‘I enjoyed every minute of it’

As federal election season ramps up, Ken McDonald steps back

Ken McDonald started his political career as a municipal councillor in CBS in 1993. Craig Westcott photo

By Craig Westcott

In 31 years of politics, Kelligrews native Ken McDonald saw his fair share of controversy and confrontation, but as he prepares to bow out as the Liberal MP for Avalon Riding, the former appliance repairman turned councillor and then mayor says he has enjoyed every day of it.

“I’m truly honoured to be doing the job that I’m doing as an MP,” McDonald said last week during an interview at The Shoreline as his colleagues in the Liberal caucus huddled in B.C. to plot strategy for the next sitting of Parliament and a way to save their political skins in the face of elevator dropping poll results. “It’s not something I ever envisioned doing. I didn’t grow up in a house where you had riches, but you always had lots to eat… But to know that the people voted me to represent them in three elections I think is just amazing, and I owe the people a huge, huge thank you…

McDonald, already well known in CBS as a colourful character and small businessman, formally entered the political arena in 1993 and got elected as the representative of Ward 3.

It was a time when CBS council generated provincial headlines, especially involving water and sewer work and subdivision developments. McDonald found himself a critic of the way some staff had handled builders’ deposits and other matters.

“I resigned in ’96, a year early, because I just didn’t like the way things were going,” McDonald said. “There was stuff getting done that shouldn’t have been getting done and I didn’t want to be part of it.”
McDonald went back to fixing washers and stoves and didn’t run again until 2005, when he was one of four people who ran for mayor, coming second to Woodrow French.

That meant another cooling off period.

“So then when it rolled around again to 2009 I decided I’d run to try to get back on council,” McDonald said. “And I won by 20-something votes. I beat Gerard Tilley at the time, he was the incumbent. And four years after that I ran for mayor against Woodrow French. That was in 2013.”

McDonald won handily, beating the incumbent by nearly twice as many votes.

“And then two years after that I was elected an MP, in 2015.”

The step up to federal politics came after the Liberal incumbent, Scott Andrews, got in hot water over an alleged peccadillo in Ottawa and was expelled from caucus by then Opposition Leader Justin Trudeau.

“At the time, a guy named Rick Webber in Topsail called me,” said McDonald. “We were organizing a food drive (together) in the town… In that conversation, he asked me, ‘Do you know Andrew Furey?'”

McDonald said he only knew Furey from the media stories about his activities as a doctor in Haiti.

Webber said he had just been talking to Furey and when he told him he had to go to talk with Ken McDonald, Furey asked if it was the same Ken McDonald who was mayor of CBS.

“Rick, said yes, that’s who it is,” McDonald recalled. “He said, ‘Would you mind asking him if he’s interested in running in federal politics?’ And lo and behold, I said, ‘I’m willing to have a conversation.'”

So, McDonald and his wife Trudy went down to Furey’s house in St. Phillips. 

“We must have been there two hours talking about what’s involved and everything else, and he told me his job was to find the best candidate for Avalon Riding. And he said to me, ‘If you’re interested, my job is done, I won’t look any further than you.'”

McDonald said he would think about it.

“And that’s what I did, I called him back and said, ‘Yeah, we (Trudy and I) talked about it and I’m interested,” McDonald said. “He said, ‘Good enough.’ And that’s how I got to be where I’m to today.”

McDonald got elected as part of the new Trudeau government that November and was re-elected in 2019 and 2021.

“I won’t be elected federally in ’25, that I know of right now,” he said, laughing.

McDonald said he his relationship with Furey has remained good with the now premier willing to tell him when he is doing well or bad.

McDonald said there isn’t much difference between being a councillor or mayor and an MP, except that at the municipal level you’re more accessible. When he was a councillor, McDonald said, people who couldn’t reach him by phone sometimes showed up at his door.

“But I enjoyed my days at municipal politics, I was never sorry for doing it,” McDonald said. 

Federal politics is just as fulfilling, but on a bigger scale, he said, citing the increased federal child tax benefit that the Trudeau government implemented.

“It was absolutely phenomenal the amount of people who brought it up at the doors,” he said. “They really appreciated the fact that they were getting this Canada Child Benefit tax free, whether it was to put their kids in sports, or whether it was to enroll them in music, or provide them with their school lunches that they had to pack for them everyday.”

But federal politics does have one big drawback.

“The frustration, I think is being away from home so much,” McDonald said. “And the travel. I’ll start next week flying back and forth to Ottawa. I’ll fly up Sunday afternoons and I’ll fly back Thursday nights, and I’ll do that now probably four weeks straight, and then you’re back for a full week. But when you’re back in between on weeks that are sitting weeks, you’ve probably got an event to go to Friday night, you’ve probably got another event somewhere, it could be in St. Bride’s, it could be in Trepassey, on Saturday night. And Sunday afternoon you’re back on the plane again and gone. So, you’re hardly home. You’re home, but you’re not home… You’ve got to enjoy it, and I still enjoy it. I’m not giving it up because I’m not enjoying it. I like going out to those communities, they appreciate the fact that you show up.”

