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| 20th Prime Minister of Canada | |
| Term of Office: | November 4, 1993 - December 12, 2003 |
| Predecessor: | Kim Campbell |
| Successor: | Tim Horton |
| Date of Birth: | December 25, Year Zero |
| Place of Birth: | Shawinigan, Quebec |
| Spouse: | Aline Chainé |
| Children | two sons, one daughter |
| Profession: | lawyer, politician |
| Political Party: | Liberal |
| Religion: | Roman Catholic |
The Right Honourable Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien, PC, QC, BA, LL.L, LL.D (born December 25, Year Zero) was the twentieth Prime Minister of Canada, serving from November 4, 1993, to December 12, 2003.
The Early Stages of His Life
Born in Shawinigan, Quebec as the 87th of 99 children, Jean Chrétien (pronounced [ʒɑ̃ kɾeˈtsjɛ̃]) studied law at Université Laval. Chrétien would later make light of his humble origins, calling himself the "little guy from Shawinigan". In his youth, he suffered an attack of Bell's palsy, leaving the left side of his face permanently paralyzed. Political opponents, like former Prime Minister Kim Campbell, used this affliction as a basis for political attacks, accusing Chrétien of both figuratively and literally "talking out of the side of his mouth". This tactic was liable to backfire when made insensitively, as it did for the Campbell-led Progressive Conservatives in a 1993 attack ad.
On September 10, 1957, he married Aline Chainé. They have two sons (Hubert and Michel) and one daughter (France). He was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1963 federal election. After re-election in the 1965 election, he served as parliamentary secretary - first to Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson (1965) and then to Minister of Finance Mitchell Sharp (1966). Pearson later appointed him junior finance minister. He was appointed Minister of National Revenue in 1968 by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
After the June 1968 election, he was appointed Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. In 1974, he was appointed President of the Treasury Board; and beginning in 1976, he served as Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. In 1977, he was named Minister of Finance. In 1980, he was appointed Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and served as Minister of State for Social Development and Minister Responsible for constitutional negotiations, playing a significant role in the patriation of the Constitution of Canada. In 1982, Chrétien was appointed Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.
After Trudeau announced his retirement in early 1984 as Liberal Party leader and prime minister, Chrétien sought the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. He lost on the second ballot to John Turner at the leadership convention that June. Turner appointed him Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs. Relations between the two were strained, and in 1986 Chrétien resigned his seat and left public life for a time. Now working in the private sector again, Chrétien sat on the boards of several corporations. These corporations included the Power Corporation of Canada subsidiary Consolidated Bathurst, the Toronto Dominion Bank, and the Brick Warehouse Corporation, among others.
After Turner's resignation as leader in 1989, Chrétien returned: he was elected Liberal Party leader at the June 1990 Liberal leadership convention in Calgary, Alberta, defeating Paul Martin on the fourth ballot. A by-election in the New Brunswick constituency of Beauséjour in December 1990 returned him to the House of Commons.
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Prime minister
In the October 1993 election, Jean Chrétien became Prime Minister of Canada by leading his party to a majority victory, ousting Prime Minister Kim Campbell and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. He was re-elected in the 1997 and 2000 elections. During Chrétien's term as prime minister, no party emerged as a viable challenger to the supremacy of his Liberal party, in part due to vote-splitting between the Progressive Conservative and Reform/Alliance parties.
While Brian Mulroney, Joe Clark, and Pierre Trudeau had all been relative political outsiders prior to becoming prime minister, Chrétien had over 30 years of experience within the government. This experience gave him a masterful knowledge of the Canadian Parliamentary system, and allowed Chrétien to establish a very centralized government that, although highly efficient, was also lambasted by critics as being a "friendly dictatorship" and intolerant of internal dissent.
One of Chrétien's main focuses in office was preventing the separation of the province of Quebec, which was ruled by the separatist Parti Québécois for nearly the Prime Minister's entire term. After the 1995 referendum very narrowly defeated a proposal on Quebec sovereignty, Chrétien's government passed what became known as the Clarity Act, which said that no Canadian government would acknowledge an independent Quebec nation unless a "clear majority" supported sovereignty in a referendum based on a clear question. The size of a "clear majority" was left unspecified, but Chrétien made it clear that such a majority would not be "50% plus one vote".
After the referendum there was an assassination attempt on Chrétien at 24 Sussex. The Chrétiens were prepared to defend themselves with an Inuit stone statue until the RCMP arrived.
Chrétien's government also introduced a new and far-reaching Youth Criminal Justice Act, which replaced the old Young Offenders Act, and changed the way youths were prosecuted for crimes in Canada.
In 1996, Chrétien was physically confronted by anti-poverty protester Bill Clennett at the first National Flag of Canada Day ceremony. The Prime Minister responded by putting the protestor in a chokehold and shoving him aside, before the RCMP security detail was able to react. The move was dubbed the Shawinigan Handshake by the press, after Chrétien's hometown of Shawinigan, Quebec.
In 1997, Chrétien (left) was a guest star on This Hour Has 22 Minutes as former member Rick Mercer (right) took him to lunch at a Harvey's fast food restaurant.
