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Oligarchs at Ottawa 17 Oligarchs at Otta-wa Austin F . .Cross 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master-that's all.' Through the Looking Glass. 'AFFAIRS of State in Canada today by the lop-sidedly Liberal St. Laurent are far too important to be run by Administration, perish the thought. Hard- 'The Government'. We use Brain Trusters ly a major decision is taken today in the instead. Once upon a time we were a Capital, scarcely any important task has Dominion, ruled in theory by a Governor been undertaken in the coup.try in this General, a Senate, and a Commons. In last decade, without an OK from some fact, we were ruled by the Prime Mini- Brain Truster. The Minister merely signs ster and his Cabin.et, responsible, in theory where the Brain Truster puts the dotted at least, to a popularly elected Parliament. line. More and more today, we are confined, This blunt assertion reflects not merely controlled and ,contained by a group of the casual obl;'.ervation of correspondents senior civil servants, far from lovingly in the Parliamentary, Press Gallery. It dubbed 'Brain Trusters,' and responsible rests on far more authoritative sources. to none other than their several and col- Dr. H. A. Innes, Dean of the Faculty of lective consciences. Constitutionally we Graduate Studies of the University of are no longer The Dominion of Canada, but Toronto, if the reader will forgive a learned The Government of Canada. Anyhow that reference remarked as long ago as 1941: is how it is listed in the Ottawa telephone directory. The change was hemmingly "The voice of the economist is heard and hawingly confirmed subsequently by throughout the land. In every investiga- wobbly-syllabled politicians, both with- tion economists of quality and quantity in and outside the House of' Commons. have contributed substantially either by But regardless of how we are described giving evidence or by stuffing the shirts of their betters, i.e., writing the final constitutionally, and no matter what new reports. The rise of economists has been nomenclature has descended upon us, we an important practical trend of the post- are still run by Brain Trusters. These war years. They have captured crucial are our new masters, our latter day bosses, positions in the civil service, 13specially our Public Service Politburo. with the Bank of Canada, and the dis- cussion of t'he problems of Canadian If by some quirk or fancy, anyone cher- recovery has taken on the air of rational ishes the illusion that Canadians in the calculation ... A new religion has emer- Year of Our Lord 1951, are run entirely ged." OLIGARCHS AT OTTAWA 17 The business of government has become get the number of "Yeas" it wants, just so complex and intricate that parliamen- aR Hitler used to get his full quota of tarians tend more and more to rely on "Ja's". And back of the government the advice of the "experts" of the public hill just assented to, was the Brain Truster- service not only for the carrying out but who dreamed it up for the Minister, way also for the making of policy. Whether back six months ago. Ottawa's Brain this trend is good or bad we leave to Trusters never sleep .. others to judge. Such are, however the facts of public life in Canada today. HEN there is the interlocking direc- T torate. Ottawa's Oligarchs, like those O get down to cases-there is a growing new streamliners in the United States, T tendency, especially in the Capital, where each single car is so softly and yet to pooh-pooh the notion that Public Works so closely bound together, that the whole Minj_ster George Prudham, for example, can streamliner slides along as if one were put down a hammer andsawinEdmonton, riding on a cloud rather than a coach, come to Ottawa, and in sixteen months, moves forward so intimately articulated by virtue of the "Honourable" prefixed to that one hardly realizes how it runs, his name, manage national affairs as well separate, yet a unit. Talk about the as any longtime deputy. Super Chief. The St. Laurent Brain• On Parliament Hill, even the more Trust Limited has it beaten all hollow! ardent admirers - of able Bob Winters, This has ramifications. No Brain Truster Minister from Nova Scotia, are disposed functions in single capacity. Remember to rank his experience and executive Poo Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan's ability after that. of a Clark, or a Pickers- operetta, The Mikado? There poor Koko, gill, or a Robertson. Much as one may contemplating matrimony, approaches Poo admire the spirit and