Floyd Laughren’s sense of humour is clearly intact.
When I ask how he’s doing, heading into his 90th birthday, he hearkens back to a line he once heard from the American pianist and composer, Eubie Blake: “If I knew I’d live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.”
Don’t believe it. Laughren, whose birthday is today, looks and sounds terrific, and says he’s in a wonderful place, physically and emotionally. “I feel great, and I don’t take it for granted either. I’m very fortunate to be as hale and hearty as I am.”
Laughren got elected the NDP member for Nickel Belt in 1971 and held the seat until 1998. Now, he’s looking back at the many professional experiences he figured he’d never have.
For example, he spent nearly two decades on the opposition benches at Queen’s Park until 1990, when the NDP shocked the country’s political firmament by winning its first (and still only) Ontario election. He spent five years as Premier Bob Rae’s finance minister before the worst recession since the Great Depression torpedoed that government’s re-election chances.
Laughren (right) speaks with former premier Mike Harris (centre) and his former NDP cabinet colleague Dave Cooke at the Robarts-McKeough Lunch earlier this year. (Steve Paikin)
But he loved his time in public life. “One of the reasons I liked it all so much is that I like politicians,” he says. “Not everyone would agree with that. But I like the sense of commitment and work ethic.”
Laughren mentions two politicians in particular whom he admired. There’s former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas, who became the first ever national leader of the NDP in 1961, “whose performance and principles have stayed with me forever.” In fact, it was Douglas’s influence that led Laughren to become a New Democrat in the first place.
He also mentions Canada’s current ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae, “who was a major influence on my life as well, and always had my back when I was treasurer.” (It wasn’t always so rosy. When the two would disagree about something in caucus or cabinet, Rae would tease Laughren by saying: “I just about forgot that you didn’t support me for leader.”)
Laughren, as chair of the board of Laurentian University, with honorary doctorate recipient, former Liberal cabinet minister Rick Bartolucci in Oct. 2016. (Steve Paikin)
While Laughren was the NDP’s finance critic in opposition, it wasn’t a slam dunk that he’d be appointed to head the ministry when the party formed government. Laughren had a well-known reputation for being a staunch lefty, having called for the nationalization of Sudbury’s most famous company, Inco. After all, his nickname was Pink Floyd.
When Rae called him to ask what portfolio he’d be interested in taking, Laughren picked finance. Rae’s reaction? “I’ll have to think about that.”
Laughren with former premier Bob Rae and cabinet colleague Dave Cooke at the Ontario Association of Former Parliamentarians' tribute to Rae in 2022. (Steve Paikin)
“He was concerned about my reputation,” Laughren admits. “But he phoned back a few days later, gave me finance, and added, ‘I hope we’ll get along.’”
Although the NDP won a majority government with only 37.6 per cent of the total vote, the government was initially extremely popular. Polls showed the party at 60 per cent support in the early months. When Laughren showed up for question period one day, he said to Premier Rae, “Did you see that poll this morning?”
Rae said that he did, then added: “Floyd, I’m warning you: don’t inhale.”
Rae was right to offer that admonition. Laughren took over as treasurer just as Ontario’s finances were cratering. It seemed every time ministry officials came into his office, the briefings became more depressing.
Three former finance ministers from three different parties (Laughren, Janet Ecker, and Greg Sorbara) with the current finance minister, Peter Bethlenfalvy, at the Robarts-McKeough Lunch on Feb. 8, 2024. (Steve Paikin)
Laughren’s first budget was a huge moment for the province’s first-ever NDP government. Supporters wanted him to damn the torpedoes and spend whatever it took to protect people from the ravages of the economic downturn; the business community wanted him to hit the brakes, downsize government, and get control of spending. Laughren was trying to find the right balance. He discovered he was quite unpopular with his caucus colleagues because he had to tell them, No, we simply don’t have money for X, Y, or Z.
But Laughren recognized that, as the first NDP finance minister, he couldn’t very well introduce an austerity budget. He laid out the options: “It is important for people to understand that we had a choice to make this year,” he said in his first budget speech, “to fight the deficit or fight the recession. We are proud to be fighting the recession.”
When Laughren’s budget featured a deficit of almost $11 billion, Bay Street freaked out, and the government’s popularity began to fall.
