John Crosbie, a firebrand of a politician who served in several federal cabinet portfolios and who played a dominant role in his beloved Newfoundland and Labrador for decades, has died.
He was 88.
“To Newfoundland and Labrador and to Canada, he was an independent spirit, a passionate nation builder, an orator of biting wit and charm, and always — forever — a tireless fighter for the people,” reads a family statement released Friday morning.
“John’s is a legacy worth celebrating, a life worth emulating, a name indelibly etched in the history of this place we love.”
General visitation for Crosbie will take place at the House of Assembly in St. John’s on Jan. 14-15 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. NT.
A funeral service will be held at the Anglican Cathedral on Jan. 16 at 2 p.m.
Condolences from former prime ministers, colleagues, friends and media personalities alike came rolling in Friday, as news of Crosbie’s death spread across the country.
During a remarkable career that took him from St. John’s city council to the inner sanctum of Parliament Hill, from fishing wharfs to the negotiating rooms of international trade agreements, Crosbie earned praise — and criticism — for his quick wit, saucy tongue and willingness to make controversial decisions.
Chief among those was a stomach-churning decision to shut down the northern cod fishery off Newfoundland and Labrador in 1992, a decision that instantly put an estimated 30,000 people out of work and triggered what was called the single largest industrial layoff in Canadian history.
John Crosbie tells CBC News in 2017 about his experience in politics, when he says he had to fight for a better compensation package for displaced fisheries workers in 1992. (CBC)
He also oversaw Canada’s fateful 1989 free-trade agreement with the United States, championed the Hibernia offshore oil megaproject in the years before its development, and served as a powerful regional minister in an era when cabinet portfolios were allowed that kind of clout. A titan of Tory politics, he was unapologetic about patronage, claiming that appointing qualified supporters to public positions was key to democracy.
Crosbie never served as premier of Newfoundland and Labrador nor prime minister, but he was politically ambitious, launching unsuccessful leadership attempts at the provincial and federal levels.
In his later years, he served as Newfoundland and Labrador’s lieutenant-governor, a ceremonial role he embraced between 2008 and 2013.
His last major public appearance was in September 2018, when his son Ches Crosbie won a provincial byelection. Ches Crosbie is now the leader of the Opposition Tories in Newfoundland and Labrador’s House of Assembly.
Lt.-Gov. John Crosbie in the Newfoundland and Labrador legislature in St. John’s March 22, 2010. (The Canadian Press)
Born into privilege
John Carnell Crosbie was born Jan. 30, 1931, in St. John’s to a prominent business family. He overcame the painful shyness of his youth to emerge as a potent political force, with his career in public life stretching from the 1960s through to his final years.
Although known for a caustic wit and a willingness to argue with any political opponent, Crosbie — who trained first as a lawyer — once found public speaking so mortifying that he enrolled in a Dale Carnegie course to muster the courage to speak in public.
His political career accelerated quickly. Crosbie jumped from a seat on St. John’s city council to a cabinet seat in the Liberal government of legendary Newfoundland premier Joseph R. Smallwood in 1966.
Lt-Gov. Crosbie, wearing a sealskin coat, and his wife, Jane, greet Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, at Government House for a tree planting ceremony Nov. 4, 2009, in St. John’s. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)
But Crosbie resisted becoming a Smallwood protegé, and in 1968 quit cabinet — with future Liberal premier Clyde Wells — over frustrations with a deal Smallwood wanted to make with American industrialist John Shaheen over an oil refinery at Come By Chance.
Crosbie stayed on the sidelines of the provincial Liberals before stepping into a leadership race in 1969 to replace Smallwood. His ambitions were thwarted in bizarre fashion, though, when Smallwood — still the sitting premier — entered the leadership race to replace himself, insisting that Liberals could not trust the young politician he decried as a “merchant princeling.”
Crosbie broke ranks with the Liberals and, in a fateful move, jumped to the Progressive Conservatives, helping the once-feeble Newfoundland Tories muster enough strength to topple the 23-year grip on power that Smallwood had enjoyed. With Frank Moores as premier, Crosbie emerged as the de facto powerhouse of the PC government, serving in roles that included finance and government House leader.
By 1976, the lure of federal politics took Crosbie to Ottawa, after he won a byelection in St. John’s West — the riding he would represent for most of the next two decades.
