John Turner: the pilot who weathered the storm

By Thomas S. Axworthy

Left to right- Brian Mulroney, John Turner and Ed Broadbent. (Wayne Cuddington/The Citizen)

As our national party leaders participate in televised debates this week, it is a good time to recall perhaps the greatest election debate in our history, the televised showdowns between Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Liberal leader John Turner 20 years ago this month.

It was the famous 1988 Free Trade Election and until the leaders, including Ed Broadbent of the NDP, stood before the cameras that fall, Canada’s Progressive Conservatives were in the midst of a relatively easy election victory.

But as Turner showed that year, debates can matter. Though Mulroney went on to win and the Free Trade Agreement was to become a reality, the PC victory that year was anything but easy --  because of Turner.

Turner reached the summit of Canadian politics by becoming Prime Minister, though only briefly, four years before the debates of 1988.  He had had a golden career, rarely making a mistake, before his resignation in 1975.  But his return to active politics in 1984 was rocky. 

“A week is a long time in politics”, said Prime Minister Harold Wilson of Great Britain, and Turner had been away for nearly eight years.  In the 1984 television debate, Mulroney clearly bested him and a proud man leading a proud party was reduced to 40 seats, only 10 ahead of the NDP. 

As the 1988 election approached, the media conceded victory to Mulroney and said the real question was whether Ed Broadbent’s NDP would replace Turner’s Liberals as the Official Opposition.  We are seeing some of the same reporting and commentary today.

One man, though, made a difference, 20 years ago this fall.  Turner turned the situation around with the old-fashioned idea that election campaigns are about issues and platforms, not personalities and polls. 

He had read every paragraph of the 1,407-page Free Trade Agreement that Mulroney’s government had signed with the United States.  Defeating that agreement, he said, was “the cause of my life”. 

Waving the agreement before crowds in community halls, school gymnasiums, and church basements, Turner ignited Canadians.  In the French and English television debates on October 24 and 25, 1988, he marginalized Broadbent and confronted Mulroney. 

The last 15 minutes of the English language debate was the best performance of Turner’s career.  Those 15 minutes saved the Liberal Party.

Turner did not win the 1988 election.  His debate performance, however, briefly moved the Liberals into the lead.  “I have never been more serious in my life,” he told Mulroney, his eyes steely blue once again, as million of Canadians watched.

This, in turn, galvanized the Conservatives and the business community who spent millions of dollars in advertising to “bomb the bridge” of Turner’s credibility.  The Conservatives won a majority, and the Free Trade Agreement became law. 

 But Turner doubled the number of Liberal seats and it was clear that if the Conservatives stumbled, it would be the Liberals who profited. 

Speculation about the NDP replacing the Liberal Party ceased.  When Turner retired in 1990, the Liberals were poised to dominate the decade.
 
Turner’s character is defined even more by his defeats than by his successes.  He never gave up.  In 1988, he soldiered on, nearly alone, a bad back aching.  He never lost faith in the kind of Canada that had given him such an opportunity to shine. 

We will never know if he would have made a great Prime Minister; we do know that he was a great Liberal leader who remained true to the verities of one era, while trying to adapt to the demands of another.  For the Liberal Party, he was the pilot who weathered the storm.

Thomas S. Axworthy is Chair of the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD)  at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He’s been a long-time Liberal and was speechwriter and policy adviser to Pierre Trudeau. The CSD is hosting a Tribute Conference and re-enactment of the Great Debate of 1988 at Queen’s University on Oct. 24 – the 20th anniversary of the first Mulroney-Turner debate in the 1988 election campaign. See www.Queensu.ca/csd for further details.