Northern Ontario former MPs reflect on life in cabinet, backbenches
'Lobbying a prime minister to get nominated is the best way of not getting it,' says ex-Nipissing MP
Two former northern Ontario Liberal MPs show there is a real divide between the backbenchers and those chosen to sit at the cabinet table.
Speaking on CBC Radio's Morning North, former Nickel Belt MP Ray Bonin said that one of the reasons he didn't make it into cabinet during his 15 years in Parliament is that he didn't always tow the party line.
"I knew full well that being in cabinet meant I had to vote 100 per cent with my party, even with issues of morality," said Bonin, who voted against his own government several times on gay marriage.
But Jean-Jacques Blais, the former Nipissing MP who sat in the cabinet of Pierre Trudeau in the late 1970s and early 1980s, said being a minister doesn't mean you don't get to express your opinion.
"You don't get your way every time and on every issue. I lost a lot of battles in cabinet," said Blais, who served as postmaster, solicitor general and minister of defence.
"I would argue and of course, subsequently, join with my colleagues, even though the position might not be one that I prefer."
'Certain mentality' in Ottawa
Blais was first elected in 1972. Four years later, he was giving a speech in Sturgeon Falls, Ont., when someone pulled him aside to say that the prime minister wanted to speak with him about a cabinet post.
"As an ambitious politician, I was very pleased," he said.
Blais added there is a lot of competition among MPs to move into the inner circle, but in his time, that competition was never out in the open.
"Lobbying a prime minister to get nominated is the best way of not getting it," he said.
When he was elected in 1993, Blais said he had decided to focus on constituency work instead of trying to move up in the party.
But he expressed some frustration at the divide between cabinet and the backbenchers, saying the numerous committees MPs sit on are often "a waste of time" in the nation's capital.
"There's a certain mentality in the leadership in Ottawa: keep these guys busy, because they're going to get in trouble," he said.