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.
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.
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.
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.
18. Lester B. Pearson (1963-1968) Liberal Party.
Pearson
was born near Toronto in 1897. He attended Victoria College in the
University of Toronto. The First World War interrupted his college
education and he volunteered for service, first in a medical unit, and
later in the Royal Flying Corps. He suffered an aviation accident on
his first flight and later, when recuperating in London, was hit by a
bus, which pretty much ended his career in the Great War.
Returning
to Canada, he received his BA from the University of Toronto. He then
worked in the meat packing industry in Hamilton, ON and in Chicago, but
left in time to pursue an advanced degree in history. He won a
scholarship to
the UK to study history at Oxford in St. John's college and received
his MA there. He returned to the University of Toronto and taught
history there, and also coached Varsity Blues Canadian football and ice
hockey.
In
1927 he became a diplomat and was sent to London in the late 1930s as
the second in command in Canada House there under the high commissioner
Vincent Massey until 1942 during the critical war years. He returned to
Ottawa and then was re-posted to Washington DC as a ministerial
counselor and then became the Canadian Ambassador to the US in early
1945, a position he held for nearly two years. During this time he
aided in the founding of NATO and the United Nations. He almost became
the first Secretary-General of the United Nations, but the Soviet Union
vetoed that nomination.
He was offered a
place in the government of Mackenzie King, but Pearson declined. It was
only later on that he accepted St. Laurent's appointment as Secretary
of State for External Affairs (i.e. Foreign Minister). While in that
position he played a key role in resolving the Suez crisis of 1957. In
that crisis, an Anglo-French-Israeli seizure of the canal zone followed
Nasser's decision to "nationalize it" and tilt his nation towards a more
cosy relationship with the Soviet Union. In the ensuing military
conflict, Cairo was bombed and the US, the Soviet Union, and the United
Nations forced the French, British, and Israelis to back down. The
canal remained open for all-important oil from the Middle East, but
Nasser's Egypt remained in control of the canal. For his efforts
Pearson received the Nobel Peace Prize, back when the award was awarded
to persons for actually doing something for world peace, (or at least
doing something the Norwegians approved as efforts towards world
peace.)
Pearson became
party leader on the retirement of St. Laurent in 1958 after the fall of
his government in 1957. Pearson's first year as leader was
unauspicious, as when he sought the return of power back to the
Liberals, but was humiliated by Diefenbaker's revelation of St. Laurent
predicting in a classified document that 1958 was going to be a bad year
economically. Thus the petty game of blaming one party or the other
for the economy was played out that year. (This, incidentally, was the
same economic downturn that made 1958 a year that favored the Democrats
in the US congress, who of course blamed it on Eisenhower).
I
n
1963, the BOMARC missile defense issue and the divisions within the
Diefenbaker government caused new elections to be called and Pearson
became prime minister. As a Liberal prime minister, the BOMARC missile
defense project went ahead, relations with the US improved, and a number
of social programs were instituted, including
universal health care, the Canada Pension Plan, subsidized student loans
for college students, and a new maple leaf flag, eliminating the old
union jack version.
An
auto pact negotiated with the US in 1965 resulted in free trade for
automotive products, leading to more cross border trade and
manufacturing in subsequent years. When my wife and I showed up at a
family reunion in the 1990s in Lockport, NY they were bothered that we
had bought a Toyota, (Lockport being a GM manufacturing town at the
time) but were mollified somewhat by the discovery that the model we
were driving was made in London, ON. I guess a Canadian import was
better than one from Japan.
Pearson
was less forthcoming when it came to lending support to the US war in
Vietnam, refusing to send troops, and even criticizing US military
strategy while speaking in the US. Nevertheless relations with the US
were friendlier than they had been under Diefenbaker. While PM,
Pearson combined the Army, Air Force, and Navy into a single entity
called "Canadian Forces" in 1968. The practice common in both the US
and Canada of immigration quotas was eliminated during the Pearson
years, and replaced it with a points system which did not consider race
or national origin.
 |
| de Gaulle in Montreal |
It
was 1967 that French President Charles de Gaulle made his infamous "Vive
le Quebec Libre" speech. Pearson criticized his speech the next day in
parliament. Just as Lyndon Johnson did not take kindly to Pearson
criticizing US military strategy on American soil, Pearson did not
appreciate de Gaulle stirring up separatist sentiment on Canadian soil
and said that de Gaulle was no longer welcome in Canada.
