Canadian federal election, 1957
Encyclopedia
The Canadian federal election of 1957 was held June 10, 1957, to select the 265 members of the House of Commons of Canada. In one of the great upsets in Canadian political history, the Progressive Conservative Party
(also known as "PCs" or "Tories"), led by John Diefenbaker
, brought an end to 22 years of Liberal
rule, as the Tories were able to form a minority government.
The Liberal Party had governed Canada
since 1935, winning five consecutive elections. Under Prime Ministers
William Lyon Mackenzie King
and Louis St. Laurent
, the government gradually built a welfare state
. During the Liberals's fifth term in office, the opposition parties depicted them as arrogant and unresponsive to Canadians' needs. Controversial events, such as the 1956 "Pipeline Debate
" over the construction of the Trans-Canada Pipeline, had hurt the government. St. Laurent, nicknamed 'Uncle Louis', remained popular, but exercised little oversight over his cabinet
ministers.
In 1956, Tory leader George A. Drew unexpectedly resigned due to ill health. In his place, the PC party elected the fiery and charismatic Diefenbaker. The Tories ran a campaign centred on their new leader, who attracted large crowds to rallies and made a strong impression on television. The Liberals ran a lackluster campaign, and St. Laurent made few television appearances. Uncomfortable with the medium, the Prime Minister read his speeches from a script and refused to wear makeup.
Abandoning their usual strategy of trying to make major inroads in Liberal-dominated Quebec, the Tories focused on winning seats in the other provinces. They were successful; though they gained few seats in Quebec, they won 112 seats overall to the Liberals' 105. With the remaining seats won by other parties, the PC party only had a plurality in the House of Commons, but the margin was sufficient to make John Diefenbaker Canada's first Tory Prime Minister since 1935.
, who had previously served two times as Prime Minister, was restored to power. The Liberals won five consecutive majorities between 1935 and 1953. The Liberals worked closely with the civil service (drawing several of their ministers from those ranks) and their years of dominance saw prosperity.
When Mackenzie King retired in 1948, he was succeeded by his Minister of Justice
, Louis St. Laurent
, a bilingual Quebecer who took office at the age of 66. An adept politician, St. Laurent projected a gentle persona and was affectionately known to many Canadians as Uncle Louis (or, among francophones, Oncle Louis). In actuality, St. Laurent was uncomfortable away from Ottawa, was subject to fits of depression (especially after 1953), and on political trips was carefully managed by advertising men from the firm of Cockfield Brown. St. Laurent led the Liberals to an overwhelming triumph in the 1949 election
, campaigning under the slogan "You never had it so good". The Liberals won a fifth successive mandate in 1953, with St. Laurent content to exercise a highly relaxed leadership style.
With over twenty years of parliamentary majorities, Liberal ministers did as they wished with little regard for the opposition parties. The Mackenzie King and St. Laurent governments laid the groundwork for the welfare state, a development initially opposed by many Tories. C.D. Howe, considered one of the leading forces of the St. Laurent government, told his Tory opponents when they alleged that the Liberals would abolish tariffs if the people would let them, "Who would stop us? ... Don't take yourselves too seriously. If we wanted to get away with it, who would stop us?"
secured 67 seats for the Tories. The Liberals, though, had won 125 seats, and maintained their majority. In the 1953 election, the PC party won 51 seats out of the 265 in the House of Commons. Subsequently the Tories picked up two seats from the Liberals in by-elections, and the Liberals (who had won 169 seats in 1953) lost an additional seat to the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
(CCF, the predecessor of the New Democratic Party
(NDP)).
After over two decades in opposition, the Tories were closely associated with that role in the public eye. The Tories were seen as the party of the wealthy and of English-speaking Canada and drew about 30% of the vote in federal elections. The Tories had enjoyed little success in Quebec in the past forty years. By 1956, the Social Credit Party
was becoming a potential rival to the Tories as Canada's main right-wing party. Canadian journalist and author Bruce Hutchison
discussed the state of the Tories in 1956:
, were able to defeat amendments to the Defence Procurement Act, which would have made temporary, extraordinary powers granted to the government permanent. Drew led the Tories in a second battle with the government the following year: in the so-called "Pipeline Debate
", the government invoked closure
repeatedly in a weeks-long debate which ended with the Speaker ignoring points of order as he had the division bells rung. Both measures were closely associated with Howe, which, in combination with his earlier comments, led to Tory claims that Howe was indifferent to the democratic process.
Tory preparations for an upcoming election campaign were thrown into disarray in August 1956 when Drew fell ill. Tory leaders felt that the party needed vigorous leadership with a federal election likely to be called within a year. In September, Drew resigned. Diefenbaker, who had failed in two prior bids for the leadership, announced his candidacy, as did Tory frontbenchers Davie Fulton
and Donald Fleming. Diefenbaker, a criminal defence lawyer from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan
, was on the populist left of the PC party. Those Tory leaders who disliked Diefenbaker and his views, and hoped to find a candidate from Drew's conservative wing of the party, wooed University of Toronto
president Sidney Smith as a candidate. However, Smith refused to run.
Tory leaders scheduled a leadership convention for December. In early November, the Suez crisis
erupted. Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson played a major part in the settlement of that dispute, and was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
for his role. Diefenbaker, as the Tories' foreign policy critic and as the favourite in the leadership race, gained considerable attention for his speeches on Suez. The Tories attacked Pearson for, as they said, being an errand boy for the United States government; he responded that it was better to be such a lackey than to be a colonial errand boy doing Britain's will unquestioningly. While Suez would be remembered as one of the finest moments in Canadian foreign policy, at the time it cost the Liberals support outside of Quebec.
Diefenbaker was the favourite throughout the leadership campaign. At the convention in Ottawa in December, he refused to abide by the custom of having a Quebecer be either the proposer or seconder of his candidacy, and instead selected an Easterner (from New Brunswick
) and a Westerner to put his name in nomination. With most Quebec delegates backing his opponents, Diefenbaker felt that having a Quebecer as a nominator would not increase his support. Diefenbaker was elected on the first ballot, and a number of Quebec delegates walked out of the convention after his victory. Other Diefenbaker opponents, such as those who had urged Smith to run, believed that the 61-year-old Diefenbaker would be merely a caretaker, who would serve a few years and then step down in favour of a younger man, and that the upcoming election would be lost to the Liberals regardless of who led the Tories.
When Parliament convened in January, the Liberals introduced no major proposals, and proposed nothing controversial. Diefenbaker turned over his parliamentary duties to British Columbia
MP Howard Green and spent much of his time on the road making speeches across the country. Diefenbaker toured a nation in which Liberal support at the provincial level had slowly been eroding. When the Liberals gained Federal power in 1935, they controlled eight of the nine provincial governments, all except Alberta
. By early 1957, the Liberals controlled the legislatures only in the tenth province, Newfoundland
, and in Prince Edward Island
and Manitoba
.
In March, Finance Minister Walter Harris
, who was believed to be St. Laurent's heir apparent, introduced his budget. The budget anticipated a surplus of $258 million, of which $100 million was to be returned in the form of increased welfare payments, with an increase of $6 per month (to a total of $46) for old age pensioners—effective after the election. Harris indicated that no more could be returned for fear of increasing inflation. Diefenbaker attacked the budget, calling for higher old age pensions and welfare payments, more aid to the poorer provinces, and aid to farmers.
St. Laurent had informed Diefenbaker that Parliament would be dissolved in April, for an election on June 10. A final parliamentary conflict was sparked by the suicide of Canadian Ambassador to Egypt E.H. Norman in the midst of allegations made by a United States Senate
subcommittee that Norman had communist links. Pearson had defended Norman when the allegations became public, and defended him again after his death, suggesting to the Commons that the allegations were false. It quickly became apparent that the information released by the Americans might have come from Canadian intelligence sources, and after severe questioning of Pearson by Diefenbaker and the other parties' foreign policy critics, Pearson made a statement announcing that Norman had had communist associations in his youth, but had passed a security review. The minister evaded further questions regarding what information had been provided, and the discussion was cut short when Parliament was dissolved on April 12.
Peter Regenstreif, who studied the four elections between 1957 and 1963, wrote of the situation at the start of the election campaign, "In 1957, there was no tangible indication that the Liberals would be beaten or, even in the opposition's darkest moment of reflection, could be. All the hindsight and post hoc gazing at entrails cannot change that objective fact."
in Toronto, Diefenbaker contended that Canadians were overtaxed in the amount of $120 per family of four. Diefenbaker pledged to reduce taxes and castigated the Liberals for not reducing taxes despite the government surplus. St. Laurent also addressed tax policy in his opening speech, in Winnipeg
. St. Laurent noted that since 1953, tax rates had declined, as had the national debt, and that Canada had a reputation as a good place for investments. The Prime Minister argued that the cost of campaign promises made by the Progressive Conservatives would inevitably drive up the tax rate. Diefenbaker also assailed tight-money monetary policies which kept interest rates high, complaining that they were hitting Atlantic and Western Canada hard.
The Tories promised changes in agricultural policies. Many Canadian farmers were unable to find buyers for their wheat; the PC party promised generous cash advances on unsold wheat and promised a protectionist policy regarding foreign agricultural products. The Liberals argued that such tariffs were not worth the loss of bargaining position in efforts to seek foreign markets for Canadian agricultural products.
The institution of the welfare state was by 1957 accepted by both major parties. Diefenbaker promised to expand the national health insurance scheme to cover tubercular and mental patients. He characterized the old age pension increase which the Liberal government was instituting as a mere pittance, not even enough to keep up with the cost of living. Diefenbaker noted that the increase only amounted to twenty cents a day, using that figure to ridicule Liberal contentions that an increase would add to the rate of inflation. All three opposition parties promised to increase the pension, with the Social Crediters and CCF even stating the specific amounts it would be raised by.
The Liberals were content to rest on their record in foreign affairs, and doubted that the Tories could better them. In a radio address on May 30, Minister of Transport
George Marler commented, "You will wonder as I do who in the Conservative Party would take the place of the Honourable Lester Pearson, whose knowledge and experience of world affairs has been put to such good use in recent years." Diefenbaker, however, refused to concede the point and in a televised address stated that Canadians were "asking Pearson to explain his bumbling of External Affairs". Though they were reluctant to discuss the Norman affair, the Tories suggested that the government had irresponsibly allowed gossip to be transmitted to United States congressional committees. They also attacked the government over Pearson's role in the Suez settlement, suggesting that Canada had let Britain down.
Some members of the Tories' campaign committee had urged Diefenbaker not to build his campaign around the Pipeline Debate, contending that the episode was now a year in the past and forgotten by the voters, who did not particularly care what went on in Parliament anyway. Diefenbaker replied, "That's the issue, and I'm making it." Diefenbaker referred to the conduct of the government in the Pipeline Debate more frequently than he did any other issue during the campaign. St. Laurent initially dealt with the question flippantly, suggesting in his opening campaign address that the debate had been "nearly as long as the pipeline itself and quite as full of another kind of natural gas". As the issue gained resonance with the voters, the Liberals devoted more time to it, and St. Laurent devoted a major part of his final English television address to the question. The Liberals defended their conduct, and contended that a minority should not be allowed to impose its will on an elected majority. St. Laurent suggested that the Tories had performed badly as an opposition in the debate, and suggested that the public give them more practice at being an opposition.
