CHAPTER 11

Politics in Disrepute

The Pearson government had had some major successes. The government had begun the task of making government bilingual, and its creation of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism had demonstrated its seriousness of purpose to both French and English Canada. It had put the Canada Pension Plan into place, it had given Canada a new flag, and it had begun the process of unifying the Armed Forces. Those were all major accomplishments. But somehow the government came unstuck and things went badly askew. The Sixty Days of Decision that began the new administration turned agonizingly into five years of scandal and bitter partisan controversy that left the Canadian people desperately sick of politics and both Liberal and Conservative parties searching for new leaders and fresh approaches. The general trend of a disheartening period is conveyed by the titles of articles on Canadian affairs that appeared in the Round Table, the British quarterly: “A Shaky Start for the Liberals” (September 1963), “Minority Government in Trouble” (December 1963), “Liberals Struggle On” (March 1964), “An Addled Parliament” (June 1964), “Futility in Parliament” (September 1964), “Faction and Scandal” (June 1965), “Government’s Second Wind” (September 1965), “A Discredited Parliament Dissolved” (December 1965), and “Time for New Leaders” (June 1966). Something had gone wrong, and the Liberals, so confident, even cocky, about their managerial prowess before the 1963 election, made many Canadians aware that their country had always been difficult to govern – and not only in Tory times.

I

The government’s troubles had begun with its first budget. Pearson had given the Department of Finance to Walter Gordon, the miracle man who had created the Liberals’ electoral victory. Gordon was a top-rank Toronto accountant and business consultant with fresh ideas and a proven record of administrative competence stretching back over thirty years. He was a nationalist businessman, a rare bird indeed, but in April 1963, as Finance minister, he seemed the right man in the most important place. The Sixty Days of Decision that the Liberals had promised in the 1963 campaign were under way.

But it was Walter Gordon who first got the government into the political hot water in which it was to stay. Gordon had not been entirely happy with the condition of his department when he took over. The deputy minister, K.W. Taylor, had lost his administrative grip and ability to initiate. The minister wanted R.B. Bryce, the Clerk of the Privy Council, to replace Taylor, but Pearson, needing Bryce near him in the first days of the new government, refused to allow him to switch at the outset. The result was that Gordon, after a canvass of academics and others for a list of bright young economists who could come to Ottawa for a brief period to assist with the budget, selected three, asked them to take leave from their employers, had them sworn in, and used their talents in the budget drafting.¹

The budget was hurriedly prepared and, after some criticism by the permanent civil servants in the department, was cleared with the Prime Minister and its bare bones presented to Cabinet.² It was a nationalist document, Gordon’s attempt to begin the process of rescuing Canada from foreign control of the economy. The Finance minister levied a 30-per-cent takeover tax on sales of shares in Canadian companies to non-residents, and the 15-per-cent withholding tax on dividends paid to non-residents was reduced by 5 per cent for companies that were at least one quarter Canadian owned and increased by 5 per cent for firms with a lower proportion of domestic ownership. There were also changes to the depreciation allowance for companies with 25 per cent or greater Canadian ownership. Other noteworthy measures were special allowances for companies that hired older unemployed workers and the elimination of the 11-per-cent sales tax exemption on building materials and production machinery.

Gordon might have expected the criticism that fell upon him beginning June 14. The Governor of the Bank of Canada, Louis Rasminsky, had told the Prime Minister and Gordon that the withholding tax would cause trouble and might produce “massive attempts at liquidation” of foreign investment and precipitate another foreign exchange crisis.³ He was right. The United States government was incensed at the takeover and withholding taxes,⁴ and Canadian businessmen, hooked into the continental economy, quickly opened their own attacks on those same measures. The result of the protests at home and abroad forced Gordon on June 19 to withdraw the takeover tax. But the minister’s troubles were not yet over, for his use of special assistants in preparing the budget came under assault, initially from Douglas Fisher, the NDP member for Port Arthur, Ontario. Were the “three bright boys” free of associations with their employers in the private sector? Could they have made personal gains because of their inside knowledge?⁵ Those questions stung, and after Gordon unwisely stonewalled he had to reveal full details of the hiring of the assistants to the House.

By June 20, the battered Gordon had offered his resignation to Pearson. The Prime Minister refused to accept – he had enthusiastically approved the budget and could do little else – and the Cabinet that day agreed to give full support to Gordon in Parliament. Even so, the defence was tepid at best, and by July 8 Gordon had been forced to modify additional parts of his budget. The humiliation was completed in mid-July when the Kennedy administration proposed restrictive measures to be applied to foreign borrowings in the United States, and Gordon had to appeal to the U.S. Treasury secretary to exempt Canada from the restrictions that were sure to put further pressure on the Canadian dollar.⁶

Thus Gordon was crippled as Minister of Finance and the much-trumpeted Sixty Days of Decision sputtered to a halt in a first-class brouhaha that demonstrated the limitations of the new government. “Well!” Eugene Forsey wrote to a friend. “The government of all the talents, all the knowledge and all the virtues!”⁷ In his semi-private correspondence, the Prime Minister supported his old friend: “I hope we have learned from our mistakes. I am sure Walter Gordon has.” But in conversation he was much more critical. Arnold Heeney, who had worked closely with Pearson for twenty years, wrote in his diary that in two or three talks the Prime Minister “has been very frank concerning his political difficulties, notably re W.L.G. when his personal friendship and natural loyalty to the individual cuts right across the course of political wisdom…. LBP told me…that he hoped within a couple of months to have induced Walter to take another portfolio; he was afraid however that he would insist on resigning his seat.”⁸

With astonishing swiftness, Gordon had fallen to the point where he had become a liability, even an impediment, to the proper functioning of Pearson’s government. Although he retained his portfolio, there was nonetheless an element of personal tragedy in his fall; yet because of his superconfident mannerisms and his too obvious certainty that Liberals knew best, very few outside the Liberal party ranks could sympathize with him. For the government as a whole, the budget had serious consequences. When he met the executive of the National Liberal Federation in Ottawa early in 1964, Pearson admitted that the budget had been “our major failure” but claimed that the country seemed to have forgotten that “we have accomplished a great deal…. The record has been a good one….”⁹ In many ways that was so. And yet the government was in terrible trouble, harassed in the House of Commons by the Tories, bedevilled by trouble-prone ministers, and beset by scandals.

