A Conversation with Master of Massey College and Former Canadian Senator Hugh Segal

“John Lennon and Yoko Ono were coming to town.”

It is nine in the morning. Hugh Segal sits huddled in his office overlooking the Massey College quadrangle. The orange and green hues of autumn filtering in through trees outside give the meeting a groggy feel, no doubt exacerbated by the early hour. Segal “draws strength from the morning,” and seems quite prepared to field questions about his youth, his career in politics, and his time at the Canadian Senate. But first, he is quick to recall a particularly poignant moment from his time as an undergraduate at the University of Ottawa.

“In 1969 when I was at university, I served as a Vice President on the student government. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were on their ‘Give Peace a Chance’ Bed-In, which was basically an opportunity to stay in bed at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal and make their case for peace. Our student government President back then, Allan Rock, had gotten it into his head that he would invite Lennon and Ono to the University of Ottawa, enticing them with the promise of a meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau.”

Chuckling, Segal continues. “What we knew then that people have forgotten now is that Allan was a ‘Paul Hellyer Liberal’, having supported Hellyer on the ballot against Trudeau’s leadership nomination. As you can imagine, this made his ability to get John Lennon an appointment with Pierre Trudeau close to zero.”

“But they came anyways, with their kid in tow. Allan and I went to meet them at the train station in Ottawa – Mr. Lennon, Yoko Ono, and the kid – and whisked them off to a big press conference where I was told I’d be holding the baby. I was Vice President Academic, and what do Vice Presidents Academic do? They hold the baby.”

Segal grins. “After that they hung out at the chapel with Father Rabi, the chaplain of the campus. And it turns out that they’re ‘sort of vegetarian,’ so what does the Vice-President Academic do? He gets shipped down to Nate’s Deli to bring back a smoked fish plate for them to have lunch.”

“In the end, they stood in front of the famous pillars at the University of Ottawa and addressed a huge crowd. Allan even took them for a drive in his Volkswagen through Rockcliffe to try and see Pierre Trudeau, but he was obviously unavailable. It took them until a week later to finally get to see him, and what was truly astounding was how the picture we took from that day – of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Mr. Trudeau – was the first picture of Prime Minister Trudeau to go global around the world. This is before Twitter and before e-mails. That photo spoke to millions because he had been the first NATO leader to associate himself with the ‘Give Peace a Chance’ tour. It is fascinating for me to look back on that and realize that I had truly been a part of a piece of history that set Trudeau on the trajectory to becoming one of the most different kinds of Prime Minister out there at that tumultuous time.”

***

Naturally progressing from the Lennon story, Segal reminisces about a seminal moment from his time as an undergraduate. “I remember the War Measures Act. At that point, I had been elected President of the student government, and so I got to experience firsthand the imbalanced application of the law on specific groups. I remember waking up, going across the street to the student union building, and finding an armed personnel carrier parked out front. I guess they were concerned about potential instability from our very active sovereigntist Parti Québécois club on campus.”

Tensing up, Segal continues. “I was always one of those who took the view that the War Measures Act was excessive. I saw it as a core violation of our civil liberties that would never have been tolerated in the United Kingdom or the United States, and that would never have been tolerated in Canada either if we had had the Charter of Rights in 1970. And so I will never forget that day when the police came to the student union headquarters, walked past the Conservative office, walked past the Liberal office, walked past the NDP office, and stopped at the Parti Québécois office and started taking out all their files. And I said to myself, ‘this is not who we are, this is not what we do.’ My fellow students at the time had the right to be a part of any political party as long as it was non-violent and believed in achieving its goals in peaceful ways. This was a challenging, challenging time. But, you know, it’s one of those things that shapes you and gives you some sense of balance and perspective.”

“The fact that forty years later, I’d be standing in the Canadian Senate fighting for greater parliamentary oversight over national security – well you can trace that right back to that seminal experience that I had as an undergrad.”

This story reinforces the passion that underscored Hugh Segal’s early foray into politics and subsequent 45-year career on The Hill and at Queen’s Park. In that time, Segal served as Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, senior aide to Ontario Premier Bill Davis, and as Senator for Kingston-Frontenac-Leeds from 2005 to 2014.

“I was very interested in politics from a young age. That was another reason that I went to university in Ottawa – it was the centre of the federal political system. When I left Ottawa University, my first job was as a full-time staff member for David MacDonald, a Member of Parliament from PEI. David was a United Church minister and so I wrote the first drafts of his sermons when the Ministers were away for the summer months, even though I’m Jewish.”

Eyes twinkling, Segal recalls, “You could say that a lot of those sermons were a bit more Old Testament than they were used to in rural Prince Edward Island, but they got over it pretty well.“

“After that, at the age of 21, I ran for Member of Parliament and came within 500 votes in a riding where the Liberals would traditionally win by 10 or 15 thousand votes. After that I got to work for Bob Stanfield [Former Premier of Nova Scotia and Progressive Conservative Leader] who I thought was one of the most decent, balanced, thoughtful, and progressive people to ever serve in national politics.”

Segal sighs and leans back in his chair. “What bothered me most was seeing him not succeeding, even though he was all those good things. I quickly began to learn that there are many things that shape outcomes in politics; quality and competence are just two of them. When you’re an idealistic young person, you have to learn those things about the harsher realities and begin to factor them into your own judgments.”