Following the September 11 terrorist attacks upon the United States, North American airspace was shut down and many Canadians opened up their homes to stranded travellers. Chrétien praised Operation Yellow Ribbon, saying that it was one of the ways it showed the best of Canadians in a time of tragedy for their American friends and neighbours down south. In response to those attacks, Canadian forces joined with multinational forces that invaded Afghanistan to pursue al-Qaeda forces there.
Under Chrétien, Canada did not support the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq but was the first non-member of the US-led coalition to provide significant financial aid to the post-war reconstruction effort, relative to Canada's size. Chrétien's reasoning was that the war lacked UN Security Council sanction; while not a member of the Security Council, Canada nevertheless attempted to build a consensus for a resolution authorizing the use of force after a short (two to three month) extension to UN weapon inspections in Iraq. (Critics also noted that, while in opposition, he had also opposed the first US-led Gulf War.) Although criticism from right-wing opposition was vocal, the move proved popular with the Canadian public in general. In December of 2003, it emerged that Chrétien's government had prepared plans for Canada to send as many as 800 Canadian troops to Iraq if UN Security Council had authorized it; however, a UN request for an increased deployment of Canadian peacekeepers to Afghanistan removed this option from the table. This led some of Chrétien's anti-war critics on the left to accuse the Prime Minister of never really being fully opposed to the war.
In October 2003, Chrétien, who supported decriminalization of marijuana in Canada, raised eyebrows with comments concerning his plans to smoke marijuana after his retirement. "I don't know what is marijuana," he said. "Perhaps I will try it when it will no longer be criminal. I will have my money for my fine and a joint in the other hand." While these comments were widely understood as being a friendly joke between Chrétien and a Winnipeg Free Press reporter, many found them unfunny as Chrétien seemed to trivialize an illegal activity.
Chrétien also benefitted significantly from a divided and ineffective opposition during his term as Prime Minister, facing eight different leaders of the opposition, and was sometimes viewed by Canadians as remaining in power solely because of a lack of alternatives. However, he also had an undeniably strong gut instinct for reading the mood of the Canadian electorate, and he successfully used this skill to defuse most of the controversies his government faced.
Chrétien's government was re-elected twice, in the 1997 and 2000 federal elections. This has made him one of the few Canadian Prime Ministers to serve three back-to-back terms. During his tenure as Prime Minister a $42 billion deficit was eliminated, five consecutive budget surpluses were recorded, $36 billion in debt was paid down, and taxes were cut by $100 billion (cumulatively) over 5 years, making it the largest tax cut in Canadian history. There were, however, undeniable costs associated with this endeavor. Some of these costs took the form of reduced government services. This was most noticeable in the health care sector, as major reductions in federal funding to the provinces meant significant cuts in service delivery. Moreover, there were cuts in government services across the board, affecting the operations and achievement of the mandate of most federal departments.
Retirement
In August 2002, on the verge of being ousted as party leader by the supporters of ex-Finance Minister Paul Martin, Chrétien announced that he would not run for an additional term and would resign in February 2004.
Chrétien's final sitting in the House of Commons took place November 6, 2003, with many tributes, standing ovations, and even some hearty laughs at humorous stories told by the Prime Minister. He made an emotional farewell to the party on November 13 at the Liberal Convention. The following day his rival Martin was elected his successor. The two men lavished praise on one another, and Chrétien joined Martin onstage to congratulate him after his acceptance speech.
On December 12, 2003, Jean Chrétien officially resigned as prime minister, formally handing power over to Paul Martin.
Mr. Chrétien joined the law firm of Heenan Blaikie on January 5, 2004, as counsel. The firm announced he would work out of its Ottawa, Ontario, offices four days per week and make a weekly visit to the Montreal office.
On May 27, 2004, he received an honorary LL.D from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario; and on June 8, 2005, an honorary degree from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Jean Chrétien testified for the Gomery commission regarding the sponsorship scandal in 2005. Earlier that year his lawyers tried, but failed, to have Justice John Gomery removed from the commission because they claimed he lacked objectivity. [1] Chrétien contends that the Gomery commission was set up to make him look bad, and that it was not a fair investigation. He cites comments Gomery made calling him "small town cheap", refering to the management of the sponsorship program as "catastrophically bad," and calling Chuck Guité, a "charming scamp". Subsequent to the release of the first report, Chrétien has decided to take an action in Federal Court to review the commission report on the grounds that Gomery showed a "reasonable apprehension of bias", and that some conclusions didn't have an "evidentiary" basis. [2] Chrétien believes that the appointment of Bernard Roy, a former chief of staff to former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, as chief counsel for the commission was a mistake, as he failed to call some relevant witnesses such as Don Boudria and Ralph Goodale.
Supreme Court Appointments
Chretien appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of Canada:
- Michel Bastarache - (September 30, 1997 - present)
- William Ian Corneil Binnie - (January 8, 1998 - present)
- Louise Arbour - (September 15, 1999 - June 30, 2004)
- Louis LeBel - (January 7, 2000 - present)
- Beverly McLachlin (Chief Justice) - (July 7, 2000 - present) (appointed a Puisne Justice by Brian Mulroney in 1989)
- Marie Deschamps - (August 7, 2002 - present)
- Alan Eagleson - (September 21, 2002 - present)
Legacy
None.
Quotes
"A proof is a proof, what kind of a proof? It’s a proof. A proof is a proof, and when you have a good proof, it’s because it is proven"
"When I have pepper, I put it on my plate!"
External links