The first scandal to become public concerned evidence that the Seafarers’ International Union had contributed money to the campaigns of several Montreal Liberals. As Hal Banks, the SIU leader, was in the United States awaiting a decision on whether or not he was to be extradited to Canada to serve a jail term for contempt of court, there was understandable concern that the donations might have been made for a particular purpose. Then came charges that Lucien Rivard, a Montreal drug smuggler held in a Montreal jail pending extradition to the United States, had powerful friends in the government. Erik Nielsen, the Conservative M.P. for Yukon, and NDP Leader T.C. Douglas alleged that a lawyer for the American government had been offered a bribe to drop his opposition to bail for Rivard and that two of Justice minister Favreau’s aides and Pearson’s parliamentary secretary, Guy Rouleau, had added the government’s weight to that request.¹⁰ Favreau (who was also the Quebec leader since Lionel Chevrier had gone to London as High Commissioner at the end of 1963) had learned of the Rivard affair in late August 1964, and he had discussed it briefly with the Prime Minister on an aircraft on September 2. But nothing concrete had been done between that date and the Nielsen-Douglas revelations in Parliament on November 23, 1964.¹¹

As a result, Favreau, an able and amiable man but not a shrewd parliamentary strategist, was led “like a lamb to the slaughter,” or so Conservative House leader Gordon Churchill recalled.¹² Under questioning he denied the allegations. That same night Pearson saw the RCMP file on the case for the first time, and the next day he fired Rouleau. In the House, the Liberals agreed to an inquiry, and in response to an Opposition questioner Pearson said he had first heard of the Rivard case two days before when Favreau had told him the details at his home. The Prime Minister apparently had forgotten his earlier conversation with Favreau on the airplane. But within a day or two the House and the Press Gallery were awash with rumours that Pearson had known of the affair since September.

Despite appeals from colleagues and friends, Pearson remained silent. He was in the West on a political tour while Parliament worried over the details of the case, and when he returned to Ottawa the pressure to set the record straight began anew. One of those who made the attempt was Arnold Heeney, who had learned of the Rivard case from a deputy minister friend late in August. Heeney saw the Prime Minister on November 29, accompanied by Gordon Robertson, the Clerk of the Privy Council, and Tom Kent, policy secretary to Pearson. According to Heeney, all “shared the view that the P.M. would be in an exceedingly difficult, indeed false, position if the record were to stand as it was. Furthermore, I felt that the P.M. himself should make a strong effort to assert (resume?) the moral leadership which the demeanour of the Government so far had caused the public impression that Ministers were, to say the least, ignoring….” When the meeting ended, Heeney expected Pearson to issue a statement making clear that Favreau had told him of the case in early September.

But nothing happened. Heeney learned that the question had been raised in Cabinet “and there had been opposition (notably from Walter Gordon) on the ground apparently that it would simply arouse further criticism and furor.” Heeney was appalled: “I said that I thought it would be disastrous if the P.M. did not go ahead – even now – before the enquiry started December 15. Better to do it from a standing start than not at all. Otherwise the enquiry would almost certainly lead to a direct conflict over what was and was not reported to the P.M.” Heeney then went to see Gordon but found the Finance minister “tired and depressed and without any idea as to what could be done…he said that no one but the P.M. could make the decision and he had not been asked for further advice.”¹³ In the end Pearson wrote on December 14 to Frédéric Dorion, Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Quebec and the inquiry commissioner, to explain his lapse in memory. “I did not want to appear unfair” to Favreau, Pearson later said, after having allowed the Justice minister to dangle for three weeks. The House of Commons was outraged, emotion already running high because of the flag debate, and Pearson was subjected to the worst barracking of his career, Tommy Douglas accusing him of misleading Parliament and concluded with a formal motion to refer the matter to the Committee on Elections and Privileges. In parliamentary terms, Pearson had been called a liar, and in the manoeuvring that followed the Liberals defeated the NDP motion 122 to 105. Pearson’s honour had been upheld – barely.

The inquiry report appeared on June 29, 1965. Dorion concluded that Erik Nielsen was correct – bribes had been offered – and he blasted the men who had been involved. He was gentler with Favreau but did say that the minister “should have submitted the case to the legal advisers within his Department with instructions to complete the search for facts…and secured their views upon the possible perpetration of a criminal offence by one or several” of those involved.¹⁴ Favreau’s judgement had been called in question, and he offered his resignation to Pearson. Although Quebec ministers objected, Pearson accepted and, as he told the House, because Favreau “remains a man of unimpeachable integrity and unsullied honour, I have asked him to consider the acceptance of another post.”¹⁵ Ruined by the affair, Favreau became President of the Privy Council, a largely honorific portfolio.

While the Rivard case was at its peak, Pearson was also under pressure from Premier Jean Lesage to fire Yvon Dupuis, a Minister without Portfolio, who was suspected of taking a bribe in 1961 to accelerate the granting of a race track licence by the province. Lesage told Pearson that Montreal La Presse had the story and that the Union Nationale Opposition could be expected to raise it in the legislature. Forced to act, Pearson summoned Dupuis and told him he had two weeks to produce evidence why an RCMP investigation should not take place. By Christmas 1964, finally, the Prime Minister authorized the police to look into the case and, after seeing their report, on January 17, 1965, asked Dupuis for his resignation. The errant minister refused, and five days later, after the Toronto Star had some of the story, Pearson fired Dupuis.¹⁶ (In the end, Dupuis was cleared in the courts.)

At the same time the Conservatives had begun to charge that another two ministers were involved in the bankruptcy of two Montreal furniture dealers. Maurice Lamontagne, the Secretary of State, it turned out, had taken delivery of $8,000 worth of furniture and had made no payments on the debt until the bankrupt company’s creditor, the Bank of Montreal, had asked for the cash. René Tremblay, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, had also bought furniture from the company and subsequently paid off the creditors. It was the tiniest of scandals, yet another uncovered by Erik Nielsen who had, he said, learned of the deals from a man he met on a train to Montreal, but it was sufficient to create innuendoes. What precisely was Lamontagne expected to do for the furniture dealers in return for their not asking for payment? The careers of both ministers were ruined, and the stench of scandal persisted.¹⁷

II

The scandals that ensnared it came to dominate the thinking of the Pearson government and preoccupy the press through 1964 and 1965. Every day seemingly brought new troubles for the Prime Minister and his shaky Cabinet, and over every acrimonious debate in Parliament hovered the shadow of minority government, obliging the Liberals to watch constantly lest some act of omission or commission push the opposition parties into coalition, produce a defeat in the House, and force an election at an inopportune time. The delicate balance in the Commons also gave the third parties more prominence than might otherwise have been the case, and Réal Caouette and Tommy Douglas won a genuine bargaining power as a result.

Yet the situation could not last indefinitely, and government strategists knew all too well that the next election had to be called at a time that best suited the Liberals. Here too were questions of strategy, the most important of which involved redistribution. Even if things went well, the Liberals estimated, the redistribution that was to take place on the census results of 1961 could not be put through Parliament before 1966. Once it was past the House, an eighteen-month delay was necessary to permit the reorganization of constituency associations by all the parties and a restructuring by the Chief Electoral Officer. In other words, if the Liberals did not go to the polls in 1965 they might well be stuck until late 1967 – and would Centennial year be the best of times for an election?

