Joe Clark

Charles Joseph "Joe" Clark, PC, CC, AOE, MA, LLD (born June 5, 1939 in High River, Alberta) was the sixteenth prime minister of Canada from June 4, 1979, to March 3, 1980. He was a prominent Canadian politician until his retirement in 2004.

Joe Clark was the son of Charles A. Clark the publisher of the local newspaper and Grace Welch. He attended local schools and the University of Alberta, where he earned a bachelor's and a master's degree in political science. He studied law at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was active in student politics, and left law school to work full time for the Progressive Conservative Party.

Clark is married to Maureen McTeer, a well-known author and lawyer. Their daughter, Catherine, is an art history graduate from the University of Toronto who has pursued a career in public relations and broadcasting.

Political career

Clark first became active in politics at the university level. He served as President of the University of Alberta Young Progressive Conservatives. Clark sparred with future political rival Preston Manning in debate forums on campus between the Young PCs and the Youth League of the Alberta Social Credit Party. Clark was keenly aware from a very young age of the politics of Canada. In his youth, Clark was an admirer of Progressive Conservative leader and Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and he eventually entered politics himself at the provincial level at the age of 28. He was unsuccessful in his first foray into politics as on official constituency candidate for the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party in the 1967 provincial election. Clark served as a chief assistant to provincial opposition leader and future Premier Peter Lougheed. He was first elected to Parliament in the 1972 federal election.

Clark was the first Canadian politician to take a strong stand for decriminalization of marijuana in Canada, and for a guaranteed minimum income for everyone — both positions characteristic of the Red Tories. In many ways his social liberalism was as bold in the '70s as Trudeau's was in the '60s. This however put Clark at odds with the right-wing members of his caucus. In particular, during the 1979 election when Clark's riding was merged into the riding of another Conservative MP during a redistribution of ridings, the other MP refused to step aside, and Clark ended up running in another riding.

Progressive Conservative Leadership

Following the resignation of PC party leader Robert Stanfield, Clark sought and won the leadership of the PC Party at the 1976 leadership convention. Although he placed third in a field of eleven on the first ballot of convention delegates, behind Claude Wagner and Brian Mulroney, he quickly became the compromise Red Tory candidate. The party's right-wing rallied behind Wagner. Mulroney, a Quebec businessman with no elected political experience, was unable to expand his base of support significantly. Many delegates were offended by his expensive leadership campaign. As other Red Tory candidates were eliminated during the first four ballots, Clark gradually overtook Mulroney and then Wagner to emerge as the victor on the fifth ballot.

Joe Clark's rapid rise from a relatively unknown Alberta MP to the Leader of the Opposition took much of Canada by surprise. The Toronto Star announced Clark's victory with a headline that read "Joe Who?" giving Clark a nickname that stuck for years. Much joking was made of Clark's clumsiness and awkward mannerisms. Skinny and tall, he became a frequent target for editorial cartoonists, who delighted in portraying him as a sort of walking candy apple, with an enormous head and floppy dog-like ears. Initially, it seemed unlikely that a man that was the source of so much mockery could ever hope to compete against the confident and intellectual Pierre Trudeau.

However, Clark remained belligerent in his attacks on the Trudeau government, angrily clashing with the prime minister in Parliament. Trudeau's attempts to brush off Clark were seen by many Canadians as examples of the pompous attitude of a prime minister who had taken his position for granted.

Large budget deficits, high inflation, and high unemployment made the Liberal government unpopular. Trudeau had put off calling the election as long as possible in the hope that his party could recover popular support. Clark campaigned on the slogans, "Let's get Canada working again", and "It's time for a change - give the future a chance!". In the latter half of the campaign, the Liberals focused their attacks on Clark's perceived inexperience, while the PC party was unable to make much headway in Quebec. Nonetheless, Clark won 136 seats to end sixteen continuous years of Liberal rule, falling just short of a majority.

