By Barry Stagg
February 1997
MULRONEY ROCKS THE ROCK
Brian Mulroney turned the new year into a nightmare for fancy Bay Street lawyer Allan Rock. Rock was forced to eat his words on the Airbus fiasco when the Liberal Government caved in on the courthouse steps just before Mulroney's libel trial was about to begin in Montreal. The brave arrogance of Justice Minister Rock, so much on exhibit during the past year when he discussed the upcoming trial, was nowhere in evidence when the Etobicoke dandy was forced to be the Liberal Government's lead man in a grovelling apology to the former Prime Minister.
Rock was touted as sure fire prime minister material when he was elected in 1993. Without doubt he saw himself in that same light and his self-promotion and eager-beaver attitude toward doing all things good and popular provided ample evidence of that vainglorious ambition. This fellow saw himself as the obvious choice to succeed the tired warrior that Jean Chretien has become. The scene has now been dramatically changed. Mr. Rock has been forced to back-pedal and dance and weave in a manner that makes him look particularly ridiculous. His bravado in assuring the Canadian public that the Federal Government was set to tangle to the end with Mulroney in the libel trial was thrown on the ever growing heap of half truths that has built up steadily in this matter.
It must be particularly painful for the Liberal Justice Minister to have been bested by the battle scarred labour lawyer from the north shore of the St. Lawrence. Certainly Rock ,coming as he did from his former High Church position in the Ontario legal establishment, could not have chosen a worse opponent. Being defeated by Brian Mulroney after all Rock's tough talk must be a particularly humiliating experience.
Of course the real defeat for Rock comes in the form of the public impression that he has now made upon Canadians. He now looks ridiculous. Every politician dreads the day when the public begins to laugh and snicker when his name comes up. Rock is now the Two Million Dollar Man who had to pay Brian Mulroney to let the government out of its embarrassing predicament. While Canadians may continue to detest Brian Mulroney they now have the unctuous Rock as a convenient object of laughter.
The very simplicity of the government's dilemma over the Mulroney libel shows just how frail and inept our supposed leaders are in a real crisis. Allan Rock in his grovel before the television cameras was no better than the publisher of some muckraking tabloid forced to eat some particularly nasty lies in public. Maybe the editors of Frank magazine can learn a thing or two about the finer points of the public surrender of pride. At any rate Frank should have no problem in selecting a poster boy for the next post-apology issue of this nasty and absolutely necessary publication.
Perhaps now Rock's prim and proper puritanism will be given a rest. He should realize that windiness about the profound goodness of Liberals is not going over well with Canadians who have to endure his million dollar apology to Mulroney on top of the slippery refusal of Jean Chretien to eliminate the G.S.T. It should not go unsaid that the seven per cent solution will be tacked on to that huge Mulroney legal bill that the government will be paying.
While without doubt it was the great folly of Brian Mulroney and Michael Wilson to introduce the G.S.T. in the first place, nevertheless, it has been the stupid and cynical act of Jean Chretien and his cohorts to continue to apply that abhorrent tax. With Jean Charest as the new broom in the Conservative Party it would be an astute political move for Charest to have the Conservative Party reject the G.S.T. and indicate to Canadians that this monstrosity will be eliminated and the revenue collected through income tax. A Charest apology would have some credibility at a time when Chretien and Rock have none. That would give Chretien and his dancing justice minister plenty more to worry about in the coming election.
Tax payers can think of how Allan Rock is paying Brian Mulroney's legal bills when they trek in massive numbers to the ballot box.