The man who saved Canada’s Conservatives from political irrelevance
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Summary
In his new book, Freedom Fighter: John Diefenbaker's Battle for Canadian Liberties and Independence, author Bob Plamendon dives into trying to save the former prime minister s legacy from being forgotten. In this episode, Brian and Brian chat with the author about the life and legacy of the late Prime Minister, and why his time in office is greatly misunderstood.
Transcript
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John Diefenbaker still holds the record for winning the largest majority ever in Canadian history.
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And yet his legacy, his time in office is greatly misunderstood.
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Hello and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. My name is Brian Lilly, your host.
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In his new book, Freedom Fighter, John Diefenbaker's Battle for Canadian Liberties and Independence,
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author Bob Plamendon dives into trying to save Diefenbaker's legacy.
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Ask most people what Diefenbaker is all about and you might hear about the Avro Arrow,
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you might hear about the Diefen dollar, but you're not going to hear about his many accomplishments.
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Bob Plamendon wants to change that. Here's our chat about his new book.
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Bob, would you say that John George Diefenbaker was an unlikely politician, an unlikely prime minister?
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Well, when you think that he grew up poor, born in small-town Ontario, grew up in small-town Saskatchewan,
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didn't go to an elite college or university for education, was a perpetual outsider and did not come from British or French origin.
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The first person actually even to be in cabinet who was neither, that he ran for five elections,
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went zero for five before he came into the House of Commons and was largely despised by the elite and the power structure within the Conservative Party,
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then I would say yes, it was unlikely that he became prime minister.
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I mean, we look at his name now, everyone's used to Diefenbaker,
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that would have been a name that would set a lot of people back in the 1950s.
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Well, of course, we had just gone through two world wars against Germany,
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He did not like any form of discrimination or prejudice.
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So, you know, he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder when it came to that.
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But it was a lot to overcome, to have that as part of your legacy.
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Of course, half of his legacy was German, the other half was Scottish, but he was all Canadian all the way.
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I say that as someone whose parents are direct immigrants.
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And my parents never liked the idea of hyphenated Canadians.
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I know that you listened to the podcast episode by my colleague Tristan Hopper,
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that Diefenbaker is the biggest political rock star this country's ever seen,
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and that at the height of his popularity, it was bigger than Trudeau mania?
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So, you know, of the full episode on that one particular issue, I do agree with him.
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And then, so he won in 1957 when the Conservatives had lost eight of the previous nine elections.
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It was only R.B. Bennett that squeaked in there in 1930 during the Depression.
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But the Liberals had owned the electoral landscape in Canada.
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So, in 1957, you know, the Liberals were assured of victory with Louis Saint Laurent.
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And lo and behold, Diefenbaker wins this minority government.
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Nine months later, there's another election where he does win the largest majority in Canadian history,
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So, it was just a complete electoral landslide.
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And there was an attachment to Diefenbaker, a charisma about Diefenbaker,
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that we'd had these politicians, you know, that spoke down to people in some respects,
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You know, he talked about representing the poor, the disadvantaged, those who, you know, ordinary Canadians.
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And, you know, here he, and he was running against a fellow who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, Lester Pearson.
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But Lester Pearson didn't have that connection with ordinary Canadians.
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He didn't, he didn't speak their language or have their aspirations.
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So, people thought with John Diefenbaker, we've got somebody who knows us,
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who will represent us, who understands who we are, who's going to make our life better.
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So, he was a rock star to the point where, and he was, he was, he could deliver a speech like no other at the time.
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You know, he was, you know, he could deliver lines like lightning bolts against his opponents.
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So, you know, he just captured hearts and minds to the point that people went to his rallies.
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And even in Quebec, where the Tories had been nowhere in Quebec since the days of Sir Johnny MacDonald,
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Now, of course, he had Maurice Duplessis on his team helping him out, the Premier of Quebec.
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That was an election like we've never seen before.
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I encourage everyone to go listen to that episode.
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You said he had the Premier of Quebec, Maurice Duplessis, on his side.
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But he didn't have the Central Canadian power brokers.
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The Premier of Ontario, Leslie Frost, remarked,
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They didn't want him near the leadership of the Conservative Party when he ran in 1956.
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But after George Drew stepped down, a guy who had previously been Premier of Ontario but couldn't win a federal election,
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Why did they dislike him so much in the party brass when people were obviously drawn to him?
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So the party brass did not like him for two reasons.
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One, he came to Ottawa as an MP and did his work,
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but he really did not ingratiate himself to his fellow members of Parliament.
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His connection was with the rank-and-file members of the party.
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So they didn't see him necessarily as a team player.
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They saw him as a guy certainly with a vision and a passion and a great orator,
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but they weren't sure that they could trust him.