Prime Minister

Joe Clark's efforts would prove successful, and on June 4, 1979, at age 39, he became Canada's youngest prime minister, after defeating Trudeau's Liberal government in the May 1979 general election. Clark was the first Conservative to head Canada's federal government since the defeat of John Diefenbaker in the 1963 election. He was also the first Alberta-based prime minister since R.B. Bennett (and the last until the 2006 election of Stephen Harper). Joe Clark also carries the unique distinction of being the only Canadian politician to ever defeat Pierre Trudeau in a federal election.

But with a minority government in the House of Commons, Clark had to rely on the support of the Social Credit Party with its 6 seats or the New Democratic Party (NDP) with its 26 seats. Without this support, he was subject to defeat by the Liberals at any time.

Social Credit was below the 12 seats needed for official party status in the House of Commons. However, the six seats would have been just enough to give Clark's government a majority had the Progressive Conservatives formed a coalition government with Social Credit, or had the two parties otherwise agreed to work together. Clark managed to lure Socred MP Richerd Janelle to the government caucus but this still left the Conservatives short. Clark however declared that he would govern as if he had a majority^* and refused to grant the small Social Credit caucus official party status or form a coalition or co-operate with the party in any way.

During the 1979 election campaign, Clark had promised to cut taxes to stimulate the economy. However, once in office he adopted a budget designed to curb inflation by slowing economic activity, and also proposed an 18 cent per Imperial gallon tax on gasoline in order to reduce the budgetary deficit. Finance Minister John Crosbie touted the budget as "short term pain for long term gain". Though Clark had hoped this change in policy would work to his advantage, it actually earned him widespread animosity as a politician who could not keep his promises, even in such a short period.

Clark's refusal to work with the Social Credit, combined with the 18 cent gas tax, led to the his government's defeat in the House of Commons in December 1979. The Liberals voted with the NDP on a Motion of No Confidence related to the Clark government's budget, moved by NDP MP Bob Rae. The five members of the Social Credit had demanded the tax revenues be allocated to Quebec and when that was turned down, they abstained which ensured the vote's passage.

Clark was criticized for his "inability to do math" in failing to predict the outcome, not only because he was a minority situation, but also because several members of his caucus would be absent for the crucial budget vote (one was ill, several stuck abroad). The Liberals by contrast had assembled their entire caucus, save one, for the occasion, with two of their MPs arriving on Parliament Hill in ambulances so they could vote^*.

The collapse was at least partially welcomed by the PC Party. When a new election was called, Clark expected to be able to defeat the demoralized and leaderless Liberals easily since Trudeau had stepped aside. However, the Conservatives had misjudged the electorate since they did not commission any polls after August. A November Gallup poll published eight days before the Dec. 11 budget reported that their popularity down from 36% during the summer to 28%, with the party 19 points behind the Liberals, giving the Grits the popular support to initiate the non-confidence motion^*. Before the budget, Clark's government was criticized for its perceived inexperience, such as in its handling of its campaign commitment to move Canada's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Clark's Tories campaigned under the slogan, "Real change deserves a fair chance", but the broken promises were still fresh in voters' minds. Progressive Conservative Premier Bill Davis's criticism of the gas tax was used in Ontario television ads. Pierre Trudeau had quickly rescinded his resignation from the Liberal leadership, and swept his party back into power in the February 1980 election with 146 seats, against 103 for Clark and the Progressive Conservatives.

Clark appointed one Justice to the Supreme Court of Canada, Julien Chouinard.

Trudeau and Clark's relationship

Trudeau commented in his memoirs that Clark was much more tough and aggressive than past Tory leader Robert Stanfield, noting that those qualities served Clark well in winning the 1979 election victory. However, Trudeau also complimented Clark as a respectable leader and Trudeau said that he personally felt that Clark was a better choice over Brian Mulroney, even when the former lost the leadership convention to the latter in 1983. When Mulroney took over the reins of the Conservatives, Trudeau's Liberals attacked them with the slogan "Bring back Joe!", taking aim at how the Tories had replaced their proven leader with an unknown. In contrast to Clark, Trudeau and Mulroney had become bitter enemies over the Meech Lake Accord despite never having fought an election.