The arguments for an early election seemed compelling to those such as Walter Gordon who wanted to test the electorate quickly. In January 1965 – with polls showing the Liberals at 47 per cent and the Conservatives and NDP at 32 and 12 respectively – he told Pearson that the party’s National Campaign Committee favoured a June election and estimated a gain of twenty-five seats.¹⁸ A few months later Gordon was after Pearson again, still calling for a June or July election. The organization was ready, the economy was in good shape with unemployment at about 4 per cent, and Quebec “at the moment” was relatively calm. Moreover, the polls were still good (although the March Gallup poll showed both the Liberals and the Conservatives down in support), and if Diefenbaker decided to retire “a Conservative convention called for December or January” would tie “our hands…until the new leader was chosen.” In political terms, the Finance minister said, “there will be no excuse for failing to take the initiative when we can win.”¹⁹

But Pearson was reluctant. He hated campaigning, and the thought of another election against John Diefenbaker made him almost ill. The June date passed, and Gordon was soon urging an October election, prophesying 155 to 180 seats. “Diefenbaker is a real asset to us,” he said, “and we should not risk waiting until someone takes his place.” Moreover, the Dorion Report on the Rivard case was due. The campaign committee felt strongly “that firm and fast action is imperative following publication” and “any delay” in housecleaning where necessary “would be very damaging.”²⁰ But again Pearson put off a decision, and by late summer 1965 the press had begun to argue against an election before redistribution. Tom Kent, Pearson’s chief aide, however, still pressed for an early vote. The only people who objected were “those who don’t like us but can’t bear Diefenbaker…and good, sincere people who don’t like elections and hope that if it is put off it will somehow be less ‘dirty’ and not do the harm to national unity that they fear from Diefenbaker.” Kent added that “the rejection of Diefenbaker, if we achieve it, would be good for national unity.”²¹

The crucial day was August 31. Gordon saw the Prime Minister that day to discuss new polls, which suggested the Liberals could win 150 to 155 seats. The issues were identified as the cost of living, unemployment, taxes, spending, and medicare; surprisingly, there was little concern about federal-provincial relations. “It would be a mistake to emphasize the Quebec problem,” Gordon said, “not because we do not consider it the No. 1 domestic issue but because people in English-speaking Canada do not like being reminded of it…. Also every time we mention the ‘two founding races’, we offend unnecessarily the one-quarter of the population that belongs to neither….” According to Gordon, the survey results argued that the issues should be “what we have done – prosperity…pensions, the flag, etc. An appeal for a strong Federal Government…. A request for a mandate to proceed with such programs as Medicare and improved educational and training facilities.” And the proper strategy, Gordon added, was to leave Diefenbaker alone.²²

Pearson fretted about the decision over the Labour Day weekend, but the decision to hold the election on November 8, 1965, was nonetheless made and announced on September 7. The Liberal strategy, as devised by the pollsters and Gordon and revised and expanded by Keith Davey, the National Campaign Director, was “Building the New Canada,” which naturally demanded a Liberal majority government. With a majority, the party’s secret strategy paper said, the Government and the Opposition both know where they are for the next four years. “We ask for a majority so that we can get on with the main job and be judged by how we do it.”²³

The Conservatives were no less eager than the Liberal strategists for an election. Waldo Monteith told Diefenbaker that he wanted the vote now and was confident the Chief could win. The people were “completely disenchanted” with Gordon and Pearson and the big issues were “One Canada,” the erosion of central authority and the Liberals’ catering to Quebec.²⁴ The party campaign committee set out the Conservative plan. In the first stage, the object was to hit at the government record and to stress bread-and-butter issues; in the last month, the candidates should stress national development. The Tories’ objectives were to hold their rural vote and increase it, to target rural Quebec, Toronto, and Montreal (particularly working-class Montreal), as well as Vancouver and Newfoundland. It was a national campaign focused regionally.²⁵

The NDP was in straitened circumstances, as usual. The Conservatives would raise more than $2 million and allocate $1.16 million to the constituencies; the NDP would budget $150,000 for their national campaign and be exultant when the Ontario party could raise and spend $250,000 during the election.²⁶ What worried the NDP planners was the appeal of majority government to an electorate tired of minority government and the wrangling between Diefenbaker and Pearson. Tommy Douglas had done his fair share of desk-pounding in Parliament too, but he had never attracted the odium that attached itself to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. Thus for the NDP the issue was leadership – Tommy Douglas’s transparent honesty against the mud-spattered Chief and the vacillating Mike.²⁷

Social Credit and the Créditistes, divided in two since September 1963 when Réal Caouette had led most of the Quebec contingent in a breakaway, had demonstrated that a minor party when sundered was even less effective than when united. Caouette’s forces were quick to appeal for support from “les petits gars,” but their scarcely concealed efforts to save their own seats before all else did them little good. One Créditiste on the House Flag Committee had even offered his vote to the Conservatives in return for election expenses, a sure sign that collections were drying up in Quebec.²⁸ At the same time, as one of his followers told Robert Thompson, the Alberta M.P. and Social Credit leader, the Créditiste defection “dealt a very serious blow to the public image of Social Credit and its political effectiveness…[and] placed seriously in question before the public your status as leader….”²⁹ The two parties were finished, and even Réal Caouette’s fabled drawing power in the rural areas of Quebec had dwindled.

Diefenbaker’s appeal had not diminished, however. The old Chief, turning seventy on September 18, toured the country by railway car, a striking contrast to the jet-setting Grits. “He cared enough to come,” the Conservatives cheered, and the leader was glorying in a reunited party. George Hees and Davie Fulton had again pledged loyalty; Eddie Goodman was once more directing the campaign; and the party’s opinion polls, showing the Liberals losing support during the campaign, looked better and better.³⁰ Diefenbaker played the Liberal scandals like a master – on warm nights he got an unfailing roar from the crowds when he said that “it was on a night like this” that Rivard, the dope peddler, had left his cell to water the prison ice rink – and escaped. It was great theatre, just as it was when Diefenbaker ran through a litany of the furniture scandals and bribes that had tormented the government. The names were French, and the Tory leader revelled in his mispronunciations and appeals for One Canada. In the code of the day, whatever Diefenbaker might have meant, he was unfailingly understood as wanting to put and keep Quebec in its place.

The Chief’s supporters argued that he was not anti-Quebec. He used the scandals because those involved were Liberals, not because they were French speaking. He had no anti-French Canadian biases, they said; he simply did not understand Quebec. While he loved visiting country fairs in La belle province and even enjoyed his stumbling attempts to speak French, he simply equated Quebeckers with the Ukrainians he had grown up with in Saskatchewan – good people wanting to be accepted. Perhaps that was so, but even Diefenbaker’s supporters had to rationalize what they were doing during the 1965 election. One slogan privately used around party headquarters in Ottawa was “Let’s give the old bugger another chance,” and three of the key planners jokingly agreed that if by chance the Chief won the election, one of them would go on the radio, accept the nation’s plaudits, and then admit it was all a giant hoax. The three would then link hands and jump off the roof of the Chateau Laurier.³¹

There was even a chance that the election could be won. Pearson’s self-doubts about the election were reflected in his lacklustre campaign. There was no oomph in the Liberal efforts, while Diefenbaker scored heavily with his attacks. Walter Gordon’s assessment was that a majority was still possible, although in mid-October he expected losses in the Maritimes and on the Prairies but saw chances for large gains in Quebec. For Gordon, the issues remained the same, and he was convinced that a big push on the majority government issue could only do good.³² The Liberals were bolstered by the return of Robert Winters, a minister in the St. Laurent government, running in York West, Ontario, and by the adhesion to the party of Gerard Pelletier, Jean Marchand, and Pierre Trudeau. Pelletier, a journalist, and Marchand, a labour leader, were much the best known; Trudeau, described by the Round Table in December 1965 as “an intellectual millionaire,” was suspect to many Liberals for his scathing denunciations of Pearson on the nuclear issue in 1963.

