Presidents of France 8: Emile Loubet (1899-1906)

Émile François Loubet was born in 1838.   He received his law degree and his doctorate in law in 1862-3.  He became mayor of Montelimar in 1870 and was elected to the chamber of deputies in 1876 during the earliest days of the Third Republic.  He was a supporter of Leon Gambetta, and a friend of Sadi Carnot and became a force in the moderate wing of the Republican party.  He was an opponent of the Falloux Laws which sought to put education under Catholic control.   He entered the Senate in 1885.  His reputation as an eloquent orator and his honesty as a politician served him well as he became Senate President in 1886, served briefly as Prime Minister in 1892 and was chosen as President of the Republic in 1899.  He completed his term, leaving in 1906. 

As President he took the side of those who sought to reconsider the conviction of Captain Dreyfus.  This his administration succeeded in doing although not without some violence to his person by an anti-Dreyfusard who struck him with a cane.  Dreyfus's ten year sentence was remitted and Dreyfus was released.    The Paris Exhibition occurred in 1900, helped to form an Entente with Great Britain after friction between the two countries over the Dreyfus affair and the Boer War.  

After he retired from politics in 1906, he lived another 23 years, passing away in 1929 at age 90.

Presidents of France 7: Felix Faure (1895-1899)

Felix Faure was born in 1841 in Paris. And unfortunately for him, he is remembered more for the manner of his death than anything he did in his life.  His father was a small scale furniture maker and he himself was a tanner and merchant based in Le Havre, where he became quite wealthy.  At the age of 40 he was elected to the national assembly and sat with the left party.  He was appointed as under-secretary of the colonies in 1882 in Ferry's and later in Tirard's ministry.  He became vice president of the assembly in 1893.  Under Charles DePuy he was appointed minister for the Navy the next year.   

The sudden resignation of the President Casimir-Perier precipitated his rise to President.  He was chosen essentially to prevent the ascendancy of Henri Brisson a perennial candidate who was on the far left and was considered not centrist enough to win. Faure was inoffensive, which was therefore a blessing.  In the year he became President Faure granted amnesty to anarchists who up to then had been living in exile.   In celebration of the Franco-Russian alliance, he received the Tsar on a state visit.   

Captain Albert Dreyfus

The Dreyfus affair broke during his tenure as President, and he sided with those who did not want to reopen the case, which gained him the enmity of pro-Dreyfus politicians such as Georges Clemenceau and the greatest champion of Dreyfus, the writer Emile Zola.  

He died suddenly of a stroke while making love in his office suite with Marguerite Steinheil, then 30 years old. He was 58.  His ingestion of an aphrodisiac containing quinine may have precipitated his death.  Steinheil  was his mistress and was married to a painter , certainly not an uncommon thing for a number of French politicians or even for certain Arkansas governors. 

Marguerite Steinheil

Steinheil went on to have affairs with a number of other important French figures of the age, until finally she married the 6th Baron of Abinger and lived in England.  She also was tried and acquitted for the murder of her stepmother and husband 1909, but with lingering suspicion hanging over her afterwards similar to that surrounding OJ Simpson.

Faure was not mourned by his political opponents who were not above making puns about the supposed sexual behavior that had led to his death.   Georges Clemenceau, perhaps the most famous French statesman of the age, said of Faure that "upon entering the void, he must have felt at home".    He was laid to rest in France's foremost cemetery, Pere Lachaise.

Tomb  of Felix Faure

Presidents of France 6: Jean Casimir-Perier 1894-1895

Jean Casimir-Perier was the French President only for a little over 6 months. 

 He was born in 1847 into a political family, being the grandson of  Casimir Pierre-Perier, who was premier for Louis Phillipe, and the son of Auguste Casimir-Perier, who was interior minister in the Thiers government.  He was chosen as counselor for the Aube Department and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Aube until his election as President.   While his family had monarchist sympathies, he chose to side with left-republicans.  He was under secretary of State for War in the government of Jules Ferry.  From 1890-92 he was vice president of the Chamber of Deputies,  and in 1893 became speaker.  In 1893 on December 9, the anarchist August Vaillant throws a bomb in the chamber but fortunately nobody was killed. In response repressive measures against anarchism were passed in the chamber.  Vaillant was guillotined.

On June 25, 1894, President Carnot was stabbed to death in Lyon.  Casimir-Perier was elected President with support from the right shortly afterwards.  He was criticised by some as being "President of the Reaction".  As Casimir-Perier is a wealthy investor in the Anzin coal mines, he is ridiculed by the left as Casimir Anzin.  

  His unpopularity with the public was such that even his own ministers began to ignore him, and complaining of this, he resigned from the presidency after six months.

