I had my first encounter with Belinda Stronach in mid-February of 2005. The show was brand new and so was she.
She was the newly elected member of Parliament for Newmarket, Ontario.
For an Opposition MP she was pretty darn famous. The year before she had run for the leadership of the newly minted Conservative Party of Canada. She might have lost to Stephen Harper, but she made a giant splash while doing it.
Everyone was surprised that, after losing, she kept her promise to run as an MP. Candidates for leadership always say they will run, win or lose, but they never do.
In our camp, we were even more surprised that she agreed to be on the show. Or, I should say, we were surprised that she got permission to be on the show. From the minute Stephen Harper became leader, it was very clear to us and to everyone in Ottawa that nothing could happen in that party without permission from the leader’s office.
A controlling leader was not new in Ottawa, but this was something else. The level of control being demanded by Harper’s office was pathological.
The reason was obvious. For close to a decade, Stephen Harper’s party—the Conservatives, and the Canadian Alliance and Reform Party before that—had been knocked off message almost daily by some obscure rogue MP or candidate. They had people who appeared to wake up every morning wondering what offside opinion they could float into the universe that would make the conservative world unravel.
To an observer of politics like me, it was great fun to watch. For a conservative like Stephen Harper, it must have been excruciatingly painful. He was all about discipline. In fact, he liked discipline so much, I’d bet money it was the number one word in his Google search history.
At first, MPs weren’t used to this level of control coming from the leader’s office. But when push came to shove, they surrendered to Harper’s will as fast as the French in the Second World War. The difference being, there was no resistance.
I once met a Conservative staffer who confided in me that very early in Harper’s mandate, he was pulled into the Opposition leader’s office and entrusted with a very special task. He was given a list of Conservative caucus members who had spoken to the media about random subjects over the previous few weeks. None of the interviews were problematic or controversial, but the new rule was simple: nobody talks to anyone, even local press, without permission from head office.
The first six MPs on the list had each done an interview where they were asked what jobs they held when they were students. It was all part of a story on a current “hire a student” campaign. Politicians love to be asked about their first job because it gives them an opportunity to wax nostalgic about how hard they worked waiting tables at the Calgary Stampede or spreading manure on an uncle’s farm.
But as great as the press coverage was, the Opposition leader’s office felt it was a slippery slope. If MPs think they can answer questions about mowing lawns when they were fifteen, next thing you know, they might want to discuss policy or promote Autism Awareness Week. This young man with the deep voice was told not just to remind the MPs they needed permission to do interviews, but to remind them in a way they would not forget. He was given permission to take them to the woodshed.
And so the nineteen-year-old staffer spent his first days on the job berating members of Parliament, some of whom were three times his age.
In light of this we were mildly surprised when we found out that Harper’s office had given Belinda the green light to be on the show. What we didn’t know, but which became abundantly clear to everyone over the next weeks and months, is that Belinda didn’t ask Stephen Harper’s permission for anything that wasn’t directly related to her critic’s portfolio.
This was not a woman used to being told what to do.
We wanted Belinda for the same reason everyone did. She had a huge amount of star power, something that is traditionally lacking in Canadian politics.
The other parties were clearly a bit jealous of what she was bringing to the Hill. The most glamorous MP the Liberals had at the time was a short guy who used to be a meteorologist on the Weather Network. What passed for glamour on the NDP benches was a woman who once famously busted up a bar fight at a union conference by breaking an ironworker’s nose.
I was very much looking forward to meeting Belinda Stronach.
Her office in the East Block of Parliament Hill was like so many other MPs’ offices, with one very large exception: the art. It was clear she wasn’t decorating her walls with hand-me-downs from the Canada Council Art Bank. It’s not every day you walk into a Conservative MP’s office and there’s an original Warhol portrait of Chairman Mao leaning against a wall, waiting for a home.
We were met in Belinda’s office by a young male staffer. He was very handsome—in some ways straight out of Central Casting. But my first impression was coloured not by his looks but by the colour of his shirt. He was wearing a pink dress shirt with a brown and pink tie tied in a very large knot. The shoes were long and pointy. He was, as we say in the business, “fashion-forward.”
Today, a pink shirt would not be noteworthy, but believe it or not, in those days I was a bit taken aback. Wearing a pink shirt in the office of a Conservative MP at that time was akin to wearing a sticker on your forehead that said, “Hello, my name is Mike and I am a homosexual.”
