Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
— American poet, novelist, and playwright
Langston Hughes (1902–67)
August 1983. It was cabinet-shuffle time in the nation’s capital. Weeks of rumours and speculation about who would be dropped from cabinet, who the prime minister would invite into the inner circle. It provided, at the very least, a distraction during the dog days of summer.
For some of us, though, it was far from a slow summer. The ever-worsening crisis in the deep-sea fishery kept me on my toes from early morning to bedtime. In a twenty-page report to my constituents, I documented the issues in play and summarized steps taken by the federal government to mitigate the impact on fishermen, plant workers, and communities.
I also took a few swings at the Peckford government for talking out of both sides of its mouth. The premier told a national television audience that some trawler plants would have to close. Soon after, he said that “not one fish plant can be allowed to permanently close.” Clearly, the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. The livelihood of tens of thousands of plant workers and fishermen hung in the balance.
Drafted to the A-team
Only the prime minister knows if and when there will be a cabinet shuffle. But even here, Newton’s immutable first law of physics applies, figuratively speaking: A body in motion will continue in motion unless acted on by an outside force. The intruding factor may be a resignation from cabinet, an underperforming minister or two, or a nagging realization that the government needs to reset its compass.
Once such an occurrence gets the ball rolling, a time-honoured public ritual preludes every cabinet shuffle, whether in Ottawa or a provincial capital. Immediately, the press goes into overdrive, speculating on which ministers will be shown the door and who will replace them. Body language, perceived slights, the foot traffic at 24 Sussex139—all are parsed and scrutinized for clues to the new cabinet lineup. Day in, day out, media pundits confidently issue ever-changing winners’ and losers’ lists.
For the insider, reading the tea leaves is often not that difficult. If, for example, there’s a cabinet vacancy, just knowing the ex-minister’s home province or region is enough to make an educated guess as to which of the remaining MPs from that province will be invited to join the A-team. Long-standing practice mandates that each province gets at least one seat at the cabinet table. As Abraham Lincoln noted, “If the twelve Apostles were to be chosen nowadays, the shrieks of locality would have to be heeded.”
Hopeful MPs and eternal optimists stay close to the capital, certainly close to the phone, convinced their time has arrived. Every MP sees him/herself as obvious cabinet material. I admit to being no different. But I am also a realist. Newfoundland and Labrador’s small population usually means just one seat at the cabinet table, and that one was filled, ably so, in my view. My late, good friend Bill Rompkey, selected by the PM following the 1980 election, seemed to have a lock on the position. He had fostered an excellent rapport with his fellow Newfoundland MPs and had a respectable batting average in ensuring our province got its fair slice of the federal pie. Dreamer though I am, a realist I can be.
So, as the clock ticked toward the shuffle, I had no real expectation I would get the call. In the home stretch, as speculation reached fever pitch and the mess in the deep-sea fishery continued to dominate the headlines, pundits and insiders alleged that Rompkey was all but absent from the fisheries debate and surmised that could spell trouble for his sojourn in cabinet.
My phone rang. It was early evening, August 11. The PM’s deputy principal secretary, Gordon Ashworth, was on the line. Could I be available to take a call from the boss next morning? Well, yes!
I talked to my wife about the call, and we canvassed the implications. Miriam raised a recently concluded Revenue Canada140 investigation into my income tax affairs. I noted that the matter had been resolved seven weeks earlier. I pointed out that the very fact of Ashworth’s call was confirmation that the tax issue was no longer in play, since I had obviously cleared the requisite screening process which precedes every cabinet shuffle.
By morning, the impending call from the PMO was the furthest thing from my mind. In deference to the stifling hot weather, I opted for shorts and golf shirt. Well before 8:00 a.m., I settled in behind my desk in the Confederation Building to confront, yet another day, the latest bad news. Those days, it was all about the fishery. And it was all bad. The one-and-a-half-hour time difference with Newfoundland aggravated matters. It was already mid-morning back on the Rock. Playing catch-up was my daily routine.