After that Casimir-Perier left politics and turned his attention to his holdings in mining.  He was supportive of the accused in the Dreyfus case in Rennes.  He turns down offers of the presidency by President Loubet in 1899.    In 1907 he died at the age of 60. 

Presidents of France: 5. Marie François Sadi Carnot (1887-1894)

Marie François Sadi Carnot was born in 1837 and became President of France in 1887 succeeding Jules Grevy who resigned after a scandal broke concerning Grevy's son in law. He was the son of Hippolyte Carnot, who served in the government of Napoleon.  Carnot's uncle was a physicist whose claim to fame was his achievements in the field of Thermodynamics and Carnot was himself trained as a civil engineer at the Ecole polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale de Ponts et Chaussees (National School of Bridges and Roads)

He was, because of his staunch republicanism, entrusted with  the prefecture of Seine-Inférieure and was shortly afterwards elected to the National Assembly representing Côte-d'Or.  When Grevy resigned, his reputation for honesty made him the obvious successor winning election by the National Assembly overwhelmingly.   At the outset of his term as President, Carnot was faced with the neo-militarist challenge of Boulanger until the latter was driven into exile.

Nevertheless another scandal broke in 1882 in which the Panama Canal Company's debt problems were concealed from the public by certain members of the government who apparently received bribes from Ferdinand de Lesseps.

de Lesseps

  De Lesseps had previously helped to bring the Suez Canal into existence.  This financial venture, when it collapsed caused many investors to lose their savings, eventually the US bought out the investments and succeeded in building the canal.    

Carnot established a Franco-Russian alliance and was at the height of his popularity when on June 24, 1894 he was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist while sitting his his carriage.  The anarchist, Sante Geronimo Casario was guillotined a little less than 2 months later.

Assassination of Sadi Carnot

  His motive was said to be in revenge for the executions of other anarchists, beginning with Auguste Vaillant and Emile Henry.  

Carnot was laid to rest in the Pantheon after a large state funeral .July 1.    

Presidents of France: 4. Jules Grévy (1879-1887)

Jules Grevy is perhaps the only French President to have a zebra named after him.  English naturalist Emile Oustalet first described one in 1892 and named it after Grevy.   The government of Abyssinia gave Grevy one when he was French President in the 1880s.  The zebra is an endangered species found only in a small part of modern day Ethiopia and Kenya. 

Grevy's Zebra

Grevy himself
was born at Mont-sous-Vaudrey in 1807, a district in Eastern France in the Jura Mountains. He was called to the bar in 1837 and was consistently republican in his sentiments, through the years of the Orleanist monarchy.  After the 1848 revolution he foresaw the neo-monarchist plans of Louis Bonaparte and sought to prevent his ascendancy through constitutional means.  After the 1851 coup d'etat he was briefly under arrest but was released.  He reentered politics towards the end of the Second Empire in 1868 and sat in opposition to the monarchists before and after the fall of Napoleon III and his
disastrous Franco Prussian war. 

When Marshal MacMahon resigned in the face of rising left-republican opposition, Jules Grevy succeeded him in late January 1879.  Grevy announced his intention of never going against the popular will, and discontinued the prerogative of the executive to summarily dissolve the assembly and hold new elections.  He revised the constitution to weaken the executive powers.  The song "La Marseillaise" was officially restored as the national anthem 1879.  During his tenure as President, Grevy oversaw a number of anti-clerical "reforms" including the creation of teacher training schools that were strictly republican in outlook.  Unauthorized teaching by churches was outlawed, which caused many Jesuits to emigrate.  At the same time, for the first time,  colleges and high schools were created for women.  The freedom to assemble without official permission was granted in 1884.  In view of the sad experience of Louis Bonaparte, former members of the royal families (Bonapartist, Orleanist, Bourbon)  were made ineligible to run for office in the republic. In foreign policy Grevy was opposed to the Boulangist movement promoting an aggressive policy against Germany.  The French overseas possessions expanded with a protectorate over Tunisia established in 1881, in French Indochina, and over Madagascar in 1885.

He was easily reelected for a second term in 1885 but soon came to grief because of a scandal created when it was revealed that his son in law, Daniel Wilson, had been selling Legion of Honor awards to anyone willing to pay for them.   This scandal, for which he was only indirectly to blame, eventually led to his resignation in late 1887.  

During Grevy's terms in office and, specifically, on the occasion of the death of Victor Hugo,  he made the Pantheon  officially a kind of secular republican temple, which interred the heroes of the Republic as voted by the National Assembly.   In a similar way Les Invalides included  a secular mausoleum honoring and containing the mos eminent military dead of France.

Grevy died four years later from a pulmonary embolism in 1881 at the age of 74. 