The result, as the Montreal Gazette of November 10 described it, was that “Pearson wins but loses.” The Liberals won only two seats more than they had in 1963, totalling 131 or two short of a majority. Diefenbaker also increased the Conservative ranks by two to 97, while the NDP went from 17 to 21 seats. The Créditistes and Social Credit were the main losers, dropping from 24 seats between them in 1963 to 9 and 5 in 1965. The Liberals had 40.2 per cent of the popular vote, the Conservatives 32.4, and the NDP 17.9. The election had turned on the Liberals’ inability to sweep Quebec, where the Conservatives had held 8 seats and the Créditistes 9; the Liberals won only 56 of the 75 seats, at least 10 below expectations. On the Prairies, the Liberals had taken a lone seat against 42 for the Chief.

The post-mortems were many and various. Jack Pickersgill said the result had confirmed his hunch that Diefenbaker was a more formidable opponent than a new Tory leader would have been. “Undoubtedly by sickening the public with both ‘old’ parties Dief made a lot of extra votes for the NDP that they would never have got on their own merit.” Pearson found the “total result…disappointing but the outlook is far from bleak.” Yet he said to an old friend that his own preference was to get out: “…somebody might even give me a job at a university!”³³ And Walter Gordon, as the chief proponent of an election, felt obliged to give Pearson his resignation as Minister of Finance. In part that was a gesture that would allow the Prime Minister to replace a trouble-prone and sometimes troublesome minister; in part it was simply a recognition that after the Liberal failure Gordon’s influence was severely weakened. Pearson did not protest much, later noting that as Gordon himself knew “he did not have the full confidence of the financial and business community which a Minister of Finance should enjoy.”³⁴ Walter Gordon was gone from the Cabinet.

III

The election results, so closely duplicating those of 1963, unfortunately did not end the parade of scandals that had so tormented the last parliament. Pearson and Diefenbaker were still at the head of their parties, and so long as the two remained the bitterness that dominated the daily struggle in the House was certain to continue.

And continue it did. The next case to make the headlines concerned one George Victor Spencer, a postal worker in Vancouver, who had been recruited as a low-level spy by officials operating from the Soviet embassy in Ottawa. Spencer had no access to secrets of state, but he did provide his masters with details of the Post Office’s security system and with data that could be used to create plausible backgrounds for deep-cover Soviet agents. The RCMP had apparently known of Spencer’s activities for some time, but in May 1965 the police and the Department of External Affairs announced that two Soviet spies were to be expelled and the activities of Spencer, himself unnamed, were tossed into the press release for good measure. The Prime Minister added that because the postal worker in question was about to die of cancer, no legal action would be taken against him.

The Spencer case, still unknown to the public as such, disappeared. But only for a time. Thanks to cobalt treatment, Spencer lived longer than anticipated, and a Vancouver reporter tracked him down. That stirred interest. Then “This Hour Has Seven Days,” CBC-TV’s flagship public affairs show that had won large audiences with an iconoclastic style and bold questioning of public figures, managed to have Justice minister Lucien Cardin confirm Spencer’s existence on air.

Next it became known that Spencer had been fired by the Post Office and denied his pension, all without being prosecuted. That stirred up outrage in the Opposition and the press over the violation of Spencer’s civil liberties. How could this man have been fired and deprived of his pension without being tried in open court for his alleged crimes? The Justice department told the Prime Minister quietly that although the facts were clear, “there are nevertheless such difficulties in the way of presenting this evidence to the Court as to raise a very serious doubt as to the success of a prosecution.”³⁵

The Cabinet spent some time considering the Spencer case over the Christmas recess, trying to decide whether or not to hold an inquiry. Pearson favoured an in camera hearing and was confident that, as “we had treated Spencer fairly,” the government’s course was completely defensible. But Cardin and a majority of the ministers disagreed sharply with Pearson’s judgement. To appoint another inquiry inevitably would create the impression of government wrongdoing. Cardin had said as much in public, and, Pearson noted, his “repudiation” would have been interpreted as throwing another Quebec minister to the wolves. “He would have resigned.”³⁶

The Opposition continued its attacks on the government’s position after the recess, and on March 4, 1966, David Lewis, the NDP M.P. for York South, Ontario, produced a telegram from Spencer asking for an inquiry. This blew away the argument that Spencer had never asked for an inquiry, one of the Liberals’ pretexts for stonewalling on the issue. Spencer’s telegram seemed to want to limit the inquiry’s scope to the circumstances of his dismissal and his pension, and to Pearson that pointed a way out. We could “accept this kind of limited inquiry while rejecting the demand for a full one which would bring in security issues,” he wrote. “We could save our face and give public opinion reassurance that the dismissal was just….” The Prime Minister consulted some of his colleagues and won support; Cardin too “agreed that we should change front in the new circumstances…. There was not a word about resignation.”

Thus Pearson announced the limited inquiry and associated Cardin with his statement “so that there would be no repudiation…either in fact or in appearance.” But over the weekend, while the Opposition exulted in the Liberal surrender, and while the Liberals from Quebec fumed, Cardin decided to resign. The Quebec caucus furiously accused the Prime Minister “of having repudiated Cardin, tossed him aside, without even consulting him, etc., etc. Marchand felt that he should resign if Cardin did; so did [Léo] Cadieux [Associate Minister of National Defence] and [J.J.J.P.] Côté [Postmaster General].” As Pearson noted, “Things were really falling apart,” and he applied all his formidable powers of persuasion to keeping Cardin in the government. But the Justice minister had come to detest Parliament, Ottawa, and his job, and he was adamant. Pearson soon discovered, however, that Cardin feared if he left, “his resignation would break up the government and lead to mine. He claimed that this would be a tragedy for Canada and especially for Quebec….” Maurice Lamontagne and others persuaded Cardin that if he went they would all go, and the Justice minister relented. Cardin gave his decision to the caucus on Wednesday, March 9, 1966, and matters calmed down. Spencer was to have his inquiry and the government would stay together; Pearson had survived yet another crisis without the sacrifice of a Quebec colleague.³⁷

But on March 4, Cardin had responded to a sharp attack from John Diefenbaker in the Commons by shouting out something about the “Monseigneur” case. Only a few insiders knew to what this referred until the Justice minister held a press conference on March 10. Cardin told the reporters, assembled to learn why he had decided to stay in the Cabinet, that although he had not seen the RCMP file, the case in question was worse than Britain’s sex-and-security scandal involving John Profumo, a minister in the Macmillan government. Cardin added that one Gerda Munsinger had engaged in espionage before coming to Canada and that both Diefenbaker and Davie Fulton, his Minister of Justice, had known of the affair and had not referred it to the law officers of the Crown.

