/ Oligarchs at Otta-wa ..: Austin F. Cross ' ' VERY year on budget night, like an to advise the minister (that's the term, E unspectacular star at the tail of but actually our man writes the stuff) on that bright comet, the Hon. Douglas the technical aspects of taxation. His Abbott, there moves into the Press Gal- is the ethical concept of taxation. Not lery ' reception rQom, among others, Ken' immediately has he to be concerned with Eaton. In title, Assistant Deputy Minister such matters as whether the Fisheries of Finance: in fact, he is the fell ow who needs the money, or Trade and Com- wrote a lot of <the budget that the Hon. merce is bungling its administration. Ra- Mr. Abbott has just so entertainingly given. ther would it be his role to assess nicely, There are other tail-stars, of course, to the what for example, would be the effect of Abbott comet. Yet paradoxically none one cent more tax on cigarettes, or the will seem duller, none will be brighter, precise incidence of sales tax. than the same Ken Eaton. For a fellow _He and Harry Perry are a very good who has just heard a lot of his own fiscal team, and when they sit down to write theory and financial policy given to the their share of the budget, you have people of Canada in particular and the a brilliant duet being played. world in general, Ken Eaton is quiet "He's without a peer in his field," said enough. an expert enthusiastically, in discussing There he sits, a man who would pass in Eaton, and this expert is one man rarely a crowd. His suits are not costly, his given to enthusiasms. I am told that grooming is short of soigne, he is the Eaton is one of the finest tax technicians prototype of all civil servants. He is in the world. He is a fiscal philosopher also out-ranged by the booming bellows on •Olympian scale. of his twin-Truster Bob Bryce, and in- deed, unless you crowd close to him, you INCE the war began in 1939, we have are not likely to hear the elite economics S had three finance ministers. They of Eaton. · have all been good men, great national The peculiar role of this particular Brain names. But no. one believes that a finance Truster is that he is the east half of the minister is indispensable, and even those Siamese Twins who get out the Budget. who raved about Fielding, and who lauded The west half is the aforementioned Robert the late R. B. Bennett's solo flight into Bryce. Held together by common the stratosphere of budgeteering, admit spine, which is the Finance Minister, that all budget deliveries are strictly a · these fiscal twins each have their own one night performance, while b~dget mak- separate functions, and it is further con- ing goes on all the time. It is the unsung tended one could hardly survive without if well paid fellow back in the Finance the other. It is Eaton's particular role · Department, who make the minister's 22 OLIGARCHS AT OTTAWA, PART II night a success. So Eaton et al slug away The other half of the Katzenjammer day in and day out, year in and year out, Kids, or perhaps more truly, the Siamese faithfully serving a Ralston one time, an Twins as depicted by myself when at the - Ilsley for a cycle, and then swinging in Ken Eaton sequence, is an utter realist overnight to walk in stride with Abbott. on spending. Bob Bryce often sits in for Some of these days the natty St. James the sometimes ailing Deputy Minister Street lawyer will get tired of it all, and Clark as chairman of Treasury Board. then Eaton will be a glorified chore boy This enormously · important and little for still another minister. known body really spends Canada's money. So, while our fiscal philosopher, like For, while Parliament is merely permissive other brain trusters in Ottawa, continues in its money moods, it is Treasury Board to be one drab star in the tail of the cum Bryce et al that decides if the money minister's comet each budget night, he finally, is really to be spent at all. makes his almost shy way about the ' nation's capital, juggling billions in his AVING the taxpayer his money is ' brain. It is a sure thing that last summer, S Bryce's daily nine to five chore. he was already dreaming up the 1952 He is said to be not merely good, but budget as he walked the streets of Ottawa, actually superb on what might be called . unidentified. the discrimination and discernment of dollar dispensing. Watchdog of The Treasury One can imagine Bryce going . to the Department of Fisheries and saying: "You The other one of the Katzenjammer