Around eleven o’clock, Ashworth was back on the phone: Would I come over to Langevin?141 The PM wants to talk to me.
“Gordon, how much time do I have? I’m wearing shorts!”
“He needs to see you now!”
As I was ushered into his office, the prime minister, standing behind the desk in his trademark gunslinger pose, extended his hand in greeting. Straight to the point, he invited me into his cabinet, then explained why. The why was the fishery. My tongue deserted me. My mind raced at warp speed:
Fisheries portfolio! He can’t be serious! Oh well, I will sink or swim on the fish file, with or without the title.
Trudeau picked up on what must have been a kaleidoscope of non-verbal signals—surprise, then inadequacy, bravado, acquiescence.
“Roger, what is it? Don’t you want to know what I have in mind for you?”
By then my thoughts had sprinted ahead once again.
“Where does this leave Rompkey?”
“I spoke with him. You will be my new minister of state for Mines, working with Chrétien142 and keeping us on our toes concerning the offshore fishery and Newfoundland.”
As the PM stood and extended his hand, signalling the end of our brief chat, he gestured toward my naked knees and, with that impish twinkle in his eye, said, “And try and find a pair of pants for the swearing-in!”
Roger who?
As the guy from the Privy Council Office (PCO) began administering the oath of office to the first of my colleagues, Collenette, it was evident to all that English was not the official’s first language and would not soon become his second language. That, and the nervousness occasioned by this, his debut at swearing in cabinet ministers, got me thinking: Why is this fellow administering the oath? Where is the Clerk of the Privy Council, who would normally do it? That would have been Gordon Osbaldeston, who, I later learned, was holidaying in the US. It would prove to be a very expensive vacation—for me.
Post-ceremony, there was the requisite kibitzing and congratulations all around. After all the intervening years, it is a Trudeau one-liner which stands out. As I was exiting the ornate Rideau Hall ballroom, the PM shouted a special goodbye in my direction: “ Roger, you’ll be fighting the other guys, right?”
It was a private joke, an allusion to our morning meeting when he had lauded my combative style. I took it as a compliment, an affirmation he was pleased to have me on his side. There was no doubt that I was elated to have him on my side, where, without even a nuance of equivocation, he steadfastly remained in the difficult months ahead.
My elevation to cabinet got mixed reviews. Friends and political soulmates thought it was the best thing since sliced bread and wished me Godspeed; my detractors, not so much. Newfoundland’s Premier Brian Peckford was at his gratuitous best, insisting that we “are not that good friends.” Caustic. And, given the verb tense he chose, true. Otherwise, reaction in Newfoundland was favourable. The now-defunct St. John’s Daily News heralded the appointment.
Simmons will acquit himself well. . . . He has a reputation for thoroughness, is tough-minded, but also has the ability to be a conciliator.
The national press largely ignored me, opting instead to profile my urban colleagues, deemed more newsworthy copy in the big-city dailies. I did rate a little ink in regional newspapers where mining was key to the local economy and in mining industry publications. In truth, though, I was largely an unknown to the Ottawa press entourage camped outside Rideau Hall. That reality was succinctly captured in the whispered query I overhead as I navigated the forest of cameras and microphones:
“Which one is Simmons?”
I felt the urge to answer the question. To myself only, I muttered, more in mild put-down than prediction, “You’ll know soon enough!” Even I didn’t realize just how soon that would be, and not for the right reasons, either.
Mesmerized and motivated
Next morning, Saturday, reality quickly set in. Now, not only was I the MP whose riding was bearing the brunt of the deep-sea fishery crisis, I was Newfoundland’s representative in the federal cabinet. Now, the buck stopped with me. Already, expectations were being voiced that my seat at the table could translate into better times for the troubled sector. Besides, the fishery problem had languished far too long. It was time to craft a consensus on what needed to be done. That wouldn’t be easy. Premier Peckford and his Fisheries minister, Jim Morgan, both articulate wordsmiths, had launched a war of words, pinning full blame for the fishery woes on the feds. My friend and colleague, federal Fisheries Minister Pierre de Bané, and I had lobbed a few verbal grenades back at the province. It was time to can the rhetoric and seek common cause.