 

Presidents of France: 3. Patrice de Mac-Mahon (1873-1879)

Mac-Mahon  was born in Sully in 1808 in the department Saône-et-Loire. He was descended from the old Irish Catholic aristocracy associated with County Clare.  The confiscation of lands from the time of Cromwell and then the support of James II against William III of England led to exile in France, their naturalization in 1749.  His grandfather was named Marquis de MacMahon by Louis XV.  The politics of the family was Catholic and royalist.  One of a very prolific clan, he was the 16th child of 17 in his father's family.  

MacMahon was educated at the Lycee Louis le Grand and at the Academy of St. Cyr, secondary school and military academy respectively.  He graduated in 1827.   As a soldier he served in Algeria, he was wounded in the assault on Constantine, was promoted to commander in the Foreign Legion, and became a Divisional General in 1852.  He also served with distinction in the Crimean War.  While serving in the Second War of Italian Independence which pitted the Kingdom of Sardinia against the Austrian Empire, he won a decisive battle at Magenta, and in gratitude Napoleon III created him the first duke of Magenta. 

Before the Franco-Prussian war he served as Governor-General of Algeria.  He returned when war broke out in 1870 and he served with Napoleon in this ill-fated campaign.  The encirclement of the army at Sedan, led to Napoleon III and Mac-Mahon being taken prisoner.  Released by the Prussian Army in the peace in 1871 he resumed his military service, leading troops in the assault of the Paris Commune which led to 6000 to 7500 deaths and many summary executions.  

In 1873 he was elected President of France, succeeding Adolphe Thiers.  He was staunchly monarchist and was supported by the conservative wing of the National Assembly.  He was a "Legitimist" a party of monarchists who favored the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty, last seen in 1830, but was forced to countenance the republicans in his midst and sometimes in his government. 

Since the Franco-Prussian War there was a French garrison in Rome protecting the pope from the depredations of the Italian nationalists, who had succeeded in erasing all but the last vestiges of the Papal States.  When in 1877 two bishops of the Catholic church in France asked MacMahon to help resolve the issue, the republicans, it provoked an outroar and backlash by the republicans.  MacMahon allegedly started to make moves to restore the Bourbon monarchy under the

Le Compte de Chambord

Compte de Chambord, the grandson of Charles X.  In the elections of 1877 a left-republican majority was returned in the national assembly putting and end to such ideas and after another leftist victory in the Senatorial elections in 1879 MacMahon resigned.  He died in 1893 and was afforded full military honors and buried in Les Invalides in Paris.

Presidents of France: Adolphe Thiers (Aug 1871-May 1873)

2.  Adolphe Thiers (Aug 1871-May 1873)

Adophe Thiers was the second President of France.  He was born in Marseille in 1797.  He was trained in the law at the faculty at Aix-en-Provence and educated at the Marseille lycee. 
 
At first he was known as a historian for the French Revolution though another eminent British historian of the same revolution and literary figure, Thomas Carlyle, said that Thier's voluminous history was full of inaccuracies.    He was prime minister in the governments of Louis Phillipe in 1836, 1840, and in 1848, when Louis Phillipe went into exile, and again became a leader of the French government after Louis Napoleon III was deposed after having been humiliated militarily and taken prisoner at Sedan. 

Charles X,  made himself unpopular by advocating a staunch conservative Catholic policy, recommending among other things, the death penalty for theft or harming of the consecrated host.  Thiers advocated Charles X's overthrow prior to the revolution of 1830.  He found he could work with Louis Phillippe whose Orleanist branch of the royal family was more liberal.  His father, who had initially supported the revolution of 1789, nevertheless lost his head. 

As a politician during the regime of Louis Phillippe, he helped to bring the remains of Napoleon I back from St. Helena to be interred in a place of honor at Les Invalides, the military memorial for France's war dead. 

Thiers eventually fell from favor with Louis Phillippe when he advocated supporting militarily Egypt's Mohammed Ali Pasha in his struggles against the Ottoman Empire. 

He tried to straddle the divide between the conservative Catholics on the one hand and the more atheistic or at least secular Republicans on the other side.  He helped develop the Falloux Laws of 1850-51. These were designed to establish schools in communes with more than 500 persons, to decentralize education, and place it in the control of local Catholic congregations.  This was a conservative movement aimed at decreasing the power of the Republicans and anti-clerical factions in education.

After the fall of Louis Phillippe in 1848, he was not a big fan of Napoleon III, and was said to have declared that electing Napoleon III as president of France would be a disgrace. 

Alexandre Bixio

Alexandre Bixio at least claimed to have heard him say this, which lead Thiers to challenge him to a duel in the gardens of the palace (1).  Apparently neither man was seriously hurt however.  Bixio went on to fame as an atmospheric scientist and baloonist, and Thiers as the man who crushed the Paris Commune of 1871. 