Cardin’s accusations caused a sensation. The minister later confirmed that although he “had never seen the word ‘Munsinger’ spelled out…believe me, I knew what the facts were.” In fact, Cardin had discussed the case with Pearson and Favreau earlier in an attempt to get the Prime Minister to use this weapon against Diefenbaker, but Pearson had refused, and Cardin had blurted out the slightly garbled pronunciation of Munsinger, he said, under the pressure of the House debate.³⁸ Favreau, it turned out, had also talked about the case with Fulton, warning him in a friendly way that it might be used against the Tories if the scandal campaign against the government continued. According to Fulton, that was proof that Cardin’s interjection was far from accidental.³⁹

The astonishment of the public increased when the Toronto Star discovered that Gerda Munsinger, far from being dead, was alive and well and living in Germany. Lurid stories soon appeared in the press, especially in Germany: “I will not be quiet about it,” Munsinger breathlessly told the Neue Illustrierte. “I will tell you how it was. How it really was in my fast-living restless life…where I met the men of society who wanted to have my love.” According to Munsinger, she had had an affair with Pierre Sévigny and also with George Hees, the Minister of Trade and Commerce in the Diefenbaker government.⁴⁰

The result of the Cardin charges was the establishment of another royal commission under Supreme Court Justice Wishart Spence to investigate the Diefenbaker government’s handling of the Munsinger case. The Spence Commission considered the evidence and heard testimony. The Conservatives, and especially Diefenbaker and Fulton, were fighting for their political lives, and some people were worried about the precedent that was being established. Joseph Sedgwick, a Toronto Conservative and one of the leading figures of the Ontario bar, told Fulton privately that the commission was “no better than a political witch hunt.” The commissioner had been asked “to review decisions that were made in good faith, and which were purely political decisions. In my view,” Sedgwick went on, “no Commissioner should be asked even to comment on the decisions of the leader of the Government, or his Ministers, whether to praise or condemn.” The prime minister, he concluded, was answerable to the House and, in due course, to the country, not to anyone else.⁴¹

That was a good principle. And there were reasons to doubt Pearson’s motives in the whole question. George Bain of the Globe and Mail wrote: “It is now apparent that for 16 months the Government had stood with the Munsinger case held like a pailful of slops over the heads of its chief political opponents…the inquiry that is now going on was brought into being by the desire for political revenge against the Government’s tormenters…the protection of national security…had nothing to do with it.”⁴²

Bain was exactly right. In November 1964, at the height of the Opposition’s scandalmongering, the Prime Minister had accepted a suggestion from J.W. Pickersgill, then Minister of Transport, that he should “counter the suspicions being created that members of Parliament are ‘shady’ characters” by instructing the RCMP, as Pearson wrote, “to let me know the details of any investigations made by them during the last 10 years in which a member was involved; let Diefenbaker know we are doing this.”⁴³ Pearson duly spoke to the RCMP commissioner and on December 2, 1964, had received his report. This was the first time Pearson had learned of the Munsinger affair, the liaison between Sévigny, Associate Minister of National Defence in the Diefenbaker government, and Munsinger, a German-born prostitute in Montreal. It was a “particularly sordid affair,” Pearson noted, but it would not have justified any intervention on his part except for the security aspect raised by Munsinger’s involvement as a low-level Soviet agent in Germany. Diefenbaker had, again in Pearson’s words, “merely reprimanded the Minister (who had certainly by now become a vulnerable person from a security point of view) and kept him in his most sensitive Ministerial post. It wasn’t ‘Go and sin no more’. It was ‘Stay, and sin no more.’ ” As the Prime Minister added in a later diary note, “It can be imagined how great was the temptation to use this knowledge at a time when we were being subjected to every kind of slimy attack on grounds of corruption, integrity in Government, political morality, etc.”⁴⁴

As Pickersgill had proposed, Pearson wrote to Diefenbaker and met him on December 10, 1964. Pearson’s account, written that day, noted that the Conservative leader “seemed tired and more than usually nervous.” He had known of the Sévigny case, he said, “interviewed his minister, had satisfied himself that no security had been violated.” Pearson added, “I shudder to think what he would have done to a Liberal P.M. who kept a Defence Minister on the job in these circumstances.” It seems certain that Pearson hoped to persuade Diefenbaker to cool the scandal accusations against his government by letting the Conservative leader know that he was aware of the Munsinger case. Diefenbaker was equal to the challenge, however, and as Pearson wrote, “indulged in his own form of blackmail by telling me that when he took office, there was a very important security file – from Washington – in which I was involved. He was surprised, I think, when I identified it, said I knew all about it, would have no worry if it were ever made public and had, years ago, told the U.S. State Department just that! That ended the subject.”⁴⁵ The file in question apparently contained accusations from a witness before a Congressional committee that Pearson had Communist connections.

This interview between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition had surely been extraordinary. Each man tried to blackmail the other with secrets from security files, and neither emerged with any credit whatsoever.

Nor was there much glory in the Spence inquiry. Diefenbaker and Fulton withdrew from the inquiry on May 18 in protest against Spence’s conduct of it and the tactics of the commission counsel. That did not stop Spence, whose report, published on September 23, 1966, found that Pierre Sévigny had become a security risk because of the affair, even though there was no suspicion of disloyalty on his part. Diefenbaker was censured for failing to dismiss Sévigny and for not seeking the advice of his Cabinet, and Fulton, incredibly, was criticized for accepting the RCMP’s word that there was no security breach without investigating further. George Hees was cited for a “regrettable” lack of discretion.⁴⁶ Parliament, the leaders of the parties, and the nation’s political process were besmirched by this affair, from which no one emerged with either credit or reputation intact. Judy LaMarsh summed it up best: “Members scuttled from the House heads down, even though the drama lured them back to their seats as the lethal verbal slashing went on. They were sick, Parliament was sick, but the press had a field day.”⁴⁷

IV

The dreadful Munsinger affair and the less-than-satisfactory Spence inquiry reduced politics in Canada to an appalling state. In the House and throughout the country, the Liberals pointed the finger at John Diefenbaker and maintained that he alone was responsible for the debasement of Parliament; Conservatives, whether they supported the continuation of Diefenbaker at the head of their party or not, were almost unanimous in placing the blame on Pearson personally and on his government’s apparently corruptible ministers; and the New Democrats, fortunately spared any direct involvement in the scandals, characteristically pointed at both parties and proclaimed their own innocence and pristine superiority. Everyone seemed to agree that renewal was needed if Parliament was to regain its position in the country and politics was again to be seen as an honourable profession. Renewal began first – but only with enormous travail – in the Progressive Conservative Party.

