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
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.
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