Economist and academic John McCallum died of lung cancer at the age of 75 on June 21.The Canadian Press
As the 2000 federal election loomed, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien recruited a star candidate to bolster his effort to win a third Liberal majority, a McGill University economist-turned-banker named John McCallum.
“In many ways, Mr. McCallum comes out of central casting, a rumpled … academic who is fluently bilingual but with an easy media presence in both official languages,” enthused Globe and Mail columnist Hugh Winsor. There was talk that Mr. McCallum, seen as an articulate, sought-after expert as chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada, could end up as finance minister if Paul Martin decided to step down.
Mr. Chrétien was so anxious to ensure Mr. McCallum’s success that he appointed him as official Liberal candidate in Markham, a suburban riding north of Toronto, to avoid a nomination fight. Mr. McCallum swept the riding, winning by 23,000 votes and launching a political career lasting more than 16 years.
Mr. McCallum, who died of lung cancer at age 75 on June 21, went on to serve in cabinet positions ranging from national defence to immigration. But his early promise never really panned out. A brilliant economist and affable politician, he failed to master the discipline of cabinet office, frequently finding himself engulfed in controversy after an ill-advised comment or embarrassing incident.
His career in public life ended in 2019 when he was serving as Canada’s ambassador to China in the midst of the crisis caused by the arrest of Chinese technology executive Meng Wanzhou and China’s retaliatory seizure of two Canadian citizens. Mr. McCallum swerved away from the government’s official position in unscripted comments to the media. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fired him.
Explainer: John McCallum’s firing and the aftermath
“Most people at the time saw him not living up to his promise and being haphazard and making various communications errors,” said Eugene Lang, a former chief of staff and friend of Mr. McCallum for 25 years. “Nevertheless, he was a survivor. He was in the cabinet of three prime ministers. … He went up, down and then he went up again.”
“He made lots of communications gaffes,” Mr. Lang continued. “He was outspoken and said some things that got him in trouble with the media and inside the government. He was too straight, with not enough spin or nuance.”
But he was also held in high regard by his political colleagues. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said she was “heartbroken” by Mr. McCallum’s death. “From the moment I decided to run for office in 2019, John was by my side with a smile, endless enthusiasm and thoughtful advice,” she said on social media.
Mr. McCallum’s career in public life ended in 2019 when he was serving as Canada’s ambassador to China.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
John McCallum was born in Montreal on April 9, 1950. He was the eldest of four children of Alexander McCallum, an actuary, and his wife Joan Patteson, whose grandparents were close friends of the late prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King.
John attended Selwyn House, a private school in Westmount, before transferring to Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ont., for high school. “He was the smartest kid in the room in every subject and he was also very nice,” said filmmaker Peter Raymont, a fellow student at Trinity, remarking on how he taught himself Russian. “John was talented,” his younger brother Duncan added.
John was accepted to Harvard but opted instead for Cambridge University in England. After Cambridge, he earned a Diplôme d’études supérieures at the Sorbonne, returning to Canada to complete a PhD in economics at McGill.
His first job was as an analyst in the cabinet planning secretariat for the NDP government in Manitoba. He taught economics at University of Manitoba and at Simon Fraser University, returning to his hometown in 1982. Mr. McCallum decided to improve his French by teaching economics for five years at the University of Quebec at Montreal.
He went on to McGill, where he become chairman of the economics department, which was in disarray. “There was division in the ranks and John was able to sort that out relatively quickly,” Alex Patterson, a former chancellor of McGill, told The Gazette in a later profile of Mr. McCallum.
He later served as McGill’s Dean of Arts, where he didn’t hesitate to wade into the national unity debate. In 1991, he co-authored a study for the C.D. Howe Institute which predicted that Quebec separation would lead to a $15-billion annual deficit and a drop in its standard of living.
Mr. McCallum, working as Royal Bank’s chief economist, speaks to reporters at a briefing in Vancouver in 1997.Chuck Stoody/The Canadian Press
In 1994, Mr. McCallum moved to the private sector as chief economist and senior vice-president of the Royal Bank of Canada in Toronto. It wasn’t an obvious fit for a career academic with leftish leanings. Mr. McCallum didn’t shy away from controversy. Just months into the job he published a study titled “Why Have Canadian Living Standards Declined in the 1990s?” The paper pointed to the fact that after-tax incomes had dropped an average of 0.9 per cent annually from 1989 to 1994.
The blame, he argued, lay with the Bank of Canada’s restrictive monetary policy. The headline on The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business couldn’t have been more direct: “Royal Bank Rips Into Bank of Canada.” Mr. McCallum’s bosses at the Royal Bank weren’t happy.