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let's just say, the bastion of the Albany Club in Toronto,
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So the bankers, business people, you know, the wealthy,
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the people that had great academic credentials were wary of him
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because he was talking about helping people across the country
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in ways that the Conservatives had not done before.
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They didn't think that poverty was something that politicians addressed.
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People just worked hard and free enterprise would take care of everything and everybody.
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So here he came forward with a completely different message and vision
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that countered what was the established Tory tradition.
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So, you know, they thought he was a little bit crazy for some of the ideas
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and some of the sentiments that, you know, that he produced.
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And, you know, they, you know, there's beyond the, you know,
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the quotes of Drew and Goodman and others, you know,
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Let's just let the crazy son of a bitch have it.
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He's going to lose the next election anyway, and we'll come back in charge.
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There's no point in kicking against the pricks who want him.
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Devenbaker's got them, you know, sort of in their back pocket.
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So let him have his shot and we'll be done with him.
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But lo and behold, he wins it, wins the next election.
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And they didn't even forget that, Brian, because in 1963, when he's prime minister,
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he faces a revolt from within his own party while he's prime minister.
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That precipitated his downfall in that election.
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In terms of his style and some of what you've described,
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you know, as I'm reading the book, I'm thinking,
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but Polyev is someone who obviously studied Devenbaker and appreciated him.
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He invoked him often, not quite as often as Sir Wilfrid Laurier's Canada's Freedom stand.
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But did you get that sense watching Polyev over the last couple of years that he was
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like Stephen Harper before him, inspired by Devenbaker?
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So certainly Pierre Polyev would quote Devenbaker's mantra that he spoke of when he passed the Bill of Rights
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about, you know, how he was a free Canadian, you know, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion,
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These freedoms that he bequeathed to all Canadians.
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And that was certainly a central theme in Pierre Polyev's campaign and his mission,
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And, you know, one thing about Devenbaker is that he was not particularly ideological.
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And, you know, you think of the various factions of conservatism and say,
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I would say that Devenbaker didn't represent any of them, you know, particularly strongly.
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Um, he was a populist in the sense that he wanted to solve people's problems and he didn't come to office
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In fact, he launched more royal commissions than any other prime minister before or since,
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because, you know, he did want to have the benefit of the experts.
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He wanted to study the problems and he wanted to see what would work.
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So I'm not sure that, you know, that that would have been Pierre's approach had he become prime minister.
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But there there is a lot about the the way that they address crowds.
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They both attracted large crowds and they've tracked out a following and people invested,
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And they they didn't say things that you would get out of central casting from a politician.
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So in that respect, there are some similarities.
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Yeah, well, I understand what you're saying about, you know, different styles of populism.
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I think Pierre had more ideology rooted within him.
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But, yeah, it's just some of the the ways that he acted comparing to what you were describing.
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I'm thinking back to my time visiting the Devenbaker Center at the University of Saskatchewan.
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And it's just an amazing experience that anyone should go and see, being able to sit behind his desk,
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being able to sit at his cabinet table, seeing all the artifacts.
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We don't do that a lot for our prime ministers.
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Of course, we we tend to forget about them as soon as they're they've left office.
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So I haven't been through the center other than virtually and, you know, talking with people who are resident there.
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He certainly appreciated not only Canadian history, but, you know, world history and his place in it.
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And in fact, he offered to donate his home to the government of Canada for a dollar to serve as a as a place where Canadians could come and visit in Ottawa, where he lived.
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And, of course, that was turned down by the government of Canada, which is unfortunate.
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I mean, there is a there is a center in Shewinigan for Prime Minister Crecce that, you know,
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we also have the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, which had lots of money attached to it.
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But otherwise, we don't we have we haven't put up a statue on Parliament Hill to a prime minister since since Pearson.
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But so we've got an airport named for Pearson, the biggest airport in the country.
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Yeah, I'm sitting steps from an area, University of Toronto, where they've got the Lester B. Pearson Peace Garden is a beautiful spot.
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My dog and I love to sit there in the mornings and sip coffee.
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The dog doesn't know all these things named for Pearson.
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And Diefenbaker was demonstrably more successful in terms of electoral terms.
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But is it just that liberals get all of these platitudes, all of these honors and conservatives don't because conservatives aren't in power as often or won't do this?
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And liberals want to, you know, elevate Pearson and Trudeau and talk about their wonderful legacies.
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Well, it's true that since the days of McDonnell, liberals had held power, you know, at least two thirds of the time.
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So they've had not only the opportunity to govern, but the conservatives had had fewer opportunities to recognize their own.
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As far as Diefenbaker is concerned, you know, one of the challenges that we have is there hasn't been a real honest assessment and an evidence-based assessment of his record.
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He's seen in popular Canadian literature as a bit of a buffoon, a cartoon character, a man out of step with his times, a bit of a lunatic.