That was his name by the way: Mike Liebrock. Nice fellow. Very down-to-earth. Welcomed us warmly and told us to make ourselves at home while he went to fetch Belinda. “She’s just on a call,” he said, moving towards the back office.
MPs are always on a call, even when they are sleeping on their couch or trying to figure out how to put an attachment on an email.
“She’s looking forward to it,” Mike said, before disappearing into the inner sanctum. “She has some surprises up her sleeve and some ideas.”
Great. She had some surprises and ideas.
As luck would have it, I hate both.
Is there a man alive who likes a surprise? If such a man exists, I haven’t met him.
And ideas? Ideas are not bad in theory, but after years of shooting television I have learned that, when it comes to politicians, the ideas are almost invariably of the bad variety. Sure, they can be genuine and well-meaning, but they tend to be impractical and far too long or complicated.
“I have an idea,” a cabinet minister might say. “I think it would be funny if, when you enter my office, I’m sitting at my desk with three large pizzas and I act surprised. I’ll look up and say, ‘What are you doing here, Rick? I thought the interview was tomorrow!’”
Then he will explain: “It’s funny because last August I did an interview with a newspaper in Sudbury, and I said my favourite food is pizza! Can you believe that? Pizza!”
Usually there are two or three staffers nodding and laughing as if they are in the presence of Richard Pryor.
This is where my stickhandling skills come in.
If the idea was simple, which it rarely was, we would do what we called a “courtesy roll.” We would just shoot the pizza gag, knowing full well it would never make it into the show. Unfortunately, the ideas were often too time-consuming for a courtesy roll. Then I would have to explain, diplomatically, why it was a bad idea.
“Well, it’s certainly hysterically funny that you said your favourite food is pizza, but there’s a slim chance that the thirty-five million people who didn’t read the article in the Sudbury paper will know this about you. Also, eating three large pizzas alone may appear wasteful or extravagant or gluttonous, which may not be the best look for a cabinet minister. People who run food banks are notorious for their lack of sense of humour, you know. But what the hell—let’s shoot it anyway. Your idea is funny!”
Then the staffers would huddle and confer among themselves until one would eventually say, “I don’t think we have time for the pizza gag, Minister. You’re going to be needed on that phone call with the president of France in a few hours, so we should really get going.”
Mike disappeared behind a closed door and I was wondering what Belinda’s ideas might be.
I heard Don mumble to himself, “Hmm, a Tory in pink. Imagine that.”
“Times are changing, Don,” I said. “It’s a brave new world.”
Eventually the Tory in Pink (that’s how I thought of him now) returned with the one and only Belinda Stronach.
She made quite an entrance. The always elegant and well-put-together MP was wearing a hockey jersey made from jerseys from two different teams, cut in half and sewn together. And she had an armful of what I assumed were props.
I began to make small talk. “So great to meet you, really looking forward to this.” But what I was really thinking was What is she wearing? What are those props in her hand? And how do I stop this?
The props were eventually revealed to be large Valentine cards that we could exchange on-camera. Like all Valentine cards, they had a verse or two or three written on the inside. I assumed the idea was that we would read these cards out loud to one another. I could handle people saying I suck up to politicians, but it was another thing to go on national TV and read love poetry to them.
The show was airing on February 14, and we had pitched a “Valentine’s Day skating date on the Rideau Canal” as the premise of the shoot. Belinda or her people ran with it. The cards looked like someone had put a lot of work into them. Where did she find a calligrapher on such short notice? They were goofy, but not very funny. They seemed like, well, actual Valentine cards.
I had the distinct impression that some speech writer, or maybe even a comedian, had been hired to prep her on this shoot and this is what they’d come up with.
Turns out the jersey was non-negotiable. She was simply not going skating on the canal without it. I didn’t care so much, but it meant we would have to devote precious moments on-camera to explaining what she was wearing. Otherwise, the audience would be distracted by the wardrobe choice. They would wonder, “Is this what they’re wearing at Fashion Week in Paris?”
When I floated the idea that the Valentine cards and surprise gifts wouldn’t really work, Mike gave me a look that said they wanted to use the cards. “I think they are cute,” he said.
Luckily, at that moment Belinda ran to grab something in her office and I turned to him and said quietly, but firmly, “Look, trust me on this: they aren’t funny, it will look contrived, she will look bad.”
