Joe Clark
- Seats short of a majority 1979: 6. Term of office 273 days.
To improve his situation slightly, Clark supported the selection of Liberal member James Jerome, House Speaker in the 30th Parliament, to serve as speaker once again, and this was seconded by Opposition Leader Pierre Trudeau. (Starting in 1986, the speaker was elected in a secret ballot vote by the members of the house.)
While the Liberals had had first the Progressives and later the NDP to support them in minority situations, the Progressive Conservatives had little experience attracting support as a minority government. Seven months after the 1979 election which ended 11 years of Trudeau Liberal government, the Tory government of Joe Clark was defeated in motion of no confidence in the government and its budget moved by Bob Rae of the NDP and supported by the Liberals.
Clark might have prevented this defeat had his government agreed to support the Quebec based Social Credit Party in its bid to maintain official party status—the party's seat total had fallen to six seats as a result of the 1979 election. However, Clark had hoped to follow the precedent set by Diefenbaker and pledged to "govern as if" he had a majority and then advance to a majority government through a new election without having to make deals with smaller parties. He also wished to win seats in Quebec in his own right and saw the conservative, populist Social Credit Party as an obstacle rather than a potential partner. As a result of Clark's refusal to extend recognition to Social Credit its MPs abstained in the Non-Confidence vote that brought down the Clark government on December 13, 1979, a defeat caused by the Social Credit abstention and the absence of a handful of Tory MPs due to illness or travel. The dissolution was portrayed as a blunder and the budget Clark fought 1980 election on was unpopular with voters. On February 18, 1980, the PCs were defeated by the Trudeau Liberals who were elected to a majority government.
Read more about this topic: Federal Minority Governments In Canada
Famous quotes containing the words joe and/or clark:
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“I believe that Harmon would be the easiest to defeat, though he might gain much strength from the Republicans. Clark would surely lose New York. I am beginning to feel that by some stroke of genius they may name Woodrow Wilson, and that seems a pretty hard tussle.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)