No, Joe Clark was Prime Minister for nine months.
John Turner was elected Liberal leader here in Ottawa at the Ottawa Civic Centre at a good old-fashioned delegate convention in June of 1984. I love those delegated conventions. That's what got me interested in politics.
The first convention I ever saw on TV as a young guy—I think I was in junior high—was the 1976 PC Conservative Party delegate convention in Ottawa, where there were 14 candidates running, including a young Joe Clark; a young Brian Mulroney; the former owner of the Edmonton Oilers, Peter Pocklington; a well-known and very respected Quebec politician, Claude Wagner; Jack Horner; Flora MacDonald; and Paul Hellyer. There is a term out of that called the “Flora Syndrome”, which, if you're interested, I can talk about at some point. That's what got me interested in politics: the excitement of watching that on TV as a young guy. Joe Clark soon became the youngest Prime Minister ever. He was 39 in 1979 when he was elected Prime Minister—imagine that...39. He was 36 when he was elected leader of the Conservative party.
In that 1984 convention, John Turner inherited a colossal mess...the poor bugger. It was a mess that Pierre Trudeau had left him. Pierre Trudeau famously made him sign, as part of the transition, a document appointing, surprisingly, a bunch of former ministers, bagmen and campaign workers to somewhere over 58 patronage positions—Senate seats.... Pierre Trudeau didn't have the guts to make them himself, but as part of the transition.... I don't know if it was his refusal to move out of 24 Sussex or what its was that made John Turner say, “I want to live there”. He signed this document, and John Turner signed a document appointing people like Bryce Mackasey, a minister under Trudeau, to the ambassador in Ireland, and all of those things. It was a horrible raft of patronage.
That was the beginning of the downfall. John Turner operated his Prime Minister's Office out of the Château Laurier. He never called Parliament back even though he was probably one of the people who respected Parliament the most. All the great campaign gurus, the “rainmaker” Keith Davey—some of the Liberal party members will actually know that, and if you don't, you should read his books—then senator Keith Davey, those folks all told him he didn't need to bring Parliament back. As an elected leader of the Liberal party, and now as de facto sworn in Prime Minister of Canada, he didn't need to be accountable to Parliament as Prime Minister. He just needed to go on the barbeque circuit. Everybody would love him like they loved Pierre Trudeau in 1968 but not since then.
Pierre Trudeau was smart enough to know that he couldn't defeat the newly elected leader Brian Mulroney in 1984, but John Turner lost that election. As I mentioned earlier, it was the largest victory ever winning 211 of 282 seats. People speculated back then that the Liberal Party and the NDP would become one party. Little did they know that today that has actually happened.
Going forward, what happened to John Turner? I mentioned the Gulf War in 1991 when I talked about my boss at the time. I've had requests to mention her name. She's still alive and still kicking: the Honourable Barbara McDougall, Canada's second woman to be a foreign minister. The Gulf War was launched back then. The Internet was just coming up. We learned it on CNN..
John Turner, by this time, was still in the House of Commons representing Vancouver Quadra, but Jean Chrétien was the leader of the Liberal party. I know I'm educating the Liberals. Some of the Liberals may not know the history of their own party.
When the Gulf War happened, Jean Chrétien, as leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition, famously said he had no problem with our troops being in the Middle East even though Iraq invaded the sovereign nation of Kuwait. He had no problem with our troops being over there. However, when the firing started, we would take them back and keep them out of harm's way, because you sure wouldn't want a military to actually fight.
On the night the Gulf War was launched, CNN was covering it. There was a new reporter for CNN. His name was Kent. He is a relation to our former minister Peter Kent. In fact, I think it was his brother. Arthur Kent became known as the “scud stud” as he stood in Baghdad with scud missiles flying over his head while he reported on the launch of the shock and awe campaign in the Gulf War.
John Turner, in terms of ministerial and parliamentary accountability, was an old-fashioned guy who believed that whatever our views were of our troops going to war, and whether or not we should be in it, once we were in it, we supported our troops.
There was an emergency debate in the House that night when the Gulf War broke out. Jean Chrétien was to lead it off for Her Majesty's loyal opposition and went on at great length about how the then prime minister had to remove our troops from harm in the Middle East.
Brian Mulroney, of course, gave an impassioned speech about supporting our allies in the coalition of the willing and about defeating totalitarianism and a leader who had killed his own people, the Kurds, with mustard gas. He said that this was just the right thing to do.
You know what? Sometimes, as a civilized and wealthy nation, that's what we have to do. It's part of our responsibility in the world.
Jean Chrétien would not allow the former prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party, John Turner, to speak in the House of Commons in that emergency debate. He wouldn't let him because he knew that John Turner, as the former leader, would get up and contradict him about what the Liberal Party should do, because John Turner would stand up and say that we have to be with our troops.
John Turner did make a speech that night in the House. For those of you who are interested in parliamentary rules and how you go about that, the deputy prime minister of the government of the day was one of the greatest Albertans ever, the Honourable—actually, later to become “Right Honourable”—Donald Mazankowski. John Turner had a chat with the former deputy prime minister for Canada, Don Mazankowski, and told him of his situation and his desire to speak.
The former deputy prime minister of Canada got up to speak in this emergency debate on the launch of the Gulf War, and about a minute into his speech said that, by the way, Mr. Speaker, I'm sharing my time with the member for Vancouver-Quadra. Jean Chrétien was sitting in the seat of the leader of the opposition. It's 11 seats down from the Speaker and is the seat that our leader and the next prime minister currently holds, only temporarily, because he'll be 11 seats down on the right side of the Speaker in the not-too-distant future.
Jean Chrétien did one of these—and I know that if you're watching you can see this—and whipped his head around, like “Holy”.... I can't say. It probably would be unparliamentary. Maybe he said, “Holy fuddle duddle.” Turner got up and did the honourable thing in Parliament as a member of Parliament, as a person with independence, a person who believed you had to be accountable to Parliament, and said that he was supporting our troops.
That was the integrity of the man. It's the integrity of the place that a former leader and former Liberal prime minister placed on the role of Parliament and the role of prime ministers, the role of MPs and the role of ministers in respecting that institution, and on when you made decisions, how you had debates and the importance of those debates.