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So if with that sentiment that was established, I think largely because of a book that Peter C. Newman wrote, you know, Renegade in Power, that the press popularized.
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The CBC certainly they created a documentary series on the Avro Arrow that was slanderous and a gross act of fiction that sort of cemented what people thought about John Diefenbaker.
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So he needed to be rescued, not from the slander.
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I mean, there's things you can say positive and negative about him, but it was all negative.
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It was only when Stephen Harper became prime minister that quite, I think, cleverly, they renamed the building that sits right beside the Lester B. Pearson building where external affairs, foreign affairs is located.
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And the building that's right beside it, they renamed the John George Diefenbaker building.
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So they are side by side, institutionally, staring at each other, these two massive structures that house foreign affairs.
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Well, and of course, I went to many, many news conferences where they would invoke the name of Diefenbaker during the Harper government and they would talk about his Bill of Rights, which you wouldn't know had ever been passed.
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But, you know, this is a man who appointed the first Chinese Canadian to cabinet, the first woman to cabinet, gave Aboriginals to vote.
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So maybe I know more about Diefenbaker because, you know, he seemed to have a bit of a lore in Hamilton where I grew up because there was Ellen Fairclough.
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John Diefenbaker or Sean O'Sullivan, who was a hero, especially for those of us going through the Catholic school system,
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who Diefenbaker had been talking to and listening to since he was a teenager at Bishop Ryan High School.
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Well, maybe I just know more of that, but you're correct.
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It is this constant, you mentioned Diefenbaker's name, and people will go off about the Avro arrow.
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In fact, I want to play a clip of Jason Kenney from that Canada Did What podcast that I mentioned earlier here,
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where Kenney's talking about the fact that until maybe 20, 25 years ago, you'd still have people say,
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I haven't voted Tory since Diefenbaker canceled the arrow.
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Let me say that it was a great tradition of conservative campaigns to see how many times
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would you get a comment at the door, I haven't voted Tory since Diefenbaker scrapped the Avro arrow.
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Now, I think the last time I heard that was probably circa 2000, but that legend lived on
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in Canadian politics for several decades that you could talk to almost any conservative candidate
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federally or provincially for the better part of the latter half of the 20th century.
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And they will have heard voters say right up into the late 90s,
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I've never voted Tory since Diefenbaker scrapped the arrow.
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So is that part of the reason for this book and, you know, setting the record straight on things
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like the arrow, setting the record straight on his passion for fundamental rights and freedoms
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for human rights? Is that part of the reason that you did this book?
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So it is part of the reason, but I start with the premise, Brian, that Canada in itself is an
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improbable country, you know, given our geography, our diversity language. And, you know, somehow
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we've been able to bring this country together and make it an incredibly successful, much admired
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nation beating all the odds because we've had over our history, exceptional political leadership at
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various points in time. And we can learn from our, from our history to help us solve the problems
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of today. So the more we know about Canada, where we've come from, I think the less we apologize for
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Canada, the more we celebrate Canada, the more that we, we come together as a country. And part of
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that is knowing and understanding the true history. So I think John Diefenbaker is much
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misunderstood the issues that he faced, the decisions that he made, the foundation
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that he laid out that, you know, whether it was, well, we can talk about the Avro arrow,
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but the roads to resources that opened up the North and our resources to development,
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the way that he stood up to an American administration that was quite belligerent
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about Canada, about Diefenbaker and the most severe form of election interference in Canadian history
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comes at a time when John Diefenbaker is in power. His efforts to diversify trade away from the United
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States around the world, which seems pretty topical these days, all come from Diefenbaker.
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Our, our social safety net at the, the hospitalization coverage that was a precursor to Medicare
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comes from John Diefenbaker. These things are not well understood. What we do know because of the
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CBC's docuseries, well, we are, and others is we know that he canceled the Avro arrow and he sacked
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the governor of the Bank of Canada. And how could a prime minister ever have done that? And when you
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look at the evidence as I do in, in the, and, and standing up to an American administration
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and, and, and not having American controlled nuclear weapons on Canadian soil, these are all
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Diefenbaker decisions that were, that put him on the right side of history and have not been reversed
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by his successors in any way. You know, this may upset a certain political columnist, but he was
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right to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada, in my view. He was a hundred percent correct. At the
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time you had a governor of the Bank of Canada, if anyone had gone rogued, um, it was Coyne,
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James Coyne, who was a lawyer and was made governor of the Bank of Canada because the liberal government
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of the day did not want to have, um, a Jew, Louis Razminski as the governor of the Bank of Canada,
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who was eminently more qualified. And here you had the James Coyne talking down the Canadian economy,
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speaking out critically of the government of Canada's fiscal policy, not, you know, impact on
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monetary policy, um, and, and instituted, um, erratic monetary policy where we saw the, the,
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the interest rates in Canada fluctuate from 2% to 6% to 2% all over the map and quite distinct from
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what was going on in the United States to the point that he did something no other, um, Bank of Canada
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governor could do is he united economists across the country to come together, all whom who say we
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value our independence, but we, we think this man is doing tremendous damage to the Canadian economy
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and he needs to be sacked. And the only way, and he, before he became governor, he said, if I was ever
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in disagreement with the government, the government of the day, I would do the honorable thing and resign.