Finally, the Tories contended that the Liberals had been in power too long, and that it was time for a change. The PC party stated that the Liberals were arrogant, inflexible, and not capable of looking at problems from a new point of view. Liberals responded that with the country prosperous, there was no point to a change.
studied the Canadian federal elections since Confederation. He concluded that the Progressive Conservatives were ill-advised to continue pouring money into Quebec in an effort to win seats in the province; the Tories could win at least a minority government by maximizing their opportunities in English-speaking Canada, and if the party could also manage to win twenty seats in Quebec, it could attain a majority. Churchill's conclusions were ignored by most leading Tories—except Diefenbaker.
Diefenbaker's successful leadership race had been run by Allister Grosart
, an executive for McKim Advertising Ltd. Soon after taking the leadership, Diefenbaker got Grosart to help out at Tory headquarters, and soon appointed him national director of the party and national campaign manager. Grosart appointed a national campaign committee, something which had not been done previously by the Tories, but which, according to Grosart, provided the organizational key to success in 1957. The party was ill-financed, having only $1,000,000 to wage the campaign—half what it had in 1953. Grosart divided most of that money equally by constituency, to the disgruntlement of Quebec Tories, who were used to receiving a disproportionate share of the national party's financing.
The Tory campaign opened at Massey Hall
in Toronto on April 25, where Diefenbaker addressed a crowd of 2,600, about 200 short of capacity. At the Massey Hall rally, a large banner hung behind Diefenbaker, which did not mention the name of his party, but which instead stated, "It's Time for a Diefenbaker Government." The slogan, coined by Grosart, sought to blur Canadian memories of the old Tory party of Bennett and Drew and instead focus attention on the party's new leader. Posters for election rallies contained Diefenbaker's name in large type; only the small print contained the name of the party. When St. Laurent complained that the Tories were not campaigning under their own name, Grosart sent copies of the Prime Minister's remarks in a plain envelope to every Liberal candidate, and was gratified when they began inserting the allegation into their own speeches. According to Professor J. Murray Beck in his history of Canadian general elections, "His political enemies were led to make the very point he was striving to drive home: Diefenbaker was, in effect, leading a new party, not an old one with a repellent image." Grosart later stated that he structured the entire campaign around the personality of John Diefenbaker, and threw away the Tory party and its policies.
Diefenbaker began his campaign with a week of local campaigning in his riding, after which he went to Toronto for the Massey Hall speech. After two days in Ontario, he spoke at a rally in Quebec City, before spending the remainder of the first week in the Maritimes. The next week saw Diefenbaker spend two days in Quebec, after which he campaigned in Ontario. The next two weeks included a Western tour, with brief returns to Ontario, the most populous province. The final two weeks saw Diefenbaker spend much of the time in Ontario, though with brief journeys east to the Maritimes and Quebec and twice west to Saskatchewan. He returned to his riding for the final weekend before the Monday election. He spent 39 days on the campaign trail, eleven more than the Prime Minister.
According to Professor John Meisel, who wrote a book about the 1957 campaign, Diefenbaker's speaking style was "reminiscent of the fiery orators so popular in the nineteenth century. Indeed, Mr. Diefenbaker's oratory has been likened to that of the revivalist preacher." As a new face on the national scene given to outspoken attacks on the government, he began to attract unexpectedly large crowds early in the campaign. When reduced to the written word, however, Diefenbaker's rhetoric sometimes proved to be without much meaning. According to journalist and author Peter C. Newman
, "On the printed page, it makes little sense. But from the platform, its effect was far different." Both Newman and Meisel cite as an example of this the conclusion to the leader's Massey Hall speech:
Diefenbaker's speeches contained words which evoked powerful emotions in his listeners. His theme was that Canada was on the edge of greatness—if it could only get rid of its incompetent and arrogant government. He stressed that the only alternative to the Liberals was a "Diefenbaker government". According to Newman, Diefenbaker successfully drew on the discontent both of those who had prospered in the 1950s, and sought some deeper personal and national purpose, as well as those who had been left out of the prosperity. However, Diefenbaker spoke French badly and the excitement generated by his campaign had little effect in francophone Quebec, where apathy prevailed and Le Devoir
spoke of "" (an election campaign of chloroform).
The Tories had performed badly in British Columbia in 1953, finishing a weak fourth. However, the province responded to Diefenbaker, and 3,800 turned out for his Victoria
speech on May 21, his largest crowd yet. This was bettered two days later in Vancouver with a crowd of 6,000, with even the street outside the Georgia Street Auditorium packed with Tory partisans. Diefenbaker responded to this by delivering what Dick Spencer (who wrote a book on Diefenbaker's campaigns) considered his greatest speech of the 1957 race, and which Newman considered the turning point of Diefenbaker's campaign. Diefenbaker stated, "I give this assurance to Canadians—that the government shall be the servant and not the master of the people ... The road of the Liberal party, unless it is stopped—and Howe has said, "Who's going to stop us?"—will lead to the virtual extinction of parliamentary government. You will have the form, but the substance will be gone."
The Liberal-leaning Winnipeg Free Press
, writing shortly after Diefenbaker's speeches in British Columbia, commented on them:
On June 6, the two major party campaigns crossed paths in Woodstock, Ontario
. Speaking in the afternoon, St. Laurent drew a crowd of 200. To the shock of St. Laurent staffers, who remained for the Diefenbaker appearance, the PC leader drew an overflow crowd of over a thousand that evening, even though he was an hour late, with announcements made to the excited crowd that he was slowed by voters who wanted only to see him or shake his hand.
Diefenbaker's intensive campaign exhausted the handful of national reporters who followed him. Clark Davey of The Globe and Mail
stated, "We did not know how he did it." Reporters thought the Progressive Conservatives might, at best, gain 30 or 35 seats over the 53 they had at dissolution, and when Diefenbaker, off the record, told the reporters that the Tories would win 97 seats (which would still allow the Liberals to form the government), they concluded he was guilty of wishful thinking. Diefenbaker was even more confident in public; after he concluded his national tour and returned to his constituency, he addressed his final rally in Nipawin, Saskatchewan
: "On Monday, I'll be Prime Minister."
, Diefenbaker's victory in the party leadership race increased his confidence by a factor of ten. At his press conference detailing his election tour, St. Laurent stated, "I have no doubt about the election outcome." He indicated that his campaign would open April 29 in Winnipeg, and that the Prime Minister would spend ten days in Western Canada before moving east. However, he indicated he would first go home to Quebec City for several days around Easter (April 21 in 1957). This break kept him out of the limelight for ten days at a time when Diefenbaker was already actively campaigning and making daily headlines. At one campaign stop in Jarvis, Ontario
, St. Laurent told an aide that he was afraid the right-wing, anti-Catholic Social Credit Party would be the next Opposition.St. Laurent denied Opposition claims that he would resign after an election victory, and the 75-year-old indicated that he planned to run again in 1961, if he was still around.
The Liberals made no new, radical proposals during their campaign, but instead ran a quiet campaign with occasional attacks on the opposition parties. They were convinced that the public still supported their party, and that no expensive promises need by made to voters. St. Laurent was made the image of the nation's prosperity, and the Liberals refused to admit any reason for discontent existed. When Minister of Finance Harris proposed raising the upcoming increase in old age pension by an additional four dollars a month, St. Laurent refused to consider it, feeling that the increase had been calculated on the basis of the available facts, and those facts had not changed.
During the Prime Minister's Western swing, St. Laurent made formal speeches only in major cities. In contrast to Diefenbaker's whistle-stop train touring, with a hasty speech in each town as the train passed through, the Liberals allowed ample time for "Uncle Louis" to shake hands with voters, pat their children on the head, and kiss their babies. In British Columbia, St. Laurent took the position that there were hardly any national issues worth discussing—the Liberals had brought Canada prosperity and all that was needed for more of the same was to return the party to office. After touring Western Canada, St. Laurent spent the remainder of the second week of the campaign returning to, and in, Ottawa. The third week opened with a major speech in Quebec City, followed by intensive campaigning in Ontario. The fifth week was devoted to the Maritime provinces and Eastern Quebec. The sixth week opened with a major rally in Ottawa, before St. Laurent returned to the Maritimes and Quebec, and the final week was spent in Ontario before St. Laurent returned to his hometown of Quebec City for the election.
St. Laurent tried to project an image as a family man, and to that end often addressed schoolchildren. As he had in previous elections, he spoke to small groups of children regarding Canadian history or civics. The strategy backfired while addressing children in Port Hope, Ontario
. With the children inattentive, some playing tag or sticking cameras in his face, St. Laurent angrily told them that it was their loss if they did not pay attention, as the country would be theirs to worry about far longer than it would be his.
St. Laurent and the Liberals suffered other problems during the campaign. According to Newman, St. Laurent sometimes seemed unaware of what was happening around him, and at one campaign stop, shook hands with the reporters who were following him, under the apparent impression they were local voters. On the evening of Diefenbaker's Vancouver speech, St. Laurent drew 400 voters to a rally in Sherbrooke, Quebec
, where he had once lived. C.D. Howe, under heavy pressure from the campaign of CCF candidate Doug Fisher
in his Ontario riding, intimated that Fisher had communist links. At a rally in Manitoba, Howe offended a voter who told him the farmers were starving to death, poking the voter in the stomach and saying "Looks like you've been eating pretty well under a Liberal government." At another rally, Howe dismissed a persistent Liberal questioner, saying "Look here, my good man, when the election comes, why don't you just go away and vote for the party you support? In fact, why don't you just go away?"
The Liberals concluded their campaign with a large rally at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens
on June 7. Entertainment at the event was provided by the Leslie Bell singers, and according to Grosart, many in the audience were Tory supporters who had turned out to hear them. St. Laurent's speech at the rally was interrupted when William Hatton, a 15-year-old boy from Malton, Ontario
, climbed onto the platform. Hatton carried a banner reading, "This Can't Be Canada" with a Liberal placard bearing St. Laurent's photograph, and moved to face the Prime Minister. Meisel describes Hatton as an "otherwise politically apathetic boy who ... slowly and deliberately tore up a photograph of the Prime Minister as the latter was speaking" and states that Hatton engaged in "intensely provocative behavior". Liberal partisans interceded, and in the ensuing fracas, Hatton fell from the platform, audibly hitting his head on the concrete floor. St. Laurent watched in apparent shock, according to his biographer Dale Tompson, as officials aided the boy and took him from the hall. According to Tompson, the crowd "turned its indignation on the men on the platform" and spent the remainder of the evening wondering about the boy's possible injuries rather than listening to the Prime Minister's speech. Hatton was not seriously injured, but, according to Newman, "the accident added to the image of the Liberal Party as an unrepentant arrogant group of old men, willing to ride roughshod over voters". Grosart later described the incident as "the turning point" of the campaign. Professor Meisel speculated that the Hatton incident might have been part of an organized campaign to annoy St. Laurent out of his pleasant "Uncle Louis" persona, and Grosart later related that Liberal frontbencher Jack Pickersgill
always accused him of being behind the boy's actions, but that the incident was "a sheer accident". Hatton's mother described his actions as "[j] ust a schoolboy prank," and a reaction to reading an article about how the art of heckling was dying. According to public relations executive J.G. Johnston in a letter to Diefenbaker on June 10, Hatton had come to the rally with several other boys, including Johnston's son, but had gone off on his own while the other boys paraded with Diefenbaker posters which had been smuggled inside. According to Johnston, Hatton was caught on CBC tape saying to St. Laurent, "I can no longer stand your hypocrisy, Sir" before tearing the St. Laurent poster. Attempts by Johnston to have the Liberal activist who pushed Hatton off the platform arrested failed, according to Johnston on the ground that the police could find no witnesses.
