The people you didn’t hear from at the Liberal convention

Yes, the highlight of last weekend’s federal Liberal convention in Montreal was Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Saturday afternoon speech before an enthusiastic crowd of perhaps 4,000 delegates. I watched it with one of Carney’s speechwriters, who followed along nervously to see whether his boss paused in the right places and hit all the right applause lines. One line which landed particularly well came when the prime minister compared previous Canadian foreign policy to today’s: “We definitely have a different foreign policy now,” he said, tacitly referencing his now-famous Davos speech in his impish, understated way.

“Was that in the speech?” I asked the speechwriter.

“Ad libbed,” he responded.

Not bad.

As a political journalist who has attended too many conventions to count, I can’t attend these kinds of meet-ups without bumping into hundreds of people I know — and hundreds more that I don’t.

The veteran lawyer

But everyone knows Toronto lawyer Jack Siegel.

“How many conventions is this for you, Jack?” I ask.

“I couldn’t count, but I haven’t missed a national one since 1985,” he responds.

“Why do you come?”

“It’s like a family reunion,” Siegel says. “The most fun part of it is just seeing old friends who I’ve worked with across the […] This is an excerpt. Read the full article at TVO.org.