personality of House Bah, who holds all the portfolios, and all Leader Alphonse Fournier, it is easy to the power. In one capacity Koko is name a round dozen brain-trusting civil advised "Don't stint yourself." But Poo servants who have had more impact on Bah also urges Koko in another capacity the lives of everyone of us during the last that "due economy must be observed." decade than the amiable Alphonse. Again Poo Bah in still another role suggests True, there are such people as 'Trader' that Koko "chance it". Then the same Howe and Finance Minister Abbott and Poo Bah in a different capacity diametri- External Affairs Minister Pearson. Yet cally opposes himself and tells Koko that even back of such strong-mided indivi- he must see that "the law isn't violated." dualists as they, there lurks a Mackenzie, It would hardly be fair to carry the ana- a Clark or a Heeney. logy as far as Poo Bah seems to do, where As for the private Members of Parlia- he tells Koko he might "cook the accounts" ment, they have their day only just as although as Archbishop of Titipu he would every dog has his day. But merely that. have to denounce himself for his knavery. You get a pyrotechnical Pouliot, a Jack- Write in the word Canada for Koko, in-the-Box Knowles, a devastating Diefen- and sometimes you have the Gilbert and baker. In the past, R. B. Hanson, har- Sullivan setting here, where a Brain Truster angued us, and Wa1ter Tucker trumpeted has to urge something in one capacity, from his barrel chest. Yet in all those but as the chairmen of another committee, years, Donald Gordon, not elected by the he had to countermand himself. people at all, had more power over any of us than the greatest of these, No, the Canada's Shadow Cabinet Commons nowadays is just what the old ERE, then,is the Brain Trust, Ottawa's French root-word means. A Parliament H full-time Shadow Cabinet. It is is a place where people parler, or talk. Canada's nearest equivalent to the Soviet Chances are those who talk loudest in Politbureau, the Committee of top Bol- Commons may be absent when the vote sheviks which directs the affairs of the is taken. A top-heavy government will Soviet Union. 18 PUBLIC AFFAIRS · The parallel is not intended to be taken Whatever their economic convictions too literally, for the members of Mr. St. may be- and that is something which Laurent's full-time shadow cabinet have it is virtually impossible to define - the nothing like the absolute power enjoyed fact remains that the Brain Truster, wise by their counterparts in the Kremlin. in the ways of Ottawa, gifted with that Their influence makes itself felt in more special timelessness peculiar to orientals subtle and less sinister ways. Their scope and old governments, has already left an of action is delimited in greater or less indelible· 1mpression upon the economic degree by the Oppsoition in Parliament life of the nation ·and of its millions of and by public opinion. Where the parallel individual citizens. with the Politbureau begins to take sub- stance is in the profound influence exer- Canada Under Clarkism cised by the Brain Trusters over individual members of the Cabinet in the realm of ITHOUT a doubt, the greatest economic policy. The members of Mr. W Brain Truster of them all is Wil- St. Laurent's full-time shadow cabinet liam Clifford Clark, Deputy Minister of would deeply and properly resent, in the Finance. He is the Super Duper of the ordinary sense of the term, being de- Species, the great grand-daddy of all scribed as politicians, Yet, if politics, Brain Trusters, the very apotheosis of as has been said, is the art of the possible, cerebral controls. Indeed, as much of it is hardly logical to deny that the archi- what we live under today is Clarkism as tects of Government policy can escape Canadianism. Much more of our latter the argument that they exercise substan- day economy may be traced back to tial influence in the realm of public affairs. Clark than to the Fathers of Confedera- In his recent study, 'l'he Canadian tion. Bureaucracy, Dr. Taylor Cole of Duke The cherub-faced deputy with the China University-and here we go again with a Doll eyes has left his mark on our times. Lofry reference-has this to say regarding He is one of the very few economists who Ottawa's Brain Trusters: ever got his theories into practice. One still talks of the Malthusian Theory. De- "These men met together socially and kept in frequent official contact in Ottawa, puty Minister Clark's administration of where contacts are easy to maintain.
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