At Trudeau's funeral in 2000, his son Justin Trudeau related a story in which he had told a joke about one of his father's chief rivals, and his father had corrected him, lectured him sternly on how wrong it to insult someone just because they disagreed. At this point in the ceremony, the CBC cut to an image of Clark, leading many to believe that Justin's joke had been about Clark.

Under Mulroney

Opposition to Clark's leadership began to grow after the fall of his minority government and his defeat by a resurgent Trudeau. In 1983, after declaring that an endorsement by 66 per cent of delegates at the party's biennial convention was not enough, Clark called a Progressive Conservative leadership convention to decide the issue. After a heated campaign, he led on the first three ballots before losing on the final ballot to arch-rival Brian Mulroney. Mulroney went on to win a huge victory in the 1984 election, and became prime minister.

Many political observers and analysts have questioned Clark's rationale for the decision. One famous incident involved a 1987 state dinner held in honour of The Prince of Wales. The Prince, who was seated next to Clark at the function, asked him "why 66 percent was not enough?" Clark's wife, Maureen McTeer, elaborated on Clark's decision in her 2003 autobiography In My Own Name. McTeer suggested that for her husband, anything less than a 75 percent endorsement would not have been a clear enough mandate to forge onwards from the party membership. Clark feared that the 35 percent of PC members who did not support him would become his most vocal critics in the upcoming election campaign and his continued leadership would have led to fractures in the party. Clark was convinced that he could win another leadership race and gain a clear level of support once his qualities were compared against the handful of politically inexperienced challengers who coveted his position and who were covertly undermining his leadership.

Secretary of State for External Affairs

Despite their personal differences, Clark ably served in Mulroney's cabinet as secretary of state for external affairs.

Some of Clark's accomplishments and bold moves in this role included:

convincing Mulroney to appoint Stephen Lewis as Canada's ambassador to the United Nations — who later became the UN special envoy on the AIDS crisis; many believe Lewis' appointment was Clark's price to serve under Mulroney
in 1984, being the very first developed nation foreign affairs minister to land in previously-isolated Ethiopia to lead the Western response to the 1984 - 1985 famine in Ethiopia; Clark landed in Addis Ababa so quickly he had not even seen the initial Canadian Broadcasting Corporation report that had created the initial and strong public reaction; Canada's response was overwhelming and led the US and Britain to follow suit almost immediately — an unprecedented situation in foreign affairs to that time, since Ethiopia had a Marxist one-party state and had previously been wholly isolated by "the West"
a famous public rebuke to the Canadian Jewish Congress for its stance of supporting the state of Israel without limitation no matter what it had done
taking a strong stand against apartheid and for economic sanctions against South Africa at a time when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher very strongly opposed such sanctions
taking a strong stand against Nicaraguan intervention under Reagan
accepting refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and other countries with regimes supported directly by Reagan
managing nonetheless to maintain extremely strong ties with the US and deep coordination where Canada and the US agreed, helping steer the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations to a final agreement

During his term as External Affairs minister, Clark championed Canada's unabashed disapproval of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Canada was the only G7 nation to take such a resolute stance against the apartheid regime during the 1980s. He also took on the difficult Constitution ministerial portfolio after the failure of the Meech Lake Accord and vigorously pursued his task.

He maintained Canada's independent voice politically and socially at a time of increasing economic integration with the US and the rise of more socially conservative right-wing politics there.

Minister of Constitutional Affairs

Clark then served as the president of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.

With Quebec's constitutional status within Canada a rising issue, he shifted to become the minister responsible for constitutional affairs. The latter position saw him play a leading role in the drafting of the failed Charlottetown Accord. He retired from politics in 1993, side-stepping the near annihilation of the PC party in the 1993 election under the leadership of Mulroney's successor Kim Campbell.

