John Turner, Canada’s 17th prime minister who spent decades in federal politics as a cabinet minister and Liberal Party leader during some of the most turbulent moments in modern Canadian history, has died at 91.
Turner led Canada for 79 days in the summer of 1984 — the second-shortest time in office of any prime minister.
Dubbed “Canada’s Kennedy” as a stylish, up-and-coming young MP in the early 1960s, Turner was Pierre Trudeau’s chief anglophone lieutenant in cabinet for years. Turner served as justice minister when the government decriminalized homosexuality and suspended civil liberties during the October Crisis in 1970, and was the finance minister as Ottawa struggled to control deficit spending and inflation during the oil crisis.
After a shock resignation from Trudeau’s government and a period of self-imposed exile on Bay Street, Turner eventually completed his climb to the Liberal leadership in the mid-1980s. But he inherited a party suffering from years of accumulated scandals and an electorate ready for change after more than two decades of nearly unbroken Liberal rule.
In the end, Turner’s most enduring moments in federal politics came once his short stint at 24 Sussex was over — namely, years of bitter battles waged with Brian Mulroney over free trade with the United States. They were fierce fights that Turner eventually lost, but the legacy of those debates continues to shape Canadian politics today.
Early life
Turner was born in the English town of Richmond upon Thames on June 7, 1929. When his father died just three years later, his Canadian-born mother moved the family to Canada, where they eventually settled in Ottawa’s posh Rockcliffe Park neighbourhood, surrounded by members of the country’s ruling political class.
After the Second World War, his mother remarried — to industrialist and future B.C. lieutenant governor Frank Ross — and the family moved west, where Turner attended the University of British Columbia. He became a track star, setting a national record for the 100-yard dash in 1947, and narrowly missed his chance to compete at the 1948 Olympics after smashing his knee in a car accident.
“Chick,” as the popular athlete became known, graduated from UBC in 1949 and received a Rhodes scholarship to study law at Oxford. He was called to the bar in London and started a doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris, but he returned to Canada in 1953 before it was completed, joining the Montreal law firm Stikeman Elliott shortly thereafter.
Meteoric rise
Turner’s first taste of national politics came when C.D. Howe, the storied “Minister of Everything” under Mackenzie King, recruited him in 1957 to help organize a Liberal re-election campaign.
The young lawyer’s profile swelled within the Liberal ranks as he started speaking at policy conventions, but it truly took off after he made headlines worldwide for dancing with Princess Margaret during a 1958 royal tour of British Columbia. Letters from the princess published in 2015 revealed she “nearly married him,” and it was reported the pair only broke up after Buckingham Palace ordered an end to the relationship.
Former prime minister John Turner and Princess Margaret made headlines in 1958 during the princess’s visit to Canada. Newly unearthed letters written by Margaret reveal the pair may have ‘nearly married.’ (The Canadian Press)
In 1961, with the Liberals languishing in opposition and eager to recruit young talent, Turner was wooed into running for the party in the 1962 federal election.
The 32-year-old lawyer accepted, winning his Montreal riding and joining a cohort of rookie lawmakers — including Herb Gray and Gerald Regan — that Maclean’s magazine called “probably the brightest group of MPs ever to appear simultaneously in a Canadian Parliament.”
Turner married his wife, Geills McCrae Kilgour, in 1963, at a time when he was quickly rising within the Liberal caucus. By 1965, he had joined Lester Pearson’s cabinet as minister without portfolio, and by 1967 he was minister of consumer and corporate affairs.
When Pearson stepped down as prime minister in 1967, Turner eagerly entered the race to replace him on an anti-establishment platform that pledged to lower the voting age and improve skills training for young Canadians.
Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, second from right, and, from left, cabinet ministers Pierre Trudeau, John Turner and Jean Chrétien talk in Ottawa in April 1967.
“My time is now and now is no time for mellow men,” Turner told delegates at the 1968 Liberal leadership convention.
Trudeau emerged the victor at that convention, but Turner hung on until the final ballot. The 195 delegates who stuck with him until the bitter end were rumoured to have subsequently formed the “195 Club,” a secretive cadre of well-placed political organizers quietly waiting for his next leadership campaign.
Trudeau heir apparent
The promising Liberal would soon be considered Trudeau’s heir apparent and the natural choice to continue the Liberals’ traditional anglophone-francophone leadership rotation.
Appointed justice minister in 1968, Turner championed key reforms to Canada’s Criminal Code that opened the door to LGBTQ rights and legal abortions. He also implemented, defended and eventually dismantled the controversial War Measures Act during the FLQ crisis and appointed Canada’s first Jewish Supreme Court justice, Bora Laskin.
Shuffled into the finance portfolio in 1972, Turner faced mounting economic pressures due to the global oil crisis. He also became the government’s main economic interlocutor with the White House, playing tennis with Treasury Secretary George Schultz and frequently ironing out bilateral issues over dinner with President Richard Nixon.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau explains federal proposals to deal with the energy problem as Finance Minister John Turner looks on at the Ottawa conference centre in January 1973. (The Canadian Press)
Successive Turner budgets prioritized low unemployment levels, but at the cost of double-digit inflation and soaring deficits. Still, some Liberals would later defend Turner as a voice of fiscal prudence at the Trudeau cabinet table, implementing the government’s policy in public but privately advocating restraint while other ministers clamoured for ever-bigger budgets.
