The
________________________________________
Darling Diaries
The
________________________________________
Darling Diaries
M EMOIRS OF A P OLITICAL C AREER
STAN DARLING
with
Beth Slaney
Dundurn Press
Toronto Oxford
Copyright Stan Darling, 1995
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except brief passages for purposes of review), without the prior permission of Dundurn Press Limited. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Reprography Collective.
Printed and bound in Canada by Best Book Manufacturers
The publisher wishes to acknowledge the generous assistance and ongoing support of the Canada Council, the Book Publishing Industry Development Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Ontario Arts Council, the Ontario Publishing Centre of the Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, and the Ontario Heritage Foundation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in the text (including the illustrations). The author and publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any reference or credit in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, Publisher
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Darling, Stan, 1911
The Darling diaries: memoirs of a political career.
ISBN 1-55002-253-9
1. Darling, Stan, 1911 2. Canada Politics
and government 1935 .* 3. Canada. Parliament.
House of Commons Biography. 4. Legislators
Canada Biography. 5. Politicians Canada
Biography. I. Slaney, Beth, 1922. II. Title.
FC631.D37A3 1995 328.71092 C95-932912-9
F1034.3.D37A3 1995
Dundurn Press Limited | Dundurn Distribution | Dundurn Press Limited |
2181 Queen Street East | 73 Lime Walk | 1823 Maryland Avenue |
Suite 301 | Headington, Oxford | P.O. Box 1000 |
Toronto, Canada | England | Niagara Falls, N.Y. |
M4E 1E5 | 0X3 7AD | U.S.A. 14302-1000 |
Contents
Stan and William K. Reilly were presented with gold medals from the Americas Society for distinguished service in the cause of greater Canadian-American friendship and understanding on September 23, 1991 in New York. From left to right: Hon. William K. Reilly, Hon. Jean Charest (then minister of the environment), Stan Darling, and Ambassador George Landau, president of the Americas Society.
PROLOGUE
March 25, 1991 I have had to eat my words today, in front of a group of my acid rain peers. I stated some time ago that I would never live to see the day when a formal Acid Rain Control Treaty would be signed. The March 13th signing of the United States/Canada Air Quality Control Treaty which, received a great deal of media coverage, took place in the beautiful, former Reading Room, in the House of Commons, which later became the Progressive Conservative Caucus Room. There were a great many invited guests and the media were in full force.
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney paid tribute to the many people who had worked hard to bring this treaty about. He mentioned our former Washington ambassador, Allan Gotlieb, and the present ambassador, Derek Burney, as well as deputy ministers and other officials. However, he omitted to mention the Acid Rain Committee or any involvement that I had had for the past ten years or more. I was sort of disappointed about this.
Then, as he began to introduce President George Bush, Mr. Mulroney mentioned that there was one Member of Parliament in particular for whose work a special thanks should be made; the Member For Parry Sound/Muskoka, who he called, Mr. Acid Rain. That certainly made me feel pretty good.
When Mr. Bush started to speak, he looked over to me and said, Mr. Darling, I want to thank you most sincerely on behalf of the United States and Canada, for the great work you have done. This was certainly one of the highlights of my parliamentary career.
When the President was finished speaking, he walked over to me, shook my hand, and presented me with the gold pen he had used to sign the treaty. You can rest assured that this pen is a treasured momento and was not an inexpensive pen from Kresges or Woolworths. It received a lot of publicity across the country with newspaper headlines reading, President Presents Pen to MP.
THE EARTH SUMMIT
Rio de Janeiro, June 1, 1992 The fact that 188 nations are meeting in Rio this week is worth headlines in every newspaper in the world. I arrived from Ottawa yesterday and, believe me, I was surprised and delighted to be asked to represent Canada at Earth Summit 92. Being a Canadian delegate at this conference is a real plum for me. Because of my ten-year involvement with acid rain and the environment I really wanted to attend, but so many others in Ottawa felt the same way, I didnt think I had a chance.
Secretary of State for External Affairs Barbara McDougall, and the minister of state for the environment, Pauline Brouse, were both all set to go to Rio. At the last minute, Prime Minister Mulroney would not approve either McDougall or Brouse. I had mentioned casually to Jean Charest, the minister of the environment, how much I would like to attend the conference and Charest said he would see what he could do. Just a week ago, he asked me if I could go for two weeks as a delegate. Needless to say I was delighted. The Hon. David MacDonald, Chairman of the Standing Committee on the Environment, was also a delegate, as were the NDP representatives Jim Fulton and Lynn Hunter, so we made an interesting Canadian group including Sheila Copps, Brian OKurley, Paul Martin, Marlene Catteral and others.
The United Nations had been planning Earth Summit Rio for over two years. Maurice Strong, who was to become Chairman of Ontario Hydro in the future, was United Nations Conference on Environmental Development (UNCED) Secretary-General, for the United Nations, responsible for the overall planning of the conference.
I understand that invitations have been sent out by the UN to heads of state of every country in the world. It must be the largest conference ever held and there will be, I am told, at least 120 of the worlds leaders attending, all of whom will, we expect, speak at the plenary sessions during the next two weeks. I hope to hear President George Bush from the U.S., Prime Minister Mulroney, Prime Minister John Major of Great Britain, President Francois Mitterand from France, Chancellor Helmut Kohl from Germany, and many others.