Later Napoleon III became President of France.  When he later staged his coup d'etat and made himself emperor, Thiers was imprisoned for a while, then sent into exile.  The next year he was allowed to return to France, but stayed out of politics and turned once more to his work as a historian.
In 1863 he reentered politics and served in parliament as the leader of the anti-royalist faction there.

He appeared to be of two minds about French assertions of its power abroad.  At first supporting war with Prussia he abruptly switched to being against the war and favoring negotiations to resolve the issues with Bismarck. 

Bismarck and his prisoner

Bismarck refused, the Franco Prussian war broke out and when Napoleon III was captured along with a large body of troops, he was deposed.

Thiers was elected head of the provisional government of the new republic in late February 1871 and on 1st March 1871 they signed a peace with the German Coalition which held the northern 2/3 of France.

Meanwhile on March 18th an insurrection took place in Paris.  Thiers had cannons and other military materiel and his government moved to Versailles.  A socialist city government was elected in Paris. 

This was the start of the Paris commune.   In street fighting, the insurrection quickly resulted in thousands of Parisians being arrested, killed, tried and shot, or deported to the French colonies.  The Tuileries palace, a symbol of monarchism,  burned to the ground.  The Vendome column was toppled.


After peace was restored Thiers served as president of the third republic for two more years.  He was a protectionist and republican presiding over a national assembly dominated by monarchists.  Following a motion of no confidence that passed, Thiers resigned and his resignation accepted.  They elected Marshal Patrice de MacMahon as his successor.  Thiers died 4 years later at the age of 80.



(1) The Life of Louis Adolphe Thiers by Francios J. LeGof,  GP Putnam & Sons. 1879.  

Canadian Prime Ministers IX: Paul Martin and Stephen Harper

26.  Paul Martin (2003-2006)
Liberal Party.

Paul Edgar Philippe Martin was born in 1938 in Windsor Ontario, the son of Paul Joseph James Martin, who himself was a member of the Canadian Parliament for years and served in the cabinets of four Prime Ministers from Mackenzie King through Pierre Trudeau.   His roots were both French and English-Canadian. He graduated from St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto with a degree in history and philosophy in 1961.  He got a law degree from the University of Toronto Law School and was called to the bar in 1966.   For a number of years he was involved with the Canada Steamship Lines company, serving as executive assistant to the CEO and later as President and CEO.  

In 1984 he was considered for leadership of the Liberals after Turner was resoundingly defeated, however he lost out to Jean Chretien at that time and the two men soon became bitter political rivals within the Liberal Party.  In 1993 when the Liberals were swept into power, Turner, in spite of his antipathy to Chretien, was appointed finance minister.  This was at a time of turmoil in the Canadian economy.  He made deep cuts in public spending which eventually revived the economy in the private sector and enhanced government revenues.  Moody's revised upward Canada's bond rating back to AAA.  

He was chosen new Liberal leader and Prime Minister in late 2003 when Chretien resigned.  New elections were called in 2004, an in spite of the resurgence of Stephen Harper's Conservative party, the Liberals won a small plurality in parliament and formed a minority government.  

Changes made to the "equalization program" which ensured that the "have-not" provinces received aid for government service expenses led to conflict with Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia over revenue from natural resources.    Martin was opposed to same-sex marriages, but reversed his position following court cases which favored legalization.  Thus the Civil Marriage Act was passed in 2005, making Canada the 4th nation in the world allowing same sex marriage.    The Martin government signed what is known as the Kelowna Accord, which was an effort to equalize health, education, and economic opportunity between First Nations peoples, Metis and Inuits and other Canadians.  

When the Gomery commission reported its investigation of the Sponsorship scandal, which uncovered corruption in the payment of advertising contracts designed to promote the role of the Federal government in Quebec, it indicated that there has been lack of oversight in the administration of funds.  The NDP, in the wake of these revelations started making demands on its coalition partner and this led to a vote of no confidence and the calling of early elections in 2006.    After his defeat in January 2006, Martin stepped down as Liberal party leader.  





27.  Stephen Harper (2006-present) Conservative Party of
Canada.
 
Harper was born in Toronto in 1959, the son of an accountant for Imperial Oil.  After dropping out of the University of Toronto, he moved to Edmonton, Alberta where he worked in the mailroom of Imperial Oil, then went to the University of Calgary where he earned both a bachelor's and then a master's degree in economics.  

He was a chief aide to Jim Hawkes a PC MP in Edmonton. Later, he broke with the Progressive Conservative Party and was later elected as the Reform Party candidate in 1993 after having been defeated in the previous election by his former boss, Jim Hawkes.    Not entirely happy with the Reform Party he resigned from his seat in parliament in 1997 and went on to head the National Citizen's Coalition.  

