Madam Speaker, many Liberals think of Sir Wilfrid Laurier as the real founder of the Liberal Party.
When Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was in power the chief opposition to Macdonald came from two recalcitrant reform groups: les Rouges of Lower Canada, a group of French speaking radicals whose chief target was the Roman Catholic church; and the Clear Grits, originally an assemblage of discontented Presbyterian and Methodist farmers from the area southwest of Toronto. While the Grits disappeared as an entity in the 1870s the term clung to Liberals and was still widely used a century later.
Laurier was an attractive man, an elegantly handsome lawyer from a Quebec country town, eloquent, ambitious and sensitive. Early in his political life as one of the young leaders of les Rouges he had realized that if his confrères were ever to gain office they would have to form an alliance with the English and at the same time soften their anticlerical stance by identifying themselves with a political program acceptable to the Roman Catholic church.
Laurier proselytized that these goals could be reached through stressing the liberalism of his party, demanding the separation of republican and anticlerical dogmas. What he was saying to both races was that les Rouges could take a moderate approach compatible with the philosophy of William Lyon Mackenzie, the first Liberal prime minister, and Edward Blake, the only federal Liberal Party leader in Canada never to become prime minister.
He emphasized compromise and admiration for the liberal reform ideals that were then articulated by William Gladstone in England and that were to have a hold on the imaginations of Canadian Liberals for decades to come.
Laurier served four terms as Prime Minister, from 1896 to 1911. He taught us Liberals many of our greatest principles, including the most important: the need to find and maintain common ground between anglophones and francophones.
The Liberals realize that Laurier won the 1896 elections because the Conservatives had lost sight of this fundamental principle of the Canadian federation.
For Liberals the lessons of Laurier's leadership went far beyond the French-English entente. He buried dogmatism, abandoning the ideological rigidities that had plagued les Rouges and the Clear Grits. He built his electoral strength on the organizational backs of Liberal provincial premiers, Oliver Mowat of Ontario, William Stevens Fielding of Nova Scotia and Andrew George Blair of New Brunswick. He brought them into his cabinet as power brokers for their regions.
He launched the building of a second transcontinental railroad and sought support from the business community, modifying his party's commitment to free trade in order to appease the country's new industrialists.
Laurier supported the aggressive open immigration policy of his minister of the interior, Sir Clifford Sifton, whose purpose was the settlement of the west. He talked optimistically about the glorious future of Canada.
Laurier's successes were turned into principles that Liberals have followed for decades. Despite some setbacks, Laurier on the whole skilfully walked the French-English tightrope throughout his years in office, balancing French Canada's racial fears and
Nearly a century ago, Sir Wilfrid Laurier predicted that “it is Canada that shall fill the 20th century”. When we look back at it, who could call him wrong? The challenge before us now is to find a balance or a compromise among ourselves and among our many interests to make the 21st century Canada's as well.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier believed immensely in his country. He held strong views of what Canada could be or should be. More important, he possessed vision for Canada and for Canadians.
For all of these reasons, it seems very appropriate to celebrate the beginning of the 21st century by amending the Holidays Act to honour this remarkable Canadian by designating Sir Wilfrid Laurier Day.