They challenged the picture painted in a Maclean’s magazine article last week of Mulcair, formerly Quebec’s environment minister, as an unprincipled opportunist who was prepared to join a Conservative government, and even be a candidate despite the much-criticized Tory record on the environment.
The article quoted sources, including a former Harper aide now allied with the Liberals, alleging Mulcair ultimately decided against the move for financial reasons, before agreeing to become the late Jack Layton’s NDP lieutenant in Quebec.
Two Conservatives who had senior government roles at the time said this week that their recollection supports Mulcair’s assertion that talks broke off over his strong disagreement with the Harper government’s environmental policy.
“Money was never the issue,” one source told The Sun via email, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He supported the view of the second source, who told The Sun that Conservatives determined during two sets of talks that Mulcair was “so far out there” on issues like climate change that Harper couldn’t have trusted him to be a team player.
Mulcair, according to NDP and Conservative sources, was interested in becoming president of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, a since-disbanded arm’s-length organization that produced critical reports on the government’s environmental record.
But the Conservatives planned at the time to name longtime Conservative insider David McLaughlin to that post.
Instead, the Conservatives wanted Mulcair to serve as a senior adviser to the government, who would not have permission to go public with his strong views on the environment.
One of the two Tory insiders said John Baird, then the environment minister and assigned by Harper to boost the party’s image on the environment, was looking for outside public figures who would give the government credibility on matters like climate change.
“Where (discussions) began to fade was when it was clear that he wasn’t” going to keep his criticisms private, the insider told The Sun. “You can’t work for the government and be holding press conferences or holding interviews against the government, and it was clear he was so far out there on the issues.”
And it became increasingly clear the match wasn’t feasible given that Mulcair had already had a public spat with Jean Charest, then the Liberal premier, over a conservation issue that resulted in Mulcair being removed in 2006 as Quebec’s environment minister.
“His departure from the Charest government was not elegant and he was not a team player. He’s the last type of person Harper would want in his inner sanctum.”
The sources said the Maclean’s piece was based primarily on statements by former Harper media spokesman Dimitri Soudas, now with the Liberals due to his romantic relationship with Tory-turned-Liberal MP Eve Adams.
“This looks like (it’s about) Mulcair’s rise in polls and Liberals getting angry and using this and trying to twist this,” one said.
Soudas told Maclean’s that Mulcair “told me he wanted $300,000 a year and that was his bottom line and, basically, I got back to him, saying I couldn’t go higher that $180,000, and I never heard back from him ever again. Two or three months later, he made the jump to the NDP.”
Mulcair said this week that he spoke to the Conservatives, but said he never talked to Soudas, and that money wasn’t an issue.
Both Tory sources told The Sun they believe Mulcair, not Soudas.
One of the Conservatives said Soudas was in the relatively low position of deputy press secretary in charge of dealing with the francophone media. “The idea he’d have been involved in this, let alone given a $180,000 negotiating mandate, is ridiculous.”
Maclean’s quoted Lawrence Cannon, a former federal cabinet minister, saying that Mulcair “did not dismiss the idea” of running for the Conservative in 2008, and “did indeed raise” his concerns about Conservative climate change policy.
One of the Conservative sources confirmed to The Sun that the Tory goal at the start of the process was to recruit Mulcair as an adviser, then have him become a candidate.
But neither Tory source recollected Mulcair ever indicating he wanted to run under the Tory banner in 2008.
“The NDP might be right,” one source said of Mulcair’s statement earlier this week that he “had absolutely no intention of running for the Conservatives.”
B.C. New Democrat MP Nathan Cullen, who had no personal involvement in the matter, said it was reasonable in early 2007 for an environment-focused provincial politician like Mulcair to consider overtures from the Conservative government.
Cullen was contradicting Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s assertion this week that it was obvious to everyone in early 2007, and should have been obvious to Mulcair, that the Harper government never had any intention of taking significant steps to improve the environment.
The Conservatives had launched a major effort to dispel the notion it was hostile to conservation issues. One of Baird’s major steps was a $30-million contribution to protect B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest that was done in a partnership with Tides Canada, an organization the Harper government would later demonize.
Baird was appointed in early January, 2007, just weeks after Stephane Dion had won the Liberal leadership and briefly led in polls while vowing to make the environment the centrepiece of his election platform.
By 2008, the Conservatives had come up with two campaign platform promises that would seem unthinkable today for a government that champions the export of raw bitumen to Asia and has repeatedly denounced measures like “cap and trade” as dangerous “job-killing carbon tax” schemes.
That 2008 Tory platform included a vow to prohibit the export of raw bitumen to “higher-polluting jurisdictions” and a pledge to push for the creation of a North American “cap and trade” system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Cullen, his party’s environment critic in early 2007, said Baird gave a strong impression in private meetings with New Democrats that he was prepared to change the Harper government’s direction on the environment.
“Tom had left (the Quebec cabinet) on principle, and when someone (like Baird) offers you an ability to make change, even from an unlikely source, what’s more important? Your partisan future, or making the change?” Cullen said.
“I can’t speak for Tom, we’ve never spoken about this, but (it was reasonable to listen to the Conservative overture) knowing the mood of the government at the time, and their willingness to do something at that moment for political reasons.”
Original Article
Source: canada.com/
Author: PETER O?NEIL
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