutional Lincoln standing solemn and resolute against the sophistic separatist hordes. That perception, like all political creations, is undergoing metamorphosis into a more modest form as the true squalor of the constitutional mess is revealed. However, in leaving office with a likely destination on a lofty judicial bench, Wells may be able to arrest the inevitable deterioration of his anglicized halo. So, it is likely that there will be few further analyses of this enigmatic politician beyond the decent interval that spans from resignation to elevation.
One of the more intriguing possibilities that might occur and which could bring a judicially anointed Clyde Wells back to the candle of public assessment is if his role in the blocking of the Meech Lake Accord comes under renewed and critical scrutiny. The wildcard in that scene is Brian Mulroney. If the former prime minister emerges into the public limelight with renewed vigour and a taste for vengeance after the Airbus fiasco ends the political ascendancy of Justice Minister Allan Rock then the retired premier may himself an obvious target. Mulroney should have little difficulty grasping the obvious political connection between the utter intransigence of Wells on the ratification of the Accord and the absolute need for Jean Chretien's Liberals to destroy Mulroney's Quebec power base. Chretien and Wells embraced at the Liberal leadership convention that brought Chretien into power on the weekend Meech died. Of course if Chretien could have his time back he might have made his gesture of political intimacy off camera since the videotape of that few seconds of Liberal rapture cost him at least ten seats in Quebec.
As time runs on and the Quebec problem looks hellishly worse now than it was before Meech , the public may turn its belated attention to the fine speech that Mulroney made in the Newfoundland House of Assembly in the last few desperate days before Wells refused to let the House vote on the passage of the Accord. Mulroney simply and eloquently stated that in the tumult to surely follow the death of Meech ,then the Accord would start to look awfully attractive and quite a modest price to pay for a peace treaty with the Quebec separatists.
These words are becoming prophetic in these miserable times when Chretien is in the throes of a potentially fatal political paralysis and Lucien Bouchard slouches toward Quebec City to be born. What rough beast has been whelped out of the crass political couplings that brought down the agreement that was a silver bullet for the rancid heart of separatism? These are the questions that only a newly resurrected Mulroney can raise in the public amphitheatre. He will of course have to direct his pointed queries at Wells because Wells is the only political craftsman with the power and position to have perpetrated the deed that threatens to break this country's back. There will be no search for retribution from such a political non-entity as invisible Liberal M.P. Elijah Harper who waved his feather so dramatically and poisonously in the Manitoba legislature. That political mosquito is of no consequence when Wells and the backroom role of Chretien in his obstructive tactics remains to be revealed.
With Brian Tobin ascending inevitably to the premier's chair this month it will be time to look at the old constitutional wars from a point where the sitting Newfoundland premier voted in favour of the Meech Lake Accord . Tobin made that point very early on in his rush from Ottawa to St. John's.
So long Premier Wells.