Reflecting on what he’d learned throughout his time in politics, Segal is blunt. “I think there is a part of politics which is about entertainment. And so, it becomes really important that a politician find a way to be engaging and to say things in a way that will make people want to stop and listen. Stanfield never gave into that sort of thing; if you asked Bob Stanfield a question, he would pause for ten seconds and think about the answer. Well nowadays, the average news clip is ten seconds! And while Bob Stanfield thought gardening was a wonderful hobby, Mr. Trudeau was doing double gainers off diving boards!”

Segal laughs and shakes his head. “As you can imagine, it was very hard to compete with that.”

***

“When I heard about the shootings, I was stunned.”

As was inevitable, given that our interview took place the day after the October 22nd shootings on Parliament Hill and the murder of Corporal Nathan Cirillo near the National War Memorial, the conversation turned to Segal’s reaction to the event.

“Look, let me say this. I’ve walked those halls for over 20 years in my time in politics, and so it hits you very hard when you see that happening. When I was a junior research assistant for MacDonald I would have to do research for Question Period in the House of Commons, and so I did a lot of work in the Library of Parliament. That’s why I thought it was so poignant that they brought the shooter down outside the library yesterday. If he had gotten into the library on a Wednesday morning, when a lot of people your age are sitting in the library doing work for MPs and Senators, it would have been total carnage.”

“And of course there’s a series of hypothetical questions that have to be asked; if the guys at the front door were better armed, if they normally walked around with submachine guns, could they have stopped [Michael Zehaf-Bibeau] sooner? Do we even want guys at the front door of Parliament with submachine guns on a regular basis? Do we want a parliament building where families and visiting tourists wander through with guides to see everything, or do we want a place that is shut down to the public? My instinct is that we want to tilt towards the open model because that’s who we are as a society. But we have to think about what else we do.”

Segal continues passionately, “I think we have to put yesterday in perspective and consider it as no more than a terrible criminal act against an unarmed soldier standing at the War Memorial. Obviously the guy had criminal intent as he entered the parliament buildings with a loaded gun and came within feet of the where the Prime Minister and the Leader of Opposition normally stay. We have to ask some tough questions, no doubt, but I don’t know that we should come to core conclusions about Canadian society based on what appears to be isolated individuals acting out some measure of anger or insanity driven by their own personal circumstances.”

“When I was Chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade and later as Chair of the Special Committee on Anti-Terrorism, we issued some very interesting reports on things like home-grown terrorism which made it clear that there is a significant impact of the web on young males – not necessarily of any ethnic background in particular – who would act out a measure of frustration through violence. We need to understand our linkages to younger members of our community and look at a broader problem that we have where young men are not getting into university like they used to and aren’t doing as well economically as they used to. As far as I am concerned, the two freedoms that matter most in this world are freedom from fear and freedom from want. And if you look at those parts of the world that are most torn up by terrorism, there is an absence from freedom of fear and an absence of freedom from want. These two absences feed off each other.”

When pressed on the similarities between this stance and the one taken by Justin Trudeau in reference to “root causes” following the Boston Bombings, Segal is quick to reply.

“Let me be clear. We absolutely need to understand the entire cohort of folks who tend to be the age group and gender demographic from which these violent actors have emerged. This doesn’t suggest, however, that every kid that comes from a poor background or that every kid who has been marginalized will act out. And this is where I think Trudeau meant well but got it wrong. We need to look first at our security apparatus and the quality of our criminal intelligence work, and only after that should you look at root causes.”

***

“I’ll be the first to admit that we have a crisis of confidence with our Senate.”

In the wake of the Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin scandals, various accusations have been leveled against the house of “sober second thought.” Segal weighs in with his views.

“One of the most challenging political crises for me was during the government motion to throw out Senators Wallin and Duffy because of an alleged gross misconduct. I felt it quite inappropriate that there hadn’t been a trial or due process and was surprised to see them considered the imposition of what would amount to be a $270,000 fine in lost salaries over what might have been as much as $60,000 in dispute. I’m not suggesting that everyone is beyond reproach here – on the contrary, I am very careful about taxpayer’s money – but to throw people under the bus in such a manner was a violation of everything I believe in.”

Segal continues concisely. “It wasn’t a popular position to have at the time, but I had it because I still use a mirror to shave every morning and I have to look at myself in it and ask, ‘was this the right thing to have done or not?’”

When asked about ways to combat the crisis of confidence Segal presents an incredibly interesting perspective.

“I’ve always supported the notion that there should be a more democratic base for how the Senate should operate. To have such a major part of our legislature in Ottawa not be elected is truly stunning. The fact that the elected Member of Parliament for Kingston has no greater power to introduce legislation or to vote in favour or against legislation than I did as an unelected Senator is not acceptable.”

“And so I think there is a middle ground on this that can help improve our Senate without needing to amend the constitution. We did this during the Meech Lake Accord: Mulroney did not give up his constitutionally enshrined right of appointment but said ‘I won’t appoint anyone unless they’ve been chosen in some democratic way by a province.’ And so then Alberta had Senate elections in 1989 and they elected Stan Waters, a retired general, who Mulroney then appointed to the Senate. None of this was a violation of the constitution.”

As the interview comes to a close, Segal is quick to make a final statement, “I don’t think the notion that we can have this institution go on in perpetuity without being elected makes any sense. We cannot give up the project of making our Upper Chamber more democratic. If anything, we need to protect our institutions of government and make them more adaptable to our changing world.”

Given Hugh Segal’s storied career in policy, business, and politics as well as his steadfast commitment to his principles, very few are so well poised to do so.

#HughSegal #MasseyCollege