Senator was key Tory adviser and strategist
Doug Finley dies after battle with colon cancer
OTTAWA — Doug Finley wasn’t supposed to deliver a speech in the Senate on May 8. The legislation was a private member’s bill from a Conservative backbencher about Canada’s waterways that cross international boundaries.
“If I had thought ahead, I would have performed much the same way as my esteemed colleague, Sen. ( Stephen) Greene, did to pass this bill straight through, but I did not want to let down my allegiance to supporters of my Scottish accent,” Finley joked to his Senate colleagues last Wednesday.
It was the last time Finley’s distinct, rumbling Scottish accent filled the upper chamber.
Finley, the man considered one of the architects of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s election victories, died Saturday after a battle with colon cancer. The Conservative party operative and organizer was 66.
“He was seen as being this gruff Scot, but when you get to know people you see something in them that people don’t see or appreciate,” Sen. Marjory LeBreton, the top Tory in the Senate, said in an interview.
“Despite his gruff side and sometimes the way he came across, he had a really decent core.”
LeBreton said Finley would email the Senate leader during difficult moments in the upper chamber, with the two sharing memorable quotes from Scottish poet Robbie Burns.
“At different times when we were dealing with difficult issues in the Senate, he sent me some extremely warm and friendly and wonderful emails, which I wasn’t expecting and yet I really appreciated it coming from him because it was a side of him you didn’t see,” she said.
The partisan operative’s death sparked condolences from party leaders, with NDP Leader Tom Mulcair saying in a statement that Finley’s passing “will be mourned beyond party lines.” Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau tweeted his condolences to Finley’s family.
The prime minister issued a statement expressing his condolences.
“Our government has lost a trusted adviser and strategist. Canada has lost a fine public servant. I have lost a dear and valued friend,” Harper said in the statement. “A great Canadian has been taken from us, before his time.”
Finley was married to federal Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, making the duo only the third married couple in Canadian political history to have one partner serve in the House of Commons and one in the Senate.
“Between the two of us, we have both the red and the green chambers covered. Of course, I like the fact that I am the one who is called the ‘ sober second thought’ of the family or, as I call it, having the last word,” Finley said in his first official speech in the Senate on March 23, 2010.
Finley was controversial, working in political campaigns for parties of all stripes, including the Liberals. That political mix mirrored the upbringing he had in Scotland before immigrating to Canada in 1968.
His mother had “ultra- socialist leanings,” he once reminded the Senate since she had come from the “cradle of the trade union movements” in Scotland. His father, he said, was “an avowed Tory.”
Finley walked into a non- unionized work environment in the 1960s and became a union organizer. Years later, he took an aviation company and ran it without the presence of organized labour in his shop.
In 2002, he met Harper and joined his ranks, first helping merge the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives into the Conservative Party of Canada in 2003, then helping Harper become the leader of that party and running his election machine.
He was credited with bringing discipline and organization to the party, a quality that permeated his own life, LeBreton said.
His campaign experience made him a source of advice for campaigners inside and outside of Canada.
“He invariably responded generously and with practical realistic advice,” said Brian Loughnane, federal director of the Liberal Party of Australia.
“In the cut- and- thrust of campaigning he was always supportive and encouraging.”
Finley was in the middle of the socalled “in- and- out” election- spending affair, in which the Conservative party pleaded guilty to exceeding campaign spending limits in the 2006 election. A more serious charge was dropped and the party paid more than $ 50,000 in fines. Finley denied there was ever wrongdoing.
In 2010, Finley was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, the third most common cancer diagnosed in Canada and the second- leading cause of cancer deaths in the country. Although it is treatable if caught early, surgeons found that the cancer had spread to Finley’s liver.
The cancer spread again in 2011 at which time he was given about three years to live. He then started to tell colleagues, family and friends that his cancer was terminal.