.
In 1956, the party adopted the Winnipeg Declaration
, a far more moderate proposal than its previous governing document, the 1933 Regina Manifesto
. For example, the Regina Manifesto pledged the CCF to the eradication of capitalism; the Winnipeg Declaration recognized the utility of private ownership of business, and stated that the government should own business only when it was in the public interest. In its election campaign, the CCF did not promise to nationalize any industries. It promised changes in the tax code in order to increase the redistribution of wealth in Canada. It pledged to increase exemptions from income tax, to allow medical expenses to be considered deductions from income for tax purposes, and to eliminate sales tax on food, clothing, and other necessities of life. It also promised to raise taxes on the higher income brackets and to eliminate the favourable tax treatment of corporate dividends.
The CCF represented many agricultural areas in the Commons, and it proposed several measures to assure financial security for farmers. It proposed national growers' cooperatives for agricultural products which were exported. It proposed cash advances for farm-stored wheat, short and long term loans for farmers at low interest rates, and government support of prices, to assure the farmer a full income even in bad years. For the Atlantic fisherman, the CCF proposed cash advances at the start of the fishing season and government-owned depots which would sell fishing equipment and supplies to fishermen at much lower than market prices.
Coldwell suffered from a heart condition, and undertook a much less ambitious schedule than the major party leaders. The party leader left Ottawa for his riding, Rosetown—Biggar
in Saskatchewan, on April 26, and remained there until May 10. He spent three days campaigning in Ontario, then moved west to the major cities of the prairie provinces and British Columbia, before returning to his riding for the final days before the June 10 election. Other CCF leaders took charge of campaigning in Quebec and the Maritimes.
economics, which its candidates rarely mentioned. Canada's far-right party, the Socreds were led by Solon Low, though its Alberta leader, Premier
Ernest Manning
was highly influential in the party. The Socreds' election programme was based on the demand "that Government get out of business and make way for private enterprise" and on their hatred of "all government-inspired schemes to degrade man and make him subservient to the state or any monopoly".
The Socreds proposed an increase in the old age pension to $100 per month. It called for the reversal of the government's tight money policies, and for low income loans for small business and farmers. It asked for income tax exemptions to be increased to meet the cost of living, and a national housing programme to make home ownership possible for every Canadian family. The party called for a national security policy based on the need for defence, rather than "aggression", and for a foreign policy which would include food aid to the less-developed nations.
The Socreds also objected to the CBC
and other spending in the arts and broadcasting. The party felt that the government should solve economic problems before spending money on the arts.
Low challenged the Prime Minister over the Suez issue, accusing him of sending a threatening telegram that caused British Prime Minister Anthony Eden
to back off the invasion and so gave the Soviets the opportunity for a military buildup in Egypt. St. Laurent angrily denied the charge and offered to open his correspondence to any of the fifty privy councillors who could then announce whether St. Laurent was telling the truth. Low took St. Laurent up on his challenge, and selected the only living former Prime Minister, Tory Arthur Meighen
, but the matter was not resolved before the election, and Meighen was not called upon to examine the correspondence in the election's aftermath.
The Social Credit Party was weakened by considerable conflict between its organizations in the two provinces it controlled, Alberta and British Columbia. It failed to establish a strong national office to run the campaign due to infighting between the two groups. However, it was better financed than the CCF, due to its popularity among business groups in the West.
The Socreds hoped to establish themselves in Ontario, and scheduled their opening rally for Massey Hall in Toronto. The rally was a failure, and even though it ran 40 candidates in Ontario (up from 9 in 1953), the party won no seats in the province.
gave the four recognized parties free air time for political statements. The television broadcasts's audio tracks served also for use on radio. The three opposition parties gave their party leader all of the broadcast time, though Diefenbaker, who did not speak French well, played only a limited role in the Tories' French-language broadcasts. In one, he introduced party president Léon Balcer
, a Quebecer, who gave the speech. Diefenbaker had no objection to makeup and, according to Meisel, was prepared to adopt any technique which would make his presentation more effective. A survey in populous southwestern Ontario showed that Diefenbaker made the strongest impression of the four leaders.
According to Liberal minister Paul Martin Sr. (the father of the future Prime Minister
), St. Laurent had the potential to be quite good on television, but disliked the medium. He was prejudiced against television appearances, considering such speeches the equivalent of carefully planned performances, such as stage shows. He refused to be made up for the telecasts, and insisted on reading his speech from a script. His advisers switched him to a teleprompter, but this failed to make his performances more relaxed. When reading, he would rarely look at the camera. However, St. Laurent made only occasional television appearances (three in each language), letting his ministers make the remainder. Only one cabinet member, Minister of National Defence
Ralph Campney
took advantage of the course in television techniques offered by the Liberal Party in a dummy studio in its Ottawa headquarters. This lack of preparation, according to Meisel, led to "a fiasco" during a television address by Minister of Justice
Stuart Garson
in early June when the teleprompter stopped working during the speech and Garson "was unable to cope effectively with the failure".
reported that Liberals expected to lose a majority of Ontario's seats, but retain a narrow majority in the House of Commons. Time magazine predicted a Tory gain of 20 to 40 seats and stated that any result which denied the Liberals 133 seats and a majority "would rank as a major upset". Beck indicates that many journalists, including those sympathetic to the Tories, saw signs of the coming upset, but disregarded them, convinced that the government was invulnerable. Maclean's
, which printed its postelection issue before the election to go on sale the morning after, ran an editorial noting that Canadians had freely chosen to reelect the Liberal Party.
On Election Night, the first returns came in from Sable Island
, Nova Scotia
. Usually a Liberal stronghold, the handful of residents there favoured the Tories by two votes. St. Laurent listened to the election returns on a radio in the living room of his home on Grande Allée in Quebec City, and when the radio broke, moved to an upstairs television set. Diefenbaker began the evening at his house
in Prince Albert, and once his re-election to the Commons was certain, moved to his local campaign headquarters.
The Conservatives did well in Atlantic Canada, gaining two seats in Newfoundland and nine in Nova Scotia, and sweeping Prince Edward Island's four seats. However, in Quebec, they gained only five seats as the province returned 62 Liberals. The Tories gained 29 seats in Ontario. Howe was defeated by Fisher, and told the media that some strange disease was sweeping the country, but as for him, he was going to bed. The Liberals still led by a narrow margin as the returns began to come in from Manitoba, and St. Laurent told Liberal minister Pickersgill that he hoped that the Tories would get at least one more seat than the Liberals so they could get out of an appalling situation. As the Tories forged ahead in Western Canada, Diefenbaker flew from Prince Albert to Regina
to deliver a television address and shouted to Grosart as yet another cabinet minister was defeated, "Allister, how does the architect feel?" Late that evening, St. Laurent went to the Château Frontenac
hotel for a televised speech, delivered before fifty supporters.
The Tories finished with 112 seats to the Liberals' 105, while both the CCF and Social Credit gained seats in Western Canada and finished with 25 and 19 seats respectively. Nine cabinet ministers, including Howe, Marler, Garson, Campney and Harris were defeated. Though the Liberals outpolled the Tories by over 100,000 votes, most of those votes were wasted running up huge margins in Quebec. St. Laurent could have constitutionally hung onto power until defeated in the House, but he chose not to, and John Diefenbaker took office as Prime Minister of Canada on June 21, 1957.
There were, however, a number of irregularities. In the Toronto riding of St. Paul's, four Liberal workers were convicted of various offences for adding almost five hundred names to the electoral register. One of the four was also convicted for two counts of perjury. While the unsuccessful Liberal candidate, former MP James Rooney, was not charged, Ontario Chief Justice James Chalmers McRuer
, who investigated the matter, doubted that this could have been done without the candidate's knowledge.
Various violations of law, including illicitly opening ballot boxes, illegal possession of ballots, and adding names to the electoral register, took place in twelve Quebec ridings. The RCMP felt it had enough evidence to prosecute in five ridings, and a total of twelve people were convicted. The offences did not affect the outcome of any races.
The election of the Liberal candidate in Yukon
was contested by the losing Tory candidate. After a trial before the Yukon Territorial Court, that court voided the election, holding that enough ineligible people had been permitted to vote to affect the outcome, though the court noted that it was not the fault of the Liberal candidate that these irregularities had occurred. The Tory, Erik Nielsen
, won the new election in December 1957.
The election in one Ontario riding, Wellington South
was postponed pursuant to statute after the death of the Liberal candidate and MP, Henry Alfred Hosking
during the campaign. The Tory candidate, Alfred Hales
, defeated Liberal David Tolton and CCF candidate Thomas Withers on July 15, 1957.
stated that the defeat could be attributed to "the uneasy talk ... that the Liberals have been in too long." Tom Kent
of the Winnipeg Free Press
, a future Liberal deputy minister, wrote that though the Liberal record had been the best in the democratic world, the party had failed miserably to explain it. Author and political scientist H.S. Ferns disagreed with Kent, stating that Kent's view reflected the Liberal "assumption that 'Nobody's going to shoot Santa Claus and that Canadians in the 1957 election were motivated by things other than material interests. Peter Regenstreif cited the Progressive Conservative strategy in the 1957 and 1958 elections "as classics of ingenuity unequalled in Canadian political history. Much of the credit belongs to Diefenbaker himself; at least some must go to Allister Grosart". A survey taken of those who abandoned the Liberals in 1957 showed that 5.1% did so because of Suez, 38.2% because of the Pipeline Debate, 26.7% because of what they considered an inadequate increase in the old age pension, and 30% because it was time for a change.
The results of the election surprised the civil service as much as it did the rest of the public. Civil servant and future Liberal minister Mitchell Sharp
asked C.D. Howe's replacement as Minister of Trade and Commerce
, Gordon Churchill
, not to come to the Ministry's offices for several days as they were redecorating. Churchill later learned that the staff were moving files out. When Churchill finally came to the Ministry's offices, he was met with what he termed "the coldest reception that I have ever received in my life". The new Minister of Labour
, Michael Starr
, was ticketed three days in a row for parking in the minister's spot.
St. Laurent resigned as leader of the Liberal Party on September 5, 1957, but agreed to stay on until a successor was elected. With a lame-duck leader, the Liberals were ineffective in opposition. Paul Martin stated that "I'm sure I never thought the day would come when[Diefenbaker] would ever be a member of a government, let alone head of it. When that happened, the world had come to an end as far as I was concerned." In January 1958, St. Laurent was succeeded by Lester Pearson.
Even in reporting the election result, newspapers suggested that Diefenbaker would soon call another election and seek a majority. Quebec Tory MP William Hamilton
(who would soon become Postmaster General under Diefenbaker) predicted on the evening of June 10 that there would soon be another election, in which the Tories would do much better in Quebec. The Tory government initially proved popular among the Canadian people, and Diefenbaker called a snap election. On March 31, 1958, the Tories won the greatest landslide in Canadian electoral history in terms of the percentage of seats, taking 208 seats (including fifty in Quebec) to the Liberals' 48, with the CCF winning eight and none for Social Credit.
Michael Bliss, who wrote a survey of the Canadian Prime Ministers, alluded to Howe's dismissive comments regarding the Tories as he summed up the 1957 election:
Progressive Conservative Party of Canada
The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada was a Canadian political party with a centre-right stance on economic issues and, after the 1970s, a centrist stance on social issues....
(also known as "PCs" or "Tories"), led by John Diefenbaker
John Diefenbaker
John George Diefenbaker, PC, CH, QC was the 13th Prime Minister of Canada, serving from June 21, 1957, to April 22, 1963...