It also pays off in votes. McDonald said when he was first elected in 2015, he lost the ballot in St. Bride’s by 1 vote. He also lost nearby Branch and Point Lance.

“I set my heart on making sure that I won them in 2019,” he said. “And I did. I remember the mayor (of St. Bride’s), Eugene Manning, Fabian’s brother, told me in 2019 that I would double the Conservative candidate and that’s exactly what I did, I doubled him. And I won Point Lance, and I won Branch as well, and did it again in 2021. That was in an area that people thought could never be switched from blue to red, but it has been. I don’t know what will happen next time. We’ll have to see.”

McDonald is one of the few Liberal MPs who have voted against the government on a policy issue, in this case the carbon tax on home heating fuel. 

“I didn’t blindside anyone when I was doing the vote,” he said. “I told everybody up front what I was doing and why I was doing it.”

The day of the first vote on it, McDonald got a call as he was walking up the steps towards Parliament. It was from a cabinet minister he won’t name who asked if McDonald would vote remotely, from home, instead of on the floor of the House of Commons. 

“I had a lump in my stomach the size of my head at that point,” McDonald said. “My answer was no, I’m on my way into the House now. I said I like being in the House, I like to vote in the House instead of voting online, and I like to stand up and let people know how I voted, and I intend to do the very same today.”

Once he got inside, McDonald approached the Speaker to alert him about his voting intention and asked that the clerk recognize and record his vote quickly rather than leave him standing up a long time waiting for it to be recognized. The Speaker obliged.

The reaction from the Prime Minister’s Office was muted, but the one from caucus was frosty.

As he was dealing with the fallout, McDonald kept recalling a line former Brian Peckford advisor and businessman Des Sullivan had written for him in the speech when he announced he was leaving CBS politics for federal politics.  

“One of the lines that he had in it, and I’ve said this to many people, is as a politician you should never forget that it’s the people you serve,” McDonald recalled. “And I’ve told that to people in Ottawa. I told it to the prime minister, I told it to everyone who asked, ‘Why did you do this?’ And I told them about this line that was put in a speech for me one time, and it fits. I think every politician should live by it. If they don’t, they don’t deserve to be there.”

McDonald said it took a while for his fellow Newfoundland Liberal caucus members to speak to him again. One of them sent a text so cutting, McDonald took a screen shot of it for posterity.

“So, I stay away from the Newfoundland caucus, I don’t go there,” McDonald said. “I stay away from Atlantic caucus, for the same reason I suppose; they were upset that I had (voted against the government). And I stay away from national caucus. Now I may go back when I go back (to Ottawa) now, I don’t know. I did go to a couple before it ended for the summer, but you can feel the cold breathing down your neck when you’re there, not that it bothers me too much. Because nobody in Ottawa is voting for you; everything depends on what you are doing in your riding.”

McDonald insisted it hasn’t affected his ability to do his job and deliver results for residents of Avalon.

“I can talk to any minister, if I bump into them in an airport, or meet them in the lobby, or whatever,” he said. “And they’ve been very receptive to me talking to them. I had a phone call last week from (finance minister) Chrystia Freeland, just asking me how things were going, and stuff like that. It was very cordial, a very nice conversation. I bumped into Minister (Steven) Guilbeault in Montreal Airport a couple of months ago and we had a short conversation, ‘How’s your summer going and what not?’ And if there’s anybody who should be mad at me it’s him. But he doesn’t portray it, anyway.”

The breach with the party is not why he is not running again, McDonald said.

“I truly believe that if I put my name on the ballot I would win,” he insisted. “Whether that be for the Liberals or for any party, for that matter. I think I could win the seat again, because the reception I got this summer going to events and dinners and whatnot and people coming up to me and saying, ‘We’re losing a good man if you don’t run.'”

So why is he going?

“I’m 65, I turned 65 on June 8,” McDonald said. “And when I did this, I said to Trudy if I get two terms out of it, that will probably be enough. The travel is horrible, you’re away from home, I’ve got grandkids involved in hockey and sports and whatnot, and I don’t get to see much of it… You’re missing out on a lot. It’s a huge commitment for some one to make. I didn’t realize it until I got there.”

But McDonald won’t say he is finished with politics for good. He’s not sure what’s next.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. I kind of know, but I don’t know, that kind of way. I enjoy it. Trudy tells me, ‘There’s coming a time when you have to stop.’ But I’ve worked from the time I was 16 years ago… My first job at 16 in 1975 was working in the kitchen at Grace General Hospital at $2.85 an hour. I think the minimum wage at that time was $2.14. So, I was making more than the minimum wage… I loved every minute of it, and I’ve been working ever since. But being an MP, or even a provincial politician, I was surprised to be here this long, and for people to come up to you say how they appreciate everything you do for them… People are very grateful if you speak up for them in the House of Commons, or to a minister, or if you deliver some funding to the community, or give them a certificate for a 50th anniversary, or an 80th birthday, or something. They really appreciate the fact you showed up, and I’ve tried to show up. I could have stayed home a good many nights the last nine years, but I didn’t. I figured I owed it to the people who voted me in.”