After the Cabinet revolt of February 1963 had been squelched, the unhappiness in certain quarters of the Tory party over the leadership of the Chief did not abate. Douglas Harkness, the Defence minister whose resignation had precipitated the crisis of confidence that destroyed the Conservative government, was one who remained adamant in his opposition. In June 1963, he wrote to a friend that the anti-Diefenbaker feeling had been responsible for the election of a Liberal in Calgary South in the election. “I was in considerable difficulty in Calgary North,” he added, “because I was running as a regular Conservative candidate”; while many wanted to vote for Harkness, they “could not possibly cast a vote which would assist Diefenbaker in any way, and if I were elected it would mean one more seat to help keep him in power.” There had to be a change of leaders, Harkness concluded. But as he wrote to the same friend in December, the caucus, while dissatisfied with the Chief, was not about to say so out loud: “…not more than two or three of the members at most are prepared to say publicly what the majority are saying privately.” And it was the same across the country, “the same reluctance on the part of the Party members to come out and advocate a change in leadership.”⁴⁸

Part of the trouble arose from the minority situation in Parliament, which meant an election could come at any time. With the Liberal government so shaky, the Conservatives could not afford to be left leaderless by a party revolt at a critical time. That probably contributed to Diefenbaker’s buoyant mood. In the fall of 1963 he wrote to the Lieutenant-Governor of Saskatchewan (one of his former M.P.s) that opinion polls showed the Progressive Conservatives up 3 per cent since the election and the Liberals up only two. The Pearson government was slipping, failing even to enjoy the traditional honeymoon. “The Pearson administration,” he exulted, “started to die prematurely almost from the time of its birth.”⁴⁹

But opposition to Diefenbaker did show itself timidly at the party’s annual meeting in Ottawa at the beginning of February 1964. Young Progressive Conservatives narrowly defeated a motion for a secret leadership ballot, and Student Conservatives on a secret ballot narrowly supported the leader 29 to 27. At the main meeting, the question of a secret ballot was fought for ninety minutes, and the Diefenbaker loyalists won by a 3-to-1 margin. A resolution of confidence in the leader, however, carried by a decidely larger margin with only about thirty delegates voting against. The frustrated Harkness wrote, “Over two hundred people to whom I spoke around the hotel…were anxious to see a change in leadership…. However, when the open vote on confidence came only between sixty and seventy stood up.” Although the press had said that thirty opposed the Chief, he could name more than forty who rose and there were many others whose names he did not know. “It is very difficult to understand why so many people are afraid to publicly take a stand on a matter of this kind.”⁵⁰

But the next year at the P.C. Association National Executive meeting in Ottawa in February, the attacks against Diefenbaker were furious. The entire Quebec caucus had met in Montreal to lick collective wounds caused by Diefenbaker’s anti-Quebec line and had issued a statement: “We have concluded, with real regret, that the direction that the party is now travelling can have no other result than to isolate Quebec Conservatives from the main body of the party.” The problem was Diefenbaker: “On every issue touching the tap-roots of Confederation, the hopes and aspirations of French Canada have been distorted, misrepresented, and ignored…subjected to narrow, parochial, unreasoning criticism of the kind to which great issues should not be subjected.” The conclusion was somber: “…the Conservative Party can no longer carry on under its present leadership and the policies which that leadership has engendered.”⁵¹ In the opinion of Quebec Tories, a leadership convention was necessary, and that became the focal point of the association meeting.

The key struggle was fought in the meeting of the National Executive. Léon Balcer, the Quebec leader in the federal house, was given the opportunity to read the Quebec statement. Then Diefenbaker spoke at length. The meeting was closed, but Davie Fulton’s on-the-spot notes captured the flavour of the Chief’s remarks:

Those who opposed in 1956 and have continued to oppose ever since privately and publicly

Those who have ambition will have opportunity in due course…

…Gladstone won his last election at 84.

You who have ambitions should not be other than hopeful

Termites

Balcer

Press statements prepared by somebody else (attacks Pres. of U.S. – Kennedy

– re attempted stoppage of shipments to Comm. China

– in connection with crisis in foreign exchange – created by U.S. to help Liberals…

Anti-Quebec? was I responsible in 1921-40? Was I the one who left caucus? and said I was anti-Quebec?

…I am for one Canada – not separate.

– I have no personal ambition – have had everything – don’t care how you vote – but put yourself in my position. If you vote vs me you are voting for the [illegible] of Liberalism. I want to know if you want that…

If you want a convention have it. Get rid of me. They offered me the Chief Justiceship of Canada – say more about that another time…

Do what you will – I don’t come to you as a supplicant.⁵²

With its confused logic and rhetorical questions, that speech was vintage late Diefenbaker. The venom, the attacks on enemies within the party and on Liberals and Americans without were also classic.

But when the National Executive considered a vote on a secret questionnaire, Diefenbaker opposed the inclusion of a question involving a vote of confidence. The executive withdrew, considered the protest, and then decided to let the questions stand as drafted. The decision was challenged from the floor, and the motion to delete the confidence question carried 55 to 52, with the five-member executive abstaining. As the incredulous Harkness observed, had the executive voted “they would have supported their unanimous recommendation which would have given a majority against Diefenbaker.” There was also a vote on whether or not a leadership convention should be called at once, the results of which, Harkness said, were “communicated only to Diefenbaker” while the National President, Dalton Camp, announced only that the recommendation was against a convention. Harkness was dubious: “I personally think it very probable that the ballot must have been in favour…because otherwise Diefenbaker would have been roaring from the rooftops that the meeting had voted against it.”⁵³

Diefenbaker was shaken by the narrow escape. On March 14 he summoned some of his supporters – Angus MacLean of P.E.I., Erik Nielsen of the Yukon, Waldo Monteith of Ontario, and Gordon Churchill of Manitoba – to Stornoway, his home, and told them that he was going to resign within two days. But on March 17, nothing having happened in the interim, Diefenbaker called his friends to his office. “Chief in high state of excitement,” Monteith scribbled, “– ‘this is it’ and so on.” Churchill urged the leader to remain, and on the next day Monteith noted that “Mike Starr wonders if he, Churchill and JWM[onteith] being used as pawns and Chief has no idea of resigning.” The threat of resignation disappeared.⁵⁴

However, some Quebec Conservatives were leaving. Remi Paul left the caucus in February and Balcer followed in April, charging that “the majority of members supporting Mr. Diefenbaker have nothing but contempt for French Canada and all that it represents.” As a result, there was much speculation about the leadership, with men like George Hees and Davie Fulton campaigning almost openly.⁵⁵ But the Chief was equal to the threat, and with an election clearly on the way, he told the press on June 11 that the media should not spread idle gossip. He was the leader and would be for years to come.⁵⁶ Party unity in the face of the Grits and the election seemed restored, and in the 1965 campaign the hitherto rebellious Tories regrouped around the old man and fought with him a magnificent battle. The result was not victory, but it was closer than most pundits had thought possible in February 1965.

