The Story of Jean Chretien and His Yellow Paving Machine

Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came calling in Alberta with cash in hand and the provincial government's nose was out of joint. It was no surprise.

It involved a scary head of security for the PM and concerns a bomb might have been planted at the event.

Snubbed by the PM

I was amused by the antics of our politicians last week when Prime Minister Trudeau came to Edmonton to announce the city would be getting $175 million to help build affordable housing.

The announcement was held in front of an apartment block under construction and even though it was a news conference for a few members of the media and some hangers on, the PM made it sound as if he was doing a campaign speech in front of a full arena. I thought he needed to tone his pitch down several notches, but that’s not the point here.

Conspicuous in their absence were members of the provincial government. The PM and MP’s were there, along with Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, but there was nobody from the province.

Minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services Jason Nixon said they hadn’t been invited, which technically could be true. Premier Danielle Smith sent a nasty Tweet about something Trudeau had said on Ryan Jespersen’s show and accused the PM of not wanting to meet with her while he was here.

Smith’s government is ticked the money is going directly from the federal government to the City of Edmonton. The province sees municipalities as its children and doesn’t want anyone to interfere. It’s much the same as grandparents giving their grandchild a toy and the parents being upset because they don’t want their kid to have it.

This almost predictable exchange between the province and the feds took me back many years ago when I was doing Communications for the City of Edmonton and found myself smack dab in the middle of a similar fight.

Paving the Country

In 1994 I was trying to put together a photo opp for Prime Minister Jean Chretien on short notice. Really short notice. I was told the Prime Minister’s Office wanted to promote the Canada-Alberta Works Infrastructure Program, in which each of the three levels of government contributed equal amounts to build and repair infrastructure.

I chose a paving project on 153 Avenue in Edmonton for the event, which was to be held at noon on a Friday. Two days before, I met at the site in Castle Downs with John Brennan from the Mayor’s office and an advance man from the Prime Minister’s Office. I’ve long since forgotten his name.

I told them about my idea of having Chretien drive a paving machine from the contractor Wells Construction, over a small mound of hot asphalt, get off the paver, answer some questions from the media and go inside the nearby coffee shop to shake hands and kiss babies.

The advance man loved it. I remember him saying “It will look like Jean is paving the country.” I nodded my head in agreement.

The only problem I had was trying to get somebody from the provincial government to commit to attending. I found out later Premier Ralph Klein had no use for events like this because in his opinion, Alberta didn’t have the money to be building new infrastructure. He also wanted no part of celebrations like this because of the optics.

How many paving machines I needed and how I would fit Mayor Jan Reimer into this plan remained up in the air until I heard back from the province.

The Scary Security Guy

Friday arrived and it was a perfect spring day. Late the previous afternoon we learned that cabinet minister Steve West would represent the province. I had to find a paving machine for him to drive to keep everyone happy. Mayor Reimer was content to ride on the same machine the PM was going to be driving. That made my life easier.

As it turned out, the media and everyone there followed the PM and Mayor around and West was left driving his paver by himself in the distance. That’s not the story though.

Two hours before the event started, I met with Brennan and the advance man from the PMO at the same spot we had met on Wednesday to go over the plan again. The advance man introduced me to the head of security for the Prime Minister.

This guy looked like he walked right out of Hollywood casting. Big guy, wide shoulders, slicked back dark hair and he was wearing black aviator sunglasses. He was scary looking and had my attention right away.

The advance man said since this was my event I should run through the plan. When I got to the part about the paver, the security guy stopped me and asked “Paver”?

“Yeah that yellow one right over there”, I said as I pointed to a paving machine about a half a block away.

The head of security turned and looked at the advance man and said “You didn’t tell me about no f*&cking paver.” The advance man looked like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar and started to mumble something about not having enough time to communicate the plan properly to him.

The security guy cut him off and got right in his face and said “We don’t have enough time now to sweep that paver. You and I have had this problem before and we’re not going to have it again!”

It felt like the temperature had suddenly dropped by 20-degrees. He then turned to me and politely said “Proceed.”

In my most professional voice possible, I briefly ran over the rest of the plan. The security guy quickly turned and as soon as he started walking towards the paver, he pulled out his walkie talkie and called for somebody to bring out bomb sniffing dogs.

It had never occurred to me the paving machine needed to be checked for bombs. This was 30-years ago. In those days Mayor Reimer arrived for news conferences driving her beat up Toyota. No security was around most of the time.

The event came off without a hitch. The next day in newspapers across the country, front pages had photos of Chretien wearing a hard hat and driving that yellow paver. The photo above came from the front page of the Edmonton Journal.

The advance man was right, but I’m not sure he survived that photo opp.