In time, Turner and Trudeau developed a notorious rivalry, and after 10 years as a senior minister in the Trudeau government, Turner resigned from cabinet in 1975 with a terse, enigmatic letter.
Waiting in the wings
Turner formally vacated his seat in Parliament in 1976 and decamped with his wife and four children to Toronto. On Bay Street, he became a high-paid lawyer at McMillan Binch and joined the boards of some of Canada’s most powerful companies, including Canadian Pacific, Seagram’s and Holt Renfrew.
He remained in Toronto for the ensuing eight years, refusing to give interviews but maintaining a public profile as the Liberal Party’s leader-in-waiting.
Turner would also prove a thorn in the side for many former cabinet colleagues, pumping out corporate newsletters to clients that lambasted the Liberals’ economic policies. While Jean Chrétien, another of Turner’s bitter rivals, dismissed the newsletters as a “gossip column,” opposition MPs eagerly weaponized the missives in Question Period.
WATCH | Turner returns to public life:
After close to a decade of self-imposed exile, Turner the lawyer returns to public life to claim the title of Liberal leader – and prime minister. 5:59
1984 coronation
After Trudeau’s second resignation in 1984, Turner finally won the top Liberal job, becoming leader and prime minister at a convention many saw as a coronation.
But he inherited a party sagging and scarred from too many years in power. Turner’s decision to move ahead with over 200 appointments proposed by Trudeau in his final days as prime minister cemented the party’s image as out of touch and too comfortable in power.
During the ’84 televised election debate, Mulroney eviscerated Turner when the Liberal leader unconvincingly argued he had “no option” but to follow through with the appointments. In one of the most iconic exchanges in modern Canadian politics, Mulroney replied: “You could have said: ‘I am not going to do it. This is wrong for Canada, and I am not going to ask Canadians to pay the price.'”
WATCH | Behind the scenes at the 1984 Liberal leadership convention:
A behind-the-scenes look at the drama and bitterness behind John Turner’s win at the 1984 Liberal leadership convention. 21:09
In the end, the Liberals suffered a resounding defeat at the hands of the Progressive Conservatives, receiving just 40 of 282 seats — at the time, the party’s worst-ever showing.
Turner had been prime minister for little more than 11 weeks. Only Charles Tupper held the country’s top job for less time — 68 days in 1896.
Turner hung on as Liberal leader, however, rebuilding the party and duelling with Mulroney over the Meech Lake Accord and, most memorably, Canada’s trading relationship with the U.S. — a battle he called “the fight of my life.”
He also weathered the firestorm created by Reign of Error, a searing biography by journalist Greg Weston that portrayed Turner as a heavy-drinking, hypocritical loose cannon. One CBC reporter said it was “written with acid.”
Free trade fight
Fearing the impact Mulroney’s Free Trade Agreement would have on Canadian sovereignty, Turner made the controversial move in 1988 to instruct Liberal senators to block legislation that would have ratified the deal.
Turner was accused of misusing the powers of the unelected Senate, but told CBC’s Bill Cameron at the time, “I believe if Canadians are given a choice to vote on this trade deal, people will reject it.”
WATCH | Mulroney battles Turner on free trade in 1988:
An invigorated John Turner takes on Brian Mulroney over his controversial free trade deal with the U.S. 4:36
The decision triggered an election dominated by Canada’s trading relationship with the U.S., during which Turner, with the support of Canada’s labour unions and arts community, fiercely fought the future agreement. In another iconic live TV election debate, Turner told Mulroney “You’ve sold us out” with “one signature of a pen,” and argued the deal would “turn us into a colony of the United States.”
In the end, although the Liberals increased their share of the House of Commons to 83 seats, Canadians returned the PCs to power with a second majority. The FTA was successfully ratified in Parliament, and after surviving an attempted caucus putsch, Turner eventually retired as Liberal leader in 1990.
Retreat from public life
In an exit interview with CBC Radio’s Dale Goldhawk in 1990, Turner said the trade agreement was “a bad contract for Canada,” adding “history will prove me right.”
He also said that he wished he’d done more to create opportunities for education, protect the environment, promote gender equality and “[bring] Aboriginal people back into the mainstream.”
Former prime ministers, right to left, Pierre Trudeau, John Turner and Kim Campbell applaud former parliamentarians that were honoured at a plaque unveiling ceremony in the House of Commons in May 1996. (Tom Hanson/The Canadian Press)
Turner retained his seat in the House until 1993, but largely retreated from public life after stepping down as Liberal leader.
In 1994, he was named a companion of the Order of Canada and, in 2004, led the Canadian delegation of election monitors in Ukraine.
After leaving full-time politics, he returned to practising law in Toronto, but remained an outspoken advocate against the centralization of power in Ottawa, the manipulation of House of Commons debates and bills and the diminishing role of parliamentary committees in the legislative process. He also showed a particular interest in speaking about politics with young people.
Turner stands during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in November 2017. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)
“Democracy doesn’t happen by accident, you’ve got to work at it,” he told the Globe and Mail in 2009. “At the moment, Canadians are getting a little lazy about it, a little inattentive, and we’ve got to revive it.”
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