A persistent theme in Harper's career has been opposition to populism and "social conservatism" and support for "economic conservatism".  This led him to conflict with both Preston Manning and Stockwell Day.  When Day announced new leadership elections for the Reform Party in 2002, Harper stepped down from the NCC and was elected Reform Party leader later standing for and being elected to parliament from Calgary Southwest.  

The Reform Party soon became the "Canadian  Alliance" and then in 2003 merged with the Progressive Conservative Party to become the Conservative Party of Canada.  Early in 2004 Harper left his post as head of the opposition to run for leadership of the new party, and won.  

As Prime minister, Harper has had three governments, the first two as minority governments and a third, elected in 2011 as a majority.  The Goods and Services Tax was reduced from 7% to 5%.  The Federal Accountability act outlawed corporate and union contributions to federal campaigns.  In 2012 the government eliminated the Federal Long Gun Registry, as promised in their platform.   In 2011 Harper's government suceeded in tipping the balance in the Senate towards the conservatives filling six new vacancies with conservative senators.  The government made in the 2011 census the providing of detailed demographic information optional, which provoked a storm of protests from those who saw it as weakening the statistical framework upon which targeted government programs were based.  Harper has taken a basically pro-Israel stance which may have cost Canada a chance to gain a seat on the UN Security Council.  In 2007 Canada announced it has finalized an agreement with the European Free Trade Association, consisting of four European countries not in the European Union including Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.  

During the US Presidential campaign prior to Obama's getting the Democratic Party nomination, a campaign operative was reported to have reassured the Canadian government that Obama's public statements regarding possible "renegotiation" of NAFTA was just for domestic consumption and not to be taken seriously.   In the event, this turned out to be true, though at the time it was embarrassing to the Obama campaign.  

As Canadian governments must hold an election at most after a period of five years, its next election must be in 2016 or sooner, depending on the current political situation.  Recently Harper visited Israel and expressed pessimism at the resolution of the Syrian civil war and for the chances of democracy in Egypt.  Of the latter he said that Egypt was not ready for Democracy.

 

Canadian Prime Ministers VII: John Turner, Brian Mulroney, and Kim Campbell

22.  John Turner (1984) Liberal Party.

John Turner was born in Richmond, Surrey, England in 1929.  After his father's death his Canadian born mother and he moved back to Canada and lived in Rossland, BC.  He went to the University of British Columbia where he was a star in track and field, graduated with honors and became a Rhodes scholar.  He studied at Magdalen College at Oxford and at the University of Paris, where he earned several law degrees.  In 1959 he was even romantically linked with Princess Margaret.  Turner practiced law in Quebec and entered parliament as a Liberal in 1962.   Once when vacationing in Barbados he happened to notice the former PM John Diefenbaker was in danger of drowning, and he pulled him to safety. 

In Parliament he became a cabinet minister for Lester Pearson and for Pierre Trudeau.  When Pearson retired he ran for the position of party leader but lost to Trudeau.  Like Trudeau before him with Pearson,  Turner served as minister of justice in Trudeau's cabinet.  Later he served as Finance minister but resigned in 1975 owing to differences with Trudeau and left the government to practice law, which was much more remunerative.  

When Trudeau finally decided to hang it up in 1984, Turner entered politics once more and defeated John Chretien to replace Trudeau as party leader and head of government. 
 
His tenure as Prime Minister was one of the shortest in Canadian History, less than 3 months.  While things looked good for the Liberals when elections were called, the mass patronage appointments by Trudeau, and other political miscalculations led to a massive victory by the Progressive Conservatives in the election that same year.

23.  Brian Mulroney (1984-1993)

Progressive Conservative Party.

Brian Mulroney was born in 1939 in Baie-Comieu in eastern Quebec on the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  His parents were of Irish Catholic background and his father was a paper mill electrician.  Baie-Comieu, was a company town supplying paper for the newspaper business, specifically for Robert McCormick's conservative American newspaper, The Chicago Tribune.  

Mulroney went to Catholic boarding school in New Brunswick,  there being no English language schools in the immediate area near his home and grew up fluent in both English and French.  He went to St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, NS.   While a student there he became involved in Progressive Conservative politics and helped to elect PC candidate Robert Stansfield to a position as premier in the province.  Stansfield would later become national PC party opposition leader during the early Trudeau years. 

Mulroney graduated from St. Francis Xavier in 1959 and entered law school at Dalhousie, but neglected his studies there while working to re-elect Stansfield as premier.  His subsequent illness caused him to flunk out of Dalhousie and he began law school later at Laval University in Quebec City. He received his law degree there in 1964 and passed the Quebec bar exam after the third try, subsequently joining a large law firm in Montreal where he specialized in labor relations.   He became a partner in the firm in 1971.   His stature in Quebec politics was enhanced by his participation in the Cliche Commission, a body set up by Quebec Premier Bourassa to investigate organized crime infiltration into labor unions in James Bay where major hydroelectric projects provide electricity to much of Eastern Canada and Northeastern US.

