2014 Recipient of the Award for Excellence in the Cause of Parliamentary Democracy

Introduction by the Hon. Senator Linda Frum at the 2014 Churchill Dinner

I know there are many, many people in this room who know and love Hugh and would have been able to tell a great number of entertaining stories about him, because Hugh is just that kind of guy. We all love Hugh.

In fact, when he left the Senate of Canada last June, after nine years of thoughtful, distinguished and valuable service, there was a true sense of mourning among the ranks - on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers. I have witnessed a number of Senators deliver farewell speeches, but I can assure you that as Senator Segal rose to deliver his remarks, no one received a louder or more enthusiastic standing ovation than he.

In fact, the applause lasted such a long time that Hugh finally had to complain, “Mr Speaker, they are cutting into my time.” How typical of Hugh to make us laugh when all we really wanted to do was cry. Such was and remains our collective respect for Hugh that we all knew we would be a lesser body without him and I can assure you he is sorely missed today. That is why it is so very appropriate and gratifying to see him receive this Award for Excellence in the Cause of Parliamentary Democracy. He truly deserves it.

From the age of about fifteen – or it was probably more like five – the erudite and effervescent Hugh Segal has used his talents and his energies to enrich Canadian politics and Canadian democracy. While still a student at the University of Ottawa in the early 1970s, he began his political career as an aide to the federal Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield. In his early twenties, he ran twice as a candidate for the federal Progressive Conservatives.

From there, he became a senior aide to Ontario’s legendary Premier Bill Davis, with whom I know he remains very close to this day. He was named a Deputy Minister at the age of 29. From 1992 to 1993, Hugh was Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. In 1998, Hugh ran for Leader of the Progressive Conservative, coming in second to Joe Clark. In 2003, in recognition of his vast contributions to the fields of politics, academia, journalism and business, Hugh was recognized with a membership to the Order of Canada.

In 2005, Prime Minister Paul Martin named Hugh Segal to the Senate of Canada as a Progressive Conservative member, though happily Hugh was eventually elected to sit as a member of Prime Minister Harper’s Conservative Caucus. Hugh served for a period as Chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and Chair to the Special Senate Committee on Anti-terrorism. In 2010, he was appointed to the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, which was tasked with the mandate of developing recommendations on how to strengthen the Commonwealth and fulfill its potential into the 21st century. And, in December 2011, the federal government appointed him Special Envoy to the Commonwealth with a task of convincing individual countries to sign on to the Eminent Persons Group’s 106 recommendations. In addition to being relied upon for his wise counsel, during his tenure in the Senate Hugh enjoyed a reputation for true independence of mind, principled conviction, and thoughtful intervention, or – as one fan summed it up admiringly in a blog post – “Hugh Segal: a Senator who didn’t suck.”

Hugh championed a guaranteed annual income for the poor as a tool to combat income inequality. He was outspoken in his calls for greater Parliamentary oversight of Canada’s Intelligence and Security Services. And last spring, he was instrumental in blocking the passage in the Senate of a Union Financial Disclosure Bill that he believed was excessive, erroneous, and, indeed, unconstitutional.

For the record, I agreed with that bill, and I voted for it. But what is important to note about this episode is that it shows, in a nutshell, why Hugh is so deserving of this award tonight. Because of his powers of reason and persuasion – combined with his strength of character, his brilliance – Hugh did something that many would argue is not done enough in the Upper Chamber: he took a position of principle and persuaded others to follow him, and his position prevailed. For those who did not agree with him on an issue (such as me), he was only ever courteous, congenial and understanding. He was an excellent Parliamentarian, embodying the Churchillian values of moral courage, intellectual integrity and service to country.

Although he never smoked or drank like Churchill – or at least as far as I am aware – whenever Hugh Segal got to his feet to speak, everybody wanted to listen. We knew it was going to be worth listening to and it was going to be fun. And I have no doubt the lucky students of Massey College feel exactly the same way.

In addition to all of that, Hugh is just sweet. He is an extremely loyal and good friend. He was the first Senator I called for advice after Prime Minister Harper appointed me to the Senate. I was quite terrified about what I had signed on for, although not fully as terrified as I should have been, as it turns out. But Hugh had the perfect, reassuring words for me.

Understanding that it was my anxiety about balancing parliamentary duties in Ottawa with my family life in Toronto that frightened me the most, Hugh advised me to never hesitate to put my family first, and he told me to be bloody-minded about protecting my time with my children. As we all know, Hugh adores his wife Donna and his daughter Jacquiline. It was Hugh’s sensitive and excellent advice that allowed me to forge ahead with confidence.

Congratulations on this well-earned award.

Acceptance address by the Hon. Hugh D. Segal at the 2014 Churchill Dinner

I am delighted to see so many of you here to help advance the cause of democracy that The Churchill Society has been so associated with.

I am glad to see Principal and Vice-Chancellor Ron Watts, formerly head of Queen’s University, come all the way from Kingston to be here with his wife, Donna, the finest public school math teacher in the history of Kingston, Ontario.

For all the reserve officers who are here tonight, I will remind you what Churchill said about members of the reserve. Members of the reserve are twice the citizen: they are normal tax-paying, hardworking, community members and those who are prepared to work on weekends, parade nights and when called upon, to supplement the regular force. God bless you. You do not get the recognition you deserve and I am honoured to see you here this evening.

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It is truly wonderful to be gathered here with friends and family to celebrate Mr. Churchill. In a book I recently read and reviewed for the Massey Quadrangle Society, and genuinely recommend to all of you, The Literary Churchill by John Rose of Yale Books, we get a magisterial glimpse how broad and inclusive of different literatures, plays, music, diverse history, sciences and related artistic activity, Sir Winston’s tastes actually were.