He stared at me for all of two seconds, said, “Got it,” and went to find Belinda.
And we never saw the props and cards again. Good job, Mike. Out she came with a big smile and we headed to the canal.
The interview was going take place while we enjoyed everything the Rideau Canal had to offer in the winter. We would rent skates, do some doubles skating, enjoy some snacks and push each other around on giant sleds.
I liked Belinda immediately. On our walk to the location, she did something that TV crews always appreciate: she offered to carry some gear. We travelled light by TV standards, but an extra hand was always appreciated. Once loaded down with cables and battery bags, both Belinda and Mike joined Don, John and me and strolled to the canal.
There were a few selfies on the way down. And Belinda was relaxed and charming with the tourists. She definitely had a bit of a movie-star vibe going on. Some of them were taken aback that we were together. I suppose we were an odd couple in their eyes. “We are dating now,” Belinda deadpanned. “It’s really quite something.” And then she made a face as if she was complimenting me on something—not quite sure what, but the gaggle of lady tourists she confided in seemed titillated.
I have pretty good instincts about these things, and I can always tell after a few minutes how good someone is going to be on-camera. I knew Belinda was going to be great. And then the cameras came on.
I set up the premise: “Its Valentine’s Day and I have a date with the It girl of the Canadian right, Belinda Stronach.”
As I write that now, I’m kind of embarrassed about that introduction. I was guilty of doing exactly what so many journalists and columnists did during Belinda’s career: write her off as an “It girl” and “heiress.” No mention of her corporate career. Forgive me for my sins, but that is how I set it up, and then the interview started.
I welcomed her to the show and she gave me a great smile. Out of the gate I said, “There are always reports about how Belinda Stronach is such a great dresser and how she has extravagant tastes for designer clothes, yet we go on a date and you dress like a hobo.”
This gave her the chance to push the local hockey teams from her riding. To explain she loved both and couldn’t choose, so she had this unique jersey made. And it allowed her to drop the name of her riding about six times in ninety seconds. All politics is local, and I had to admit, the jersey was good politics for someone who someday would be looking to be re-elected.
And then we moved on, skated down the canal and began the interview.
“Why in God’s name,” I asked, “would someone leave the corporate life you enjoyed and go into politics, where you knew the best-case scenario was being a backbench Opposition MP?”
And to be clear, Belinda’s corporate life wasn’t like the average corporate life on Bay Street. She wasn’t giving up access to a nice table at the fancy Keg in downtown Toronto. The Stronach family were the majority shareholders of Magna International. They had a fleet of airplanes at their disposal, there were ski lodges in Colorado, estates in Muskoka. In theory, once she became an MP, she could not avail herself of any of those things. And if she ever sat in government, she wouldn’t be able to look at a private jet again, let alone ride on one.
Her answer to this question was lifted straight out of the obvious stock answer playbook, a copy of which is given to every individual who hopes to serve in municipal, provincial or federal politics in Canada. She said she left corporate life because she believed in public service.
I was having none of it. “Oh stop,” I said. “Next thing you’ll say is that you did it to give back.”
She looked at me and said, “I did it to give back.”
There was no sense of irony.
With that stock answer out of the way, I figured we would move on to the elephants in the room—and there were many.
And this is when the segment began to resemble a hostage video.
On same-sex marriage, she reiterated her absolute support. When asked if she felt at home in a political party where so many of her fellow members disagreed with her about gay marriage, she didn’t say yes but she didn’t say no. She just looked as if she was being waterboarded. She said she admired that “the leader” wanted a free vote on the issue.
It was then that I realized that the entire time I was with her, she never once said Stephen Harper’s name. She would only refer to him as “the leader.” Years before anyone had heard of Harry Potter, Belinda was ahead of the curve. Clearly, Stephen Harper was her Lord Voldemort. He who shall not be named.
When I pressed her on the “leader” running ads against gay marriage, she said simply, “Obviously, if I was leader, I would not have run those ads.”
Well, this segment was short of laughs, but it was becoming very insightful. Rarely if ever does an MP publicly disagree with “the leader.” When challenged about a policy they privately don’t support, they dodge, duck and obfuscate instead. Belinda answered a direct question with a direct answer. Unheard of.