, brought an end to 22 years of Liberal
Liberal Party of Canada
The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...
rule, as the Tories were able to form a minority government.
The Liberal Party had governed Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
since 1935, winning five consecutive elections. Under Prime Ministers
Prime Minister of Canada
The Prime Minister of Canada is the primary minister of the Crown, chairman of the Cabinet, and thus head of government for Canada, charged with advising the Canadian monarch or viceroy on the exercise of the executive powers vested in them by the constitution...
William Lyon Mackenzie King
William Lyon Mackenzie King
William Lyon Mackenzie King, PC, OM, CMG was the dominant Canadian political leader from the 1920s through the 1940s. He served as the tenth Prime Minister of Canada from December 29, 1921 to June 28, 1926; from September 25, 1926 to August 7, 1930; and from October 23, 1935 to November 15, 1948...
and Louis St. Laurent
Louis St. Laurent
Louis Stephen St. Laurent, PC, CC, QC , was the 12th Prime Minister of Canada from 15 November 1948, to 21 June 1957....
, the government gradually built a welfare state
Welfare state
A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those...
. During the Liberals's fifth term in office, the opposition parties depicted them as arrogant and unresponsive to Canadians' needs. Controversial events, such as the 1956 "Pipeline Debate
Pipeline Debate
The Pipeline Debate was a political event in the history of the Parliament of Canada.The debate surrounded the finances of the TransCanada pipeline, proper parliamentary procedure, and American economic influence on Canada. The controversy eventually contributed to the defeat of Louis St...
" over the construction of the Trans-Canada Pipeline, had hurt the government. St. Laurent, nicknamed 'Uncle Louis', remained popular, but exercised little oversight over his cabinet
Cabinet of Canada
The Cabinet of Canada is a body of ministers of the Crown that, along with the Canadian monarch, and within the tenets of the Westminster system, forms the government of Canada...
ministers.
In 1956, Tory leader George A. Drew unexpectedly resigned due to ill health. In his place, the PC party elected the fiery and charismatic Diefenbaker. The Tories ran a campaign centred on their new leader, who attracted large crowds to rallies and made a strong impression on television. The Liberals ran a lackluster campaign, and St. Laurent made few television appearances. Uncomfortable with the medium, the Prime Minister read his speeches from a script and refused to wear makeup.
Abandoning their usual strategy of trying to make major inroads in Liberal-dominated Quebec, the Tories focused on winning seats in the other provinces. They were successful; though they gained few seats in Quebec, they won 112 seats overall to the Liberals' 105. With the remaining seats won by other parties, the PC party only had a plurality in the House of Commons, but the margin was sufficient to make John Diefenbaker Canada's first Tory Prime Minister since 1935.
Liberal domination
The Tories had last governed Canada under R.B. Bennett, who had been elected in 1930. Bennett's government had limited success in dealing with the Depression, and was defeated in 1935, as Liberal William Lyon Mackenzie KingWilliam Lyon Mackenzie King
William Lyon Mackenzie King, PC, OM, CMG was the dominant Canadian political leader from the 1920s through the 1940s. He served as the tenth Prime Minister of Canada from December 29, 1921 to June 28, 1926; from September 25, 1926 to August 7, 1930; and from October 23, 1935 to November 15, 1948...
, who had previously served two times as Prime Minister, was restored to power. The Liberals won five consecutive majorities between 1935 and 1953. The Liberals worked closely with the civil service (drawing several of their ministers from those ranks) and their years of dominance saw prosperity.
Minister of Justice (Canada)
The Minister of Justice is the Minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet who is responsible for the Department of Justice and is also Attorney General of Canada .This cabinet position is usually reserved for someone with formal legal training...
, Louis St. Laurent
Louis St. Laurent
Louis Stephen St. Laurent, PC, CC, QC , was the 12th Prime Minister of Canada from 15 November 1948, to 21 June 1957....
, a bilingual Quebecer who took office at the age of 66. An adept politician, St. Laurent projected a gentle persona and was affectionately known to many Canadians as Uncle Louis (or, among francophones, Oncle Louis). In actuality, St. Laurent was uncomfortable away from Ottawa, was subject to fits of depression (especially after 1953), and on political trips was carefully managed by advertising men from the firm of Cockfield Brown. St. Laurent led the Liberals to an overwhelming triumph in the 1949 election
Canadian federal election, 1949
The Canadian federal election of 1949 was held on June 27 to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 21st Parliament of Canada. It was the first election in Canada in almost thirty years in which the Liberal Party of Canada was not led by William Lyon Mackenzie King. King had...
, campaigning under the slogan "You never had it so good". The Liberals won a fifth successive mandate in 1953, with St. Laurent content to exercise a highly relaxed leadership style.
With over twenty years of parliamentary majorities, Liberal ministers did as they wished with little regard for the opposition parties. The Mackenzie King and St. Laurent governments laid the groundwork for the welfare state, a development initially opposed by many Tories. C.D. Howe, considered one of the leading forces of the St. Laurent government, told his Tory opponents when they alleged that the Liberals would abolish tariffs if the people would let them, "Who would stop us? ... Don't take yourselves too seriously. If we wanted to get away with it, who would stop us?"
Tory struggles
At the start of 1956, the Tories were led by former Ontario premier George A. Drew, who had been elected PC leader in 1948 over Saskatchewan MP John Diefenbaker. Drew was the fifth man to lead the Tories in their 21 years out of power. None had come close to defeating the Liberals; the best performance was in 1945, when John BrackenJohn Bracken
John Bracken, PC was an agronomist, the 11th Premier of Manitoba and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada ....
secured 67 seats for the Tories. The Liberals, though, had won 125 seats, and maintained their majority. In the 1953 election, the PC party won 51 seats out of the 265 in the House of Commons. Subsequently the Tories picked up two seats from the Liberals in by-elections, and the Liberals (who had won 169 seats in 1953) lost an additional seat to the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was a Canadian political party founded in 1932 in Calgary, Alberta, by a number of socialist, farm, co-operative and labour groups, and the League for Social Reconstruction...
(CCF, the predecessor of the New Democratic Party
New Democratic Party
The New Democratic Party , commonly referred to as the NDP, is a federal social-democratic political party in Canada. The interim leader of the NDP is Nycole Turmel who was appointed to the position due to the illness of Jack Layton, who died on August 22, 2011. The provincial wings of the NDP in...
(NDP)).
After over two decades in opposition, the Tories were closely associated with that role in the public eye. The Tories were seen as the party of the wealthy and of English-speaking Canada and drew about 30% of the vote in federal elections. The Tories had enjoyed little success in Quebec in the past forty years. By 1956, the Social Credit Party
Social Credit Party of Canada
The Social Credit Party of Canada was a conservative-populist political party in Canada that promoted social credit theories of monetary reform...
was becoming a potential rival to the Tories as Canada's main right-wing party. Canadian journalist and author Bruce Hutchison
Bruce Hutchison
William Bruce Hutchison, was a Canadian author and journalist.Born in Prescott, Ontario, Hutchison was educated in public schools in Victoria, British Columbia. He married Dorothy Kidd McDiarmid in 1925, around the same time that he began his journalism career as a political reporter in Ottawa...
discussed the state of the Tories in 1956:
When a party calling itself Conservative can think of nothing better than to outbid the Government's election promises; when it demands economy in one breath and increased spending in the next; when it proposes an immediate tax cut regardless of inflationary results ... when in short, the Conservative party no longer gives us a conservative alternative after twenty-one years ... then our political system desperately requires an opposition prepared to stand for something more than the improbable chance of quick victory.
Run-up to the campaign
In 1955, the Tories, through a determined filibusterFilibuster
A filibuster is a type of parliamentary procedure. Specifically, it is the right of an individual to extend debate, allowing a lone member to delay or entirely prevent a vote on a given proposal...
, were able to defeat amendments to the Defence Procurement Act, which would have made temporary, extraordinary powers granted to the government permanent. Drew led the Tories in a second battle with the government the following year: in the so-called "Pipeline Debate
Pipeline Debate
The Pipeline Debate was a political event in the history of the Parliament of Canada.The debate surrounded the finances of the TransCanada pipeline, proper parliamentary procedure, and American economic influence on Canada. The controversy eventually contributed to the defeat of Louis St...
", the government invoked closure
Cloture
In parliamentary procedure, cloture is a motion or process aimed at bringing debate to a quick end. It is also called closure or, informally, a guillotine. The cloture procedure originated in the French National Assembly, from which the name is taken. Clôture is French for "ending" or "conclusion"...
repeatedly in a weeks-long debate which ended with the Speaker ignoring points of order as he had the division bells rung. Both measures were closely associated with Howe, which, in combination with his earlier comments, led to Tory claims that Howe was indifferent to the democratic process.
Tory preparations for an upcoming election campaign were thrown into disarray in August 1956 when Drew fell ill. Tory leaders felt that the party needed vigorous leadership with a federal election likely to be called within a year. In September, Drew resigned. Diefenbaker, who had failed in two prior bids for the leadership, announced his candidacy, as did Tory frontbenchers Davie Fulton
Davie Fulton
Edmund Davie Fulton, PC, OC, QC was a Canadian Rhodes Scholar, politician and judge. Popularly known as E. Davie Fulton. He was born in Kamloops, British Columbia, the son of politician/lawyer Frederick John Fulton and Winnifred M. Davie, daughter of A.E.B. Davie...
and Donald Fleming. Diefenbaker, a criminal defence lawyer from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan
Prince Albert is the third-largest city in Saskatchewan, Canada. It is situated in the centre of the province on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River. The city is known as the "Gateway to the North" because it is the last major centre along the route to the resources of northern Saskatchewan...
, was on the populist left of the PC party. Those Tory leaders who disliked Diefenbaker and his views, and hoped to find a candidate from Drew's conservative wing of the party, wooed University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
president Sidney Smith as a candidate. However, Smith refused to run.
Tory leaders scheduled a leadership convention for December. In early November, the Suez crisis
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, Suez War was an offensive war fought by France, the United Kingdom, and Israel against Egypt beginning on 29 October 1956. Less than a day after Israel invaded Egypt, Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to Egypt and Israel,...
erupted. Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson played a major part in the settlement of that dispute, and was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
for his role. Diefenbaker, as the Tories' foreign policy critic and as the favourite in the leadership race, gained considerable attention for his speeches on Suez. The Tories attacked Pearson for, as they said, being an errand boy for the United States government; he responded that it was better to be such a lackey than to be a colonial errand boy doing Britain's will unquestioningly. While Suez would be remembered as one of the finest moments in Canadian foreign policy, at the time it cost the Liberals support outside of Quebec.
Diefenbaker was the favourite throughout the leadership campaign. At the convention in Ottawa in December, he refused to abide by the custom of having a Quebecer be either the proposer or seconder of his candidacy, and instead selected an Easterner (from New Brunswick
New Brunswick
New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...
) and a Westerner to put his name in nomination. With most Quebec delegates backing his opponents, Diefenbaker felt that having a Quebecer as a nominator would not increase his support. Diefenbaker was elected on the first ballot, and a number of Quebec delegates walked out of the convention after his victory. Other Diefenbaker opponents, such as those who had urged Smith to run, believed that the 61-year-old Diefenbaker would be merely a caretaker, who would serve a few years and then step down in favour of a younger man, and that the upcoming election would be lost to the Liberals regardless of who led the Tories.