Quite apart from being the new broom, I felt there were additional reasons why I might be able to inject some new momentum into the fisheries stalemate. I knew all the key players well, Peckford best of all. Our university days as fellow student leaders, six years together as educators, and vacationing on Florida beaches had forged a solid personal relationship that thrived until the insanity of partisan politics got in the way. Fisheries Minister Morgan and I had spent several years taking each other’s measure across the floor of the House of Assembly, but also swapping our best jokes between sittings and socially.
My admiration for and friendship with Richard Cashin, fiery, cerebral head of the fishermen’s union143, can be traced back to the mid-1960s, when as young turks we successfully challenged Joey Smallwood’s slate of candidates for the provincial Liberal Party executive positions.
Despite my fractured relationship with Premier Peckford, there was an ace in the hole. Two of his defining attributes are integrity and compassion. I was confident that he would not allow tribal one-upmanship and rhetoric to trump an opportunity to get the deep-sea fishery back on a sound footing. And there was a second ace. Trudeau was seized with the urgency of resolving the dispute. He wanted the file off the table. This he made clear to me during our brief tête-à-tête just hours before the swearing-in ceremony. With the PM at my back and Cashin potentially onside, it was time to forge ahead.
My first activity as a member of cabinet was a one-on-one with my senior minister, Jean Chrétien. He warned me against allowing bureaucrats to snow me under with lengthy memos and briefing notes. He pulled open a desk drawer and retrieved a single sheet of letter-sized paper.
“That’s a briefing note. If they can’t fit it on one page, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Send it back!”
Then, after a get-acquainted session with my new deputy minister, a phone consultation with Deputy Prime Minister Allan MacEachen, the signing of documents giving effect to a cabinet decision, and a ride to the airport with my new driver at the wheel, I was off to the Rock. My wife, Miriam, and I, accompanied by our sons, Paul, approaching seven, and Mark, three, were headed for a previously arranged, ten-day vacation in Newfoundland’s picturesque Codroy Valley.
Energized by the adrenalin flow of my new responsibilities, preoccupied with mapping a strategy for the task ahead, and sobered by the seemingly intractable dimensions of many of my immediate challenges, the Codroy Valley served only as a change of venue, not a change of pace. All weekend, I pumped the phone, dictated memos to colleagues, interlocutors, and staff, digested mounds of briefing binders, and rejigged my upcoming schedule based on the new reality. Among my very first actions as minister were two important telephone conversations. Peckford and Cashin each agreed to meet with me the following week. By mid-week, I had internalized, more in hope than confidence, my new mantra: “I can do this!”
Fateful phone call
All too soon, my readiness for the job at hand would be the least of my worries. As the week wound down, my world fell apart, though I didn’t realize it at the time. The clerk of the Privy Council, the same Gordon Osbaldeston whose absence from the August 12 swearing-in had caught my attention, called me from Ottawa. He alerted me to an urgent matter which had arisen, and it was imperative, he advised, that I return immediately to the nation’s capital. What Osbaldeston told me didn’t square with the facts. I didn’t need any persuasion to hightail it back to Ottawa.
139 The official residence of the Prime Minister of Canada
140 Now the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)
141 The now-renamed Langevin Block, a four-storey Second Empire–style sandstone edifice located directly across the street from Parliament, houses the Office of the Prime Minister (PMO) and the Privy Council Office (PCO). Sir Hector-Louis Langevin was a Father of Confederation and an architect of the infamous aboriginal residential school system. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in June 2017 that Langevin’s name would be taken off the building, responding to persistent aboriginal protesting.
142 Jean Chrétien, minister of Energy, one of several portfolios he held while Trudeau was PM
143 Newfoundland’s Fish, Food & Allied Workers Union (FFAW)