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The government of the day asked him to resign and he refused. And so Diefenbaker at the end,
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you know, for that and other reasons, uh, passed a bill in the house of commons to, to declare the
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office of the Bank of Canada vacant. And, um, did he have a message for the Canadian public about,
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uh, the recession and the economy at the, at the time? Well, so the governor of the Bank of Canada
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essentially said, you're going to have to consume less. You're going to have to spend less. You're
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going to have to borrow less. Your standard of living is going to have to decline. Um, because,
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you know, as, as he saw it, the government was deficit was too large, but in, in relative terms,
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it was, it wasn't large at all. It was, it was, it was quite minor. And in his messages that from the
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governor of the Bank of Canada is we have to kick the Americans effectively or diminish their role
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in investment in, in, in Canada so that we have a made in Canada economy. So he's asking Canadians
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not only to tighten their belts, but to, to lower their expectation and their standard of living.
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This coming from the governor of the Bank of Canada. But, but what was, uh, Diefenbaker's
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message after he, you know, fired coin? Well, Diefenbaker's message after he fired coin is he put in
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a new governor of the Bank of Canada, the economy recovered quite strongly from, from, uh, from,
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from a recession. Um, and then coin went on, you know, to, uh, you know, to, to become a, uh,
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you know, chairman of a, of a bank. And they asked him to resign from that after a scandal and he
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refused to resign from that, uh, you know, as well. All right. So we've set the record straight on the
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coin affair. When we come back from this quick break, I do want to ask you to set the record straight
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on the Avro arrow. And then we'll get into the accomplishments of, I think, one of the most
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underrated prime ministers in Canadian history. Back in moments.
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This is Tristan Hopper, the host of Canada Did What?
00:25:46.860
Where we unpack the biggest, weirdest, and wildest political moments in Canadian history
00:25:51.340
you thought you knew and tell you what really happened.
00:25:54.940
Stick around at the end of the episode to hear a sample of one of our favourite episodes.
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00:26:05.560
So Bob, I don't want to make the whole episode about the Arrow.
00:26:09.540
I think it is something that people talk about far too much, but there is popular perception
00:26:15.880
due to CBC and others, as you've noted, that he killed the Avro Arrow and this was the most
00:26:25.700
And, you know, the Americans only got to the moon because all the guys fired from that
00:26:29.620
went to NASA and we could have been this superpower on the defence side if he hadn't done this.
00:26:43.740
But what is true was the Arrow Arrow was an engineering marvel.
00:26:53.160
Now this is, this is the Arrow without any, you know, military equipment or any, any ballistics
00:26:59.800
equipments on it, you know, no missiles, but it was a project that started off by working
00:27:08.860
It became a made in Canada, all Canadian affair.
00:27:16.160
It didn't respond to the military threats of the day.
00:27:21.160
So this was, we were in the midst of the Cold War and all of the, at the time, if you were
00:27:28.160
growing up in the late 1950s, early 1960s, and you were in grade school or high school,
00:27:34.220
you were practising in your classroom, hiding under your desks because there was, the Russians
00:27:40.840
had acquired nuclear weapons and that was the threat.
00:27:43.560
You know, this is just before the Cuban Missile Crisis where, you know, this, the Cold War was
00:27:51.560
And so how do you defend against nuclear missiles coming in from, from Russia or elsewhere from
00:28:02.980
The defence requirements that the military were saying was we need our own missiles.
00:28:09.720
We need our, a bone mark missile program, the interceptor flights, you know, for surveillance.
00:28:16.960
They were very fast, but could, couldn't stay in the air for very long.
00:28:21.120
And they were aimed, they were designed to, to take down bombers, right?
00:28:25.160
Well, well, another, like, take, take on fighter jets or bombers.
00:28:29.880
Now we have intercontinental ballistic missiles.
00:28:31.980
They're, they're not flying, you know, at, you know, conventional speeds.
00:28:35.540
These things are, you know, are, are rockets and, and, and, and, and the Avro Aero would
00:28:42.160
On top of that, but we still needed some coverage, you know, we still needed some air coverage,
00:28:46.680
but the cost of this had gone up by more than 500%.