In 1994, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

In the 1995 Quebec referendum, the federal side won by under one percent of the vote. It was widely seen as being the failure of Charlottetown and prior Meech Lake accords that had caused it to be so close.

Mulroney's attitude to Clark

Although Clark and Mulroney had long been perceived as bitter opponents, Mulroney's speech at the 2003 convention praised Clark as an honest and admirable leader who had the distinction of being the only prime minister in recent memory who, even when he failed, was always respected, and never hated, by the Canadian public. At the time of his retirement polls showed that he was in fact the single most trusted political personality in Canada.

Second PC leadership

One of the two PC candidates to survive the 1993 wipe-out, Jean Charest became leader of the PC party following Campbell's resignation. After leading the party to modest success in the 1997 election, winning 20 seats, Charest bowed to tremendous public pressure and left federal politics to become leader of the Parti libéral du Québec (unaffiliated with the federal Liberals). The party had no obvious candidate to fill Charest's shoes, and turned to Clark once again in 1998. Clark was elected as Member of Parliament for Kings—Hants, Nova Scotia, in a by-election on September 11, 2000, and in the general election held two months later for Calgary Centre, Alberta.

While Clark's return to politics in 1998 was hailed as a death knell and a "vote for the past" by some opponents for the shell shocked Tories, Clark managed to prevent the party's wholesale destruction in the 2000 election and was judged by audiences to be the best speaker during the 2000 election debates. The party managed to hang on to the minimum 12 seats necessary to be recognized in the House of Commons as an official party and therefore qualify for research funding, committee memberships, and minimum speaking privileges. Aside from Clark's Calgary seat (one of only three Alberta seats that did not go to the Canadian Alliance) and one each in Manitoba and Quebec, the party's seats were concentrated in Tory bastions in the Atlantic provinces.

Clark never lost hope that the PCs would eventually retake Ontario and form a federal government again. His vision for the party was one that was to the left of the Canadian Alliance, but to the right of the Liberal Party. He strongly opposed a merger of the Progressive Conservatives with the Alliance during his entire time in office, although he and Alliance leader Stephen Harper briefly tried to negotiate a coalition agreement in April 2002. As leader, Clark continued to support those working for Red Tories to retake the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, and strongly supported by-election races with young politicians as PC Party candidates.

Clark was also selected by the media and many parliamentarians for three years in a row to be Canada's most effective opposition leader between 2000 and 2002, pursuing the Liberal government on issues such as Shawinigate and the Groupaction scandal. In his final mandate, Jean Chrétien repeatedly referred to Clark as the Leader of the Opposition (Clark wasn't), much to the chagrin of the Canadian Alliance politicians who occupied the Opposition Leader's chair during the same period. Indeed, Chretien and Clark had been fellow parliamentarians since the 1970s and they shared a mutual respect despite sitting on opposite benches.

Overall, Clark's efforts to rebuild the PC party had mixed results. In May 2003, the party finally overtook the New Democratic Party as the fourth-largest party in the House of Commons, after successful by-election wins in Newfoundland and Ontario. Many of his supporters have suggested his actions helped sustain the relevance of the weakened Progressive Conservative Party during some of its toughest years when its national alternative status was seriously challenged by the prairie populism of Preston Manning and the Reform Party of Canada and the social conservatism of Stockwell Day and the Canadian Alliance.

At the same time, the party was still $10 million dollars in debt from the disappointing 2000 election. The PC Party's membership had also dropped from 100,000 in 1998 to 45,000 card carrying PCs in May 2003 ^*. Clark's leadership of the Progressive Conservatives was also the subject of criticism from many United Alternative supporters. They argued that his staunch opposition to a merger with the Reform/Alliance parties was a mistake, as it helped divide the conservative vote during the tenure of Jean Chrétien. Some critics accused Clark of being more interested in helping the interests of his own party and own career than the Canadian conservative movement in general.

