\n ‘I’ve long felt that the guy did not get the credit he deserved.’<\/span> “I’ve long felt that the guy did not get the credit he deserved,” he says. “There’s a very strong case that he is the most significant non-prime ministerial parliamentarian in Canadian history.”<\/p>\n The ghost of C.D. Howe might quibble, but at least Howe, the fabled “minister of everything” in the 1940s and 1950s, got a big building in downtown Ottawa named after him.<\/p>\n The case of\u00a0MacEachen, who died\u00a0Tuesday at 96,\u00a0is indisputably remarkable.<\/p>\n In the 1960s, he advanced landmark legislation in health and social policy as a significant minister in the government of Lester B. Pearson.\u00a0But, in his second act, he emerged as\u00a0a master of the House of Commons, the man who kept Pierre Trudeau in office and helped return him to power after the defeat of 1979.<\/p>\n “Allan J. was the pre-eminent parliamentarian of his time,” says Bob Rae, who learned from MacEachen<\/a> as a young NDP MP and later became a close friend.<\/p>\n MacEachen watches as his Commons seatmate, prime minister Pierre Trudeau, answers a question on Oct. 17, 1977, the first day television cameras were allowed to broadcast question period. (CBC)<\/p>\n An assistant to Pearson while he was in opposition, MacEachen joined cabinet in 1963. As minister of labour and then health, he passed the legislation that established national medicare and the Canada Labour Code, and he implemented\u00a0the guaranteed income supplement for low-income seniors.<\/p>\n Later, in Trudeau’s cabinet, MacEachen\u00a0was minister of finance and external affairs.<\/p>\n In 1968, Pearson’s Liberals stumbled into a defeat on a money bill and MacEachen, as House leader, was put in charge of drafting the motion that would extricate the government from having to call an election.<\/p>\n Four years later, MacEachen was responsible for the Trudeau government’s survival after the near-death experience of the 1972 election.<\/p>\n \n ‘Trudeau followed MacEachen’s script to the last apostrophe.’<\/span> In The Northern Magus<\/em>, his account of Trudeau’s first 11 years in power, Richard Gwyn recounts how MacEachen kept the Liberals in power for two productive years: setting the opposition parties against each other, putting off controversial items, narrowly defining what would constitute a confidence vote and meeting privately with NDP leader David\u00a0Lewis to discuss policy.<\/p>\n “Trudeau followed MacEachen’s script to the last apostrophe,” Gwyn writes.<\/p>\n After precipitating their own defeat in 1974,\u00a0the Liberals were rewarded with a new majority.<\/p>\n Five years after that, MacEachen, still serving as House leader, helped change history: moving\u00a0Liberal MPs against the Progressive Conservative government’s first budget, defeating Joe Clark and then engineering the return of Trudeau from semi-retirement.<\/p>\n Gifted with another four years in office, Trudeau\u00a0assured his place in history, repatriating the Constitution and passing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (and, less happily, implementing the National Energy Program).<\/p>\n Allan J. MacEachen, historic Canadian politician, dead at 96<\/strong>2:21<\/p>\n Tom Axworthy, an adviser to Pierre Trudeau, has credited MacEachen with bringing debate on the Constitution to a relatively peaceful end, having threatened\u00a0to resign if the government used time allocation or closure.<\/p>\n “Managing an assembly with 300 egos, competing interests and continual jockeying for media attention requires patience, empathy and an ability to laugh at the human parade. MacEachen had all these virtues,” Axworthy\u00a0wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n “He was like a great political bloodhound, sniffing the parliamentary air, detecting the changing currents and nimbly setting off in a new direction with the parliamentary pack baying at his heels.”<\/p>\n If you despise what\u00a0Trudeau’s\u00a0Liberals did between 1968 and 1984, you might rue\u00a0MacEachen’s\u00a0success, but it should still be possible to appreciate his mastery of Parliament. Over three stints, he served more than seven years as the government’s House leader, seemingly a record.<\/p>\n He was, meanwhile, considered one of Parliament’s best orators<\/a>. “He had real substance, not mere rhetoric,” says Ed Broadbent, the former NDP leader.<\/p>\n And he was famed for his commitment to his constituents, including his ability to ensure public funds flowed to Cape Breton. (Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner, who took over some of MacEachen’s old ridings, says constituents would still turn to MacEachen in retirement.)<\/p>\n Later, as Opposition leader in the Senate, he helped lead the upper chamber’s famous fight against Brian Mulroney’s GST<\/a>.<\/p>\n National Energy Program announced in 1980 federal budget<\/strong>4:39<\/p>\n The low point was likely MacEachen’s\u00a01981 budget. His proposed tax reforms, including the elimination of various loopholes, were loudly criticized and much of his plan was subsequently abandoned.<\/p>\n That might sound familiar<\/a>.<\/p>\n And there might be other echoes\u00a0in the present day.<\/p>\n Butts connects MacEachen’s view of government\u00a0\u2014 as a positive force to “improve the lives of regular people”\u00a0\u2014 with Justin Trudeau’s. Broadly, the current Trudeau government does seem to aspire to\u00a0the activist, reforming attitude of the Pearson era, which MacEachern was at the heart of.<\/p>\n At the same time,\u00a0the current government’s\u00a0legislative record\u00a0is not yet robust<\/a>\u00a0and the Liberals have struggled to settle on an approach to Parliament.<\/p>\n
\n \u2014\u00a0Gerald Butts<\/cite>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"Allan](\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.4290677.1505425243!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.JPG_gen\/derivatives\/original_620\/allan-maceachen-and-pierre-trudeau.JPG\")
<\/p>\nThe man beside Pearson and Trudeau<\/h2>\n
\n \u2014\u00a0Richard Gwyn, The Northern Magus<\/em><\/cite>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\nA political bloodhound<\/h2>\n
Mastery of Parliament<\/h2>\n
Echoes from MacEachen’s\u00a0days<\/h2>\n