In
late 1967 Pearson announced his retirement and in a leadership
conference that year Pierre Trudeau was chosen as the new leader and
prime minister. Pearson died in 1972.
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.
10. Arthur Meighan (1920-1921) National Liberal and Conservative Party.
Meighan was born
in Anderson, ON in 1874, went to the University of Toronto where he
studied mathematics then Osgood Hall Law School where he earned his
degree. He then moved to Manitoba where after taking stabs at teaching
and business, he entered politics as a conservative. After entering
parliament in 1908 he served as Solicitor General and then was appointed
Minister of Mines, then Secretary of State for Canada. He was
charged with directing the conscription for the first world war, as well
as the disenfranchisement of those who were members of groups thought
to oppose the war.
When
Borden resigned in 1920, Meighan succeeded him as prime minister, and
served out the rest of his mandate, but was defeated in the general
elections of the next year by Liberal leader William Lyon Mackenzie
King.
11. William Lyon MacKenzie King (1921-1926) Liberal Party.
The
longest-serving prime minister so far in Canadian History, King was
born in what in what is now known as Kitchener, ON in 1874. It was a
town named Berlin until the great war, the name, owing the anti-German
sentiment, was changed. His grandfather had been mayor of Toronto at
one time, and his father was a lawyer. Like Meighan he went to Osgood
Hall Law School and knew him there. They were not friends, however.
He
got involved in the settlement house movement, which was a social
welfare movement where more educated and advantaged people were
encouraged to work with the poor and try to inculcate in them values
which would allow them to rise out of poverty. Having a scholarly bent,
he went to Chicago to study at the University of Chicago, and for a time
as worked with Jane Addams in her settlement house. From the University
of Chicago he went on the Harvard University, where he earned a Ph.D.
in political economy, where he wrote a thesis titled "Oriental
Immigration to Canada". He was not in favor of Asians in Canada,
arguing that Canada should, for economic, social, as well political and
national reasons, restrict their immigration.
For
these efforts he was considered an expert on immigration and was
appointed deputy minister of labour in the Laurier government. He worked
in this capacity for the involvement of government in labour disputes
and in anti-trust and anti-competitive legislation. When the Borden
government came in he lost his seat in parliament and got a job as a
director with the Rockefeller foundation in New York where he led the
department of industrial research.
In
1918 he returned to Canadian politics, and when Laurier died in 1919 he
became leader of the Liberal party and in 1921 became Prime Minister.
His first term as prime minister he barely held a majority in
parliament, with the Conservatives in third place behind the new
Progressive Party. The Progressives, strong in the Western
provinces, were only partially supportive of King, owing to their
favoring of lower tariffs. King's party on the other hand was opposed
to lowering tariffs too much as it would alienate his industrial
constituencies in Eastern Canada.
King
declined to aid the British in the Chanak Crisis, involving Turkey
threatening the British holding of the Dardanelles, saying that the
Canadian parliament would have to decided whether aid was forthcoming.
This led to to greater independence among the British commonwealth
nations in their foreign policy, formerly handled previously through
London.
In
1925 he won another narrow victory for a second term. To avoid a vote
of no confidence he asked Governor-General Lord Byng, the British
government's representative in Canada for permission to dissolve
parliament and hold elections. This Byng refused, and instead invited
Meighan, the leader of the opposition to form a government instead.
12. Arthur Meighan (1926) Conservative Party.
Meighan
formed a government which only lasted a few months when invited to form
one by Governor-General Byng. Mackenzie King characterized this
decision as showing favoritism and interfering in Canadian politics.