The election and its aftermath gave a pause to the leadership struggle. But it was only a pause. In early 1966, Diefenbaker named Dr. James Johnston as the party’s new National Director. “His first – and as some of his critics point out, his only – move in what he termed a thorough reorganization was to dispense with my services,” Flora MacDonald wrote to her friends at Christmas 1966.⁵⁷ A long-serving senior headquarters staffer, popular with all factions in the party but not with Diefenbaker, Flora by being sacked rejuvenated the critics and increased their ranks. On May 19, 1966, Dalton Camp, the party’s national president and hitherto a loyal supporter of the Chief, told a private gathering of Conservatives at Toronto’s Albany Club that steps had to be taken to find fresh leadership before another election. A convention, he said, had to be held before the spring of 1967. Camp’s strategy was based on the idea that there was little point in staging another direct challenge to Diefenbaker; instead he intended a crusade for the democratization of the party and for the principle that a leader, any leader, was responsible to his party and his performance had to be subject to review.⁵⁸ The test was to come at the National Progressive Conservative Association meeting at Ottawa in November 1966, and the issue was to be the selection of a national president, either Camp or a Diefenbaker candidate.

Dalton Camp was an advertising man, a shrewd assessor of winning slogans and strategies. He had worked at party headquarters in the 1950s, and he had played a major role in creating the Diefenbaker campaigns of 1957 and 1958 that swept the Conservatives into power. He was a Diefenbaker loyalist through 1963, but in the months that followed his attitude slowly had begun to change as Diefenbaker hung on to power and steadily diminished the party’s base in urban middle-class Canada. Finally, by May 1966 he was ready to come out against the Chief – at least in a private address to party notables in Toronto – and his public “crusade,” which began in September, led to the forced retirement of the old leader.

Within days of being launched, the Camp crusade began to win support. Riding associations and provincial party associations climbed aboard, and several prominent figures in caucus enlisted as well. The Chief’s supporters were shaken by the extent of the support Camp drew. Gordon Churchill, for example, saw some of the leading figures in the Manitoba provincial party on October 2 and, to his surprise, found that they wanted him to urge Diefenbaker not to oppose the Camp review of the leadership. Winnipeg businessmen were against Diefenbaker, they argued, and their estimate was that at least sixty of the one hundred Manitoba delegates to the November meeting would support Camp. Churchill dutifully passed on the message to his leader, and Diefenbaker drew the appropriate message – Premier Roblin of Manitoba could no longer be counted upon for his support.⁵⁹

But the caucus remained solid. Churchill surveyed the M.P.s and found that seventy were for the Chief, six were neutral, and only twenty were willing to say they opposed the leader. That heartened the Manitoba loyalist, and by October 20 he had found a candidate to oppose Camp for the party presidency: Arthur Maloney, a distinguished Toronto lawyer and an M.P. from 1957 to 1962.⁶⁰ The credibility of the old guard’s candidate, to say nothing of the size of the loyalist caucus contingent, led some of the party chieftains to hold back their support for Camp. Davie Fulton, for example, wrote to his leadership campaign’s shadow finance chairman to say, “We should not in any way attempt to interfere or frustrate” the Camp crusade “but should keep entirely aloof.”⁶¹ All aid short of help seemed to be the watchword.

Even so, Camp’s troops were ready. They won control of the agenda for the association meeting and managed to have the vote for the presidency scheduled ahead of the resolutions on the leadership. They packed the convention floor and either sat on their hands during Diefenbaker’s speech or hooted at him when, as Fulton wrote, “his speech grew progressively worse, more abusive and derogatory of all his predecessors, and all those who might have any hopes of succeeding him. As he grew more intolerant, so gradually the mood of his audience changed from one of cold respect to one of active hostility.” Rattled by the boos, Diefenbaker blurted out, “Is this a Conservative meeting?” It was a sad denouement.⁶²

The next day, November 15, Camp was re-elected over Maloney by 564 to 502 votes. Significantly, the three Conservative provincial premiers – Robarts of Ontario, Roblin of Manitoba, and Stanfield of Nova Scotia – supported Camp. Flora MacDonald was elected party secretary by a 4-to-1 majority, a sweeping vindication of a loyal worker and a repudiation of James Johnston as National Director. And on November 16, as the Diefenbaker supporters moved out of the hall to applaud the arrival of the Chief, the party delegates considered the leadership resolutions. Quickly the association accepted the necessity for a leadership convention and voted only a tepid motion of “support” for Diefenbaker. The Camp revolution was complete.

Characteristically, the caucus did not seem to realize the extent of the débâcle. As the leader argued that the caucus, not the party, determined leadership and as Camp’s supporters were purged, the ever-faithful Churchill got a petition of support signed by seventy-one of the ninety-six members urging Diefenbaker to continue. His reasoning, Churchill wrote later, was based on his fear that as many as forty M.P.s might leave the party if Diefenbaker were forced out, and his petition, he believed, was necessary to keep the caucus together and block the formation of a new loyalist party.⁶³ It was a sad state of affairs, one that drove Conservatives to distraction. Joseph Sedgwick wrote to a caucus friend that no one wanted to see Diefenbaker “go out ignominiously. He had made his contribution and it was a great one, but he cannot, even in remote possibility, do a repeat.” Now was the time for Diefenbaker’s supporters to think of the party. “Might they not tell him, kindly but bluntly, that a return to power is beyond his grasp, and that he must go, soon, and gracefully. That is the favour they could do him, if they do not want to see him further humiliated.” That was good advice, yet although some tried to follow it, the Chief and his supporters were in no mood to listen.⁶⁴

Thus the planning for a leadership convention began in an atmosphere of bitterness and uncertainty. The bitterness was the fruit of past battles and present hostility between loyalists and Camp-ites. The uncertainty was the product of Diefenbaker’s refusal to make clear his plans. Would he retire? The Chief’s only utterance, a delphic one, came on TV on January 18, 1967, when he said that the delegates had to be selected on a democratic basis and the convention held as early as possible. “I know that some will interpret what I am saying as being a swan song. Let me say at once – this is no swan song. Those who will interpret it that way do not know me. I have never in the past, and I shall not now desert the course of a lifetime, of at all times upholding principle and standing for those things which in my opinion are good for Canada….”⁶⁵

