Tony ClementAnthony Jenkins/The Globe and Mail
The man who just scuttled a $40-billion takeover has a dab of strawberry milkshake on his nose. And I'm not sure whether to tell Tony Clement, a politician possessed with such thirst for life and for milkshakes ("Good and good for you," he says) who has just eschewed his white plastic straw to gulp from the glass.
Also, it would be a shame to interrupt him, as we chat in a quaint family restaurant in Huntsville, Ont., because he's really going now - seized of a fervent belief that Canada's private sector companies are failing to use new technologies that could make the country more productive and competitive.
"Governments are doing their part. Universities are doing their part. Where's business?" he asks with palpable frustration.
"When is business going to do its part? And what are the impediments to them doing their part - other than government doing more and academia doing more. Come on! We are doing more. Let's not go there."
Awkwardly, tapping my nose, I say: "You have a little …"
"Oh, do I?" he says, laughing.
He wipes it off and - poof - it's as if nothing had happened. After all, Mr. Clement, Canada's genial and ideologically flexible Industry Minister, is a true master of plowing through awkward, terrible or downright embarrassing situations to great aplomb - or if not aplomb, then at least to a state of affairs in which Canadians aren't brandishing pitchforks on Parliament Hill.
Where other ministers might get mired in the muck, Mr. Clement has strolled through a large number of recent Conservative controversies, all the while taking to Twitter with irreverent asides. In the past year alone, he killed the apparently beloved mandatory long-form census; causing the head of Statistics Canada to resign; navigated the furor over sole-sourcing a $16-billion contract for gleaming new fighter jets; and, most recently, pulled the plug on BHP Billiton Ltd.'s proposed takeover of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., one of the largest proposed deals in Canadian history.
These decisions were controversial, in part, because in the eyes of critics they ran against the Western Canadian grain of the government's supposedly free market ideology. Replacing the mandatory census with a voluntary one, for instance, is said to be more expensive, and outraged business leaders that rely on the data. Quashing BHP's bid, meanwhile, raised the red flags of protectionism and nationalism. But Mr. Clement, who has the truest of right-wing credentials as an alumnus of former Ontario premier Mike Harris's slash-and-burn cabinet, says his conservative ideology has simply matured.
"I certainly can sleep at night and certainly do feel that I haven't betrayed any value or principle that has grown with me," he says. "Some people have asked me, 'Has it been tough' - this decision or that decision? I'll tell you what tough is. Tough is being the health minister during SARS."
To unwind some of this stress, Mr. Clement - quite incongruously - has been learning how to play punk rock songs on his son's knock-off Fender guitar. "I'm starting with the Ramones," he says, beginning to laugh. "Anybody who knows anything about punk rock music knows that the Ramones have the simplest, easiest chords. You can't master the two or three chords in a Ramones' song - you're pretty pathetic."
For lunch, also quite incongruously, Mr. Clement has chosen West Side Fish & Chips Family Restaurant, a friendly, bustling place in his Muskoka riding with a proudly displayed collection of novelty teapots in the shape of everything from toucans to goats, which he points out with glee as he arrives. His blazer, my tie and the "reserved" sign on our table all seem very out of place. When the deep-fried fillets of halibut and chips arrive, Mr. Clement is musing about his Potash decision and the tendency of his critics to focus on the 13 Conservatives seats in Saskatchewan, where the deal was widely condemned.
"It was a bit annoying … that the first refuge for those who disagreed with the decision would be to editorialize that it was politics, crass politics," he says, tearing open a little packet of lemon juice to squirt on his fish. "To say, 'Your choice is being principled and saying yes to the bid, or being political,' that's a false dichotomy. That's not right."
As for the days leading up to the Nov. 3 decision: "I was kind of surprised that it didn't leak out, when you think of all the things that leak in Ottawa. This one didn't." What was even more surprising to him were the news stories in the preceding days that said he'd all but approved BHP's blockbuster deal. "It's weird … I don't know who had motives on that, but no. It's not as if we were moving one way and then zig-zagged the other way. It was always based on our analysis of the situation and so, consequently, I think it was a fairly linear decision, actually."
