This is an analysis piece I wrote for CTV.ca based on former prime minister Jean Chretien's appearance before the Gomery Inquiry on Tuesday.

The "Westmount cheap" line interested me. It was delivered without any mirth. So I thought it would be useful to examine Chretien's motives for saying it.

Here's an excerpt:

Why it hurt

Chretien currently moves in rarified circles. For example, he has helped mediate the dispute been Russian oil giant Yukos and the Russian government. His daughter married into the Desmarais clan that runs Quebec's Power Corp.

When he left politics in 1984, he went to work on Bay Street as a lawyer, "but he isn't one of those guys," Lawrence Martin, an Ottawa journalist and author of a two-volume biography of Chretien, told CTV.ca.

Chretien has always been proud of the fact he came from a working-class family of 19 children in a tough Quebec mill town. While Chretien lives now in an Ottawa condominium, he has a lakefront retreat near Shawinigan where he spends almost half the year.

"He's always been sensitive to his portrayal, particularly by the intellectual class in Montreal, as a low-brow kind of guy," Martin said.

When Chretien graduated from Laval University's law school, he went back to Shawinigan to practice. But the stars went to the big law firms in Montreal, he said.

"Jean Chretien's style was always of the factory-type guy, the blue-collar worker. He became very, very, very bitter towards these people like Jacques Parizeau and Brian Mulroney, these smoothies who were slick. So it's particularly cutting when somebody would use that (small-town cheap) remark."

That would also explain the "Westmount cheap" shot, he said.