The former senator and cabinet minister the Hon. Jack Austin discusses his new memoir Unlikely Insider: A West Coast Advocate in Ottawa (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023), with Joseph Planta.

Unlikely Insider: A West Coast Advocate in Ottawa by Jack Austin with Edie Austin (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Unlikely Insider

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.

Jack Austin joins me now. The former senator has recently published a memoir, Unlikely Insider: A West Coast Advocate in Ottawa. He talks in the book of the policy he had a hand in crafting that has guided the Liberal Party going back to the 1960s, when he began as an assistant to the federal cabinet minister Arthur Laing. He served in the cabinets of Pierre Trudeau and Paul Martin, who writes the book’s foreword, and throughout the book, he also gives us sense of the personalities he interacted with, worked with, and met in his time in public life at home and abroad. Pierre Trudeau casts a shadow throughout the book, as it was working as deputy minister in the department of Energy and Mines in the 1970s that led him to serve as chief of staff to Trudeau, in a role that was called principal secretary at the time. We get a sense too of the private Trudeau, as in later years once Trudeau was out of office, Austin accompanied Trudeau on travels around the world. In 1975, Austin was appointed to the Canadian Senate, where he served until 2007 when at 75 he reached mandatory retirement. The book also illustrates Austin’s experiences with various governments including the United States, Mexico, and China, in fact, there’s a lot of reflection at how this relationship with China has evolved, some might say devolved over the last fifty years or more. Jack Austin is also a member of the Order of Canada, and the Order of British Columbia. The book is highly readable and engaging, and is written with Edie Austin, his daughter, who has had over forty years of experience as an editor and writer, who was the former editorial page editor of the Montreal Gazette. This book is published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, the Honourable Jack Austin; Mr. Austin, good morning.

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