00:28:50.420
And the only way that the Avro Aero could have been viable and feasible is if the technology
00:28:57.380
we developed had a market around the world, if we could develop this and sell this, make
00:29:01.480
it part of, you know, the NATO compliment, make it a, you know, a standard, but there
00:29:06.220
was no market whatsoever for this plane, um, for, for lots of reasons, including that it
00:29:11.980
had, you know, the program had been infiltrated by a Russian spy, but that wasn't known specifically
00:29:17.040
So the, the government of Louis Saint Laurent, the liberal government had determined to scrap
00:29:23.120
The, the recommendation from the Canadian military to the Louis Saint Laurent government was to
00:29:32.400
Fancy, fancy, um, and, and, and an injuring marvel, but this is the wrong plane for our defense
00:29:44.580
The liberals did not make that decision because they were afraid that before an election,
00:29:48.280
it would be viewed negatively by the public who, you know, were amped up about this, uh,
00:29:53.580
So they deferred the decision until after the election.
00:29:57.600
Diefenbaker is left to make the decision when he's, he's setting government priorities,
00:30:03.300
you know, spending restrictions need to be put in place.
00:30:12.480
Some say it's because he was, it was, he was dictated to by the American government that
00:30:17.940
he was just following what they had told him to do.
00:30:20.640
Anybody who studied John Diefenbaker knows that, that, you know, if, if, if, if he was
00:30:26.020
told by the American government to cancel it, he would have been more likely to keep it
00:30:30.800
He was not in bed with the Americans in any way.
00:30:32.980
He made a tough call that every expert who's looked at it, who's looked at the evidence
00:30:39.160
And I went through all of the records concluded that that was, that was the right call to make,
00:30:43.260
but it became the subject of great conspiracy theories that, you know, they, they had to
00:30:47.940
destroy the planes and put them at the bottom of Lake Ontario.
00:30:51.220
And, you know, essentially none of that, none of that is true.
00:30:54.520
Although it's perpetuated because as I said, people never wanted to come to Diefenbaker's
00:30:59.360
You know, the liberals would say, you know, the Tories are like mumps, you get them once
00:31:04.620
So they, you know, they weren't going to come to his, uh, his defense.
00:31:08.740
And then there was the battle within the conservative party that he held on for leadership too long.
00:31:13.880
And so, you know, his defenders were few and far between, but canceling the Avro Arrow was
00:31:21.140
Claiming that he canceled the Arrow because he was, you know, being dictated to by the Americans,
00:31:26.440
you describe him fighting not one, but two presidents in the book.
00:31:31.060
Like, you know, he, he, he stood up to both Eisenhower and to Kennedy at different times.
00:31:38.160
He did, um, certainly more so with Kennedy than was Eisenhower.
00:31:43.320
I think they were more kindred spirits, maybe because of, you know, the generation and the
00:31:47.780
respect that Diefenbaker had because of Eisenhower's wartime record.
00:31:51.200
But Eisenhower did not want China to come into the United Nations.
00:31:59.100
They called him naive for thinking that that, that, that could happen.
00:32:03.520
Eisenhower did not want Canada to sell wheat to China.
00:32:07.980
And Diefenbaker said, I'm elected by the people of Canada and by the farmers of Canada.
00:32:14.640
And so I'm not, he's, I'm not selling them strategic, um, intelligence or, or, or, or weaponry.
00:32:22.380
So he had battles with, with, with Eisenhower, but, you know, nothing compared to what he had
00:32:31.400
Kennedy thought that Diefenbaker should do whatever he was told.
00:32:38.160
He didn't, never wanted to be seen as a satellite of the United States.
00:32:42.120
So, you know, the title of my book is his fight for Canadian, uh, the subtitle, Canadian
00:32:48.560
He viewed Canada as having a voice in the world stage.
00:32:51.620
And it was a country that mattered not because, you know, it was friends with the United States,
00:32:56.320
but we, we had virtue in our, in our own right.
00:32:59.300
And, you know, it's why he loved McDonald so much.
00:33:01.560
McDonald was the, the man who, who kept us out of the hands of the Americans in their
00:33:07.500
And, and, and, and, and Diefenbaker was a, a firm believer in the monarchy and the traditions
00:33:13.060
and the Magna Carta and the petitions of rights and habeas corpus.
00:33:17.100
He embraced all that tradition that, that came from, from great Britain.
00:33:20.940
So he wanted to keep his distance from, from the United States and Kennedy didn't like it.
00:33:25.300
What do you think drove him to do things like, uh, extend the vote to first nations to look
00:33:35.860
at someone like Doug, Douglas young and say, this man's going to be in cabinet.
00:33:41.080
You know, it wasn't that long ago that Chinese Canadians couldn't be citizens.
00:33:45.180
He's going to put them in cabinet and then send them to the United nations.
00:33:50.000
I believe it was old video that I saw Douglas young saying he's at the United nations, sitting
00:33:56.760
And someone came over looking at him, this Chinese looking man.
00:34:01.600
And they say, sorry, sir, you're at the desk for Canada.