When Parliament convened in January, the Liberals introduced no major proposals, and proposed nothing controversial. Diefenbaker turned over his parliamentary duties to British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
MP Howard Green and spent much of his time on the road making speeches across the country. Diefenbaker toured a nation in which Liberal support at the provincial level had slowly been eroding. When the Liberals gained Federal power in 1935, they controlled eight of the nine provincial governments, all except Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
. By early 1957, the Liberals controlled the legislatures only in the tenth province, Newfoundland
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
, and in Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island is a Canadian province consisting of an island of the same name, as well as other islands. The maritime province is the smallest in the nation in both land area and population...
and Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
.
In March, Finance Minister Walter Harris
Walter Harris
Walter Edward Harris, PC, QC was a Canadian politician and lawyer.Harris was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons as the Liberal Member of Parliament for the Ontario riding of Grey-Bruce in the 1940 election defeating Agnes MacPhail...
, who was believed to be St. Laurent's heir apparent, introduced his budget. The budget anticipated a surplus of $258 million, of which $100 million was to be returned in the form of increased welfare payments, with an increase of $6 per month (to a total of $46) for old age pensioners—effective after the election. Harris indicated that no more could be returned for fear of increasing inflation. Diefenbaker attacked the budget, calling for higher old age pensions and welfare payments, more aid to the poorer provinces, and aid to farmers.
St. Laurent had informed Diefenbaker that Parliament would be dissolved in April, for an election on June 10. A final parliamentary conflict was sparked by the suicide of Canadian Ambassador to Egypt E.H. Norman in the midst of allegations made by a United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
subcommittee that Norman had communist links. Pearson had defended Norman when the allegations became public, and defended him again after his death, suggesting to the Commons that the allegations were false. It quickly became apparent that the information released by the Americans might have come from Canadian intelligence sources, and after severe questioning of Pearson by Diefenbaker and the other parties' foreign policy critics, Pearson made a statement announcing that Norman had had communist associations in his youth, but had passed a security review. The minister evaded further questions regarding what information had been provided, and the discussion was cut short when Parliament was dissolved on April 12.
Peter Regenstreif, who studied the four elections between 1957 and 1963, wrote of the situation at the start of the election campaign, "In 1957, there was no tangible indication that the Liberals would be beaten or, even in the opposition's darkest moment of reflection, could be. All the hindsight and post hoc gazing at entrails cannot change that objective fact."
Issues
The Liberals and PC party differed considerably on fiscal and tax policies. In his opening campaign speech at Massey HallMassey Hall
Massey Hall is a venerable performing arts theatre in the Garden District of downtown Toronto. The theatre originally was designed to seat 3,500 patrons but, after extensive renovations in the 1940s, now seats up to 2,765....
in Toronto, Diefenbaker contended that Canadians were overtaxed in the amount of $120 per family of four. Diefenbaker pledged to reduce taxes and castigated the Liberals for not reducing taxes despite the government surplus. St. Laurent also addressed tax policy in his opening speech, in Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...
. St. Laurent noted that since 1953, tax rates had declined, as had the national debt, and that Canada had a reputation as a good place for investments. The Prime Minister argued that the cost of campaign promises made by the Progressive Conservatives would inevitably drive up the tax rate. Diefenbaker also assailed tight-money monetary policies which kept interest rates high, complaining that they were hitting Atlantic and Western Canada hard.
The Tories promised changes in agricultural policies. Many Canadian farmers were unable to find buyers for their wheat; the PC party promised generous cash advances on unsold wheat and promised a protectionist policy regarding foreign agricultural products. The Liberals argued that such tariffs were not worth the loss of bargaining position in efforts to seek foreign markets for Canadian agricultural products.
The institution of the welfare state was by 1957 accepted by both major parties. Diefenbaker promised to expand the national health insurance scheme to cover tubercular and mental patients. He characterized the old age pension increase which the Liberal government was instituting as a mere pittance, not even enough to keep up with the cost of living. Diefenbaker noted that the increase only amounted to twenty cents a day, using that figure to ridicule Liberal contentions that an increase would add to the rate of inflation. All three opposition parties promised to increase the pension, with the Social Crediters and CCF even stating the specific amounts it would be raised by.
The Liberals were content to rest on their record in foreign affairs, and doubted that the Tories could better them. In a radio address on May 30, Minister of Transport
Minister of Transport (Canada)
The Minister of Transport is the Minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet who is responsible for overseeing the federal government's transportation regulatory and development department, Transport Canada...
George Marler commented, "You will wonder as I do who in the Conservative Party would take the place of the Honourable Lester Pearson, whose knowledge and experience of world affairs has been put to such good use in recent years." Diefenbaker, however, refused to concede the point and in a televised address stated that Canadians were "asking Pearson to explain his bumbling of External Affairs". Though they were reluctant to discuss the Norman affair, the Tories suggested that the government had irresponsibly allowed gossip to be transmitted to United States congressional committees. They also attacked the government over Pearson's role in the Suez settlement, suggesting that Canada had let Britain down.
Some members of the Tories' campaign committee had urged Diefenbaker not to build his campaign around the Pipeline Debate, contending that the episode was now a year in the past and forgotten by the voters, who did not particularly care what went on in Parliament anyway. Diefenbaker replied, "That's the issue, and I'm making it." Diefenbaker referred to the conduct of the government in the Pipeline Debate more frequently than he did any other issue during the campaign. St. Laurent initially dealt with the question flippantly, suggesting in his opening campaign address that the debate had been "nearly as long as the pipeline itself and quite as full of another kind of natural gas". As the issue gained resonance with the voters, the Liberals devoted more time to it, and St. Laurent devoted a major part of his final English television address to the question. The Liberals defended their conduct, and contended that a minority should not be allowed to impose its will on an elected majority. St. Laurent suggested that the Tories had performed badly as an opposition in the debate, and suggested that the public give them more practice at being an opposition.
Finally, the Tories contended that the Liberals had been in power too long, and that it was time for a change. The PC party stated that the Liberals were arrogant, inflexible, and not capable of looking at problems from a new point of view. Liberals responded that with the country prosperous, there was no point to a change.
Campaign
| Polls Before and During the Campaign (all by Canadian Institute for Public Opinion (Gallup Canada)) |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polling firm | Date | Lib | PC | Undecided/no answer | ||
| C.I.P.O. | October 1956 | |49.0 | 32.7 | 15.1 | ||
| C.I.P.O | January 1957 | |50.6 | 31.7 | 19.8 | ||
| C.I.P.O. | March 1957 | |46.0 | 32.9 | 26.2 | ||
| C.I.P.O. | May 4–10, 1957 | |46.8 | 32.9 | 14.7 | ||
| C.I.P.O. | May 28–June 1, 1957 | |43.3 | 37.5 | 12.8 | ||
| C.I.P.O. (forecast) | June 8, 1957 | |48.0 | 34.0 | – | ||
| Results | June 10, 1957 | |40.5 | 38.5 | – | ||
Progressive Conservative
In 1953, almost half of the Tories' campaign funds were spent in Quebec, a province in which the party won only four of seventy-five seats. After the 1953 election, Tory MP Gordon ChurchillGordon Churchill
Gordon Minto Churchill, PC, DSO was a Canadian politician. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1946 to 1949 as an independent representative, and in the Canadian House of Commons from 1951 to 1968 as a Progressive Conservative...
studied the Canadian federal elections since Confederation. He concluded that the Progressive Conservatives were ill-advised to continue pouring money into Quebec in an effort to win seats in the province; the Tories could win at least a minority government by maximizing their opportunities in English-speaking Canada, and if the party could also manage to win twenty seats in Quebec, it could attain a majority. Churchill's conclusions were ignored by most leading Tories—except Diefenbaker.
Diefenbaker's successful leadership race had been run by Allister Grosart
Allister Grosart
Allister Grosart, PC was a Progressive Conservative politician, Senator, journalist and businessman in Canada....
, an executive for McKim Advertising Ltd. Soon after taking the leadership, Diefenbaker got Grosart to help out at Tory headquarters, and soon appointed him national director of the party and national campaign manager. Grosart appointed a national campaign committee, something which had not been done previously by the Tories, but which, according to Grosart, provided the organizational key to success in 1957. The party was ill-financed, having only $1,000,000 to wage the campaign—half what it had in 1953. Grosart divided most of that money equally by constituency, to the disgruntlement of Quebec Tories, who were used to receiving a disproportionate share of the national party's financing.
The Tory campaign opened at Massey Hall
Massey Hall
Massey Hall is a venerable performing arts theatre in the Garden District of downtown Toronto. The theatre originally was designed to seat 3,500 patrons but, after extensive renovations in the 1940s, now seats up to 2,765....
in Toronto on April 25, where Diefenbaker addressed a crowd of 2,600, about 200 short of capacity. At the Massey Hall rally, a large banner hung behind Diefenbaker, which did not mention the name of his party, but which instead stated, "It's Time for a Diefenbaker Government." The slogan, coined by Grosart, sought to blur Canadian memories of the old Tory party of Bennett and Drew and instead focus attention on the party's new leader. Posters for election rallies contained Diefenbaker's name in large type; only the small print contained the name of the party. When St. Laurent complained that the Tories were not campaigning under their own name, Grosart sent copies of the Prime Minister's remarks in a plain envelope to every Liberal candidate, and was gratified when they began inserting the allegation into their own speeches. According to Professor J. Murray Beck in his history of Canadian general elections, "His political enemies were led to make the very point he was striving to drive home: Diefenbaker was, in effect, leading a new party, not an old one with a repellent image." Grosart later stated that he structured the entire campaign around the personality of John Diefenbaker, and threw away the Tory party and its policies.
Diefenbaker began his campaign with a week of local campaigning in his riding, after which he went to Toronto for the Massey Hall speech. After two days in Ontario, he spoke at a rally in Quebec City, before spending the remainder of the first week in the Maritimes. The next week saw Diefenbaker spend two days in Quebec, after which he campaigned in Ontario. The next two weeks included a Western tour, with brief returns to Ontario, the most populous province. The final two weeks saw Diefenbaker spend much of the time in Ontario, though with brief journeys east to the Maritimes and Quebec and twice west to Saskatchewan. He returned to his riding for the final weekend before the Monday election. He spent 39 days on the campaign trail, eleven more than the Prime Minister.
According to Professor John Meisel, who wrote a book about the 1957 campaign, Diefenbaker's speaking style was "reminiscent of the fiery orators so popular in the nineteenth century. Indeed, Mr. Diefenbaker's oratory has been likened to that of the revivalist preacher." As a new face on the national scene given to outspoken attacks on the government, he began to attract unexpectedly large crowds early in the campaign. When reduced to the written word, however, Diefenbaker's rhetoric sometimes proved to be without much meaning. According to journalist and author Peter C. Newman
Peter C. Newman
Peter Charles Newman, CC, CD is a Canadian journalist and writer.Born in Vienna, Austria, Newman emigrated from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to Canada in 1940 as a Jewish refugee. His father, Oscar, was a self-made wealthy factory owner. Newman was educated at Upper Canada College, where he was...
, "On the printed page, it makes little sense. But from the platform, its effect was far different." Both Newman and Meisel cite as an example of this the conclusion to the leader's Massey Hall speech:
If we are dedicated to this—and to this we are—you, my fellow Canadians, will require all the wisdom, all the power that comes from those spiritual springs that make freedom possible—all the wisdom, all the faith and all the vision which the Conservative Party gave but yesterday under MacdonaldJohn A. MacdonaldSir John Alexander Macdonald, GCB, KCMG, PC, PC , QC was the first Prime Minister of Canada. The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, his political career spanned almost half a century...
