'Canada's best MP' reputation not built on smiles - Opinion

FEW things on Parliament Hill are a challenge for the Regina Liberal MP who has become his party’s prairie godfather. He has done most of it over an 18-year parliamentary career.

Ralph Goodale has been a backbencher from rural Saskatchewan (1974-79), an effective cabinet minister with a reputation for clean-nosed competence, integrity and hard work (1993-2006), a successful survivor of the Liberal Chrétien-Martin civil wars who gets respect from both sides and during the past year, an effective opposition House leader facing Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.

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All that was child’s play compared to his Parliament Hill assignment in late November. A Toronto photographer insisted that the 57-year-old leap from the floor of Parliament’s Centre Block, click his heels in mid air and smile.

“Clicking my heels was the easy part,” he said later. “I got that on the first or second try. Getting the smile took about 11 tries.”

Smiling isn’t what has made Goodale’s reputation on Parliament Hill and in his prairie constituency.

It is his hard work, his unfailing courtesy (except when he’s raging against the Conservatives – he once called Harper in pre-prime minister days the Prince of Darkness) and his constant understanding that he is in Ottawa at the pleasure of urban and farm voters.

Late last year, MPs voted Goodale Canada’s “best MP” in a poll conducted by Maclean’s magazine and the history-promoting Dominion Institute. That led to the demand for an out-of-character photo of Goodalian exuberance for a Maclean’s cover.

“Naturally, he has faced criticism and controversy but through it all he has earned a long list of admirers on both sides of the House, largely because of the personal integrity he has brought to the job,” the magazine opined.

It also is proof that even in politics and often cynical media that cover them, good guys sometimes come first.

Goodale is famous to reporters on Parliament Hill for his long sentences that defy deconstruction, long answers and accessibility. To make sure he keeps his feet firmly in his Regina constituency, he keeps his watch on Regina time.

And after years in which his political ambitions seemed unattainable, Goodale has built what appears to be an unassailable political base in the Saskatchewan capital.

After a surprise victory in 1974 as a 25-year-old lawyer, he was defeated in 1979 and failed in the 1980s to rebuild the Saskatchewan Liberal party. He moved to business in Calgary, seemingly a spent political force, only to be lured back into the fray in 1993, battling successfully through the 1990s against not only the opposition but also arch rival Liberal Tony Merchant.

Goodale has developed a political Velcro touch. In 1995 as agriculture minister, he oversaw dismantlement of the Crow Benefit and survived because of a spike in grain prices. He took over the scandal-plagued public works department and reformed it.

Even allegations of leaked information about income trust rules when he was finance minister – allegations that helped bring down the Paul Martin government – have not stuck to him.

His work ethic is legendary.

“Canada’s Best MP” said the Maclean’s front page. Not too shoddy for a guy from Wilcox, Sask., who once doubted his political future.