Two former treasurers: Liberal Greg Sorbara and Laughren, at the Robarts-McKeough Lunch earlier this year. (Steve Paikin)
One day in caucus, Bob Huget, the NDP MPP for Sarnia, took the floor and told his colleagues they were being too hard on Laughren, who stood a diminutive 5-foot-5. MPPs started to murmur. “I think Floyd is a model finance minister,” he said, which prompted even more heckling. Then Huget added: “Before you start groaning even more, I looked up the word model. It means ‘a small replica of the real thing.’” It brought the house down with laughter — and Laughren relishes the moment to this day.
Alas, there weren’t many funny moments between 1990 and 1995. The pressure to hold the line between expenditures and revenues never let up. The government wanted to save $6 billion to avoid an unprecedented $18 billion deficit. It famously advanced its “three-legged stool” approach of $2 billion in tax increases, $2 billion in program cuts, and $2 billion in savings through what the government called the Social Contract. It forced public sector employees to take some unpaid days off work, rather than finding those savings by firing thousands of people.
Public sector unions — the NDP’s political base — were outraged that they were being asked to sacrifice (private sector workers were losing their jobs by the hundreds of thousands), but Laughren still thinks the Social Contract was the right thing to do. “I don’t regret it at all,” he says. “Some of the public sector unions never did forgive us. I told them: I know it’s not pleasant but think about the alternative.”
Laughren with PC backroom strategist John Laschinger at the Robarts-McKeough Lunch earlier this year. (Steve Paikin)
The NDP got it from both ends. The unions turned on them, and the business community made their lives miserable. One day, there was a huge pro-business rally at Queen’s Park. Laughren’s staff tried to prevent him from addressing the crowd, but he insisted on going out and engaging, which he did. Ironically, one of the people participating in that protest is now Laughren’s personal financial adviser.
“I sometimes say to him: I don’t know why I even talk to you, let alone give you my business,” he laughs.
The unions never let up on the Rae government and eventually helped to defeat it, only to see Mike Harris’s Common Sense Revolutionaries take over in the 1995 election. It was a classic example of cutting off your nose to spite your face. When Harris took over, he fired tens of thousands of those same workers to find further savings. Laughren could have said I told you so, but never did.
Laughren with his former NDP cabinet colleague Frances Lankin at the Robarts-McKeough Lunch in 2024. (Steve Paikin)
“I always felt I was doing the best I could,” he now says. “I never felt I let the side down. And that has comforted me over the years.”
Laughren left politics in 1998 under unusual circumstances, when Premier Harris tapped him to become chair of the Ontario Energy Board. He discovered he enjoyed governance and followed up by chairing the boards of Laurentian University and Health Sciences North in Sudbury. He also sat on a tripartite committee that advised a Liberal government to consolidate 600 different municipal electrical utilities into fewer, more efficient entities.
He stepped away from his final two board appointments a year ago, and now he’s genuinely retired. He’s got three adult children (Joel, who’s lived in Taiwan running an independent school for 20 years; Tannys, who’s in charge of the nearly 600 volunteers at Health Sciences North; and Joshua, who’s with the environmental group Oceana in Toronto) and five grandchildren. As many as 40 friends and family will gather in Sudbury on Saturday night to celebrate Laughren’s 90th.
Laughren chats with Ontario's current finance minister, Peter Bethlenfalvy at the annual Robarts-McKeough Lunch in 2024. (Steve Paikin)
But with the joy also comes sorrow. Former premier Bill Davis once told me the worst part about turning 90 was the gut punch you felt every time you heard about another friend who’d died. Laughren has experienced some of that recently. His great friends, former MPPs Eli Martel (Sudbury East) and Jim Bradley (St. Catharines), have both died over the past few weeks. Martel was a caucus colleague whose riding was adjacent to Laughren’s. Bradley, whose 41 years at Queen’s Park made him the second-longest-serving MPP ever, was a Liberal — but also a dear friend.
“I was very fond of him,” Laughren says of Bradley. “We attended sporting events together. He was a partisan but never used cheap shots.”
As he looks back at a life well lived, how does this former model treasurer regard it all?
“I left politics with no bitterness at all,” he says. “I wouldn’t have missed any of it. It was quite wonderful.”
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