In 1976 he waged an expensive and unsuccessful campaign to become the leader of the Progressive Conservatives, a struggle in which Joe Clark was the winner.  In 1977 he became executive vice president of the Iron Ore Company of Canada where his experience as a labor lawyer was very useful.    

In 1984 he won the position of PC party leader over Joe Clark and went on to demolish John Turner's Liberal party at the polls becoming the Prime Minister.    While Mulroney had a large majority in the House of Commons, the Senate was a different matter, since it was primarily Liberal owing to the years of Liberal dominance in Canadian politics.   

As the PC PM he did a number of things in his nine years.  He privatized 26 of the 61 crown corporations then in existence, including Air Canada, and Petro Canada.  Although the new constitution following the patriation of Canada took place took effect, it did not get the blessing of the Quebec Provincial government, which has long requested and in some cases received special consideration and veto power in national matters.  The Meech Lake accord was an attempt to mollify the French Canadiens as a "distinct people" within Canada. It was a constitutional change requiring approval by all the provincial premiers.  This proved not to please anyone and the effort died. 

The idea and issue of free trade with the United States had long been a thorny issue.  At the time it appeared that the proponents and opponents had switched sides, with the PC's in favor and the Liberals (formerly in favor) opposed.  Before such an issue was resolved, an election was called in 1988, which returned the Progressive Conservatives to power if with a smaller majority. 

After the election a recession set in, in Canada as well as in the US.  A new "Goods and Services Tax" or GST was instituted, which, though said to be a shift of taxation from the old Manufacturer's Sales Tax to a consumer tax, was not popular.    A free trade agreement was made with the US in which all trade barriers would be eliminated by 1998, and which became NAFTA when the agreement was extended to include Mexico too.  This of course was the agreement that Ross Perot famously criticised as the "giant sucking sound" and Canadians and Mexicans were in retrospect divided as to its benefits.  

The cumulation of the unpopularity of the GST, the trade agreements, the economic downturn of the early 1990s, foreign entanglements,  and the demise of the cod fishery led to a rout of the PC of unprecedented size.  The number of Progressive Conservatives in parliament dropped from 150 to 2.   Prior to the election he decided to retire, leaving his justice minister, Kim Campbell to face the music.  She in turn only had a couple of months before the statutory end to the PC government in 1993. 



24.  Kim Campbell (1993) Progressive Conservative Party.

Avril Phædra Douglas "Kim" Campbell  was born in 1947 in Port Alberni, BC.   She attended the University of British Columbia, graduating with a degree in Political Science in 1969.  She then proceeded to the London School of Economics, where she worked on a doctorate in Soviet Government, but left before acquiring her Ph.D.  She then went back to the UBC and earned her law degree in 1972.  Her first foray into politics was for a seat in the BC provincial parliament as a Social Credit Party candidate.  She finally won a seat in 1976.  She served as Minister of Justice from 1990 -1993.   She became prime minister in a contest for party leadership where she defeated Jean Charest and then, as Prime Minister called for new elections, which would have had to have been held anyway since the default election date was fast approaching.  In the few months when she was prime minister she took the Progressive Conservatives to as thorough a defeat in national elections as any major party had experienced up to that time,  leaving the conservatives with enough members in parliament to hold a caucus in a phone booth.

Canadian Prime Ministers VIII: Jean Chrétien

25.  Jean Chrétien (1993-2003) Liberal Party.

Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien was born in 1934 in Shawinigan, QC.  He attended Laval University where he studied law.  He was elected to parliament in 1963 as a Liberal member.  He served as Minister of National Revenue under Pearson, and then, in the Trudeau governments served as  Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Minister of Finance, and then Minister of Justice.  He did not get on extremely well with Trudeau, and was not often included in policy discussions or decisions by the Trudeau government.  Nevertheless during the Quebec sovereignty crisis he was instrumental in defeating the separatists during the referendum.  When Trudeau stepped down he was defeated when he ran for Party leader by Turner.   

As part of Trudeau's government as Minister of Justice he worked for the Patriation act, and as Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.  

Chrétien was elected Liberal leader in 1990 after John Turner's resignation. He was a "conditional" opponent of the Meech Lake accords, which failed.  He was in favor of designating Quebec as a "distinct society" but opposed to the form in which the idea was put forward.   The struggle between the Chrétien faction and the Paul Martin faction was more between those favoring a strong central government (Chrétien and Trudeau) and those favoring a decentralized government (Paul Martin and John Turner).  He gained traction against the Mulroney government with his opposition to the unpopular Goods and Services Tax.  He supported the failed Charlottetown Accord, another attempt at reforming the constitutional powers of the provinces vs. the Federal government.  