By mid-February – with opinion polls showing the Conservatives at 25 per cent popular support, well behind the NDP (28 per cent) and Liberals (37 per cent) – the planning committee had picked Toronto as the site and fixed the first week in September 1967 as the date for the party’s first leadership convention since 1956. Already the candidates were coming forward. Davie Fulton announced on January 19, bringing with him an organization he had been preparing since 1964 and that included able young Conservatives such as Joe Clark of Alberta and Brian Mulroney of Quebec.⁶⁶ George Hees was another early candidate, and in his train was John Bassett’s Toronto Telegram (earlier promised to Fulton).⁶⁷ Michael Starr, Labour minister in Diefenbaker’s cabinet and a loyalist, announced that he would run if the Chief did not; Senator Wallace McCutcheon decided to enter the race, arguing that his leadership could check socialism; and Alvin Hamilton, yet another loyalist, announced his candidacy in May. There were still more to come. Churchill had lined up more than fifty M.P.s who were prepared to support Diefenbaker, but he could not get the leader to commit himself. “God, I was mad at him,” Churchill said. By mid-March, as a result, Churchill had begun to look elsewhere, and Donald Fleming, the long-serving and long-suffering Finance minister through most of the Diefenbaker government, was his choice.⁶⁸

Fleming was willing to listen to representations from Churchill, Waldo Monteith, and Ellen Fairclough, and he went across the country sounding out his chances, concluding that they were good. In part, Fleming was heartened by assurances that Stanfield and Roblin would not be candidates, and he had indications of sympathetic support from Union Nationale Premier Daniel Johnson of Quebec and Social Credit Premier Ernest Manning of Alberta, both influential quasi-conservatives. There was even a gesture in his direction from Premier W.A.C. Bennett of British Columbia. On June 7, therefore, Fleming tossed his hat into the ring.⁶⁹

Dalton Camp was also thinking of his own prospects. He realized all too well that given his role in the ouster of the Chief he could not expect to unify the party. But the range of choice did not impress him, and he apparently believed that if he could not persuade Stanfield or Roblin to run, he himself must. Both premiers were under strong pressure from their supporters, but as the summer wore on, it seemed more and more likely that Camp had failed in his efforts to induce one of the new men to take the plunge. On July 19, finally, Stanfield decided to leave Nova Scotia, where he had been a long-lived and successful premier, to try for national prominence. He instantly garnered the support of Camp and his friends, an organization in being. But to the consternation of Camp and Stanfield – and to the utter horror of Fleming, who saw his support scatter – Duff Roblin also entered the contest on August 3. There were now Fleming and McCutcheon on the right, Hamilton and Starr on the left, and Fulton, Hees, Roblin, and Stanfield in the centre.

Soon there was a policy issue to concern the candidates and delegates. At a “thinkers’ meeting” at Montmorency, Quebec, from August 6 to 10, 1967, the Conservatives argued bitterly over constitutional questions. Was Canada “two nations” or was it “one Canada”? The Montmorency delegates hit on the formula of “deux nations,” which they translated as “two founding peoples,”⁷⁰ a neat piece of semantics. To many it seemed only a statement of the Canadian reality. But to John Diefenbaker, deux nations meant that his party was giving short shrift to those Canadians who were of neither French nor English origin and conceding an equality to French Canadians that he could not accept. The Chief kept his own counsel through the summer, and it was not until September 5, two days before the convention opened in Toronto, that he agreed to allow organization on his behalf to commence, even though no formal declaration of candidacy was made. What galvanized Diefenbaker into jumping in was the adoption of deux nations by the convention’s policy subcommittee.⁷¹ Even so, no one yet knew if the Chief would let his name go before the delegates.

When the convention opened amid the familiar hoopla of bands, balloons, and hospitality suites, there was no clear leader. Fleming had seen his guarantees of support dwindle after the premiers entered the leadership race, and Fulton had been hard hit by Stanfield’s entry. When the Halifax Young PCs had balloted in June, they divided nine for Fleming, eight each for Fulton and Hees, and one for McCutcheon, but if Stanfield was a candidate, he would get all the votes but one.⁷² That was symptomatic, although no one could yet judge definitively the extent of Stanfield’s or Roblin’s support. Neither man had served on the federal level, and although that was an advantage in that they had been relatively aloof from the prolonged blood-letting, it did mean that neither had any experience of Parliament.

The convention put all the candidates to the test. Still undeclared, Diefenbaker addressed the delegates in a sweltering Maple Leaf Gardens on September 7. His rambling speech was emotional in its attack on the two nations idea, and all the party stalwarts of past days were paraded in support of “One Canada.” Diefenbaker urged the delegates to make the decision for him: “I cannot be interested in the leadership of this party under a policy that is borrowed from liberalism.” Was that a declaration of candidacy? No one knew, and it was not until Friday morning’s 10 A.M. deadline that Diefenbaker’s papers were filed. Even that was largely an attempt to win time and not a firm decision to run. His tentative entry into the contest nonetheless swung support away from Fleming, Hamilton, and Starr, three candidates who had banked on the Chief’s good will; their chances, never strong, were dealt the coup de grâce. But the two nations formula was resolved, in a strictly tactical sense, by the agreement of the convention co-chairmen to table the policy proposals. That was a gesture to Diefenbaker and, in a sense, a victory for his conception of one Canada.⁷³ But it was only tactical – the convention was not about policy, Montmorency notwithstanding, but about leadership.

The leadership balloting was long and wearying as the voting machines broke down. On the first ballot Stanfield led with 519 votes, trailed by Roblin with 347, Fulton with 343, Hees with 295, and Diefenbaker with 271. Well behind were McCutcheon, Hamilton, Fleming, and Starr, followed by two nuisance candidates. On the next ballot – and on two more – Stanfield increased his support, building his lead over Roblin. The fifth and final ballot saw Fulton throw his support to the Nova Scotian, and that was sufficient to elect Robert Stanfield as leader, 1,150 to 969 for Roblin. It was a victory for Camp, something that Stanfield acknowledged by saying in his victory address that his first job was “to get along with that man Camp.”⁷⁴

As for Diefenbaker, his convention performance had been mismanaged from start to finish. He had decided to run only at the last moment, had foreclosed his opportunity to organize, and had gutted his friends’ campaigns. He had forced the tabling of the two nations resolution, but his vehemence on the platform did the party little good in Quebec or with those who wanted to resolve the great Canadian issue. And yet, the Chief had gone down battling. As early as January 1967 he had told Churchill, “I will not resign – they will have to vote me out.”⁷⁵ Vote him out they did, but Diefenbaker had lived up to his own conception of his role. As for his opponents, they were unanimously convinced that the Chief’s poor convention showing had eliminated him as a political force. The defeat, Douglas Harkness said, “has put him in a position where he can do no further great damage.”⁷⁶

The new leader, Robert Stanfield, was vastly different from his predecessor. He was fifty-three, a well-off lawyer from the Stanfield underwear family who had gone into politics in his province, built up the Tory party through the dark days of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and then gone on to take power in 1956, keeping it for a decade. Awkward physically, stumbling in speech, Stanfield projected honesty, sincerity, and decency,⁷⁷ and people responded to him. The first Gallup poll after the convention showed the Conservatives up thirteen points to 43 per cent and the Liberals down seven points to 34. The Conservatives were back on the national scene in force, the Diefenbaker era was over, and the Stanfield age seemed set to begin.