The Ghost of Lucien Bouchard

Lucien Bouchard has been gone from politics for a decade, and longer still from the federal scene. But his political ghost has been seen hovering over the head of Michael Ignatieff yesterday.

In 1997 Lawrence Martin wrote The Antagonist: Lucien Bouchard and the Politics of Delusion. In a biography of the first federal minister of the environment in the country, it was telling to find how Bouchard attempted to use his ministry virtually to control the rest of the entire bureaucratic machinery of the federal government. Bouchard demanded that all departments of government answer to his department, which is to say that they should answer to him, in the name of protecting the environment. Cabinet and the PM resisted what amounted to be Bouchard’s coup attempt.

Professor Ignatieff now wants to implement a Bouchard-like environmental control on the federal government that would propel the minister of the environment to primacy in the cabinet. If Ignatieff ever came to the PMO, one would surely hope to have the same kind of resistance in cabinet that met Bouchard, but these are Liberals we are talking about. Yes-men in cabinet are typically what survives in Liberal politics, as Jean Chretien ably demonstrated.

Here’s Michael Ignatieff, 2006:

“Results have been weak” from a decade-old policy requiring sustainable development strategies every three years from government departments, the candidate says. But if he becomes PM, that will change.

“This act would require all federal policy to comply with environmental objectives and targets,” he said in a speech Wednesday. “This means something real simple and clear. It means that every product the federal government buys, every service we purchase, every building we build, every policy we put in place, has to contribute to sustainable development objectives.”

Crossposted from Civitatensis.ca