It began to dawn on me that Stephen Harper’s office hadn’t, in fact, given her permission to do this, because she clearly hadn’t requested it.
When the camera was off, I asked her, “Did you run this interview past the leader’s office?”
She responded, “It’s a free country, Rick. I can talk to whoever I want, and I wanted to talk to you.”
I said, “I don’t think that’s how it works up here.”
She replied, “The last time I asked a man for permission, I was probably eighteen. I’m not about to start again, not as a woman and certainly not as a member of Parliament.”
I couldn’t help but think, Where was that fire when you were running for leader? And for that matter, where was that fire five minutes ago when we were on-camera?
When the cameras were rolling again, I started mining for something that could be remotely passed off as fun and light. In the back of my mind, I wondered how long it would take for Mr Liebrock to sprint back to the office and get those giant novelty Valentine cards. He certainly looked athletic.
I brought up her leadership campaign. “I noticed,” I said, “that you had Dr. Jeffrey Sachs as a special policy advisor.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m a big admirer of his. I really enjoyed his last book. He was one of the first people I called and asked his advice on policy.”
“He’s American,” I said. “Isn’t that weird?”
She said, “You get the best advice you can, no matter what the source.”
I said, “Well, I guess that’s true. And if you’re running for the leader of the Conservative Party, I suppose who better to advise you than a leading expert on brain abnormalities?”
I was relieved. That was a bit of a joke, at least. Except Belinda looked at me and said, “I think you’re thinking of a different Dr. Sachs.”
Oops.
“Am I?” I asked.
She said, “Jeffrey Sachs is the head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and is the UN special envoy to Africa.”
Well, who was the idiot now? Two guesses, and it wasn’t Belinda. I was thinking of a different doctor. I was thinking of Dr. Oliver Sacks, whom Robin Williams played in the movie Awakenings. I had even read one of his books about bizarre brain phenomena—people who get hit in the head and wake up speaking Portuguese, that sort of thing.
“Right,” I replied, before turning to Donny to say, “Cut!” One advantage of having your own show is that when you’ve revealed yourself as a total moron on-camera, you don’t have to put it on TV.
We kept the rest of the interview light, but Belinda was overly cautious. When talking about being a Conservative she was excellent, but when talking about being in the Conservative Party as it was at that time, she sounded very much like someone who was trying to make a doomed marriage work.
In the end I knew we had what we called a double. Certainly not a triple and very far from a home run. But we had a piece, and that was all that mattered.
On our way back to the Hill, Belinda suggested I read Dr. Sachs’s book about Africa. Still mortified about the mix-up, I said I would.
“I’ll send one to your office,” she said. “We have your address.”
And then she added, “I’m hoping to go to Africa with him at some point and visit some aid projects. You should come.”
I didn’t think much of it. In fact, I thought “You should come with me to Africa” was a rich person’s equivalent of saying, “We should get together sometime for lunch.”
You say, “I’d love to,” but you know it’s never going to happen.
The piece aired, as planned, on Valentine’s Day. There weren’t a lot of laughs, but it certainly caused a stir in political circles. Her straightforward support for same-sex marriage did not go over well in the Conservative caucus, where people began to demand that she lose her portfolio as critic for international trade.
The thinking was: How can you in good conscience have a woman who ran an automobile parts company that operates in sixteen countries serve as a trade critic if she thinks some farmer named Gus in Alberta should be able to marry his boyfriend and raise gay cattle?
A few days after it aired, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs’s book showed up at my office.
Personally, I never thought much about Belinda Stronach again—until the day three months later when I found myself sitting in a café in Yellowknife, having a cup of coffee. It was about eleven in the morning and I was scrolling through headlines on my BlackBerry. All eyes were on Ottawa. There was much drama playing out. The Paul Martin Liberals were on the verge of tabling a budget and Stephen Harper was making it clear that, with the support of the NDP, he had enough muscle to defeat the government on a vote of non-confidence. This was a very big deal. It would trigger a federal election and effectively put a bullet in the Kelowna Accord, which was being hailed as the largest and most comprehensive support package for Indigenous peoples in the history of Canada.
I couldn’t believe the NDP were going to back the Tories and kill Kelowna, but it very much looked like that was the case. It very much looked like the government was going to fall.
I was eyes-deep in my BlackBerry when I heard a very deep voice say my name. I looked up to see the most enormous Indigenous fellow I think I have ever encountered. I shook his hand, and I remember distinctly how very small my hand was in his. He looked down at me and said, “Why did Belinda Stronach cross the floor?”
