Unlikely Insider: A West Coast Advocate in Ottawa

By Jack Austin with Edie Austin

McGill-Queen’s University Press/2023

Reviewed by David O. Johnston

March 14, 2023

Jack Austin’s reputation in Canadian politics is dominated by his time served as a Senator, and with good reason. Austin entered the upper chamber in 1975 at the senatorially unripe age of 43, and was its longest serving member when he stepped down in 2007 at the mandatory retirement age of 75.

But as his newly published memoir, Unlikely Insider: A West Coast Advocate in Ottawa, reminds us, Austin was a significant player in the capital even before his Senate years, although in an unelected capacity. He only ran once for office, in Vancouver-Kingsway in 1965, and lost. But a decade later, he was in the prime minister’s office, the third of five people to serve as principal secretary, or chief of staff, to Pierre Trudeau.

This is a book that could have been written earlier. After all, Austin left the Senate 16 years ago and just turned 91. It took some nudging from his eldest daughter, Edie — editorial-page editor of the Montreal Gazette until her retirement last week — to light the spark. She wrote the first couple of chapters. As Austin writes in his Acknowledgements, he was surprised how well she had captured his voice and viewpoints. From there on, father and daughter worked together. The result is a very readable memoir, from a western Canadian who has made valuable contribution to Canadian public life.

As Austin remembers his two years as principal secretary in 1974-75, he started out eager to please the famously difficult-to-please Trudeau. One day, he took it upon himself to write a speech that he thought the prime minister should deliver.

Austin says Trudeau rolled the speech up into a ball and threw it into a wastepaper basket.

“Not very good, Jack,” he vividly remembers Trudeau saying.

Austin writes, “I didn’t get the sense he was particularly uncomfortable with my speech, but he wanted to say, in effect, ‘Don’t presume to try to help me where no need is evident. You have enough to do without going outside your job description.’ I remember the incident well because it fascinated me in terms of his setting the personal space between us.”

That space would narrow over time after Trudeau left public life in 1984, as and he and Austin forged a personal friendship and became travel companions during Austin’s Senate years. There’s a separate chapter in Unlikely Insider devoted to Austin’s account of his fascinating travels with private-citizen Trudeau from 1987 to 1994.

Austin says he never imagined a Senate role for himself. As he tells it, he had told Trudeau in 1974 that he hoped his time as principal secretary would be brief. From 1970 to 1974, he had served as deputy minister of energy, mines and resources. He had been a driving force behind the production in 1973 of a white paper on energy policy that ultimately led to the creation of Petro-Canada. Austin says he had made it clear he wanted to become the first chair and CEO of Petro-Canada.

That space would narrow over time after Trudeau left public life in 1984, as and he and Austin forged a personal friendship and became travel companions during Austin’s Senate years.

As it turns out, Maurice Strong was appointed the first chair, and Bill Hopper the first president. Jim Coutts replaced Austin as principal secretary. Austin was offered an ambassadorship to Japan but declined. That’s when he accepted the Senate appointment.

Austin was certainly a credible candidate for a top position at Petro-Canada, given his work as DM, oversight of the white paper and his experience as a private-practice lawyer in Vancouver specializing in natural resources in the late 1950s and 1960s. Along the way, he picked up policy experience in the public sector, serving from 1963-65 as executive assistant to Arthur Laing, minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources.

Born and bred in Calgary, Austin, the son of a grocer, moved to Vancouver to do his post-secondary studies at the University of British Columbia. He was a top student in the law faculty there. His big break, he writes, came shortly after graduation, when he was sought out by the federal government through an intermediary for a legal opinion that helped strengthen Canada’s negotiating position with the US for the Columbia River Treaty in 1961.

Austin’s work in private practice brought him to Japan and opened his eyes to new economic opportunities for Canada in Asia, as well as pegging him as an emerging young Canadian expert on Asia. After Trudeau opened diplomatic relations with China in 1970 — two years before Richard Nixon’s visit to the People’s Republic and eight years before the US established diplomatic relations — Austin was among the 24 people who were part of the first official Canadian delegation to China in 1971. It was the first of many trips to China for Austin. It’s clear from the two chapters in his book about China that his work with that country has meant a lot to him.

In the chapter titled Travels with Pierre, Austin describes what it was like to travel with private-citizen Trudeau. The first of his four travel adventures with the former PM was a 1987 trip along the old Silk Road between Pakistan and China. Travelling with Trudeau were Austin, his wife Natalie, Senator Leo Kolber and his wife Sandra, and their adult son Jonathan. As with the other trips, Austin was the principal organizer. He solicited logistical assistance from Canadian embassies, and the governments of Pakistan and China as well.

So it was that Trudeau’s little group had its own Pakistani military escort that turned into a Chinese military escort when crossing into China. Austin describes their first night in China, at an isolated place with no plumbing and a communal outhouse that had a dozen holes in the ground inside – with no privacy at all. After several days, the group ended up flying to Beijing, where Austin had arranged with Chinese authorities for a special tribute for Trudeau in the Great Hall of the People. All of China’s ambassadors to Canada during the Trudeau years were there.

That big thank you in Beijing, in hindsight, may have been the high point in Canada-China relations. Two years later, the Tiananmen Square massacre damaged China’s international relationships.

Austin writes, “There were many speeches and marvellous discussions about Canada-China relations, Canada’s role in assisting China to take its place in international organizations, and how appreciative they were. It was like a big thank you for the role he had played.”

That big thank you in Beijing, in hindsight, may have been the high point in Canada-China relations. Two years later, the Tiananmen Square massacre damaged China’s international relationships. Austin describes playing a role to help rebuild the relationship by, among other things, helping to organize Team Canada trade missions to China.

Austin completed his book before the recent revelations of alleged Chinese interference in Canadian elections. But he does address Canada’s arrest in 2018 of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver at the request of the US, and China’s retaliatory detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. Austin says there is no doubt these incidents have had a “severe impact” on Canada-China relations.

Having played such a pathfinder role in developing China-Canada relations, Austin had always been hopeful about the bilateral relationship, but he says he was never naïve. “Canada is entirely within the US sphere of influence — no ifs, ands, or buts,” he writes.

As for his old professional digs of 32 years, Austin says the rise of independent Senators has presented new challenges for how the upper chamber operates. How should debates be structured? What should be the rules for representation on committees? There are many new questions. Austin says there should be a public assessment of how things are currently working in the Senate, and that new practices need to be codified.

Unlikely Insider is a book that will appeal to political junkies and general readers alike. It provides valuable new perspectives on some important policy issues, and it is sprinkled with interesting anecdotes and revelations that help keep the narrative moving along at a brisk pace. This is well-constructed memoir. It leaves the reader realizing that nation-building is, has been, and ever will be, a work in progress.

Policy Contributing Writer David O. Johnston served as Regional Representative in Quebec and Nunavut of the federal Commissioner of Official Languages from 2014 to July 2022. Previously, he worked at The Montreal Gazette for 33 years, concluding as editorial page editor.