The Secret Mulroney Tapes by Peter C. Newman

Author:Peter C. Newman [Newman, Peter C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-37074-7
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2005-02-20T16:00:00+00:00

1 Ironically, Dr. Pivnicki treated Margaret Trudeau in the late 1970s, when the position of being the prime minister’s wife grew so frustrating that she sought solace with the Rolling Stones.

12.

The dirty dozen

——

Some People Who Really Bugged Him

“NAZIS”: THE RAT PACK

Mulroney’s nemesis in the House of Commons was the Rat Pack, a loose assembly of young Liberal MPs who relied on shock tactics. The group—which included Sheila Copps, Brian Tobin, Don Boudria and John Nunziata—capitalized on John Turner’s shaky leadership and the indulgence of the Speaker of the House, John Bosley, to savage Mulroney at every opportunity.

Mulroney minced no words:

The Rat Pack? These are Nazis. They deal in lies and calumnies. They are the worst kind. The Liberals developed this Nazi-style caliper—tell a lie often enough about somebody and people will believe it.

Copps and the F-word:

MULRONEY: I’m in Question Period and to my absolute horror, I’m getting the shaft for being the co-chairman of the UN Summit on Children. Then finally this guy from Winnipeg gets up and accuses me of bringing in these children from across the country to have a photo op. And I said in a very loud voice—very loud voice—“That vulgar bastard. What a vulgar bastard to say something like that before Christmas on an event that involves children, I can’t believe it.” I could care less who heard me, what do I care? Then Sheila Copps comes out and said I used the words “fucking bastard,” which of course I never did.

It was a lie, but to show you the hypocrisy and the cant and the unprincipled nature of the House of Commons and its members, when I went back upstairs to my office on the second floor, there were about fifty reporters and they were not interested in the children—all they were interested in is whether I used the words “fucking bastard” …

That night on television they led with Sheila Copps fabricating a falsehood. So what happened? The media should have been after Sheila Copps to apologize to me, but not a word. The case we made for children, gone down the sewer because the media were chasing around the House of Commons asking me whether I used those words. They weren’t interested in the word “bastard.” No one is interested in that. It was the “fucking,” and I had never used it. Sheila is a partisan but she’s also her own worst enemy and she’ll never be a leader because she has no judgment. She never knows when to stop.

Chief press secretary Bill Fox thought Mulroney made matters worse:

I don’t think the prime minister should take questions from anybody except the leaders of the two opposition parties. You get the short fuse because Sheila Copps is just egging him on, egging him on. If he doesn’t get up, Sheila Copps is nobody; she doesn’t make The National. Let them hoot and holler. Nunziata is a psycho—he makes the wildest accusations, completely unsubstantiated. If the prime minister gets up, he gives them legitimacy.

I like Bosley a lot, but he’s completely ineffective.

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