National Scene
Davis had an awkward relationship with federal Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark. Clark and Davis held differing views over fuel prices, and the Davis government actively opposed Clark's 1979 austerity budget which included a gas tax. In the 1980 federal election, Davis's criticism of Clark's budget was used by the Liberal Party in official campaign documents and it played a role in the federal Tories' losses in Ontario; the swing in support enabled the Liberals to regain government.
Unlike most provincial premiers in Canada, Davis strongly supported Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's 1981 plans to patriate the Canadian Constitution from the United Kingdom and add to it a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Davis's role in the constitutional negotiations of 1981 were pivotal in achieving a compromise that resulted in the passage of the 1982 Constitution.
In 2003, while Davis played a role in the successful negotiations to merge the federal Progressive Conservatives with the Canadian Alliance to create the Conservative Party of Canada, Clark refused to endorse the newly merged party.
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Famous quotes containing the words national and/or scene:
“There is no national science just as there is no national multiplication table; anything that is national is not scientific.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)