, change to meet changing conditions, today having the responsibility of this party to lay the foundations of this nation for a great and glorious future.
Diefenbaker's speeches contained words which evoked powerful emotions in his listeners. His theme was that Canada was on the edge of greatness—if it could only get rid of its incompetent and arrogant government. He stressed that the only alternative to the Liberals was a "Diefenbaker government". According to Newman, Diefenbaker successfully drew on the discontent both of those who had prospered in the 1950s, and sought some deeper personal and national purpose, as well as those who had been left out of the prosperity. However, Diefenbaker spoke French badly and the excitement generated by his campaign had little effect in francophone Quebec, where apathy prevailed and Le Devoir
Le Devoir
Le Devoir is a French-language newspaper published in Montreal and distributed in Quebec and the rest of Canada. It was founded by journalist, politician, and nationalist Henri Bourassa in 1910....
spoke of "" (an election campaign of chloroform).
The Tories had performed badly in British Columbia in 1953, finishing a weak fourth. However, the province responded to Diefenbaker, and 3,800 turned out for his Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
speech on May 21, his largest crowd yet. This was bettered two days later in Vancouver with a crowd of 6,000, with even the street outside the Georgia Street Auditorium packed with Tory partisans. Diefenbaker responded to this by delivering what Dick Spencer (who wrote a book on Diefenbaker's campaigns) considered his greatest speech of the 1957 race, and which Newman considered the turning point of Diefenbaker's campaign. Diefenbaker stated, "I give this assurance to Canadians—that the government shall be the servant and not the master of the people ... The road of the Liberal party, unless it is stopped—and Howe has said, "Who's going to stop us?"—will lead to the virtual extinction of parliamentary government. You will have the form, but the substance will be gone."
The Liberal-leaning Winnipeg Free Press
Winnipeg Free Press
The Winnipeg Free Press is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Founded in 1872, as the Manitoba Free Press, it is the oldest newspaper in western Canada. It is the newspaper with the largest readership in the province....
, writing shortly after Diefenbaker's speeches in British Columbia, commented on them:
Facts were overwhelmed with sound, passion substituted for arithmetic, moral indignation pumped up to the bursting point. But Mr. Diefenbaker provided the liveliest show of the election ... and many listeners undoubtedly failed to notice that he was saying even less than the Prime Minister, though saying it more shrilly and with evangelistic fervour ... Mr. Diefenbaker has chosen instead to cast himself as the humble man in a mood of protest, the common Canadian outraged by Liberal prosperity, the little guy fighting for his rights.
So far as the crowds mean anything, that posture is a brilliant success at one-night stands.
On June 6, the two major party campaigns crossed paths in Woodstock, Ontario
Woodstock, Ontario
Woodstock is a city and the county seat of Oxford County in Southern Ontario, Canada. Woodstock is located 128 km southwest of Toronto, north of Highway 401 along the historic Thames River...
. Speaking in the afternoon, St. Laurent drew a crowd of 200. To the shock of St. Laurent staffers, who remained for the Diefenbaker appearance, the PC leader drew an overflow crowd of over a thousand that evening, even though he was an hour late, with announcements made to the excited crowd that he was slowed by voters who wanted only to see him or shake his hand.
Diefenbaker's intensive campaign exhausted the handful of national reporters who followed him. Clark Davey of The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
stated, "We did not know how he did it." Reporters thought the Progressive Conservatives might, at best, gain 30 or 35 seats over the 53 they had at dissolution, and when Diefenbaker, off the record, told the reporters that the Tories would win 97 seats (which would still allow the Liberals to form the government), they concluded he was guilty of wishful thinking. Diefenbaker was even more confident in public; after he concluded his national tour and returned to his constituency, he addressed his final rally in Nipawin, Saskatchewan
Nipawin, Saskatchewan
There is, however, some dispute regarding the current population of Nipawin, with Tourism Saskatchewan's Saskatchewan Discovery Guide 2010 claiming a population of 5,074, which actually places Nipawin over the population threshold for applying for city status....
: "On Monday, I'll be Prime Minister."
Liberal
St. Laurent was utterly confident of an election victory, so much so that he did not even bother to fill the sixteen vacancies in the Senate. He had been confident of re-election when Drew led the Tories, and, according to Liberal minister Lionel ChevrierLionel Chevrier
Lionel Chevier, was a Canadian Member of Parliament and cabinet minister.Born in Cornwall, Ontario, the son of former Cornwall mayor Joseph E. Chevrier, he was educated in Cornwall, at the University of Ottawa, the University of Montreal and Osgoode Hall. Chevrier was called to the bar in 1928...
, Diefenbaker's victory in the party leadership race increased his confidence by a factor of ten. At his press conference detailing his election tour, St. Laurent stated, "I have no doubt about the election outcome." He indicated that his campaign would open April 29 in Winnipeg, and that the Prime Minister would spend ten days in Western Canada before moving east. However, he indicated he would first go home to Quebec City for several days around Easter (April 21 in 1957). This break kept him out of the limelight for ten days at a time when Diefenbaker was already actively campaigning and making daily headlines. At one campaign stop in Jarvis, Ontario
Jarvis, Ontario
Jarvis is a small community in Haldimand County, Ontario, Canada. Jarvis is located near the towns of Simcoe, Townsend, Cayuga, Port Dover and Hagersville. It is located at the crossroads of Highway 3 and Highway 6.- Facilities :...
, St. Laurent told an aide that he was afraid the right-wing, anti-Catholic Social Credit Party would be the next Opposition.St. Laurent denied Opposition claims that he would resign after an election victory, and the 75-year-old indicated that he planned to run again in 1961, if he was still around.
The Liberals made no new, radical proposals during their campaign, but instead ran a quiet campaign with occasional attacks on the opposition parties. They were convinced that the public still supported their party, and that no expensive promises need by made to voters. St. Laurent was made the image of the nation's prosperity, and the Liberals refused to admit any reason for discontent existed. When Minister of Finance Harris proposed raising the upcoming increase in old age pension by an additional four dollars a month, St. Laurent refused to consider it, feeling that the increase had been calculated on the basis of the available facts, and those facts had not changed.
During the Prime Minister's Western swing, St. Laurent made formal speeches only in major cities. In contrast to Diefenbaker's whistle-stop train touring, with a hasty speech in each town as the train passed through, the Liberals allowed ample time for "Uncle Louis" to shake hands with voters, pat their children on the head, and kiss their babies. In British Columbia, St. Laurent took the position that there were hardly any national issues worth discussing—the Liberals had brought Canada prosperity and all that was needed for more of the same was to return the party to office. After touring Western Canada, St. Laurent spent the remainder of the second week of the campaign returning to, and in, Ottawa. The third week opened with a major speech in Quebec City, followed by intensive campaigning in Ontario. The fifth week was devoted to the Maritime provinces and Eastern Quebec. The sixth week opened with a major rally in Ottawa, before St. Laurent returned to the Maritimes and Quebec, and the final week was spent in Ontario before St. Laurent returned to his hometown of Quebec City for the election.
St. Laurent tried to project an image as a family man, and to that end often addressed schoolchildren. As he had in previous elections, he spoke to small groups of children regarding Canadian history or civics. The strategy backfired while addressing children in Port Hope, Ontario
Port Hope, Ontario
Port Hope is a municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada, about east of Toronto and about west of Kingston. It is located at the mouth of the Ganaraska River on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in the west end of Northumberland County...
. With the children inattentive, some playing tag or sticking cameras in his face, St. Laurent angrily told them that it was their loss if they did not pay attention, as the country would be theirs to worry about far longer than it would be his.
St. Laurent and the Liberals suffered other problems during the campaign. According to Newman, St. Laurent sometimes seemed unaware of what was happening around him, and at one campaign stop, shook hands with the reporters who were following him, under the apparent impression they were local voters. On the evening of Diefenbaker's Vancouver speech, St. Laurent drew 400 voters to a rally in Sherbrooke, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, where he had once lived. C.D. Howe, under heavy pressure from the campaign of CCF candidate Doug Fisher
Doug Fisher
Douglas Mason "Doug" Fisher was a Canadian political columnist and politician.-Life and career:...
in his Ontario riding, intimated that Fisher had communist links. At a rally in Manitoba, Howe offended a voter who told him the farmers were starving to death, poking the voter in the stomach and saying "Looks like you've been eating pretty well under a Liberal government." At another rally, Howe dismissed a persistent Liberal questioner, saying "Look here, my good man, when the election comes, why don't you just go away and vote for the party you support? In fact, why don't you just go away?"
The Liberals concluded their campaign with a large rally at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens
Maple Leaf Gardens
Maple Leaf Gardens is an indoor arena that was converted into a Loblawssupermarket and Ryerson University athletic centre in Toronto, on the northwest corner of Carlton Street and Church Street in Toronto's Garden District.One of the temples of hockey, it was home to the Toronto Maple Leafs of the...
on June 7. Entertainment at the event was provided by the Leslie Bell singers, and according to Grosart, many in the audience were Tory supporters who had turned out to hear them. St. Laurent's speech at the rally was interrupted when William Hatton, a 15-year-old boy from Malton, Ontario
Malton, Ontario
Malton is a neighbourhood in the northeastern part of the city of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, located to the northwest of Toronto. The neighbourhood has a population of approximately 36,400 as of 2002....
, climbed onto the platform. Hatton carried a banner reading, "This Can't Be Canada" with a Liberal placard bearing St. Laurent's photograph, and moved to face the Prime Minister. Meisel describes Hatton as an "otherwise politically apathetic boy who ... slowly and deliberately tore up a photograph of the Prime Minister as the latter was speaking" and states that Hatton engaged in "intensely provocative behavior". Liberal partisans interceded, and in the ensuing fracas, Hatton fell from the platform, audibly hitting his head on the concrete floor. St. Laurent watched in apparent shock, according to his biographer Dale Tompson, as officials aided the boy and took him from the hall. According to Tompson, the crowd "turned its indignation on the men on the platform" and spent the remainder of the evening wondering about the boy's possible injuries rather than listening to the Prime Minister's speech. Hatton was not seriously injured, but, according to Newman, "the accident added to the image of the Liberal Party as an unrepentant arrogant group of old men, willing to ride roughshod over voters". Grosart later described the incident as "the turning point" of the campaign. Professor Meisel speculated that the Hatton incident might have been part of an organized campaign to annoy St. Laurent out of his pleasant "Uncle Louis" persona, and Grosart later related that Liberal frontbencher Jack Pickersgill
Jack Pickersgill
John Whitney "Jack" Pickersgill, PC, CC was a Canadian civil servant and politician. He was born in Ontario, but was raised in Manitobia. He was the Clerk for the Canadian Government's Privy Council in the early 1950s...
always accused him of being behind the boy's actions, but that the incident was "a sheer accident". Hatton's mother described his actions as "
CCF
The CCF was a socialist party, which had much of its strength in Saskatchewan, though it ran candidates in several other provinces. At Parliament's dissolution in April 1957, it had 23 MPs, from five different provinces. Aside from the Liberals and the Tories, it was the only party to nominate a candidate in a majority of the ridings. In 1957, the party was led by Saskatchewan MP M.J. ColdwellMajor James Coldwell
Major James William Coldwell, , usually known as M.J. , was a Canadian social democratic politician, and leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party from 1942 to 1960. He was born in England, and immigrated to Canada in 1910...
.
