National Affairs: When old friendships can cost you dearly

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on July 27, 2019.

If Andrew Scheer is serious about becoming prime minister this fall, he might want to spend the summer ditching his friends.

It’s been a theme of this year in politics, for Liberal and Conservative leaders.

Justin Trudeau has been attacked this week for failing to permanently jettison his longtime friend and adviser Gerald Butts. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has rid himself of his old friend and chief of staff, Dean French, but not the controversies that have erupted out of their cronyism.

The mere suggestion that Butts was back in the Liberal fold – after leaving his job as Trudeau’s principal secretary in the midst of the SNC-Lavalin saga this past winter – has prompted days of political angst and analysis.

For what it’s worth, I’m told that while Butts will be advising the campaign, it will be in his capacity as a friend, and it’s not at all certain that he’ll have any formal title.

The story of Trudeau and Butts, and their relationship dating back to their days together as students at McGill University, has become a tale of the high cost of friendship in the political world – in Ottawa, at least.

Then again, some forms of political friendship still pay well. At Queen’s Park, each day seems to bring another revelation about of how French, his friends and family have been doing just fine by the Ford government. A huge investigative piece in the Globe and Mail this week detailed the lucrative lives of French-friendly lobbyists, at two firms in particular: Rubicon Strategy and Loyalist Public Affairs.

Several of the principals at these firms are very familiar names in Ottawa – insiders from the old Stephen Harper government, including one of the former prime minister’s old communications directors, Kory Teneycke.

According to the Globe, these Conservatives’ ties to Ford and French have won them an entire fleet of clients, eager to be as tight with the Ford gang as their lobbyists are.

A check of the Ontario lobby register shows that the Loyalist firm signed up nearly 30 new client arrangements in July alone, while Rubicon filed 21 new registrations. Experienced government-relations people tell me this is a lot for any firm, regardless of political stripe. Then again, “open for business” is a motto dearly embraced in Ford’s Ontario.

Clearly, these former federal Conservatives do not subscribe to Harper’s philosophy about friends and lobbying, which he articulated in a speech to the Empire Club in Toronto just a couple of months before he became prime minister. “I have told my own MPs and parliamentary staffers that if they have ambitions to use public office to advance their own interests or get rich lobbying a future Conservative government, they had better make different plans, or leave,” he told a well-heeled crowd at the Royal York hotel in late 2005.

It seems the exit route ran straight to Queen’s Park, where the lobbying rules are slightly less stringent than in Ottawa.

In Ontario, it’s A-OK to help run a political campaign and then turn around and lobby the same people you helped win. In Ottawa, this is not OK – former campaign officials are expected to refrain from any lobbying jobs immediately after their candidates win. Actually, if you’re in power on Parliament Hill, the fewer friends you have, the better.

Politics is a job best suited to friend-makers and extroverts, so it has always seemed odd to me, if not outright oxymoronic, to demand that politicians keep friends at arm’s length once they’re in power. Who are they supposed to hire and consult? Enemies?

Nonetheless, and with the exception of Butts and chief of staff Katie Telford, Trudeau did go to some lengths to avoid being surrounded by longtime Liberal pals when he came into office. He expelled veteran senators from caucus, filled hundreds of staff positions with political rookies and adopted a cautious, even chilly relationship with well-known Liberal lobbyists around town.

The Liberal party even did away with the idea of party membership in 2016. But make no mistake: Liberals still aggressively solicit financial support from people cheerily addressed as friends in emails. Yet partisans and veteran donors have complained that a public record of contributions to the party can be the kiss of death for anyone seeking a government appointment. It’s just that risky now to be seen as a friend of anyone in power.

Friends of Scheer, then, should consider themselves warned. Ottawa is not Queen’s Park, and friends on Parliament Hill are more likely to be seen as liabilities than wealth enhancers.

Would-be prime ministers might remember that old Harry Truman line from the 20th century, just as applicable in Canadas capital today: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”

Susan Delacourt (@susandelacourt) is a national affairs writer for Torstar Syndication Services.