This past Tuesday I attended a discussion between former prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper sponsored by the C.D. Howe Institute in the annual Aaron Regent dinner, and moderated by its affable and well-informed president, Bill Robson. The issue was national unity. In the contemporary manner, guests were invited to indicate the level of their concern on that subject before the discussion started and after it had ended. The majority remained at least partially concerned at the end of the exchange but less so than at the beginning, so they found the words of these two men who between them were prime minister for nearly 20 years, somewhat encouraging.

The two men spoke well in their familiar ways: Jean Chretien was lively and lucid, aged 91, professed to be fairly sanguine about

See Full Page