He defeated the Progressive Conservatives overwhelmingly in elections in November 1993, and ruled somewhat autocratically, bypassing even his own cabinet at times.  Once in office he cancelled the defense contract for Sea King helicopters and tried to renegotiate NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) with the US, but President Clinton refused.  Instead he offered to draft a letter indicating that the US had no interest in taking over Canadian energy or water, even though such a letter was not legally binding.  This was accepted by Chrétien who presented it as a concession.  He reluctantly fired the head of the Bank of Canada when he refused to alter his policy of high interest rates to ensure low inflation during the recession.   Rather than purge civil servants with PC sympathies, Chrétien announced that any civil servant who did anything to disadvantage the Liberals would be sacked. 
At the same time Chretien sought to reduce the budget deficit to 3% over time mainly by cutting military spending.  It wasn't until the 2001 terrorist attacks on the US that this policy was reversed.  If Canada had wanted to be eligible to join the European Union, it would have had to reduce its budget deficit to 3%, but there was no stated intention on doing so.  On the other hand the budget put out by the government was interpreted as a lack of seriousness about the budget problems of Canada, and Moody's downgraded their bonds.  This exacerbated the problems of the banks in the country and caused the interest rates to rise even further.   Starting in 1995 the government felt compelled by economic events to make deeper cuts in the Federal budget and the Canadian economy began to improve, the budget deficits disappeared and along with the improving economic picture in the rest of the world.  They were able to cut tax rates as well.   In 1995, at a time when Parti Quebecois was dominant in the Quebec legislature, another referendum on national sovereignty, which was defeated narrowly by voters in the province.   Lip service was given to the idea of Quebec's "distinct society" but no more.   

In the meantime, the Prime Minister's Office leaked a letter in which the Justice Ministry had made inquiries to the Swiss authorities into alleged Swiss Bank accounts kept by former PM Brian Mulroney, in connection with the Airbus affair.  The Airbus affair was a scandal in which government officials allegedly received kickbacks for favoring Airbus in the purchase of new Air Canada aircraft.  Air Canada then being a crown corporation.  In response to this leaked letter, Brian Mulroney sued for $50 million in damages and suggested that the letter was leaked to divert attention from the uncomfortably narrow defeat of the Quebec sovereignty referendum.

The eventual passage of the "Clarity Act" was designed to complicate any move by Quebec towards sovereignty, by setting certain rules as to how such a separation would take place.   This plus decisions made by the Supreme Court of Canada served to raise the barrier to separation.

When the 1994 Rwandan genocide was under way, the Canadian government had perhaps the best information on the ground concerning it, but did not regard it as a vital concern to Canadian interests, an indifference that it  apologised for, years later. 

In 1997 Chrétien called early elections and, while the Liberals lost much support in Western Canada and in the Atlantic Provinces, his core support in Ontario won the Liberals a narrow majority.   His main achievements during the second term were the passage of the Clarity Act, and the balancing of the budget.   After that social spending began to creep back into the budget.




In his second term he experienced controversy when during state visits by the Indonesian President Suharto, and the Chinese President Jiang Zemin, he had to resort to suppression of protests against these two leaders with somewhat less than stellar reputations in the area of "human rights".  The Social Union Framework Agreement was signed by 9 of the 10 provinces (guess which one opted out) in order to regularize Canadian rights of mobility, welfare access, and equal opportunity.   The Clarity Act was passed into law in 1998.  

The opposition parties, in disarray since 1993, were split between the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive conservatives, with the Canadian Alliance the official opposition.  Sensing that the timing was right for new elections, Chrétien called another election in 2000, at about the time of the death of Pierre Trudeau. 

Chretien faced multiple opponents, the main one of whom

was Stockwell Day, then the head of the Canadian Alliance, who did not help his cause by his creationist beliefs that dinosaurs had existed on earth at the same time as early humans. 

This led to a series of appearances by liberal campaign operative Warren Kinsella with a stuffed Barney the Purple Dinosaur, designed to make fun of these beliefs. Other gaffes such as saying that the Niagara River flows south tended to sink Day's campaign, although the Canadian Alliance held its own in the West.  

The "Shawnigate" scandal broke during Chretien's third term.  It was alleged that Chretien had used his government connections to profit from some real estate deals in his native town of Shawnigan, QC.   After investigations by the RCMP regarding these eventually he was cleared of wrongdoing, although there was question as to whether the investigators, being directly under his control, were likely to be objective.  

Having announced that he would leave office, he resigned finally at the end of 2003 and Paul Martin, his long time rival in Liberal politics took over as Prime Minister.  