Don Drummond, a former senior Finance Canada official, credits Mr. McCallum with expanding the role of chief economist at a big bank beyond its traditional confines to study public policy issues of broad interest to the public, something Mr. Drummond emulated when he became chief economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank.
“I’ve always wished there would be more academics like him, who could look at real-life things that matter to people but look at it from the rigour of an academic perspective,” he said.
After six years at the bank, Mr. McCallum was elected in 2000 and was appointed a junior minister of finance in early 2002. After just four months in the job, he was handed the role of Minister of National Defence.
Newly appointed as Minister of Defence, Mr. McCallum leaves Rideau Hall on May 26, 2002.DAVE CHAN/The Globe and Mail
It was a fraught period when Canada embarked on its mission in Afghanistan, and as a rookie minister, Mr. McCallum had to navigate a complex department and a tense global context. Mr. Lang credits his former boss with securing a major increase in funding for the military after years of cuts.
But just months after his appointment, Mr. McCallum was in political trouble. During a ceremony in France marking the 60th anniversary of the Dieppe Raid, the failed 1942 effort to breach Nazi defences that resulted in the deaths of 916 Canadians, Mr. McCallum admitted it was all news to him.
“I had a pretty good, you could say a privileged education,” he told reporters. “But I never learned any of this in school. I haven’t even been to Vimy Ridge yet.” Instead of sounding like a candid admission from a newly minted minister, he came across as a tone-deaf politician dismissive of Canadian history and its military tradition. The press and the opposition reacted harshly.
That episode was made worse by an incident a few months later when Mr. McCallum was asked not to board an Air Canada flight from Toronto to Ottawa because he was suspected to have been drinking excessively. Mr. McCallum told reporters a few weeks later he was going to stop drinking alcohol even though he insisted that he didn’t have a problem.
Working in his role as Liberal finance critic, Mr. McCallum, left, greets former prime minister Paul Martin at a breakfast in Toronto on Sept. 29, 2008.CHRIS YOUNG/The Canadian Press
The damage was done. When Paul Martin succeeded Mr. Chrétien as prime minister in late 2003, Mr. McCallum was demoted to the veterans affairs portfolio. He was later moved to national revenue where he remained until the 2006 election that saw the Liberals defeated.
Mr. McCallum survived during the Harper years as opposition critic for finance and mused at one point about running for the Liberal Party leadership but ended up supporting Michael Ignatieff instead. He took an increasing interest in China, reflecting in part the large Chinese-Canadian population in his riding.
When the Liberals returned to power in 2015, Mr. Trudeau appointed him as immigration minister, thrusting Mr. McCallum into the centre of the Liberal promise to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees escaping that country’s civil war. Despite initial delays, the goal was achieved more quickly than public servants had thought possible.
Ottawa’s man in China: Who was McCallum and what was his strategy?
“John was always in a hurry and he had no patience for slow bureaucracy,” Mr. Lang said. It was his most successful stint as a minister.
In early 2017, Mr. Trudeau decided to bring new blood into his cabinet. Mr. McCallum was urged to resign and in return was appointed as Canada’s ambassador to China, a key role. He was seen as friendly to the regime and as an opposition MP, he had visited China frequently, often as the guest of organizations close to the Communist government.
“He was very pro-China. When he met with Chinese officials, he would say his wife was Chinese, his children were half-Chinese and 46 per cent of his riding was Chinese,” said Guy Saint-Jacques, who was Canada’s ambassador to China from 2012 to 2016.
“He liked China and he wanted more trade but maybe he could have focused a bit more on the dark side of China as far as human rights are concerned,” he said.
Mr. McCallum, acting as Canada’s ambassador to China, leaves a fundraising event at a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver in 2018.BEN NELMS
When Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver in late 2018 at the request of U.S. authorities, the Canadian government was careful to say that the extradition request was in the hands of the Canadian courts and wasn’t political.
But in January, 2019, Mr. McCallum, in the midst of the crisis, told Chinese-Canadian media that Ms. Meng had a strong argument to make that the case against her was politically motivated, undermining Ottawa’s carefully crafted approach. Mr. McCallum admitted that he “misspoke” and apologized. But it was too late. Mr. McCallum was removed.
Out of public life, Mr. McCallum continued his involvement with China, acting as a consultant for Wailan Group, a Shanghai-based immigration agency, for which he gave a series of speeches in China, prompting criticism from the press and opposition MPs.
Mr. McCallum leaves his wife, Nancy Lim; his sons, Andrew, Jamie and Duncan; six grandchildren; and his siblings, Ann, Duncan and Martha.
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