Goldenberg was a special constitutional adviser to Jean Chrétien, who served as justice minister in the Trudeau government, helping to shape the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms.PETER BREGG
In May of 1972, a 23-year-old bespectacled McGill University law student walked into the office of Jean Chrétien, the young Indian Affairs minister in the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau, to start a job as an intern.
“My summer job would last, in one way or another, for almost 32 years,” Eddie Goldenberg recalled years later in his 2006 memoir, The Way It Works: Inside Ottawa. Over those three decades, Mr. Goldenberg and Mr. Chrétien created a truly remarkable political partnership, persevering through Mr. Chrétien’s early victories and defeats and culminating in his decade-long tenure as prime minister.
For much of his career, Mr. Goldenberg, who died from cancer on July 9 at age 77, was called a senior policy adviser but he was much more.
He was Mr. Chrétien’s privatenegotiator, his troubleshooter and his “personal think tank,” as one journalist once put it. He was there for the constitutional talks in the early 1980s, for the success in tackling the federal deficit and modernizing the Canada Pension Plan in the 1990s and the later decision to keep Canada out of the Iraq war.
“He was Mr. Chrétien’s alter ego in a lot of ways,” said Peter Donolo, the prime minister’s director of communications from 1993 to 1999 and a close collaborator with Mr. Goldenberg. “He understood his [Mr. Chrétien’s] values, and their sense of the country was completely aligned. ...He knew the boss inside and out.”
“There was an odd-couple appeal of Eddie and JC,” Mr. Donolo said. “They were an unlikely duo. Eddie was very compact, a guy with glasses and looking like an intellectual. And Mr. Chrétien was a tall, lanky, rough-around-the-edges guy from rural Quebec.” But working together, they formed a “formidable” pair.
Mr. Goldenberg was “extremely professional,” said John Rae, a Liberal insider and onetime executive at Power Corp. of Canada,who helped him get that first job with Mr. Chrétien, and over the years worked with Mr. Goldenberg on leadership races, national elections and Quebec referendums. “He was a prodigious worker, very well read, very open and optimistic.”
Edward Stephen Goldenberg was born in Montreal on July 31, 1948, the eldest son of H. Carl Goldenberg, a lawyer and labour arbitrator who later served as a Liberal senator, and Shirley Goldenberg, a trail-blazing expert in labour relations and a professor in McGill’s management school.
Eddy Goldenberg, is pictured in Ottawa, on Sept. 13, 1994.CHUCK MITCHELL/The Canadian Press
It was a household full of political and intellectual talk where dinner guests included family friends like a law professor named Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Mr. Goldenberg earned a BA, an MA and a law degree at McGill and spent a year in Paris at the Institut d’études politiques.
He was a special constitutional adviser to Mr. Chrétien, who served as justice minister in the Trudeau government, helping to shape the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He was there for Mr. Chrétien’s unsuccessful bid to become Liberal leader, losing to John Turner. When Mr. Chrétien temporarily quit politics in 1986, Mr. Goldenberg joined him at the same law firm, Lang Michener, returning to his advisory role after Mr. Chrétien became Liberal leader in 1990 and leader of the opposition.
Mr. Goldenberg was wary of promises made in opposition that could come back to later haunt a politician in power. He warned Mr. Chrétien not to commit to scrap the hated GST, which contributed to the electoral demise of the Progressive Conservatives. Mr. Goldenberg knew the tax needed to stay because there was no easy way to replace the revenue.
Eddie Goldenberg, influential former top aide to Jean Chrétien, dies at 77
“You will regret the promise if ever you become prime minister,” he recalled telling Mr. Chrétien, according to his memoir. “You won’t be able to keep it.” Yet under pressure from fellow Liberals, Mr. Chrétien vowed to get rid of the tax, forcing him to make an embarrassing retreat after he became prime minister.
Mr. Goldenberg said he never had problems speaking truth to power, even though he knew that Mr. Chrétien wouldn’t always follow his advice. But he saw his role as crucial, especially in an environment where Liberal MPs and cabinet ministers would be reluctant to contradict their chief. “I would explain that excessive deference accorded to all heads of government leads to bad decisions.”
