LeBlanc’s fight in finance far from his biggest 

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Dominic LeBlanc was once alone in a 10-by-10-foot hospital room for weeks, recovering from a stem cell transplant that he hoped would cure him of cancer. In April 2019, he was told he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his second cancer diagnosis in two years.

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The long-time New Brunswick Liberal member of Parliament had taken a leave of absence from his cabinet position as minister of intergovernmental and northern affairs and internal trade.

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“It was very tough going,” recalls his friend Donald Savoie, a historian and one of Canada’s preeminent scholars on the public service.

“You can’t get closer to dying. What he lived through was incredibly painful, very difficult. But think about being that sick and spending weeks in complete isolation.”

In all, LeBlanc spent 56 weeks in isolation, “but he survived and is totally cancer free,” Savoie said.

Less than six years after his diagnosis, he is taking a turn in the spotlight.

Last week, his party fell into disarray. Chrystia Freeland had abruptly resigned as finance minister just before she was scheduled to release the overdue fall economic statement. It was an emergency and the critics were out in force, declaring that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government were finished.

“Mr. Trudeau’s government is over,” Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said. “He must acknowledge that and act accordingly.”

Instead, Trudeau turned to LeBlanc, his longtime friend and trusted ally, to fill the most important cabinet position and within hours he faced the media.

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Savoie was struck by how the new finance minister handled himself. In his view, no one else in the party could have pulled it off.

“He came out of Rideau Hall and journalists were asking a series of questions. I have to tell you, I was quite impressed with the way he handled the media,” he said. “You’ve just been appointed minister of finance, Trudeau’s been challenged, the minister of finance has resigned. It’s chaos.”

LeBlanc wasn’t overwhelmed by the moment, which likely had something to do with his gruelling battle with cancer.

“The only people in the world that live for the moment, there’s only one kind: it’s people who have had cancer and have been cured,” Savoie said. “Dominic lives for the moment.”

Why take the job in a government seemingly in disarray? He said LeBlanc is not only loyal to his friend Trudeau, but “he’s married” to the Liberal Party.

“His loyalty to the party, to make sure that it doesn’t unravel, I think would motivate him,” he said.

Many think Trudeau had been courting former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney to take on the finance portfolio, so they saw LeBlanc’s appointment as a temporary stopgap.

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LeBlanc could also be the shortest-serving finance minister if a non-confidence vote brings the Liberals down next month. New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh, in an open letter on Friday, said his party plans to vote against its one-time ally when the House of Commons reconvenes on Jan 27.

That will present LeBlanc another new challenge, something Savoie said is in his makeup.

LeBlanc’s father, Romeo, who was a teacher, journalist and press secretary for Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau before getting into politics. In 1972, he won the New Brunswick riding Westmorland-Kent, now Beauséjour, which his son has represented for close to 25 years.

Romeo LeBlanc grew up poor in the small New Brunswick village of Memramcook. Savoie said he always fought for the little guy, a trait his son would also acquire.

The elder LeBlanc served as minister of fisheries under Trudeau. He was instrumental in reining in foreign fishing and was behind the imposition of the 200-mile limit; the establishment of a new fisheries licensing system; the widespread use of quotas and zones that protected Canadian fishermen from overexpansion and competition from trawlers owned by large companies.

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“Romeo always fought for the little guy to the point that he annoyed his colleagues. He would speak out on behalf of the farmers and fishermen. That had a profound influence on Dominic,” Savoie said. “He was deeply influenced by his father, who lived it. He’s motivated by that. He’s not an ideologue. Ideology is not something he embraces. What he embraces is getting things done. Striking deals.”

Savoie said the younger LeBlanc has politics bred into him.

“When he learned to walk, he learned how to walk up the House of Commons (steps),” he said.

David Campbell, former chief economist of New Brunswick, said LeBlanc’s work on the fisheries file is his greatest legacy. He points to the hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to bring the Atlantic Science Enterprise Centre, a fisheries research hub, to Moncton.

“That was a huge one,” he said.

But LeBlanc also has his critics, including John Ruffolo, a fund manager and founder and managing partner of Maverix Private Equity, for his lack of business and finance experience.

“Here is a guy that’s never been in business and never been in finance,” he told the Globe and Mail. “Are we getting someone who really understands the position, or are we getting a trusted lieutenant of Trudeau?”

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But Campbell downplays this.

“He’s well-respected among his caucus,” he said. “I think he’ll be a pretty steady hand on the wheel.”

Campbell said it’s obvious the federal government will fall within a year; some would say in months or even weeks.

“My sense is as long as (LeBlanc) is healthy, he’ll probably take a run at the leadership,” he said.

LeBlanc has aspired to lead the party before. He took a shot at the Liberal leadership in 2008, but dropped out of the race to endorse Michael Ignatieff.

In the meantime, Savoie believes LeBlanc will do whatever is required.

“Dominic will do what is politically sound,” he said. “If the time comes when there’s a need for drastic cuts in public spending, he will do what needs to be done.”

Savoie said he’ll also do it without drama or rancour. It’s part of his nature.

“He does not have a bitter bone in that body,” he said. “You would have to push him awfully, awfully hard to get him to say anything negative about anybody else. He just doesn’t go there.”

That’s why LeBlanc has friends on both sides of the House.

Even before his fight with cancer, LeBlanc had shown a tenacity and knack for surviving in a sometimes relentless and cutthroat line of work, Savoie said.

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His first try at politics was as a candidate in a safe Liberal seat. He lost.

“He didn’t shy away; he didn’t say, ‘I gave it my best shot, I’m going to practise law’ (though he did later). He just stuck it out, Savoie said. “When you lose your first election at a very young age — and your father was governor general — in your father’s riding, it’s a helluva hit.”

• Email: arankin@postmedia.com

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