I assumed this was the opening to a joke.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why did Belinda Stronach cross the floor?”
Instead of a punchline, he said, “I don’t know either. I thought you might.”
And then my phone began to melt down.
Five minutes earlier, Belinda Stronach had ceased to be a Conservative backbencher. She was now a Liberal cabinet minister. There would be no vote of non-confidence. The Liberals were saved. Stephen Harper was outplayed and humiliated. Mongolian sandstorms were minor compared to the political shitstorm that was engulfing Parliament Hill.
I went to pay at the front of the café and there on the TV was Belinda, sitting next to Paul Martin. The press conference was playing out live for all the world to see. She looked fantastic and relaxed. I couldn’t help but notice she looked more at ease next to Martin than she ever did next to “he who shall not be named.”
Political observers love this stuff. We live for this stuff. My mind was boggled at the machinations that must have gone into this backroom deal.
God, I thought. I would kill to get her alone someday for just ten minutes and ask her how exactly this came to be.
But that, I knew, would never happen.
Two months later the telephone rang. It was Mike Liebrock. He was very much still with Belinda. In fact, he was named acting chief of staff within minutes of her crossing the floor. He was quick and to the point. “It’s July, the House is not sitting, Belinda is planning a trip to Africa, it’s just the two of us, and she wants to know if you would like to come along.”
He added, “She isn’t going as a cabinet minister, but as a private citizen.”
And then: “We leave next week.”
Mike told me Belinda wanted to see some development projects in Africa with her own eyes. She had read the books, she had a relationship with Dr. Sachs, and when she was running for the Conservative leadership she was committed to the notion that Canada should increase its foreign aid to Africa. But this was her, as a private citizen, heading out on a fact-finding mission.
“Okay,” I said, “but why me?”
“She said you were interested in Dr. Sachs’s work?”
Well, I did email her and thank her for the book, and I told her I’d read it and found it interesting. Which was partially true. I did read the book and it was interesting, but under oath I would have to admit that I skimmed some of the chapters. When it came to book writing, Sachs was a tad dry. The book was called The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. It didn’t have a lot of laughs in it.
Mike suggested that I give Belinda a call and gave me her number. I got her on the phone and right off the bat she promised me she had no agenda. She was going on the trip regardless, and when it became clear there was room for one more, she thought of me.
I told her there was no scenario where I would come back from Africa having turned into one of those people who never shut up about Africa. The world had enough white saviours parading around talking about Africa, as far as I was concerned.
She assured me that was fine. There were no strings attached.
I told her I would seriously think about it.
She said, “I’ll have Mike send you a list of the shots you’ll need to get.”
“Off the top of your head, what countries would we visit?” I asked.
“No idea yet,” she said. “Wherever Sachs goes, we will go.”
I was of two minds about going, but time was of the essence. So I spent the next couple of days being vaccinated for everything from yellow fever to typhoid. The list was long and the diseases were scary. I am not a vaccine-hesitant individual; I said yes to each shot on offer. And I got a prescription for anti-malarial pills. Of all the bad things that might befall you on a visit to Africa, malaria was surely one of the worst. The nurse at the travel clinic also advised me to buy a mosquito net. “If you bring anything, bring the net.”
I told a doctor friend about what I was considering. She had travelled to aid projects before and had some idea of what I might end up doing. She prescribed me some “just in case” medications: a strong antibiotic, some eye drops and some Cipro in case of “infectious diarrhea.” She read the look on my face. “It happens,” she said. “You want to be prepared.”
Also, she hooked me up with some completely insane painkillers. “In case you find yourself with a compound fracture and there are no doctors or clinics, and you need to fly home with a bone sticking out of your leg.”
This was a bit much. “I’ll be travelling with Belinda Stronach,” I said. “I think it’s going to be pretty swish.”
Antibiotics? Painkillers? Yellow fever? Dengue fever? This was overwhelming. Normally when I’m going on holiday, my must-haves include sunblock, moisturizer and a sleazy Hollywood memoir.
“Oh,” the doctor said. “Take this suture kit. If you need it, you’ll figure out how to use it. It’s just like sewing up a pillow.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. I called Belinda and said I was in.
Two weeks later we left Canada.