‘A rough-weather friend’: Donald Johnston, former MP, dead at 85

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Donald Johnston, who had an illustrious career as a Canadian lawyer and politician, and worked to raise the principles of corporate governance, has died at age 85. 

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Johnston spent a decade in Canadian Parliament and also was the first non-European, and only Canadian, to serve as secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation, an international organization for countries that emphasize democracy and a market economy.

friends said that throughout his career, which also included founding what became one of Canada’s largest corporate law firms, Johnston was known for his pro-free trade stance and centre-left politics, but also his sincerity as a friend.

“If you had any problems, he was more in contact with you than if things were going smoothly,” said Don Newman, the longtime CBC news broadcast veteran in Ottawa, and now a political consultant at Rubicon Strategies, who said he sometimes spoke daily with Johnston, in recent years.

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“He wasn’t a fair-weather friend, he was a rough-weather friend, which I thought was remarkable,” Newman added.

In 1973, Johnston, after about 10 years of practicing law in Montreal, joined with Roy Heenan, and later Peter Blaikie, to found the law firm Johnston Heenan Blaikie. It grew into one of Canada’s largest corporate law firms (and imploded in 2014, though Johnston was no longer involved in its management). After Johnston had entered politics and attained cabinet positions, the firm had dropped his name from the letterhead, to just Heenan Blaikie, and he had stepped down.

In 1978, Johnston was elected to the House of Commons as a Liberal MP for the Montreal riding of Saint-Henri–Westmount. He held several cabinet positions including m inister of state for science and technology and minister of state for economic and regional development under prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

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Norman Bacal, the former managing partner of Heenan Blaikie from 1997 to 2013, said his clients at the firm had included many famous actors and actresses, including Donald Sutherland.

Bacal recalled how other partners drafted a “mock” newsletter shortly after Johnston took a cabinet position, which said he would still be “accessible to all clients.” Then, they slipped it into a sheaf of other papers and waited.

“Don finally picks up the phone, and he’s apoplectic … because the one thing, the only thing that would have driven him insane was the notion that he would not maintain complete independence,” said Bacal. “Of course, Roy (Heenan) had gathered a bunch of partners on speakerphone and they all burst into hysterics.”

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He said the fact that Johnston, who would go on to lead the Liberal party as president from 1990 to 1994, had worked so closely with Peter Blaikie, who led the Progressive Conservative party in the 1980s, was characteristic of his non-partisan attitudes. 

In 1988, while in Parliament, Johnston briefly split from his party by supporting a free trade agreement with the U.S., and opposed the Meech Lake Accord, which ultimately failed but proposed amending the Constitution to strengthen provincial powers and to declare Quebec a distinct society. He served as an “independent Liberal” until the end of the year, then left Parliament.  

In 1990, he started the first of two terms as president of the Liberal party.

“ He was very, very smart, very strategic and a helluva nice guy too,” said Edward Goldenberg, a former chief of staff and senior policy adviser to prime minister Jean Chrétien . 

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Goldenberg said Johnston was a generous friend, who often lent out a house he owned in a small village in the south of France.

The next major turn in his career came when Johnston was elected secretary general of the OECD, serving two terms from 1996 to 2006. During his tenure, the organization developed standards of corporate social responsibility, called for an end to harmful tax practices, and looked to establish metrics to compare international education.

In his book about Heenan Blaikie, Bacal described Johnston as a man of many talents, recounting how he would play contemporary hits on the piano to entertain guests over cocktails, and how he always emphasized direct confrontation over backroom strategy, employing the motto, “if there were any knives, they went in the chest.”

Newman said that in recent years Johnston had been spending much of his time in his country house in the eastern townships of Quebec, and had faced bouts with pancreatic cancer and Lyme’s disease.

National Post