However Clark often cited that history was on his side to such opponents. Historically speaking only the Liberals, Tories and to a lesser extent, the CCF/NDP have maintained a constant presence in the Canadian House of Commons. Many "third parties" had come and gone, even in Clark's own active tenure in Canadian federal politics. Clark had also served as a Prime Minister and had experienced first-hand how successful the PC Party could be. From a historically fratricidal perspective, it could be said that Clark's five year long second leadership and consistent opposition to a merger with the Reform/Alliance was necessary in order for the Reform/Alliance to water-down its more right-wing policies. This process began with Preston Manning's decision to pursue the United Alternative in 1998, Reform's demise and the Canadian Alliance's rocky birth under Stockwell Day in 2000 to the Stephen Harper led CA policy conventions of 2003 that blurred the policy differences between the Alliance and the Tories. Clark's staunch opposition to serious merger talks inadvertantly gave CA leader Stephen Harper 18 months to consolidate power and gain control of the unwieldy Alliance parliamentary caucus and its divided membership, instead of spending time pressing Clark's party into a merger.

Clark's personal popularity grew as, once again, scandal enveloped Chrétien's Liberal government. Clark was widely trusted by Canadians, but this, in his own words, did not translate into more votes and additional seats. Citing this, Clark announced his intention to step down as PC leader on August 6, 2002 at the PC Party's Edmonton policy convention. It was expected that a pro-Alliance merger candidate would succeed Clark, but Clark was instead replaced by Peter MacKay on May 31, 2003. MacKay had signed a controversial deal with Red Tory rival David Orchard, promising not to merge the PC Party with the Alliance. Clark had always encouraged MacKay to keep Orchard and his followers within the PC camp.

MacKay eventually reversed his position on seeking a merger, and in 2003, 90% of PC Party delegates voted in favour of a merger with the Canadian Alliance. Opponents cast doubt upon the result however, pointing out that 20, 000 new memberships in the Progressive Conservative Party were sold almost up to the day of the vote, and membership rolls almost doubled in many western PC riding associations. It is unclear what proportion of the "yes" votes were cast by long-time Canadian Alliance members who hastily took membership in the Progressive Conservative Party to ensure the merger.

Merger of the PC party and the Canadian Alliance

On December 8, 2003, the day that the PC Party and the Canadian Alliance were dissolved and the new Conservative Party of Canada registered, Clark was one of three MPs — the other two were André Bachand and John Herron — to announce that they would not join the new caucus. MP Scott Brison had already joined the Liberals.

Clark announced that he would continue to sit for the remainder of the session as a Progressive Conservative MP, and retired from Parliament at the end of the session.

Later, Clark openly criticized the new Conservative Party in the run-up to the 2004 election. He gave a luke-warm endorsement to the Liberal leader, Paul Martin, saying that Canadians should trust "the devil they know" over Stephen Harper. He criticized the new Conservative Party as an 'Alliance take-over', and speculated that eastern Canada would not accept the new party or its more socially conservative policies against gay marriage and abortion. Clark endorsed former NDP leader Ed Broadbent and other Liberals and Conservatives as individuals, saying that the most important thing was to have "the strongest possible Canadian House of Commons" since neither large party offered much hope. Clark was criticized by some for dismissing the new Conservative Party outright rather than helping to steer it towards a moderate path.

The Conservative Party formed a minority government after the 2006 election.

Clark today

Clark continues to use his experience in foreign affairs. He was in Washington on January 20, 2005 at the second inauguration of U.S. President George W. Bush. Before heading to the Capitol, he and Canada's ambassador to Washington, Michael Kergin, discussed the inaugural festivities with Arizona Senator John McCain at the Canadian Embassy in Washington. Clark has also written several op-ed pieces for several of Canada's national newspapers since his retirement.

External links

Joe Clark (Premierminister) | Joe Clark | Joe Clark | Joe Clark | 查尔斯·约瑟夫·克拉克

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