In 1956, the party adopted the Winnipeg Declaration
Winnipeg Declaration
The Winnipeg Declaration was the programme adopted by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation in Canada to replace the Regina Manifesto...
, a far more moderate proposal than its previous governing document, the 1933 Regina Manifesto
Regina Manifesto
The Regina Manifesto was the programme of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and was adopted at the first national convention of the CCF held in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1933. The primary goal of the "Regina Manifesto" was to eradicate the system of capitalism and replace it with a planned...
. For example, the Regina Manifesto pledged the CCF to the eradication of capitalism; the Winnipeg Declaration recognized the utility of private ownership of business, and stated that the government should own business only when it was in the public interest. In its election campaign, the CCF did not promise to nationalize any industries. It promised changes in the tax code in order to increase the redistribution of wealth in Canada. It pledged to increase exemptions from income tax, to allow medical expenses to be considered deductions from income for tax purposes, and to eliminate sales tax on food, clothing, and other necessities of life. It also promised to raise taxes on the higher income brackets and to eliminate the favourable tax treatment of corporate dividends.
The CCF represented many agricultural areas in the Commons, and it proposed several measures to assure financial security for farmers. It proposed national growers' cooperatives for agricultural products which were exported. It proposed cash advances for farm-stored wheat, short and long term loans for farmers at low interest rates, and government support of prices, to assure the farmer a full income even in bad years. For the Atlantic fisherman, the CCF proposed cash advances at the start of the fishing season and government-owned depots which would sell fishing equipment and supplies to fishermen at much lower than market prices.
Coldwell suffered from a heart condition, and undertook a much less ambitious schedule than the major party leaders. The party leader left Ottawa for his riding, Rosetown—Biggar
Rosetown—Biggar
Rosetown—Biggar was a federal electoral district in Saskatchewan, Canada, that was represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1935 to 1968.This riding was created in 1933 from parts of Kindersley and Rosetown ridings....
in Saskatchewan, on April 26, and remained there until May 10. He spent three days campaigning in Ontario, then moved west to the major cities of the prairie provinces and British Columbia, before returning to his riding for the final days before the June 10 election. Other CCF leaders took charge of campaigning in Quebec and the Maritimes.
Social Credit
By 1957, the Social Credit Party of Canada had moved far afield from the theories of social creditSocial Credit
Social Credit is an economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas , a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as "the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy "practical Christianity"...
economics, which its candidates rarely mentioned. Canada's far-right party, the Socreds were led by Solon Low, though its Alberta leader, Premier
Premier of Alberta
The Premier of Alberta is the first minister for the Canadian province of Alberta. He or she is the province's head of government and de facto chief executive. The current Premier of Alberta is Alison Redford. She became Premier by winning the Progressive Conservative leadership elections on...
Ernest Manning
Ernest Manning
Ernest Charles Manning, , a Canadian politician, was the eighth Premier of Alberta between 1943 and 1968 for the Social Credit Party of Alberta. He served longer than any premier in the province's history, and was the second longest serving provincial premier in Canadian history...
was highly influential in the party. The Socreds' election programme was based on the demand "that Government get out of business and make way for private enterprise" and on their hatred of "all government-inspired schemes to degrade man and make him subservient to the state or any monopoly".
The Socreds proposed an increase in the old age pension to $100 per month. It called for the reversal of the government's tight money policies, and for low income loans for small business and farmers. It asked for income tax exemptions to be increased to meet the cost of living, and a national housing programme to make home ownership possible for every Canadian family. The party called for a national security policy based on the need for defence, rather than "aggression", and for a foreign policy which would include food aid to the less-developed nations.
The Socreds also objected to the CBC
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
and other spending in the arts and broadcasting. The party felt that the government should solve economic problems before spending money on the arts.
Low challenged the Prime Minister over the Suez issue, accusing him of sending a threatening telegram that caused British Prime Minister Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
to back off the invasion and so gave the Soviets the opportunity for a military buildup in Egypt. St. Laurent angrily denied the charge and offered to open his correspondence to any of the fifty privy councillors who could then announce whether St. Laurent was telling the truth. Low took St. Laurent up on his challenge, and selected the only living former Prime Minister, Tory Arthur Meighen
Arthur Meighen
Arthur Meighen, PC, QC was a Canadian lawyer and politician. He served two terms as the ninth Prime Minister of Canada: from July 10, 1920 to December 29, 1921; and from June 29 to September 25, 1926. He was the first Prime Minister born after Confederation, and the only one to represent a riding...
, but the matter was not resolved before the election, and Meighen was not called upon to examine the correspondence in the election's aftermath.
The Social Credit Party was weakened by considerable conflict between its organizations in the two provinces it controlled, Alberta and British Columbia. It failed to establish a strong national office to run the campaign due to infighting between the two groups. However, it was better financed than the CCF, due to its popularity among business groups in the West.
The Socreds hoped to establish themselves in Ontario, and scheduled their opening rally for Massey Hall in Toronto. The rally was a failure, and even though it ran 40 candidates in Ontario (up from 9 in 1953), the party won no seats in the province.
Use of television
In 1957, the Canadian Broadcasting CorporationCanadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
gave the four recognized parties free air time for political statements. The television broadcasts's audio tracks served also for use on radio. The three opposition parties gave their party leader all of the broadcast time, though Diefenbaker, who did not speak French well, played only a limited role in the Tories' French-language broadcasts. In one, he introduced party president Léon Balcer
Léon Balcer
Léon Balcer, PC was a Canadian politician.He was born on October 13, 1917 in Trois-Rivières, Quebec and was a lawyer by profession.-Member of the House of Commons:...
, a Quebecer, who gave the speech. Diefenbaker had no objection to makeup and, according to Meisel, was prepared to adopt any technique which would make his presentation more effective. A survey in populous southwestern Ontario showed that Diefenbaker made the strongest impression of the four leaders.
According to Liberal minister Paul Martin Sr. (the father of the future Prime Minister
Paul Martin
Paul Edgar Philippe Martin, PC , also known as Paul Martin, Jr. is a Canadian politician who was the 21st Prime Minister of Canada, as well as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada....
), St. Laurent had the potential to be quite good on television, but disliked the medium. He was prejudiced against television appearances, considering such speeches the equivalent of carefully planned performances, such as stage shows. He refused to be made up for the telecasts, and insisted on reading his speech from a script. His advisers switched him to a teleprompter, but this failed to make his performances more relaxed. When reading, he would rarely look at the camera. However, St. Laurent made only occasional television appearances (three in each language), letting his ministers make the remainder. Only one cabinet member, Minister of National Defence
Minister of National Defence (Canada)
The Minister of National Defence is a Minister of the Crown; the Canadian politician within the Cabinet of Canada responsible for the Department of National Defence which oversees the Canadian Forces....
Ralph Campney
Ralph Campney
Ralph Osborne Campney, was a Canadian politician.Born in Picton, Ontario, he first ran unsuccessfully for the Canadian House of Commons in the riding of Vancouver Centre in a 1948 by-election. A Liberal, he was elected in the 1949 federal election and in 1953. He was defeated in 1957...
took advantage of the course in television techniques offered by the Liberal Party in a dummy studio in its Ottawa headquarters. This lack of preparation, according to Meisel, led to "a fiasco" during a television address by Minister of Justice
Minister of Justice (Canada)
The Minister of Justice is the Minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet who is responsible for the Department of Justice and is also Attorney General of Canada .This cabinet position is usually reserved for someone with formal legal training...
Stuart Garson
Stuart Garson
Stuart Sinclair Garson, was a Canadian politician and lawyer. He served as the 12th Premier of Manitoba from 1943 to 1948, and later became a federal cabinet minister....
in early June when the teleprompter stopped working during the speech and Garson "was unable to cope effectively with the failure".
Election
Most predictions had the Tories picking up seats, but the Liberals maintaining a majority. The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
reported that Liberals expected to lose a majority of Ontario's seats, but retain a narrow majority in the House of Commons. Time magazine predicted a Tory gain of 20 to 40 seats and stated that any result which denied the Liberals 133 seats and a majority "would rank as a major upset". Beck indicates that many journalists, including those sympathetic to the Tories, saw signs of the coming upset, but disregarded them, convinced that the government was invulnerable. Maclean's
Maclean's
Maclean's is a Canadian weekly news magazine, reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events.-History:Founded in 1905 by Toronto journalist/entrepreneur Lt.-Col. John Bayne Maclean, a 43-year-old trade magazine publisher who purchased an advertising agency's in-house...
, which printed its postelection issue before the election to go on sale the morning after, ran an editorial noting that Canadians had freely chosen to reelect the Liberal Party.
On Election Night, the first returns came in from Sable Island
Sable Island
Sable Island is a small Canadian island situated 300 km southeast of mainland Nova Scotia in the Atlantic Ocean. The island is a year-round home to approximately five people...
, Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
. Usually a Liberal stronghold, the handful of residents there favoured the Tories by two votes. St. Laurent listened to the election returns on a radio in the living room of his home on Grande Allée in Quebec City, and when the radio broke, moved to an upstairs television set. Diefenbaker began the evening at his house
Diefenbaker House
Diefenbaker House is a museum located in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The museum building was built in 1912 and purchased in 1947 by The Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada John Diefenbaker and his then wife Edna Diefenbaker...
in Prince Albert, and once his re-election to the Commons was certain, moved to his local campaign headquarters.
The Conservatives did well in Atlantic Canada, gaining two seats in Newfoundland and nine in Nova Scotia, and sweeping Prince Edward Island's four seats. However, in Quebec, they gained only five seats as the province returned 62 Liberals. The Tories gained 29 seats in Ontario. Howe was defeated by Fisher, and told the media that some strange disease was sweeping the country, but as for him, he was going to bed. The Liberals still led by a narrow margin as the returns began to come in from Manitoba, and St. Laurent told Liberal minister Pickersgill that he hoped that the Tories would get at least one more seat than the Liberals so they could get out of an appalling situation. As the Tories forged ahead in Western Canada, Diefenbaker flew from Prince Albert to Regina
Regina, Saskatchewan
Regina is the capital city of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province and a cultural and commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. It is governed by Regina City Council. Regina is the cathedral city of the Roman Catholic and Romanian Orthodox...
to deliver a television address and shouted to Grosart as yet another cabinet minister was defeated, "Allister, how does the architect feel?" Late that evening, St. Laurent went to the Château Frontenac
Château Frontenac
The Château Frontenac, currently known as Fairmont Le Château Frontenac, is a grand hotel in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. It was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1980...
hotel for a televised speech, delivered before fifty supporters.
The Tories finished with 112 seats to the Liberals' 105, while both the CCF and Social Credit gained seats in Western Canada and finished with 25 and 19 seats respectively. Nine cabinet ministers, including Howe, Marler, Garson, Campney and Harris were defeated. Though the Liberals outpolled the Tories by over 100,000 votes, most of those votes were wasted running up huge margins in Quebec. St. Laurent could have constitutionally hung onto power until defeated in the House, but he chose not to, and John Diefenbaker took office as Prime Minister of Canada on June 21, 1957.
Irregularities
After the election, the Chief Electoral Officer reported to the Speaker of the House of Commons that "the general election appears to have been satisfactorily conducted in accordance with the procedure in the Canada Elections Act".There were, however, a number of irregularities. In the Toronto riding of St. Paul's, four Liberal workers were convicted of various offences for adding almost five hundred names to the electoral register. One of the four was also convicted for two counts of perjury. While the unsuccessful Liberal candidate, former MP James Rooney, was not charged, Ontario Chief Justice James Chalmers McRuer
James Chalmers McRuer
James Chalmers McRuer, was a Canadian lawyer, judge, commissioner and author in Ontario.Born in Oxford County, Ontario, he received his law education from the Osgoode Hall Law School and was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1913. During World War I, he served in the Canadian Field Artillery as a...