Crosbie in the House Of Commons on May 17, 1988. (Chuck Mitchell/The Canadian Press)
In 1979, he was finance minister in Joe Clark’s short-lived Tory government, wearing mukluks (rather than the traditional new pair of shoes) to bring in a tough-love budget that included tax increases for what Crosbie called “short-term pain for long-term gain.”
Clark’s government wound up having a short term, with the NDP putting Crosbie’s budget to a non-confidence vote that triggered a new election.
In 1983, Crosbie entered the subsequent PC leadership contest that Clark called to resolve tensions within the party. He wound up placing third, behind Clark and the victor, Brian Mulroney. Crosbie declined to endorse either candidate, and earned attention as the largest defender of free trade in the race. But his campaign came under attack when, defending his inability to speak French, he quipped that he could not speak Mandarin Chinese, either.
Federal front bench
As a key member of Mulroney’s team in the wake of the Tory triumph in the 1984 election, Crosbie held several portfolios in the years to come: justice, transport, international trade and fishery.
A dedicated free trader, Crosbie held the torch for Canada as it negotiated the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. The FTA became the template for NAFTA, the trilateral agreement later reached with Mexico.
His time in Parliament was marked as much by colour and controversy as by his political ambitions.
Federal Fisheries Minister Crosbie confronts fishermen in Bay Bulls on July 1, 1992. (CBC)
“Just quiet down, baby,” he told Liberal MP Sheila Copps in an infamous June 1985 exchange in the House of Commons. “I’m not his baby, and I’m nobody’s baby,” Copps fired back.
Five years later, Crosbie ignited another controversy about Copps when he quoted the lyrics of a Bobby Bare song at a B.C. fundraising dinner. “Pass the tequila, Sheila, and lay down and love me again,” he said. Crosbie and Copps, despite the headlines, became friends. She titled her 1986 autobiography Nobody’s Baby and he wrote the introduction for her second book, Worth Fighting For, in 2004.
Crosbie frequently earned the ire of feminists — New Democrat Dawn Black, one of what Crosbie called the “four horsewomen of the apocalypse” once called him a “Crosbiesaurus” — but he also held firm to Red Tory beliefs. Pro-choice, Crosbie actually fought in 1990 for the reinstatement of funding that had been cut for women’s programs across Canada, and held progressive views on social issues, including protecting LGBT people from discrimination.
Shutting down the fishery
In his final years in cabinet, Crosbie took on the fisheries portfolio — as well as the politically difficult decision to shut down the northern cod fishery on July 2, 1992. The decision came after months of consistently worsening reports of the state of cod stocks, and would be followed by other closures in Atlantic Canadian waters.
The day before, on Canada Day, Crosbie uttered one of his most famous remarks when he was confronted by angry fishermen on the wharf in Bay Bulls.
“Why are you yelling at me? I didn’t take the fish from the God damn water,” Crosbie yelled back.
Ches Crosbie, right, sits beside his father on Dec. 18, 2014. (The Canadian Press)
It was a sign of Crosbie’s clout in cabinet that he was able to deliver a massive compensation package that provided transitional income for about 28,000 people who either fished for a living or worked in fish plants that subsequently closed.
Crosbie retired from federal politics in 1993, the same year the PCs would be not only cleared out of office but reduced to a caucus of just two seats. Crosbie, who thought little of Kim Campbell’s leadership, found himself to be the blunt party member who called it the way he saw it after the loss.
“The world knows who’s responsible,” Crosbie told CBC News. “It’s the leader and those immediately around her who advised during the course of the election campaign. They must bear the burden of responsibility.”
Semi-public life
Although Crosbie would toy with the idea of a return to elected office — he briefly entertained the thought of a federal comeback leading into the 2004 election — he found other pursuits after Ottawa.
He wrote a 1997 memoir, No Holds Barred: My Life In Politics, in which he detailed behind-the-scenes exchanges with his former colleagues among the high and mighty. He also acknowledged that his sense of humour could be a liability with some pundits and journalists.
Conservative cabinet minister Crosbie is invested as Officer to the Order of Canada by Gov. Gen. Romeo LeBlanc at a ceremony at Rideau hall in Ottawa in 1999. (Tom Hanson/The Canadian Press)
“I refused to act as though I’d been weaned on a pickle,” he wrote, describing how he stood out from other politicians.
“The media, however, wouldn’t make the effort to listen to what I was saying or understand what I was doing. Instead, they stereotyped me as a buffoon, an entertainer, a jokester who was incapable of taking serious matters seriously.”