With that in mind, I ask Mr. Clement about Waterloo, Ont.-based Research In Motion Ltd. The BlackBerry maker's stock has sagged lately and it is constantly the subject of takeover rumours. However, much like Nortel once did in Ottawa - before it went broke, was dismantled and sold off, to political backlash - RIM anchors and nurtures a priceless local technology hub and owns a vast cache of intellectual property. Would he approve a takeover?
No answer. "My speculation can move markets," he replies.
Mr. Clement, of course, acknowledges that his obligations go beyond industries' interests, to the point where he also considers himself a "consumer minister." That should have companies shaking. And nowhere is this more the case than in telecommunications. His predecessor arranged the department's 2008 wireless spectrum auction to license a swarm of new companies to force down prices. When one foreign-financed player, Globalive, was later rejected by the regulator for running afoul of ownership requirements, Mr. Clement stepped in to permit the company to launch.
Both moves were considered populist, political moves at a time of minority government and show that, even if Mr. Clement doesn't consider it politics, there are other factors under consideration in the high-profile office of the Industry Minister. How Mr. Clement structures the next wireless auction will show where his loyalties lie: He must balance the needs of the popular, but capital-starved, new wireless companies with the huge providers like Bell, Telus and Rogers, which are the ones spending billions of dollars on networks across Canada, including in Conservative-friendly rural areas.
Which will he favour? "Well, there's the rub," he says. "Ideally, we have a market place where new entrants, or at least one or two of those new entrants, will be able to flourish and succeed. And at the same time the incumbents are spending billions of dollars."
There's the rub, indeed: His decision - like almost all of his other ones - is very much likely to upset some people.
But when I ask him if he's looking forward to it, he shrugs and says he would rather be on the hot seat than on the backbench, twiddling his thumbs on deeds and tweets of no consequence.
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CURRICULUM VITAE
The man
Age: 49. Born: Manchester, England. Graduated from the University of Toronto (undergraduate degree in political science with a minor in history, then law school)
Work life
Lawyer and entrepreneur before becoming an MPP in Mike Harris's Ontario cabinet. Now federal Industry Minister.
Home life
Lives in Port Sydney, Ont., and is married to Lynne Golding. They have hree children: Max (19), Alex (16), and Elexa (13)
Passions
His copyright bill, The Clash (his favourite band), learning guitar, and using Twitter to interact with citizens (and his critics).
In his own words:
On Twitter: @TonyClement_MP Main course at Competitiveness Forum dinner at Atlanta Aquarium: CHICKEN. Supply appropriate punchline here: ____
In person, and in a deep voice: "Putting the wattage in your cottage, 99.5 The Moose! I like to do the radio voice. There might be a life for me after politics."
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TONY CLEMENT ON ...
Twitter: "It's a cross between leisure and being part of an ongoing national conversation. And it gives me just a chance to let my hair down a little bit and add a bit of dimensionality to a public persona that sometimes I would argue is not very accurate about who I am. I've got a sense of humour. I've got a few quirks, like most people do. It gives me a chance to be expressive, and to be creative, you know?
The reaction to his Potash decision: "I'm not one of these feel-sorry-for-myself guys because there's been a couple of editorials that went the wrong way. If you can't take that kind of stuff, then you're in the wrong business. I don't feel the heat on that stuff."
Government funding rural broadband Internet: "The market was never completely 100 per cent the solution (to phone service in rural areas). Market forces can be helpful, don't get me wrong. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking the halcyon days of the past were market forces that have now been distorted, and the risk is distorting them more.
His guitar: "It's my son's hand-me-down, it's kind of a Fender knock-off. One of these days - hint, hint, Lynne, 50th birthday coming up, maybe I'll get a Fender. If I'm good."