Different Drummers: Banking and Politics in Canada

K.V. Nagarjan is an assistant professor of Commerce and Administration
at Laurentian University.

This book, written by the past president of the Canadian Bankers’
Association, is, as he puts it, a “mixture of history, journalism,
argumentation which is usually (but not always) in defence of my
industry, and personal reflection.” How does the book fare in these
areas and how good is the mixture?

As a piece of history, the book is episodic and somewhat discursive.
Topics of discussion include bank failures; the “disastrous foray”
of Alberta’s Social Credit Party into banking legislation in the
1930s; the founding of the Bank of Canada; and the battle over economic
policy waged between the Diefenbaker government and James Coyne, then
Governor of the Bank of Canada. Coverage of the various Bank Act
revisions is choppy, as the author is more interested in the political
horse-trading than in the issues themselves and how they were dealt with
by the legislature.

The book qualifies as journalism only to the extent that the author
writes about major events involving banking and politics. He does so
from his perspective as an insider during his tenure at the helm of the
CBA. There is no “equal time” here for all points of view, and the
author’s style is more that of an editorialist given to railing than
that of a reporter.

Though the book does not contain much by way of reflective remarks,
there are some useful suggestions for bank governance structures and a
discussion of emerging issues related to the reform of financial
institutions. What the book does have is the rich flavor of a personal
memoir, which begins approximately in the middle of the book.
MacIntosh’s drumbeat gets louder as he attacks nationalists,
populists, and promoters of questionable trust companies, while
forcefully defending the free-market system in general and the field of
finance in particular.

Different Drummers is a vigorous contribution to the political debate
over banking, but it drums into the reader’s ears mostly the
bankers’ agenda and thereby provokes a desire to listen to the other
drummers in the field of financial reform. Thus, rather ironically, at
least one of the objectives the author set out for himself in writing
this book is fulfilled.