00:34:06.120
Um, I mean, those would have been out of step with a lot of what people wanted or expected
00:34:13.000
at the time is same with putting Ellen Fairclough in cabinet.
00:34:16.160
What, what drove him to, to take steps like that, that we're, we're at the forefront really
00:34:24.080
Well, it go back, it goes back to where we started, which was he opposed any form of discrimination
00:34:29.660
or prejudice of any kind, be it where your country of origin, the color of your skin, your
00:34:36.460
sex, how can we be a great country if we're holding back anyone who can contribute to our
00:34:46.480
And so, you know, and, and he was a long time advocate for indigenous people and, and spoke
00:34:53.520
about, about their contributions to Canada, how their over contribution to Canada during
00:35:00.620
The fact that without the support of the indigenous people, we would, we may not have won the
00:35:07.560
And he, and he, so he wanted to bring all those forces together when it came to, to South
00:35:12.720
Africa, for example, South Africa would say, well, how can you lecture us on apartheid when
00:35:19.180
you don't have any indigenous people in your, in your government, which is, well, he, he might
00:35:24.820
have said that's, well, he did say, I can't well lecture them when we don't have Canada free
00:35:33.320
So he appointed Gladstone, Chief Gladstone to the Senate of Canada to be the first parliamentarian
00:35:38.840
to, to pave, to pave the way for indigenous people to become parliamentarians.
00:35:44.700
He was able to speak up at the Commonwealth against the British prime minister who did
00:35:51.120
not want South Africa to be removed from the Commonwealth, but he led the charge.
00:35:55.940
He was a troublemaker as, as the British prime minister said at the time, you know, standing
00:36:01.700
high and mighty and being sanctimonious about it to Diefenbaker.
00:36:06.220
It was just pure, pure equity, um, giving indigenous people the right to vote.
00:36:11.680
The liberal said you could have the right to vote.
00:36:13.540
If you surrender all your treaty rights, if you surrender your status and Diefenbaker said,
00:36:20.100
They were made, you know, by the crown with indigenous people.
00:36:23.720
And that should not prohibit them from exercising democratic rights.
00:36:28.000
So he said, you have open democratic rights, no conditions attached to it.
00:36:34.580
This is why he would never join one of the clubs of the clubs at the time, the private
00:36:43.220
Um, this was not the conventional thinking at the time and why he was seen somewhat as a
00:36:47.620
troublemaker because he made people who were attached to these institutions and clubs
00:36:55.300
So this was just part of his character and who he was.
00:36:59.280
I think he knew this was his purpose and his vision and his destiny.
00:37:04.200
You know, he appointed the first Ukrainian, um, to cabinet and the people in Saskatchewan
00:37:10.580
who, who, who spoke Ukrainian, you know, we're in tears thinking, I can't believe that
00:37:15.480
there's a member of cabinet in our government who speaks our language, you know, and who's
00:37:22.200
This is something that, that, that Devenbaker was, uh, was incredibly proud about and, and
00:37:28.800
Well, I mean, those were remarkable steps, uh, and removing the, um, country of origin as
00:37:36.780
a deciding factor on whether you could immigrate or not.
00:37:39.900
He changed the immigration system so that it became colorblind and he, you know, here's
00:37:48.080
He took country of origin off the census because he said, what does it matter where you came
00:37:54.160
He did not like the, you know, hyphenating Canadians.
00:37:56.920
In fact, he didn't even like English Canadian versus French Canadian.
00:38:00.860
He thought we're all Canadians, but it, you know, of course he, he didn't hesitate to appoint
00:38:05.700
the first Francophone governor general of Canada.
00:38:09.560
Um, he wanted to embrace Canada and all of its respects and all its language and its cultural
00:38:16.820
The bill of rights, um, I guess supplanted in many ways by the charter.
00:38:28.400
It's still enforced by the way, for people that don't realize that.
00:38:31.260
Uh, and, and sometimes it does get cited, uh, in court decisions.
00:38:37.700
Uh, would we have been better served if the bill of rights had stayed as it was instead
00:38:44.740
Could they have altered the bill of rights a little bit just to, to keep it cleaner, uh,
00:38:52.480
more easy to understand, less convoluted than that thing that we got in 1982, 84?
00:38:58.120
Well, whatever you think of the charter of rights and freedoms, and I certainly wrote
00:39:02.360
a lot about it in my book on Pierre Trudeau, about how it came about and what its power and
00:39:09.960
Uh, but the bill of rights, certainly if you, if you consider this an evolution, this was
00:39:15.240
the first and very critical and important step.
00:39:18.460
So this was a statement to say essentially that no law should be passed that is discriminatory
00:39:24.840
in nature on religion, on sex, on, on, on a whole range of grounds.
00:39:29.940
The problem with the bill of rights, and no one was talking about it at the time.
