John Turner
John Napier Wyndham Turner PC CC QC (June 7, 1929 – September 19, 2020) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 17th prime minister of Canada from June to September 1984. He served as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and leader of the Official Opposition from 1984 to 1990.
For other people named John Turner, see John Turner (disambiguation).
John Turner
Brian Mulroney
Pierre Trudeau
Jean Chrétien
Pierre Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau
- Lester B. Pearson
- Pierre Trudeau
George McIlraith
September 19, 2020 (aged 91)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Canada (by descent)
- United Kingdom (by birth)
4
- Phyllis Ross (mother)
- University of British Columbia (BA)
- Magdalen College, Oxford (BA, BCL, MA)
- University of Paris (no degree)
- Politician
- lawyer
Turner practised law before being elected as a member of Parliament in the 1962 federal election. He served in the cabinet of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as minister of justice and attorney general from 1968 to 1972, and minister of finance from 1972 to 1975. As a cabinet minister, Turner came to be known as a leader of the Business Liberal faction of the Liberal Party. Amid a global recession and the prospect of having to implement unpopular wage and price controls, Turner resigned from his position in 1975.
From 1976 to 1984, Turner took a hiatus from politics, working as a corporate lawyer on Bay Street. Trudeau's resignation in 1984 triggered a leadership election, in which Turner successfully contested. Turner held the office of prime minister for just 79 days,[1] as he advised the governor general to dissolve Parliament immediately after being sworn in. He went on to lose the 1984 election in a landslide to Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives, leading the Liberals to the second-worst defeat for a governing party at the federal level (in terms of proportion of seats). Turner stayed on as Liberal leader and led the Opposition for the next six years. In the 1988 election, he vigorously campaigned against Mulroney's proposed free trade agreement with the United States, and led the Liberals to a modest recovery. Turner resigned as party leader in 1990 and did not seek re-election in 1993.
Turner was Canada's first prime minister born in the United Kingdom since Mackenzie Bowell in 1896, Canada's second shortest-serving prime minister behind Charles Tupper,[2] and Canada's fourth longest-lived prime minister, living to the age of 91.
Early career[edit]
Turner practised law, initially with the firm of Stikeman Elliott in Montreal, Quebec.[32] He was elected as Member of Parliament for St. Lawrence—St. George in 1962 and was reelected there in every election until the riding's dissolution in 1968. He was the Member of Parliament for Ottawa—Carleton from 1968 to 1976.[14]
In 1965, while vacationing in Barbados, Turner noticed that former prime minister and Leader of the Opposition John Diefenbaker, staying at the same hotel, was struggling in the strong surf and undertow. Turner, a competitive swimmer while in university, jumped in and pulled Diefenbaker to shore.[33]
Cabinet minister[edit]
Premiership of Lester Pearson[edit]
Turner was generally respected for his work as a cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s, under prime ministers Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau.
He served in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Lester Pearson in various capacities, most notably as Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. When Pearson retired, Turner ran to succeed him at the 1968 leadership convention. Turner, at age 38 the youngest of the dozen leadership candidates, stated "My time is now",[34] and remarked during his speech that he was "not here for some vague, future convention in, say, 1984".[35] Turner stayed on until the fourth and final ballot, finishing third behind Pierre Trudeau and runner-up Robert Winters.[36]
Premiership of Pierre Trudeau[edit]
Turner served in Trudeau's cabinet as minister of justice for four years. Biographer Paul Litt argues that Turner was a hard-working, well-informed minister whose success was assured by his warm relationship with his peers. His achievements, say Litt, included strengthening the rights of individual defendants on trial, greater efficiency in the justice system, creation of the influential Law Reform Commission, selecting highly professional judges, and bringing a policy perspective to the Justice Department. He led the government's position in the highly controversial Official Languages Act, and he took control during the October Crisis in 1970.[37]
A leader of the Business Liberal faction of the Liberal Party,[38] Turner then served as Minister of Finance from 1972 until 1975. His challenges were severe in the face of global financial issues such as the 1973 oil crisis, the collapse of the postwar Bretton Woods trading system, slowing economic growth combined with soaring inflation (stagflation), and growing deficits.[2][39] His positions were more conservative than Trudeau's and they drew apart. In 1975 Turner surprisingly resigned from cabinet.[3] The Liberals had won the 1974 election by attacking Robert Stanfield's Progressive Conservatives over their platform involving wage and price controls. However, Trudeau decided to implement the wage and price controls in late 1975, so some have suggested that Turner quit rather than carry out that proposal.[40] In a 2013 interview with Catherine Clark on CPAC Turner confirmed his resignation from cabinet was a direct result of refusing to implement wage and price controls, after campaigning against them in 1974.[41]
In his memoirs, Trudeau wrote that Turner said he resigned as Finance Minister in 1975 because he was tired of politics, after 13 years in Ottawa, and wanted to move on to a better-paying job as a lawyer in Toronto, to better support his family and to be with them more, as his children were growing up. Trudeau also suggested that Turner's years as finance minister were very difficult because of turbulent and unusual conditions in the world economy, characterized as stagflation, largely caused by enormous increases in the price of oil.[42]
Bay Street[edit]
From 1975 to 1984, Turner worked as a corporate lawyer at the Bay Street law firm McMillan Binch.[43] When Pierre Trudeau resigned as Liberal leader in 1979 following an election loss, Turner announced that he would not be a candidate for the Liberal leadership. Trudeau was talked into rescinding his resignation after the government of Joe Clark was defeated by a motion of no confidence, and returned to contest and win the 1980 federal election. Trudeau then served as Prime Minister until 1984.[44]