Canadian Prime Ministers VI: Pierre Trudeau and Joe Clark

19.  Pierre Trudeau (1968-1979) Liberal Party.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau, or Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau was born in 1919 in Montreal, the son of a prosperous businessman and owner of a chain of gas stations in Quebec.  He attended a Jesuit secondary and college level school Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf and then went on to earn his law degree at the University of Montreal in 1943.   After being expelled from the Officers Training program, he studied political economy at Harvard, attended the Paris Institute of Political Studies and went for a doctoral degree at the London School of Economics, but did not complete his dissertation.  For a time he was blacklisted and denied admission to the US owing to his journal subscriptions to left wing publications and his visit to Moscow to attend a conference.  He tried to get a job teaching at the University of Montreal but was kept out by the premier of Quebec, Duplessis.   He was finally appointed an associate professor there in the 1960s.

He eventually became an opponent of Quebec nationalism.  He also opposed the BOMARC missile bases in Canada, but later joined the Liberal party and was elected to parliament.  He quickly became a special secretary to the prime minister and later Pearson made him Minister of Justice, which seems to be a frequent position of persons later becoming prime minister, as was the case with Trudeau.  

As minister of Justice, Trudeau created legislation decriminalizing homosexual behavior, legalized abortion, and liberalized divorce laws.  When Pearson stepped down he joined the campaign to become the party leader, and narrowly defeated several longer serving candidates.

As prime minister Trudeau enjoyed considerable celebrity as well as violent opposition from Quebec nationalists.  In 1970 when Quebec minister of Labour Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross were kidnapped by a nationalist terrorist group, Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, which allowed mass arrests and detention without trial.  When later Pierre Laporte was discovered to have been murdered, the Canadian public overwhelmingly supported the use of the WMA for this purpose.    The perpetrators were arrested and sentenced to 7 to 11 years in prison, and some of them exchanged for Canadian nationals imprisoned in Cuba.  

As Liberal leader he promoted what he called a "just society" which consisted mainly of redistribution of wealth, universal health care, and in general expanding the role of the government in social welfare in Canada (12).  Trudeau also established French as well as English as "official languages" of Canada, requiring all government services to be provided in both languages.  

In foreign affairs, while Trudeau was a firm supporter of NATO, he also was friendly with communist nations and

Castro and Trudeau

leaders.  He was a personal friend of Fidel Castro, and also recognized and visited the People Republic of China.  
In 1972 the Liberals were returned to power but with a minority coalition with the NDP.   Afterwards Petro Canada was formed as a "crown corporation", assembled from government ownership stakes

in various oil companies. 

In 1974 new elections were called after a no confidence vote, and Trudeau's Liberals were returned to power with an absolute majority in parliament.  In the ensuing years Canada was admitted to what was now the G-7 economic summit.   The death penalty in Canada was abolished. 

In the 1979 general election the Liberals narrowly lost in the wake of a worsening economy and resentment of the high handed approach of Trudeau to government.  Joe Clark of the Progressive Conservatives formed a minority government that year.  


20.  Joe Clark (1979-1980) Progressive Conservative Party.

 Charles Joseph Clark was born in 1939 in High River, Alberta.  His father was a local newspaper publisher.  He attended the University of Alberta where he earned a BA and MA in political science.  While he attended Dalhousie University his interest in politics was greater than his interest in law.    After some false starts in local Alberta politics as a PC candidate, he was elected to parliament in Ottawa from Rocky Mountain, Alberta.

In 1976, previous PC party leader Robert Stansfield retired, and Clark won the leadership on the 4th ballot against contenders such as Claude Wagner and future PM Brian Mulroney.  Clark was the youngest PC party leader and later the youngest PM in Canadian history.

In 1979 he became Prime Minister, forming an unstable government in which the Progressive Conservatives were the largest minority.  In the nine months he was in office he wasn't able to do much and when elections were called, he and other PC's misjudged the mood of the electorate which promptly returned the Liberals and Trudeau to power.


21.  Pierre Trudeau (1980-1984) Liberal Party.

 Trudeau and the Liberals were able to continue for another four years.  The two major events of that time were (1) the defeat of the Quebec sovereignty referendum which pitted

Leveque and Trudeau

Trudeau (Non!) against Rene Leveque (Oui!) and (2) the "patriation" of the Canadian constitution by the Canada Act of 1982.  The latter relinquished any need to defer to Britain's wishes in making changes to the Canadian constitution.  In the negotiation among the provinces that led to the patriation agreement, Quebec premier Leveque tried and failed to hang on to Quebec's traditional special veto power over the decisions regarding the Canadian constitution.
In 1984, after a decline in the polls, Trudeau decided to retire from party leadership, officially leaving on June 30 of that year.  John Turner took over.