00:39:33.560
This was, you know, the, the political parties weren't talking about it.
00:39:40.160
And I don't think it got Diefenbaker many votes, but he felt it was the right thing to
00:39:45.220
do. Um, the problem was because it wasn't a constitutional amendment, it only applied
00:39:56.680
So you, you could not on the basis of the bill of rights, strike down a provincial law,
00:40:01.360
um, you know, on that basis, only a federal law.
00:40:04.660
It was used in the courts of law, particularly when a government bill or regulation was overtly
00:40:13.200
discriminatory, particularly with respect to indigenous people.
00:40:15.920
So, you know, you could, you could, you could consume, if you're an indigenous person, you
00:40:19.960
could consume alcohol, um, on the reserve, but not off.
00:40:24.140
And, and, and so this was, you know, highly discriminatory and that, and that law was,
00:40:30.440
Um, the, but the bill of rights was all within the, the, the power structure of the federal
00:40:39.640
Um, the, the judiciary had some role in interpreting, uh, the, the, uh, that bill, but the charter
00:40:47.920
The charter of rights was a massive transfer of power away from parliament and into the hands
00:40:54.240
of the judiciary where up until then they were basically arguing disputes between federal
00:40:59.600
And now all of a sudden, you know, they were remaking social policy in Canada from, from
00:41:06.400
But, um, I would say that the charter of rights built on the foundation that existed in the,
00:41:18.500
Um, we we've talked about how he doesn't get credit for a lot of things, but does he have
00:41:26.220
Um, they should know about it and his legacy is a strong one.
00:41:33.340
And as I said before, almost nothing that he did was undone.
00:41:38.380
And in fact, it was, uh, reinforced by his successor.
00:41:42.140
So his policy on, on not accepting nuclear American controlled nuclear weapons on Canadian
00:41:50.520
Pearson brought in American controlled nuclear weapons on Canadian soil.
00:41:56.980
And so that policy that Diefenbaker advocated for has been the policy of the federal government
00:42:04.580
Um, I think on the world stage, I've mentioned South Africa.
00:42:10.760
And it inspired not only people around the world, um, but certainly set a, a high watermark
00:42:16.600
for Canadian prime ministers in standing up for, for discrimination.
00:42:22.380
Um, you know, I encourage anyone who, who, um, who cares about indigenous Canadians to read
00:42:29.020
the book and the, and, and what happened in the parliament of Canada between 1940 and 1979
00:42:34.460
when Diefenbaker was there, what were the issues that they were facing?
00:42:39.480
How did Diefenbaker lead that charge and so show respect and the admiration that, that
00:42:46.820
That's part of his, that's certainly part of his legacy.
00:42:50.200
Um, his roads to resources project, developing the far North.
00:42:55.160
Um, and, and he used to say, don't give me this, these bureaucratic studies to say it's
00:42:59.640
We're changing the character and the nature of Canada by developing our resources and making
00:43:06.080
That's foundational to the prosperity that we enjoy today.
00:43:09.800
Um, that he, um, just as an aside on that, Bob, uh, you know, the Stephen Harper picked
00:43:18.900
up on that when he was in office, Trudeau kind of lost interest or never had interest in
00:43:24.900
it, but I remember speaking to a Biden administration official about the, the trade irritants with
00:43:32.340
Canada and why, you know, cause people think it's just under Republicans or Trump that there's
00:43:38.540
And they said, why won't you just get Gray's point built the port in Nunavut?
00:43:51.360
Now it might get built with these national projects of great importance, but the Americans
00:43:58.080
They, they, they wanted these roads to resources as, uh, Diefenbaker called it.
00:44:03.860
That is still an issue today that is resonating in Canada and was actually causing friction between
00:44:09.900
the Trudeau government and the Biden government just a few months ago.
00:44:13.600
Well, without John Diefenbaker's vision and his leadership and his insistence, none of that
00:44:23.960
He had over 6,000 kilometers of road built during that period.
00:44:29.120
I mean, it would take us that long to study it today before, before it got off the ground,
00:44:33.940
but he, you know, he delivered it in, in additional rail lines.
00:44:37.400
Um, so this, this, this, this is, this is a key part of his, his legacy.
00:44:43.440
I've mentioned how he, he, he, he saw that there was a role for government in helping people
00:44:51.740
Um, he wasn't a laissez-faire guy, you know, built, you know, the, uh, the foundation for hospital
00:44:56.480
care in Canada, um, stood up for Canadian independence and showed we didn't have to follow the American
00:45:02.580
example, stood up to the Soviets and the United Nations with a thundering speech taking on Nikita
00:45:08.620
Khrushchev and show that Canada had a strong voice on the, on, on the world stage, you know,
00:45:13.560
for conservatives, they should appreciation because he turned a party of losers into a
00:45:20.840
They had lost eight of the previous nine elections and John Diefenbaker comes around and wins
00:45:27.780
Um, so he showed how, how conservatives and conservatism can actually be a winning force
00:45:34.420
in, in, uh, in Canadian politics and a national party.