While the top job in the Prime Minister’s Office was held by Jean Pelletier, an old friend and confidante of Mr. Chrétien, Mr. Pelletier concentrated on political files and kept a low profile. Mr. Goldenberg was everywhere else, quietly taking notes in the corner of the room during key meetings.
“You couldn’t be in Ottawa and not know Eddie. … He really understood how Ottawa works,” said Mel Cappe, Clerk of the Privy Council, the top federal bureaucrat, from 1999 to 2002.
A key role for Mr. Goldenberg was to act as a mediator in the sometimes-nasty personal rivalry between Mr. Chrétien and Paul Martin. “Eddie understood the conflict and tension between Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien,” Mr. Cappe said in an interview. “To govern when the minister of finance and the prime minister don’t get along very well, that’s very tough.”
Mr. Goldenberg acknowledged this role in his memoir, noting that he was usually present when Mr. Martin and Mr. Chrétien met. “Most often, there were only three of us in the room,” he wrote.
“He played a bridging role keeping the communications lines open,” Mr. Cappe continued, made possible in large part because of Mr. Goldenberg’s self-deprecating personality. “There wasn’t a vain bone in this guy’s body. He didn’t care about getting credit for anything. He wanted to see progress. He wanted to see accomplishments.”
Mr. Goldenberg “had a terrific ability to work with people and nowhere was that more clearly demonstrated than in the difficult period in Mr. Chrétien’s first mandate,” said David Dodge, who was deputy minister at finance and then at health before being appointed governor of the Bank of Canada.
“He had the implicit trust of Mr. Chrétien as prime minister and that was absolutely essential.”
Because of that trust, Mr. Goldenberg was often brought in to seal the deal. He compared his role to that of “a relief pitcher brought in late in the game, with his team slightly ahead, but with the other side at bat and the winning runs on base.”
Mr. Goldenberg also had the respect of political rivals. David Lindsay was chief of staff in the 1990s to Mike Harris, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative premier whose right-of-centre politics were in conflict with the Chrétien Liberals. Yet Mr. Lindsay had a good relationship with Mr. Goldenberg.
“We had somewhat different outlooks,” he told The Globe and Mail. “But at the end of the day, it wasn’t as partisan in those days, and we could make a deal and make things happen.”
At the conclusion of the Chrétien era, Mr. Goldenberg briefly held the chief-of-staff role but resigned from government in late 2003 and joined the law firm of Stikeman Elliott as a partner. It wasn’t a good fit.
“Eddie was interested in policy, not just lawyering,” said Mr. Dodge. Four years later, he left for Bennett Jones, a Calgary-based law firm, and helped set up its Ottawa-based policy practice that attracted prominent advisers like Mr. Dodge and Ann McLellan, the former Chrétien cabinet minister. It grew to as many as 18 people. He stayed for 17 years.
“It reflected a view that it was important for lawyers to understand what the policy dimensions were behind the laws which they were having to deal with,” Mr. Dodge said. After a change of leadership at the law firm, the focus changed and the policy practice was scaled back. Mr. Dodge retired and Mr. Goldenberg left in 2024 for Global Public Affairs.
He continued to advocate for the kind of policies he cherished, working with former governor-general David Johnston and Dr. Alan Bernstein, former president of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, to craft a proposal aimed at attracting scientific researchers to Canada, especially from the U.S., a policy included in the 2025 federal budget.
Mr. Goldenberg was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2013 and was awarded an honorary degree by McGill in 2004.
When he wasn’t working, Mr. Goldenberg was a keen downhill and cross-country skier and loved the outdoors ever since he first attended summer camp in Algonquin Park as a boy.
As an adult, he would travel with a group of friends to northern Canada, canoeing on remote rivers. He and his partner, Caroline Weber, whom he met in 2000, would hike and travel together frequently, with Haida Gwaii in British Columbia a favourite spot.
Mr. Goldenberg is survived by his partner, his mother, Shirley Goldenberg, who is 103, as well as Caroline’s son, a niece and a nephew.
In a statement after Mr. Goldenberg’s passing, Mr. Chrétien said, “I have lost a dear friend. Our country has lost a great public servant.”
You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here.
To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@globeandmail.com.