, who investigated the matter, doubted that this could have been done without the candidate's knowledge.
Various violations of law, including illicitly opening ballot boxes, illegal possession of ballots, and adding names to the electoral register, took place in twelve Quebec ridings. The RCMP felt it had enough evidence to prosecute in five ridings, and a total of twelve people were convicted. The offences did not affect the outcome of any races.
The election of the Liberal candidate in Yukon
Yukon (electoral district)
Yukon is the only federal electoral district in Yukon Territory, Canada. It has been represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1902 to 1949 and since 1953....
was contested by the losing Tory candidate. After a trial before the Yukon Territorial Court, that court voided the election, holding that enough ineligible people had been permitted to vote to affect the outcome, though the court noted that it was not the fault of the Liberal candidate that these irregularities had occurred. The Tory, Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Erik Hersholt Nielsen, PC, DFC, QC was a Canadian politician, and longtime Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament for Yukon....
, won the new election in December 1957.
The election in one Ontario riding, Wellington South
Wellington South
Wellington South was a Canadian federal electoral district represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 to 1968. It was located in the province of Ontario. It was created by the British North America Act of 1867 as the "South Riding of the county of Wellington"...
was postponed pursuant to statute after the death of the Liberal candidate and MP, Henry Alfred Hosking
Henry Alfred Hosking
Henry Alfred Hosking was a Liberal party member of the Canadian House of Commons. He was born in Bellows Falls, Vermont, United States and moved with his family to Canada, at Rockwood, Ontario later in his birth year....
during the campaign. The Tory candidate, Alfred Hales
Alfred Hales
Alfred Dryden Hales was a Progressive Conservative party member of the Canadian House of Commons. He was born in Guelph, Ontario and became a butcher, meat cutter, farmer, manufacturer and merchant by career....
, defeated Liberal David Tolton and CCF candidate Thomas Withers on July 15, 1957.
Impact
The unexpected defeat of the Liberals was ascribed to various causes. The Ottawa CitizenOttawa Citizen
The Ottawa Citizen is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Canada. According to the Canadian Newspaper Association, the paper had a 2008 weekly circulation of 900,197.- History :...
stated that the defeat could be attributed to "the uneasy talk ... that the Liberals have been in too long." Tom Kent
Thomas Worrall Kent
Thomas Worrall Kent, was a Canadian economist, journalist, editor, public servant, and industrialist....
of the Winnipeg Free Press
Winnipeg Free Press
The Winnipeg Free Press is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Founded in 1872, as the Manitoba Free Press, it is the oldest newspaper in western Canada. It is the newspaper with the largest readership in the province....
, a future Liberal deputy minister, wrote that though the Liberal record had been the best in the democratic world, the party had failed miserably to explain it. Author and political scientist H.S. Ferns disagreed with Kent, stating that Kent's view reflected the Liberal "assumption that 'Nobody's going to shoot Santa Claus and that Canadians in the 1957 election were motivated by things other than material interests. Peter Regenstreif cited the Progressive Conservative strategy in the 1957 and 1958 elections "as classics of ingenuity unequalled in Canadian political history. Much of the credit belongs to Diefenbaker himself; at least some must go to Allister Grosart". A survey taken of those who abandoned the Liberals in 1957 showed that 5.1% did so because of Suez, 38.2% because of the Pipeline Debate, 26.7% because of what they considered an inadequate increase in the old age pension, and 30% because it was time for a change.
The results of the election surprised the civil service as much as it did the rest of the public. Civil servant and future Liberal minister Mitchell Sharp
Mitchell Sharp
Mitchell William Sharp, PC, CC was a Canadian politician and a Companion of the Order of Canada, was most noted for his service as a Liberal Cabinet minister. He had, however, served in both private and public sectors during his long career.-Background:Sharp was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba...
asked C.D. Howe's replacement as Minister of Trade and Commerce
Minister of International Trade (Canada)
The Minister of International Trade is the Minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet is the head of the federal government's international trade department and the provisions of treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement .The post was first established in 1983 as the Minister...
, Gordon Churchill
Gordon Churchill
Gordon Minto Churchill, PC, DSO was a Canadian politician. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1946 to 1949 as an independent representative, and in the Canadian House of Commons from 1951 to 1968 as a Progressive Conservative...
, not to come to the Ministry's offices for several days as they were redecorating. Churchill later learned that the staff were moving files out. When Churchill finally came to the Ministry's offices, he was met with what he termed "the coldest reception that I have ever received in my life". The new Minister of Labour
Minister of Labour (Canada)
The Minister of Labour is the Minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet who is responsible for setting national labour standards and federal labour dispute mechanisms...
, Michael Starr
Michael Starr
Michael Starr, PC was a Canadian politician and the first Canadian cabinet minister of Ukrainian descent, his parents having immigrated from Ukraine, then a part of the Russian Empire....
, was ticketed three days in a row for parking in the minister's spot.
St. Laurent resigned as leader of the Liberal Party on September 5, 1957, but agreed to stay on until a successor was elected. With a lame-duck leader, the Liberals were ineffective in opposition. Paul Martin stated that "I'm sure I never thought the day would come when
Even in reporting the election result, newspapers suggested that Diefenbaker would soon call another election and seek a majority. Quebec Tory MP William Hamilton
William McLean Hamilton
William McLean Hamilton, PC, OC was a Canadian politician.He was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His father, Ernest Hamilton, was a lacrosse player who won a gold medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics...
(who would soon become Postmaster General under Diefenbaker) predicted on the evening of June 10 that there would soon be another election, in which the Tories would do much better in Quebec. The Tory government initially proved popular among the Canadian people, and Diefenbaker called a snap election. On March 31, 1958, the Tories won the greatest landslide in Canadian electoral history in terms of the percentage of seats, taking 208 seats (including fifty in Quebec) to the Liberals' 48, with the CCF winning eight and none for Social Credit.
Michael Bliss, who wrote a survey of the Canadian Prime Ministers, alluded to Howe's dismissive comments regarding the Tories as he summed up the 1957 election:
The pipeline debate of 1956 sparked a dramatic opposition stand on the importance of free parliamentary debate. Their arrogance did the Grits[Liberals] enormous damage, contributing heavily to the government's problems in the 1957 general election. Under the glare of television cameras in that campaign, St. Laurent, Howe, and company now appeared to be a lot of wooden, tired old men who had lost touch with Canada. The voters decided to stop them.
National results
Turnout: 74.1% of eligible voters voted.| Party | Party leader | # of candidates |
Seats | Popular vote | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 1953 Canadian federal election, 1953 The Canadian federal election of 1953 was held on August 10 to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 22nd Parliament of Canada. Prime Minister Louis St... |
Elected | % Change | # | % | % Change |
Progressive Conservative Progressive Conservative Party of Canada The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada was a Canadian political party with a centre-right stance on economic issues and, after the 1970s, a centrist stance on social issues.... |
John Diefenbaker John Diefenbaker John George Diefenbaker, PC, CH, QC was the 13th Prime Minister of Canada, serving from June 21, 1957, to April 22, 1963... |
256 | 51 | 112 | +119.6% | 2,572,926 | 38.5% | +7.8% |
Liberal Liberal Party of Canada The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative... |
Louis St. Laurent Louis St. Laurent Louis Stephen St. Laurent, PC, CC, QC , was the 12th Prime Minister of Canada from 15 November 1948, to 21 June 1957.... |
264 | 169 | 105 | -38.9% | 2,702,573 | 40.5% | -7.8% |
Co-operative Commonwealth Co-operative Commonwealth Federation The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was a Canadian political party founded in 1932 in Calgary, Alberta, by a number of socialist, farm, co-operative and labour groups, and the League for Social Reconstruction... |
M.J. Coldwell | 162 | 23 | 25 | +8.7% | 707,659 | 10.6% | -0.6% |
Social Credit Social Credit Party of Canada The Social Credit Party of Canada was a conservative-populist political party in Canada that promoted social credit theories of monetary reform... |
Solon Low Solon Earl Low Solon Earl Low was a Canadian politician in the 20th century.Low was born in Cardston, Alberta, and was a farmer, school teacher and school principal. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta in the 1935 provincial that swept the Social Credit Party of Alberta to power... |
114 | 15 | 19 | +26.7% | 437,049 | 6.5% | +1.1% |
Other | 66 | 4 | 4 | - | 188,510 | 2.8% | -0.6% |
Rejected ballots | - | - | - | - | 74,710 | 1.1% | 0% | ||
| Total | 862 | 265 | 265 | - | 6,680,690 | 100.00% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Results by province
| Party Name | BC British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858... |
AB Alberta Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces... |
SK Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota.... |
MB Manitoba Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other... |
ON Ontario Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa.... |
QC Quebec Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level.... |
NB New Brunswick New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area... |
NS Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the... |
PE Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island is a Canadian province consisting of an island of the same name, as well as other islands. The maritime province is the smallest in the nation in both land area and population... |
NL Newfoundland and Labrador Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400... |
NW Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south... |
YK Yukon Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in.... |
Total |
Progressive Conservative Progressive Conservative Party of Canada The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada was a Canadian political party with a centre-right stance on economic issues and, after the 1970s, a centrist stance on social issues.... |
Seats: | 7 | 3 | 3 | 8 | 61 | 9 | 5 | 10 | 4 | 2 | - | - | 112 |
Vote (%): | 32.5 | 27.4 | 23.0 | 35.5 | 48.1 | 30.7 | 48.1 | 50.1 | 52.0 | 37.4 | 31.0 | 48.2 | 38.5 |
Liberal Liberal Party of Canada The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative... |
Seats: | 2 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 21 | 62 | 5 | 2 | - | 5 | 1 | 1 | 105 |
Vote (%): | 20.4 | 27.6 | 30.2 | 25.8 | 36.6 | 56.8 | 47.5 | 45.9 | 46.4 | 61.3 | 66.4 | 49.5 | 40.5 |
Co-operative Commonwealth Co-operative Commonwealth Federation The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was a Canadian political party founded in 1932 in Calgary, Alberta, by a number of socialist, farm, co-operative and labour groups, and the League for Social Reconstruction... |
Seats: | 7 | - | 10 | 5 | 3 | - | - | - | - | - | 25 |
Vote (%): | 22.6 | 6.3 | 35.8 | 23.4 | 11.9 | 1.8 | 0.8 | 4.3 | 1.0 | 0.4 | 10.6 |
Social Credit Social Credit Party of Canada The Social Credit Party of Canada was a conservative-populist political party in Canada that promoted social credit theories of monetary reform... |
Seats: | 6 | 13 | - | - | - | - | - | - | 19 |
Vote (%): | 23.6 | 37.5 | 10.4 | 13.0 | 1.6 | 0.2 | 1.0 | 0.1 | 6.5 |
Other | Seats: | 4 | 4 |
Vote (%): | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 5.5 | 1.3 | 2.8 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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See also
- List of Canadian federal general elections
- List of political parties in Canada
- 23rd Canadian Parliament23rd Canadian ParliamentThe 23rd Canadian Parliament was in session from October 14, 1957 until February 1, 1958. The membership was set by the 1957 federal election on June 10, 1957, and it changed only somewhat due to resignations and by-elections until it was dissolved prior to the 1958 election.It holds the...