00:45:38.080
This was not, you know, and I should, I should say that he believed in a truly national party
00:45:43.280
with representation in, in, in, in all parts of the country.
00:45:46.540
He was not, um, he was not a fan of social credit in the West who he saw as a regionally
00:45:53.460
He wanted a party that was, that was relevant nationally and that's, and that's what he
00:45:59.540
Uh, you, you've talked about the impact on the conservative party.
00:46:02.740
I have to ask you as we close about two liberals.
00:46:05.040
Um, he was famously saved by one, John Turner while on vacation, almost drowning, but you've
00:46:11.020
got the foreword in your book, uh, from Jean Chrétien, uh, who says many nice things about
00:46:17.000
him and, uh, uh, I love how Chrétien put it that he was my opponent, not my enemy.
00:46:24.620
And then hearkens back to them being small town lawyers.
00:46:28.940
Uh, I know that you've spoken to Mr. Chrétien many times.
00:46:35.800
Um, so he, he saw John Diefenbaker as a man who loved his country, as a house of commons
00:46:44.780
man who respected the institution of parliament, uh, a great debater, a great speaker, all lot
00:46:55.540
You've mentioned they both come from small town, small town lawyers, you know, not from
00:46:59.880
the elite, uh, institutions sticking up for ordinary Canadians.
00:47:04.140
They had that in common, but you'll also notice in the foreword that John Chrétien wrote is
00:47:09.280
that John Diefenbaker could throw a punch below the belt.
00:47:13.000
Um, now that's his way of saying that he was, he was highly competitive.
00:47:17.740
He didn't dis, he didn't agree with, with Diefenbaker.
00:47:21.340
They had, you know, famous, uh, battles over the Canadian flag.
00:47:24.820
The liberals were instituting a new Canadian flag and John Diefenbaker opposed it, but he
00:47:29.460
could, he could admire the, the courage and the conviction and the flair, um, that, that
00:47:35.380
John Diefenbaker possessed and that he had a strong social conscience, which I think, you
00:47:41.080
know, puts him in line with, with, uh, Diefenbaker.
00:47:44.460
Uh, I don't think that he appreciated the attacks that, um, many of, of, of, of John Chrétien's
00:47:54.080
So he didn't want to, you know, create the impression that they were, they were friends
00:47:57.960
in any way, but he could certainly admire his, his commitment, dedication and love of Canada
00:48:02.700
and, and how he, how he carried on a battle without, without becoming, um, enemies.
00:48:09.340
And in, in, in fact, in one of John Chrétien's books, um, when he was a backbuncher, whenever
00:48:15.800
Diefenbaker would take on a liberal minister and really skewer them, they'd send notes over
00:48:21.400
to Diefenbaker to congratulate them because they thought this was that much easier for them
00:48:26.240
to move into cabinet if he took, if he took one of the liberal cabinet ministers down.
00:48:30.460
So, you know, he, he appreciated that, that aspect of it to the extent that it advanced
00:48:36.600
So I, I think it says something about John Chrétien, a liberal prime minister, that he's
00:48:40.940
prepared to write a forward to a book about a conservative prime minister, about his love
00:48:46.720
I think everyone that reads the book, uh, Freedom Fighter will have a greater appreciation
00:48:57.580
This episode was produced by Andre Proulx, theme music by Bryce Hall.
00:49:03.180
Hit that subscribe button, hit a like button, wherever you're getting your podcasts.
00:49:07.360
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00:49:23.380
Two years later, he was still opposition leader, and he lost again to the Pearson Liberals.
00:49:30.400
Despite this, Diefenbaker doesn't resign as leader of the Progressive Conservatives,
00:49:35.680
which put the party in an awkward situation that hasn't really happened before.
00:49:40.560
The typical rules of a Canadian political party were that you stayed leader until you
00:49:46.620
And if you lost twice in a row, you were supposed to do the honorable thing and step aside.
00:49:51.340
But Diefenbaker just didn't, prompting the party to take the unprecedented step of forcing
00:49:58.100
a party convention in Toronto for the singular purpose of crowbarring Diefenbaker out of the
00:50:05.700
Diefenbaker shows up, pretends everything is fine, and gives a finger-wagging speech chastising
00:50:14.280
I followed this party when I didn't agree with policies.
00:50:28.500
He's politely cheered by the assembled conservatives, and then abjectly humiliated in their subsequent
00:50:35.600
On the first ballot, Diefenbaker gets a distant fifth place, and even then he refuses to admit
00:50:44.220
If you want to hear the rest of the story, make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What?