I am a big fan of “lunch-bucket” science fiction, with themes like time travel instead of bizarre worlds. I read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells when I was a teenager, and was hooked on the theme in television shows.
I fervently watched each episode of the short-lived 1960s series Time Tunnel, even though it was cheaply made and used Hollywood backlots as the stage for historical events. In recent years, the theme of time travel was taken up by the Apple TV series Timeless, which lasted only two seasons.
I have always contemplated what it would be like to go back in time and change events of the past to see what might have been instead of what was. However, because no one has invented time travel, it just is not possible, and we live with the successes or the mistakes of the past.
This brings me to some recent, controversial revelations.
Last November, former federal minister Sergio Marchi published his memoirs, Pursuing a Public Life. Marchi held the post of Citizenship and Immigration minister in Jean Chrétien’s cabinet back around the time of the 1995 referendum. So when he published book last year, in interviews with the Quebec media, he was asked about a plan allowing applicants for citizenship to be processed in time to vote in the Quebec referendum of October 1995. Marchi said Chrétien encouraged the decision to fast track 12,000 applicants as potential “Non” voters.
The reports of what became known as “Operation Citizenship” caused a furore in the Quebec media and political circles. The Bloc Québécois demanded Chrétien appear before a House committee. Chrétien refused, but it’s now part of the Parti Québécois and Bloc Québécois’s vendetta against Canada.
Fast forward to this past January, when former CBC president Tony Manera made headlines when an account in his unpublished memoirs alluded to a link between Radio-Canada’s reporting of the 1995 referendum and cutbacks at the CBC. Manera claimed then-Communications Minister Michel Dupuy was upset about coverage of PQ committees looking into the “benefits” of separatism, and suggested there might be cuts to the network as a result. Manera resigned from the CBC in 1995 when Chrétien, along with his finance minister at the time, Paul Martin, reviewed government program funding and cut the CBC’s budget by 30 per cent.
But let’s look back: The cuts in the 1995 budget were enormous, with 53,000 people leaving the public service. This was the experience of anyone in the federal government. Dupuy was not part of the Chrétien “in crowd.” More than likely he was currying favour when he spoke with Manera.
I recently spoke to Manera, and his desire is that future CBC-Radio Canada coverage of sovereignty referendums in Alberta and Quebec be unaffected by political influence. However, his account is already being used by Quebec separatists as proof of federal “cheating” in 1995.
And let’s be clear: Having worked for CBC in Montreal, I can affirm federalist or objective reporters were few and far between in the French network. The proof is the number of journalists working for the French-language service who have become political partisans or elected PQ and BQ legislators. I believe their reporting in the referendum campaign in 1995 helped the Oui side, so much so I could predict the polls according to their reporting.
To return to that time now and reveal confidential conversations provides fuel for the PQ’s Paul St-Pierre Plamondon and the Bloc’s Yves-François Blanchet. And without a time machine, no one can say with absolute certainty what took place so many years ago.
I believe in transparency, but I also believe ministers and senior public servants have a duty to be discreet. And there is no “best before” date on confidential information, although some cabinet discussions are released decades later.
In the past, I worked as a ministerial adviser, public servant and diplomat. And in doing so, I took an oath to not divulge any secrets or cabinet confidences. Since that time, and as a journalist who has been writing about politics for several years, I have never revealed any secrets acquired during my time in public service.
Similarly, the mother of a friend died a few years ago, and in her obituary, it mentioned she was a code breaker at the famed Bletchley Park, the top-secret Allied code-breaking centre in England during the
Second World War. She never revealed what she had done during the war. She did so because she had taken a lifelong oath of secrecy.
As the Parti Québécois and Alberta United Conservative Party promised referendums loom large on the horizon, all former federal public servants and ministers should keep in mind the ammunition they could provide to separatists by recounting tales from the past.
Andrew Caddell is a veteran journalist and columnist. He writes a regular column for The Hill Times, which covers Parliament and the federal government. He is president of the Task Force on Linguistic Policy, a grassroots group that was formed in the wake of Quebec’s Bill 96, which overhauled the province’s Charter of the French Language.