Crosbie also found himself bristling at having been often labelled a “loose cannon because I refused to pussyfoot around issues and only say safe, predictable things.”
Away from the political limelight, Crosbie returned to a private legal practice, but found new ways to participate in public life.
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, left, shares a laugh with Crosbie, chancellor of Memorial University, as Chrétien receives an honorary doctor of laws degree in St. John’s on May, 24, 2000. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
In 1994, he was named chancellor of Memorial University, a post he held for 14 years.
In 2008, he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Newfoundland and Labrador. His five-year term returned him often to the public eye, albeit in a much more ceremonial fashion.
During his tenure as lieutenant-governor, Crosbie pursued a project of passion: developing a memorial to sealers, particularly those killed in a notorious 1914 disaster. The Home From The Sea centre and memorial was formally unveiled in 2014.
OTTAWA – Whole Foods Market is joining the growing list of brands whose frozen waffles have been recalled in Canada this week because of possible listeria contamination.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says the newest recall spans the Amazon-owned grocer’s organic homestyle and blueberry waffles sold under the 365 Whole Foods Market label.
The agency says the waffles recalled by Horizon Distributors Ltd. were sold in British Columbia, but may have also made their way to other provinces and territories.
It adds there have been no reported illnesses associated with the waffles, but the agency is conducting a food safety investigation, which it says may lead to the recall of other products.
Dozens of frozen waffles from brands like Compliments, Great Value, Duncan Hines and No Name were recalled earlier in the week over similar listeria concerns.
Food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes may not look or smell spoiled but can cause vomiting, nausea, persistent fever, muscle aches, severe headache and neck stiffness.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2024.
The 26-year-old dreams of going back to university to study politics and environmental science, and ultimately pursue a career to “try and make things better” in society.
“I’m not the person I want to be yet and I want to be able to achieve certain goals and be a well-rounded, well developed person. But I’m prevented from doing that because I live in legislated poverty,” they said.
Thompson is one of 600,000 working-age Canadians with disabilities that the federal government said it would help lift out of poverty with the Canada Disability Benefit, which takes effect next July. The program is meant as a top-up to existing provincial and territorial income supports.
“We had huge expectations and we had all this hope, like finally we can escape poverty,” Thompson said.
But after last spring’s federal budget revealed that the maximum people will receive per month is $200, the hopes of people like Thompson were dashed. Now, advocates are asking the federal government to reconsider the amount in the months before the benefit rolls out.
Thompson, who uses they/them pronouns, has worked at Tim Horton’s, Staples and a call centre, but said their physical and mental disabilities — including osteoarthritis, which “heavily impacts” their mobility, along with clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder — have forced them to leave.
They look for jobs, but many require the ability to lift or stand for long periods, which they can’t do. So Thompson lives on $1,449 a month from the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and shares a house with three roommates in Kingston, Ont., along with Thompson’s 12-year-old emotional support cat, Captain Kirk.
Thompson went to university in 2017, but their mental health issues flared and they had to leave after a semester. Seven years later, they’re still trying to pay that student loan back.
When Bill C-22, which mandated the creation of a Canada Disability Benefit, was passed into law last year, Thompson was “so excited.”
A news release issued by the federal government on June 22, 2023 called the legislation “groundbreaking,” saying the disability benefit would “supplement existing federal and provincial/territorial disability supports, and will help lift working-age persons with disabilities out of poverty.”
It said the benefit would be part of the government’s “disability inclusion action plan” that would “address longstanding inequities that have led to the financial insecurity and exclusion” experienced by people with disabilities.
The government simply hasn’t lived up to its promise, said Amanda MacKenzie, national director of external affairs for March of Dimes Canada, one of the organizations that supported the creation of the benefit.
Now that a public consultation period on the benefit ended last month, she is hoping the government will reconsider and increase the benefit amount in its next budget.
”These are people that are living well under the $30,000 a year mark, for the most part,” MacKenzie said.
“These are the people that you hear about all the time that are saying, ‘I can only have two or one meal a day. I can only afford to take my medication every other day … I can’t support my kids. I can’t help my family. I can’t do anything because you know, I can barely pay my rent,'” she said.
March of Dimes Canada and many people with disabilities all participated in early government consultations about how the federal benefit could be effective in topping up provincial disability support programs to provide a livable income.