have a vote for $15,000,000 to spend on Kids, in making up the budget each year, the halibut industry at Prince Rupert. is Robert Bryce. The way a good many You think you need that, but actually taxpayers tell it between moans of anguish, this is• not so." the greatest fiscal malefactors in Canada · Or he might say to Trade and Com- are Ken Eaton and Robert Bryce, the two merce: "You'll be back next year for a Assistant Deputy Ministers of Finance, further grant, because this money you ask who get out the budget every year, with for will not see you through. It would a little help from the Minister. pe better to hold up this expenditure for I explained before that Ken Eaton was a while. You have not thought the whole the theoretical taxation technician, the thing through yet.'' man whose classic concept of levy was a Ultimately, of course, the Department delight and comfort to all harassed Fin- may get its way: but as likely as not, Bob ance ministers. Bryce, ·on the other hand, Bryce and his Treasury Boys may save the works on expenditures. He, too, comes taxpayer his millions. In fact, they are in on the tail of Abbott's comet, every doing so every, day, some place or other. budget night, to the Press GaHery of .the Bob Bryce can see a rat hole farther and House of Commons. It is his loud voice plug it faster than most tax payers realize. that gives Ken Eaton his chance at soft But the average voter groans so loud these spoken counterpoint. This, of course, days that he never has time to hear how while Maestro Abbott runs the pretty some people here in Ottawa, at least, are arpeggios. trying to ;save him money. A brilliant scholar, Bob Bryce has had To tell the reader that Bob Bryce is a an inspired grounding in economics in good boy, is to say something that can Britain, where he studied under the late become very tedious very quickly. Suffice Maynard Keynes. Besides that, he packs it for the moment then to realize that here around with him, ten years or so of work- is a Brain Truster of no mean attainments. aday practic~l knowledge of public finance. Like nearly all the others, he toils ob- His is no Ivy League concept of money; scurely, anonymously, yet joyously withal. he is the survivor of many a pratt-fall in He has his say in our budgets, he has his the wrestling ring of practical government part in our government, he has his share business. m our destiny. PUBLIC AFFAIRS 23 Man of Destiny offered the kind of intellectual company that stimulated Mr. Taylor. So before Kenneth Taylor, associate Deputy Min- long, it was a deal. Taylor stayed, and ister of Finance, and all last summer the the government started making plans for acting Deputy Minister of Finance, is worth him. noting. He may well be the coming man in His pre-war record of writings, his being fiscal Ottawa. Ear-marked, one can guess, economic advisor to a Royal 'Commission as the next Deputy Minister of Finance, on Coal, his subsequent acting as counsel high in the favor of the Government, a for the Province of Ontario during the softly imperturbable :financial expert, a Rowell-Sirois Commission on Dominion- magna cum laude graduate from the direc- Provincial Relations. all combined to fit tion of the Wartime Prices and Trade him admirably for the jobs Ottawa threw Board, the Oriental-born, ex-McMaster at him m quick succession right after University professor by all signs is on his arrival. way to the top. Thus he was secretary of Wartime He appears .to be not merely well round- Prices and Trade Board early in the ed, but widely rounded. Many in Finance game; later he was co-ordinator of foods seem to have "a piece" of the business. administration in WPTB; he had graduated Taylor, like the boa constrictor which to deputy chairmanship by 1944; ultimately swallowed the goat, seems to have all of he was made Prices Board chairman. it inside him. It is stretching it a bit to He was president of the Commodity Prices slur him with omniscience, but that is the Stabilization Corporation after October way some of his colleagues are prone to 1947. Add to all this, that he has been regard him. chairman of the National Joint Council This then is the build up I am giving of the Public Service of Canada since you for somebody I think is quite a man. September 1950; and finally throw in I cannot document my case; I cannot that he is director of that latter day prove that the government has big plans bureaucratic mammoth, Central - Mortage for Ken Taylor.