It told me about the depth of his humanity in arts and culture, and the interdisciplinary reach that Sir Winston’s life embraced. Which is why I am so grateful tonight for Colonel H.N.R. Jackman, Visitor at Massey College – which is like our Chancellor – for his generosity in facilitating a table this evening of the junior fellows from Massey. [They] all reflect the very best of our fellowship at Massey College, with disciplines such as public policy, education, history, economics, political science, English, and health administration all being pursued by them at the graduate level. These junior fellows are interdisciplinary stars. And may I say that Mr. Churchill would be delighted to see them here with us tonight. Welcome.

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I come before you tonight with a high regard for politicians and public servants, generally, regardless of the government in Canada in which they serve, or their political affiliation. It is these people – despite the doggerel on the far left or far right – who are with our military and those who serve in the helping services, entrepreneurs and business people. They are the reason why this is the greatest country in the world, and we should never forget that.

As we gather this evening in fellowship and in good cheer, the world beyond this hotel and beyond our Canadian borders is in more troubling than ever. To quote W.B. Yeats almost 100 years ago:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Across most societies, the rule of law, democracy, human rights, due process, abhorrence of impunity, abhorrence of state corruption, and abhorrence of religious intolerance are dominant or at least aspirational themes. Sadly, these very traits which are our society’s strengths are the deemed weaknesses upon which terrorists – and those states and governments which finance them – seek to exploit. They count upon our deliberative fairness and avoidance of violence as weaknesses they can manipulate. These are organizations and networks whose stated purpose is the destruction of people, lives and communities because they are the wrong Islamic denomination, or Christians or Jews, or the wrong race, or gender, or sexual orientation. They are evil and our enemy, in no lesser measure than were the Nazis in World War II. Any failure on our part to engage with the same intensity, level of coherence and unavoidable cold hard steel is an abdication.

In the face of that kind of threat, we face choices Mr. Churchill understood all too well. How much incivility and force can those devoted to civility, freedom and peace use to repel those who would, if left unchecked, crush all three? Where is the right balance? What is the morality of not responding to the threat as it really is?

Of one string of logical pearls, we can all be sure as we sit here together tonight, there are no indignities, no inhumanities, atrocities, or violent excesses deployed by the Nazis not now being deployed or attempted by the terrorists in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Africa and elsewhere. The differences of scale do not imply restraint on the part of ISIS, Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah, or others, but merely lack of opportunity and instruments of wide destructive capacity they will acquire. The purposes they would be put to and their destructive instruments should be clear: academic and religious freedom, the right to dissent, due process, rule of law, diversity, gender equality and human rights would all disappear, very quickly. No moderates or non-adherents to their extreme cause would be safe or unthreatened among any faith or community, and especially the non-religious. For those who believe with great sincerity that only peace and understanding can moderate the violent and oppressive choices of this coalition of terrorist extremists, I offer respect, but also caution. Mass murderers – those who would annihilate their way to an extreme and narrow, tightly held, totalitarian regime – have no sense of what peace and understanding mean, and even less tolerance.

So we celebrate the clarity, the spirit, the determination and courage of Winston Churchill in which cause I am both honoured and humbled to be your recipient this year. Let us also reflect on why and how he stood for freedom which still resonates so deeply in the English-speaking world and beyond. It is because there can be no peace without engagement, no freedom without courage and no peaceable kingdom without the will to oppose evil. It is not just a duty to ourselves but to those who have sacrificed in the past and to a future of promise and sustained humanity for centuries to come.

We applaud The Churchill Society for its promotion of democracy and advancement of democracy. Did you know that during World War II, when London was being bombed, when the war was going very badly, Sir Winston Churchill reported regularly, not just to the King but to the entire House of Commons? There is a little book, called The Secret Speeches of Winston Churchill to the entire Parliament. He gathered them four or five times during the War, during the most difficult of times to report to every Member of Parliament. There was never, by the way, a leak from the House of Commons during those difficult times. In one of those secret speeches, reporting on the Battle of the Atlantic in June 1941, before Pearl Harbour and the entry of the Americans, when Canada and the Dominions were the only allies that Churchill’s Great Britain had, the news was not good. He finished a difficult and realistic report in this way:

“I will add only one other word. Let us not forget that the enemy has difficulties of his own; and that some of those difficulties are obvious; and that there are some more apparent to him than are to us; and that all the great struggles of history have been won by superior will-power wresting victory in the teeth of odds or upon the narrowest of margin.“

Later, in the following year, on April 23, 1942, after the entry of Japan into the war and the fall of Singapore, Churchill made a long and difficult report also in a then-secret speech to the House of Commons, at which he said at the end:

“Testing, trying, adverse times lay ahead of us. We all must strive to do our duty to the utmost of our strength. As the War rises remorselessly to its climax, the House of Commons, which is the foundation of the British life, and struggle, this House of Commons – which has a special responsibility – will have the opportunity once again of proving to the world that the firmness of spirit, sense of proportion, steadfastness of purpose which have gained it renown in former days, will now once again carry great peoples and a great cause to a victorious deliverance.“

My friends, we are not facing anything like World War I or World War II. But failure to engage in the face of ISIS brutality, inhumanity and aggression, could well see a broader destabilization of the entire Middle East and the Mediterranean, which would produce a much more serious and region-wide conflict with huge implications. Tonight, as we meet in good spirits and freedom to celebrate the commitment to democracy and liberty that so underlines much of Churchill’s work, his writings, his politics and his leadership, we should be sustained by the determination he showed, at which a broader public in Britain, the Dominions, European resistance, Russia, and the United States followed to achieve a final victory over the forces of darkness. The scale of what we face now is different. But the need for resolve, courage and determined engagement cannot be denied.

Thank you very much and God bless you all.