”Who were they listening to?” asked Thomas Cheesman, a 43-year-old in Grande Prairie, Alta., receiving provincial disability benefits due to a rare disorder that causes his bones to break down.
“Not one single disabled person would say that this is an adequate program,” he said.
Cheesman was born with Hajdu-Cheney Syndrome and knew he wouldn’t be able to work as long as most people, but managed to work as a chef until he was 39.
At that point, his physical symptoms became so debilitating he had to stop.
“It was just too dangerous between either taking medications to handle pain and being distracted from that, or not being able to function because of the pain,” he said.
Cheesman and his wife, who works as a supervisor at Costco, have three children. Before the Canada Disability Benefit became law, he “did a lot of math” and calculated it would need to total almost $1,000 a month for his family “to have a life outside of poverty.”
In an emailed response to The Canadian Press, the office of Kamal Khera, minister of diversity, inclusion and persons with disabilities, said it was making a $6.1-billion investment “to improve the financial security of over 600,000 persons with disabilities.”
“This is a historic initial investment … and is intended to supplement, not replace, existing provincial and territorial income support measures,” said Khera’s press secretary, Waleed Saleem.
“We also aspire to see the combined amount of federal and provincial or territorial income supports for persons with disabilities grow to the level of Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), to fundamentally address the rates of poverty experienced by persons with disabilities.”
That would mean people with disabilities would get a total monthly income equal to what low-income seniors get from the federal government.
MacKenzie said the lack of adequate financial support for people with disabilities is “not OK,” noting that the money they spend goes back into the economy.
“We tell people with disabilities that what they deserve and what we can afford to give them in society is an existence. It’s not a life,” she said.
For Thompson, that’s “a really hard pill for me to swallow.”
”A lot of people don’t see us as human. They see us as a drain on society,” they said.
”We’re worth investing in.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2024.
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MONTREAL – The Quebec Liberal Party has called for the French language commissioner to investigate the cancelling of some French-language training courses for newcomers to the province.
Citing an “ongoing series of closures of francization programs,” the Opposition party announced Saturday morning in a news release that its critics for the French language and French classes, André Albert Morin and Madwa-Nika Cadet, sent a letter to the Commissioner of the French Language.
The letter asks commissioner Benoît Dubreuil to “investigate to ensure that the right to French language learning services, included in the Charter of the French Language, is respected,” the release said.
The Liberals are blaming the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s budgetary decisions, which it says, “jeopardize the possibility for immigrants to become French speakers within a time frame that would facilitate their integration into the job market and into Quebec society.”
In several interviews this week, Quebec’s Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge blamed school service centres for the closures, saying his government has actually increased budgets for French-language courses.
However, media reports this week described education centres forced to cut back on programming because of budget constraints imposed on them by the province, which have also resulted in teachers losing their jobs.
“These cuts have led, in recent weeks, to the cancellation of French courses, particularly in the regions of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, the Capitale-Nationale, Estrie, Laval , the Laurentides, Mauricie and Montreal,” the release said.
Aside from cancellations, the Liberals say average wait times for full-time French study has recently doubled to four months while people who are enrolled are sometimes forced to travel hundreds of kilometres to attend class.
“There is an impression of disorder that suggests the government is unable to meet its obligations under the Charter of the French Language,” the letter sent to the Commissioner late Friday stated.
The closures come at a time of increased demand for the classes, with Quebec currently hosting around 600,000 temporary immigrants. Quebec has repeatedly asked the federal government for more power and funds to deal with the surge in newcomers, but the CAQ leadership has also come under fire from Ottawa.
Federal Public Services and Procurement Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Friday that the $750 million the federal government is spending to help the province with newcomers is not being fully used.
“We absolutely must invest the necessary sums in francization,” said Duclos. “If we want new arrivals to be able to reach their full potential, we have to offer them appropriate services.”
Cadet told The Canadian Press in an interview the government is clearly struggling to provide the right to learn French.
“So in our opinion, the commissioner should have the mandate to investigate this, and that’s why we wrote him this letter,” Cadet said, but would not say whether her party would increase French-language budgets.
Last February, Dubreuil stated it would cost between $10.6 and $12.9 billion for all temporary immigrants to complete intermediate-level training in French.
Cadet responded by saying, “I don’t think we’re in that type of scenario. I think there’s a way to better deploy the offer and make sure there are no service breakdowns.”
–With files from La Presse Canadienne
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2024.
