’THE BEST FATHER 3 BOYS COULD ASK FOR’
“Dad, I love you. We love you. Put your feet up, lay your head back, close your eyes and relax. We will take it from here.” — QUINN FLAHERTY, 23, LEFT, WITH HIS MOTHER CHRISTINE ELLIOTT, AT THE STATE FUNERAL FOR EX-FINANCE MINISTER JIM FLAHERTY.
Adiminutive titan of Canadian political life has been laid to rest.
James Michael Flaherty — “Jim” to everyone from his fellow G20 finance ministers to the custodians at the Abilities Centre he helped found in Whitby — was remembered Wednesday at a massive state funeral.
Flaherty, the former federal and provincial treasurer, died of a heart attack in Ottawa last Thursday. He was 64 and had retired from cabinet only three weeks earlier.
“He could be hard-headed, yet also soft-hearted,” a visibly emotional Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a eulogy that artfully balanced the witty with the touching.
“He particularly enjoyed — and delivered — many jokes about his own shortness,” Harper said of the fivefoot-three Flaherty.
“But, short as he was, upon the world stage he strode like a giant,” he said.
“It is a fact that Jim, as fiercely partisan as he was, was also genuinely liked and respected by his opponents, liked by his enemies.
“That’s something in this business, something I envy — I can’t even get my friends to like me,” he said to laughter from the 1,800 mourners gathered inside St. James Cathedral on Church St. and in adjacent overflow marquee tents.
Most in attendance sported green scarves in tribute to the shamrock-coloured ties favoured by the Irish-Canadian Flaherty.
His widow, Christine Elliott, recalled her husband as “the most intelligent man I ever met.”
“He was a proud Canadian who loved our great country and even when his life became more difficult in the last year or so, he persevered until he was certain he would leave things in order for his successor,” she said, alluding to the health issues that had dogged her husband.
Surrounded by their 23-year-old triplet sons, Elliott told them: “John, Galen, and Quinn, your father loved you completely.” Peering toward his father’s flagdraped casket before him, Quinn said: “Dad, I love you. We love you. Put your feet up, lay your head back, close your eyes and relax. We will take it from here.” It was an understandably difficult day at the packed cathedral for Flaherty’s family. Elliott, deputy leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, and her husband shared a riding — he represented Whitby-Oshawa federally while she held the seat provincially. The funeral was a who’s who of Canadian politics. Harper was joined by federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau as well as former prime ministers Brian Mulroney and John Turner, and Gov. Gen. David Johnston. Premier Kathleen Wynne, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath all attended the service as did former Ontario premiers Ernie Eves and Mike Harris. Both the Commons and the Ontario legislature rose for the day so scores of ministers, MPs, MPPs, and political aides could attend the service, which was presided by Archbishop Colin Johnson, the bishop of Toronto. Flaherty, an MPP from 1995 until 2005 and MP from 2006 onward, served as Harper’s first finance minister until retiring from cabinet on March 18. He was also Harris’s finance minister in 2001. His sudden death rattled Canada’s tight-knit political family. Because of that, he was accorded a state funeral, an honour usually reserved for governors general, prime ministers, and sitting cabinet ministers. He is only the third Canadian poli- tician given such a tribute, joining D’Arcy McGee in1868 and NDP leader Jack Layton in 2011.
An activist treasurer, Flaherty played a crucial role in Canada weathering the global economic meltdown of 2008 and famously stared down Bay Street to stem the tide of corporations restructuring themselves as income trusts to pay less tax, which would have hobbled the treasury.
In 2010, he also helped implement Ontario’s harmonized sales tax — melding the federal Goods and Services Tax with the provincial sales tax — and on his watch the overall consumption levy dropped from 15 per cent to 13 per cent.
Flaherty was instrumental in the Conservatives’ breakthrough in Ontario, which assured the party its first majority election victory three years ago.
Perhaps most famously, in his 2012 budget he rid the country of the penny.
“My sister Ann remembers as a child my mother finding Jimmy throwing pennies into the garbage,” his sister Norah Flaherty told the congregation. “When Mom asked Jim why he was throwing out the pennies, he said: ‘They’re not worth anything.’ Somewhat prophetic.”