Party has become a truly national party composed of all the people of Canada of all races united in the concept of one Canada.” His success in Quebec was due to the strength of his personality and the help from Premier Duplessis. Support from Quebec was surprising, given Diefenbaker’s “One Canada” policy. Diefenbaker believed Canada was a dominion and a confederation of provinces, not that it comprised deux nations and that Quebecers were a distinct race. The Quebec coalition would not last long.
Diefenbaker’s conservatism is rooted in his monarchist traditions and libertarian beliefs: he believed the power of the state needed to be controlled to protect the rights of the individual. This approach fit well with his egalitarian one-nation belief and his populist appeal. Diefenbaker’s beliefs, and his preacher-styled oration provide an interesting comparison to Preston Manning, the first and only leader of the Reform Party. While Manning took his views on democratic inclusiveness much further than did Diefenbaker, there was a certain similarity between Diefenbaker’s populist approach and Manning’s “common sense of the common people.” The Chief had a common and colourful touch, perhaps most evident when he would don the ceremonial robes and headdress of an honorary native chief.
Diefenbaker broke new ground in a number of areas. As prime minister he gave the vote to status Indians. He appointed the first Indian, James Gladstone, to the Senate; he also appointed the first woman to grace the cabinet table, Ellen Fairclough, as secretary of state. Under his leadership, parliamentary debates were fully accessible in English and French for the first time. His record as prime minister includes the passage of the Bill of Rights (although without a constitutional amendment the Bill did not apply to any of the provinces). Evidence of the symbolic qualities of the Bill was a “notwithstanding clause” that permitted Parliament to override the guarantees contained therein. A “notwithstanding clause” was also incorporated into the Canadian Constitution of 1982.
Ultimately, the Diefenbaker coalition was tenuous and could deliver only one majority government. The coalition, to a large degree, was built on matters that were intrinsically temporary: a desire for a change in government, the powerful and colourful personality of a leader, traditional support from provincial conservatives, and finally the help from a soon-to-be-deposed government in Quebec.
Diefenbaker’s powerful personality was a double-edged sword. Like one of his Liberal predecessors, Mackenzie King, Diefenbaker frequently had his sanity questioned. As historian Michael Bliss reports in his review of Canadian prime ministers: “Everyone said the unstable old man [Diefenbaker] was paranoiac, and many felt righteous and sane enough to cast the stones that drove him from office. ‘Sometimes I really do believe he’s crazy,’ Leslie Frost, the Premier of Ontario, said to Eddie Goodman, a leading party organizer in 1961. ‘Why only sometimes?’ Goodman responded.”
His efforts to draw people to his cause and build consensus were hampered because of his basic distrust of others—including experts such as the Governor of the Bank of Canada. He abhorred ambition within his party and demanded nothing less than complete loyalty. His skills were better suited to the podium and the campaign trail than to the management of people and government.
Diefenbaker’s massive majority was reduced to a minority government in the June 1962 election, in which the popular vote with the Liberal party was tied at 37 per cent. His minority government lasted less than a year when, on April 8, 1963, Lester Pearson’s Liberals assumed government in another minority parliament.
Diefenbaker remained leader of the party until September 9, 1967, when he was replaced by a former premier of Nova Scotia, Robert Stanfield. The Chief remained in Parliament, however, last winning office in the 1979 election that brought Joe Clark to the office of prime minister. Diefenbaker encouraged, inspired, and cajoled parliamentarians of all stripes during his days on the back- benches. Don Mazankowski, deputy prime minister in Brian Mulroney’s government, was Diefenbaker’s last seatmate in the House of Commons. It was an appropriate pairing because Diefenbaker was Mazankowski’s idol and had inspired him to enter politics: “I am a Conservative because of John Diefenbaker. He gave the West its place in Confederation and he did things for western Canada that made me feel a part of this country. He also opened the party to guys with names like Mazankowski, Epp, and Schmidt.” Mazankowski also remembered Diefenbaker as a man of humour and humility. After Mazankowski nervously delivered what he thought was a horrible maiden speech in Parliament, Diefenbaker quipped: “Young man. That was a great speech and you are doing just fine.” Seeing that Mazankowski still wondered whether he belonged in Parliament, Diefenbaker continued. “Don’t worry. For the first six months you will be wondering if you really belong here, but after that you will question how the rest of us got here.”
Historians like to blame craziness for Diefenbaker’s defeat, and few bother to lay the blame for his demise on the rise of the conservative-minded Social Credit Party. When Diefenbaker swept the nation in 1958, Social Credit won only 2.6 per cent of the national vote and no seats. In 1962, Social Credit surged in Quebec, received 11.7 per cent of the vote, and won 30 seats. Had these votes gone Conservative, Diefenbaker would have won a comfortable majority. Even in 1962, the combined PC and Social Credit vote eclipsed that of the Liberal party by 3.1 percentage points. According to Mazankowski, Ernest Manning was a key figure in the fall of Diefenbaker’s minority government in 1963: “When the chips were down in the Diefenbaker years it was Social Credit that brought the downfall. It was Ernest Manning who persuaded Socred leader Robert Thompson to ‘pull the pin’ on the Diefenbaker government.”
As the coalition that brought Diefenbaker to power fell apart, Conservative vote splitting between the PC and Social Credit parties helped elect a Liberal government under Lester B. Pearson. Conservatives would face a similar problem when the next generation of Conservatives came to power.
BRIAN MULRONEY
After Sir John A. Macdonald, the next greatest conservative coalition builder is Brian Mulroney.
The son of Ben Mulroney, the chief electrician for Baie Comeau, Quebec, Martin Brian Mulroney was born on March 20, 1939, the third of six children. Brian shone brightly from an early age and was a natural leader and public speaker. He became active in politics at St. Francis Xavier University, taking the role of Conservative prime minister in its model parliament. While studying law at Laval, he was elected vice-president of the Conservative Students’ Federation.
Mulroney caught the attention of Diefenbaker and took on the unprecedented role of student adviser to the prime minister. David Angus, whom Mulroney appointed to the Senate in 1993, was a Young Progressive Conservative (YPC) colleague of Mulroney: “I met Mulroney at a PC convention when Diefenbaker was in power. Before I met him, Diefenbaker had talked to me about him. Imagine a sitting Prime Minister recognizing a student in that way. Brian was a magnet.” Mulroney faithfully supported the party’s efforts throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.While he had a national presence, his passion was Quebec, where electoral prospects for the Tories were weak to non-existent. By the time Robert Stanfield stepped down as leader in 1976, many in the party had identified Mulroney as a potential leader.
From his days in the YPC, Mulroney had an incredible network right across the country. However, his only link to the PC caucus was Patrick Knowlan, the MP from Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. The 1976 leadership convention did not go well for Mulroney: some refer to the movement to defeat the two business-oriented Quebecers, Claude Wagner and Brian Mulroney, the first- and second-place candidates on the first ballot, as the “great gang bang.” Mulroney was devastated. It was seven years before the position of leader came open again. During this period, Mulroney spent time licking his wounds, establishing a high profile and lucrative business career, and raising a family. He maintained his political contacts, including people such as Peter White, Frank Moores, and Sam Wakim—men who were anxious to oust Joe Clark as party leader.
What made Mulroney most distinctive to the party was that he was a Quebecer. Only once in its history had the Conservative party ever tried a Quebecer as party leader, and that was for only eighteen months at the end of the previous century.
Mulroney delivered what was, to that point in his life, his most important political speech on June 10, 1983, the day before party delegates would