King was vindicated when he won a clear majority for the Liberals in the
1926 elections that September.
13. William Lyon MacKenzie King (1926-1930) Liberal Party.
The
constitutional controversy stirred up by the King-Byng affair led to a
redefinition of the relationship between Britain and all its dominions.
It led to the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the Statute of Westminster
in 1931. As such it was the end of the British government's ability
to legislate for its dominions. The provinces of Alberta, Manitoba,
and Saskatchewan were given provincial control of crown lands within
their jurisdictions as well as subsurface rights. He also initiated a
system of old age pensions requiring payroll deductions.
When the great
depression began in the fall of 1929, King's slow response to the crisis
led to his defeat in elections in 1930 by the Conservatives.
14. R.B. Bennett (1930-1935) Conservative Party.
Bennett
was born in 1870 in Hopewell Hill, NB. and earned his law degree from
Dalhousie University. He became close friends with Max Aitken who
eventually became the immensely wealthy newspaper publisher, Lord
Beaverbrook. As a corporate lawyer he had a very successful practice
both in Nova Scotia and later in Alberta. In 1911 he was elected to
parliament.
He served as
Minister of Justice under Meighen, and when Meighen resigned as party
leader, Bennet took over in 1927. In 1930, in the depths of the great
depression he became prime minister.
His strategy for
boosting the Canadian economy was to increase tariffs on
non-commonwealth nations and encourage trade with other Commonwealth
nations. This did not have much effect and his own great wealth and
lack of a common touch did not help him politically.
Radical left wing
political groups flourished during the great depression and were seen
by Bennett as a threat to Canadian institutions. As a result the
Section 98 criminal code came into being, which enabled more vigorous
suppression of groups and individuals identified as subversive. This
was in response to the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and similar
events.
Later, in
imitation of the "New Deal" put forward by US President Franklin
Roosevelt, Bennett put forth a plan for a progressive income tax,
minimum wages, maximum weekly work hours, health insurance, old age
pensions, and unemployment insurance, but by 1935 the Canadian voters
had tired of his efforts and he was defeated by Mackenzie King's
Liberals that year. While many of these efforts were struck down by
the courts, his creation of the Bank of Canada in 1934 remains as part
of his legacy.
15. William Lyon MacKenzie King (1935-1948) Liberal Party.
Pardoxically
it was Bennett and not King who tried and failed with New-Deal like
legislation. King reversed the trade barriers constructed by Bennett
and negotiated a reciprocal trade agreement with the US in 1935 which
improved the Canadian economy. On the other hand, he nationalized the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Bank of Canada, and the National
Film Board of Canada.
With
the approach of war with Germany, King actually met with Hitler in 1937
and was not especially supportive of Britain's efforts to counteract
Hitler, saying at one point that he would support Britain only if they
were directly attacked. Nor was he especially welcoming of Jewish
refugees from Europe and along with Cuba, and US, denied sanctuary to
900 such persons on the MS St. Louis in 1939.
While Canada did
enter the war with Germany when Britain entered in September 1939, it
wasn't automatic, as it had been with the first war. King waited a week
and a parliamentary debate before Canada entered on the side of Great
Britain. (Of course it was a little over two years later before the US
entered the war, when Japan attacked the US, and Germany declared war on
the US.)
Again as with the
First World War, there was a problem with manpower needs which led to
the introduction of conscription, but with limitations of the theatre of
conflict. King had to play a balancing game between the Canadian
isolationists until after the Liberals were returned to parliament in
1940. Even then, it was mostly volunteers and not conscripts who were
sent overseas from Canada.
During the war,
King's government in Canada, like the US, chose to intern large numbers
of Japanese Canadians as a security risk.
After the war
King helped to found the United Nations, and discontinued wartime
censorship. He called elections in 1945 and was returned to power,
though only formed a Liberal dominated government as a coalition. In
1948 he retired from public life and the Liberals chose Louis St.
Laurent as his successor. King died in 1950.
