Jean Chrétien belled the Alberta cat in a way that everyone can understand: ‘They never sold as much oil as they have today and they’re complaining as if they are going bankrupt?’
By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on November 10, 2025.
OTTAWA—Jean Chrétien spent more than 40 years in public life. Upon taking his leave, he still maintains a rabid interest in politics, and has often joked about returning to help the Liberal Party when it has been in need.
Prime Minister Mark Carney thought so much of Chrétien that he invited him to the government’s first swearing in on March 14 at Rideau Hall. At that point, Chrétien revealed a little historical gem. Carney’s father had run for the Liberals in an Edmonton riding back in the 1980 federal election.
Carney’s invitation to Chrétien was an abrupt departure from his predecessor’s government’s treatment of the former prime minister.
Justin Trudeau liked to reach out across the aisle to enlist former Conservatives like Rona Ambrose to work with cabinet on files. But his government was loathe to involve former prime ministers or former senior Liberal cabinet ministers in any policy or political development.
At one point, business leaders across the country and former prime minister Brian Mulroney reached out to Trudeau to convince him that Chrétien could negotiate a peace agreement with the Chinese after the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018.
The offer was leaked to the media before it had been accepted by the Prime Minister’s Office. Then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland went ahead to publicly snub Chrétien by stating that if she needed his help, she would be in touch.
Trudeau was probably worried about working too closely with his father’s generation, since Chrétien had been a minister with Pierre Trudeau, working closely on the 1982 repatriation of the Constitution and the establishment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
As political offspring, younger Trudeau obviously wanted to chart his own course, but in bypassing Chrétien, his government ignored wisdom that could have helped.
Trudeau’s fight with the Chinese went on for two years. Even after the telecom executive had been freed in a deal crafted with the Americans in 2021, Canada continued to suffer the ire of a Chinese government insulted by the government’s treatment of a senior business leader.
Chrétien could easily have gotten the Canadian government out of this mess because he also had a deep personal relationship with members of the Chinese government, and that history would have resulted in a solution.
Instead, political neophytes like Freeland kept repeating the promise to uphold “law and order,” all the while doing the Americans’ dirty work.
The United States government used Canada as a stand-in, and then cut a deal with Wanzhou that made our southern neighbours look good while this country suffered.
Chrétien’s wisdom shone through again last week when he weighed in on current Canadian politics and the peculiar stance of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
His simple “I put pepper on my plate” logic applied in many areas. And as he said about Smith, she is flirting with the separatists on the one hand, while on the other hand, she wants Canada to intervene in the provincial politics of neighbouring British Columbia.
Chrétien also pulled no punches when recently referring to U.S. President Donald Trump as a leader who is posing a threat to democracy.
The former prime minister, who learned to speak English in his thirties, possesses the gift of straight talk in both official languages.
Some Quebec elites in his day criticized him because they felt his use of the French language was not sophisticated enough for their crowd. They believed his vocabulary could be subjected to ridicule.
On the contrary, people love his ability to take a complex question and boil it down to the truth.
The truth for Smith is that she is talking out of both sides of her mouth. While loosening the rules and numerical requirements for a referendum, Smith is sending a signal to her supporters that separation is positive.
She also continues to threaten separation if her government’s proposed pipeline project is not immediately endorsed by the rest of Canada. She can’t convince a private sector company to invest in the project, but, nonetheless, she keeps repeating that this is a test for the country.
Chrétien belled the Alberta cat in a way that everyone can understand: “They never sold as much oil as they have today, and they’re complaining as if they are going bankrupt?”
Chrétien always mixes wisdom with humour.
When his beloved wife Aline was alive, the former prime minister joked that she was only one stopping him from jumping back into politics.
He still weighs in periodically, and reminds all of us that to be good in politics, funny trumps nasty.
Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.
