Canadian Prime Ministers V: St. Laurent and John Diefenbaker

16.  Louis St.Laurent (1948-1957) Liberal Party.

St. Laurent was born in 1882 in Compton, QC.  While his father was French, his mother was Irish and he grew up speaking both English and French.  He attended St. Charles Seminary and received his law degree from Laval University.  For most of his career he practiced as a lawyer and as a professor of law at Laval.  It was only in 1941, when nearly 60, that he was persuaded to enter politics in the government of Mackenzie King as his unofficial adviser on Quebec, and the minister of justice.    He was instrumental in holding the Liberal party together when in 1944 conscription was imposed, which was especially unpopular in Quebec.  Later he served as Secretary of State for External Affairs and represented Canada in the postwar international conferences leading up to the founding of the United Nations. 

As mentioned previously, Mackenzie King ended his long career in 1948 and St. Laurent became only the second French Canadian prime minister.  In 1949 and 1953 he led the Liberals to overwhelming majorities in parliament.  He promoted national unity and participated in the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and supported the UN's role in the Korean War, sending Canadian troops to fight there. 

In 1949 Newfoundland finally joined the Canadian Federation.  St. Laurent ended the practice of allowing the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of Britain to be the highest court of appeal, that role now assumed by the Supreme Court of Canada.    St. Laurent oversaw the expansion of social programs and universal hospital insurance, as well as large infrastructure projects such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, which allowed ocean going vessels access to the Great Lakes, the Trans-Canada Highway, and the Trans-Canada pipeline.  

The Trans Canada pipeline was designed to transport natural gas from Alberta to Eastern Canada and for a time was the longest pipeline of its kind in the world.  The debate in parliament regarding its creation, however, was contentious and the conservatives complained that excessive use of cloture was symptomatic of the arrogance that had grown up in the dominant Liberal party.  In 1957 elections were held and the Progressive Conservatives took over with John Diefenbaker as PM.  


17.  John Diefenbaker (1957-1963) Progressive Conservative Party.

 John Diefenbaker was born in Neustadt, Ontario in 1895 to William Diefenbaker, a teacher, and Mary Bannerman Diefenbaker.  In 1910 the family moved to Saskatoon, which was then part of the Northwest Territories.  He entered the University of Saskatchewan and in 1916 left with a BA and a MA, enlisted in the army and was sent to Europe, but never reached the front, having been invalided out in 1917 after having been hit in the head with a shovel, as Diefenbaker asserted, or as his biographer suggested for psychosomatic reasons.  He became an articling student of law, and received his degree in 1919 and was called to the bar the same year.  He then opened a law practice in Wakaw, SK, which was so successful in the small community (population 400) that his competitor left town.  

As Saskatchewan at the time was a Liberal stronghold with a powerful machine, and overwhelmingly pro-free trade, he was moving against the trend when he came forward as a conservative in 1925.  He ran against the Liberal candidate in the federal riding of Prince Albert,  and lost his "election deposit", which was an amount of money required to be put

up to a candidate for office, which was returned only if he received a certain percentage of the vote. (Election deposits were to discourage fringe candidates from running).    In 1926, because Mackenzie King, the prime minister had resigned his home seat in Ontario as a result of the King-Byng Affair, he chose (of all places) Prince Albert as a "safe" seat from which to run for parliament.  While opposition candidates did not usually bother running against Prime Ministers, Diefenbaker did not take this course, running against Mackenzie King and of course losing once more.  He lost twice more, once as a candidate for Saskatchewan's parliament and as a candidate for Mayor of Prince Albert.  The latter was a narrow loss, only 48 votes however.  In the meantime his law practice thrived. 

Finally in 1940 he was elected to the national parliament  as a conservative, a year that overwhelmingly favored the Liberals.  

As a German Canadian he was opposed to the war powers granted the government such as the internment of Japanese Canadians in British Columbia which he felt, as a member of another ethnic group under suspicion, to be a violation of civil liberties.  He and other leaders of the Conservative Party, now renamed the "progressive conservative party" sought to take the party left towards the center.  Diefenbaker championed a "Bill of Rights" to stop the encroachment on personal liberty by the Mackenzie King governments. 

The Progressive Conservatives continued to fare badly in elections.  When Diefenbaker went for the party leadership post, he was soundly defeated by the Eastern candidate, George Drew, who was subsequently trounced by St. Laurent in the election of 1949.  

In the meantime, in spite of gerrymandering, he still won his seat in Saskatchewan, and then they completely eliminated his district in another wave of redistricting.    He considered just leaving politics and doing legal work, but he was so outraged by the gerrymandering, that he decided to stand for the seat in Prince Albert, and though not held by conservatives since 1911, he won that seat.  

The excessive use of cloture to cut off debate in the parliament during the Pipeline Debate turned the political winds against the Liberals.  Diefenbaker, running against St. Laurent increasingly tired and jaded liberal leadership, was able to narrowly defeat the Liberals in 1957.  He was made prime minister once some of the smaller parties agreed to form a coalition.  

The new coalition was a shaky one, and the onset of the recession of 1958 and the opposition leader, Lester Pearson, made a motion in parliament which turned out disastrously for his party.  Diefenbaker made one of the best speeches in his life, and when it was over, was able to prevail upon the governor general to dissolve parliament and call new elections, which in 1958 delivered a huge majority to the Progressive Conservatives and reducing the Liberal seats in parliament to a mere 48.  

With a large majority Diefenbaker now moved to make some changes.    As a lifelong proponent of civil liberties, he obtained passage of the "Canadian Bill of Rights", while only a piece of national legislation, non-constitutional,  and having no impact on the civil liberties allowed in different provinces, it still was a bold statement of what rights should exist for citizens of Canada.  In 1960 voting rights were extended to the aboriginal peoples of Canada.  

His message was "one Canada" and refused to make special allowances for the French Canadians in Quebec, and hence lost support in Quebec for that reason.  The devaluation of the Canadian dollar versus the US dollar also helped to depress conservative prospects for 1962, when elections were called and they were able to form a government only by forming a coalition.

Tension developed the next year however between the US and the Diefenbaker government, especially during the Kennedy years over the placement of nuclear weapons in Canada as part of its NATO obligations.  Complicating matters was the Avro CF-105 Arrow, which was a Canadian-made supersonic military aircraft which was cancelled in the wake of a changing military and political situation.   While the liberals were in favor of basing the BOMARC air defense system in Canada, the progressive conservatives were divided, and when a vote of no confidence ensued, elections were called and the Liberals took over.