Jean Chrétien

Early life, family, and education

Chrétien was born on January 11, 1934, in Shawinigan Falls, Quebec, as the 18th of 19 children (10 of whom did not survive infancy), of Marie (née Boisvert, 1892–1954) and Wellie Chrétien (1887–1980). His younger brother is the neuroendocrinology researcher Michel Chrétien. The working-class Chrétien family was poor, and Chrétien had to wear hand-me-down clothes. Chrétien's parents wanted their children to escape a working-class life in Shawinigan by attending a classical college. Chrétien's father made him read the dictionary as a young boy. Chrétien's older brother Maurice won a scholarship at the insurance company he was working for, which allowed him to attend medical school, and with the profits from his medical practice, was able to assist his younger siblings to attend the classical colleges. Wellie Chrétien was a staunch Liberal who once got to shake hands as a young man with his hero, Sir Wilfrid Laurier. The local parish priest, Father Auger, a supporter of the Union Nationale who hated all Liberals as "ungodly", spread malicious rumours about the Liberal Chrétien family, saying he would never let a teenage girl go on a date unchaperoned with any of the Chrétien boys, which caused the young Jean Chrétien to have troubled relations with the Catholic church.

During World War II, the Canadian nationalist Wellie Chrétien had attracted much public disapproval by being a staunch supporter of the war effort, and especially by being one of the few French-Canadians in Shawinigan willing to publicly support sending the conscripts (known as "Zombies") to fight overseas. Under the 1940 National Resources Mobilization Act, the federal government could conscript Canadians only for the defence of Canada, and until late 1944, only volunteers went to fight overseas. In 1940s Quebec, where many French-Canadians were opposed to Canada fighting in the war, and especially to sending the "Zombies" overseas, this made Wellie Chrétien and his family outcasts. Furthermore, during the Grande Noirceur ("Great Darkness") when Quebec society was dominated by the corrupt Union Nationale patronage machine, the Chrétien family were excluded because of Wellie Chrétien's support for the war. The Union Nationale Premier Maurice Duplessis had been an outspoken opponent of Canadian participation in World War II. Until 1964, Quebec had no public schools, and Chrétien was educated in Catholic schools. Chrétien disliked the Catholic priests who educated him and in turn was disliked by them with one of Chrétien's former teachers, Father François Lanoue, recalling that Chrétien was the only student he ever grabbed by his ears, as he was too unruly. In an interview, Chrétien called his education "unnatural", as he recalled an extremely strict regime where the priests beat anyone bloody who dared to question their authority while teaching via rote learning. One of Chrétien's classmates recalled "We didn't have the right to have feelings or express them".

Early political career

Chrétien practised law at the Shawinigan firm of Alexandre Gélinas and Joe Lafond until he was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada as a Liberal from the riding of Saint-Maurice–Laflèche in the 1963 election. He represented this Shawinigan-based constituency, renamed Saint-Maurice in 1968, for all but eight of the next 41 years. The Social Credit Party had won the district in the 1962 election, and Chrétien won the Liberal nomination for the 1963 election as the previous Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) decided to retire. Chrétien won the election by portraying the incumbent Social Credit MP, Gérard Lamy, as a "buffoon" who made French-Canadians look stupid. Early in Chrétien's career, Dalton Camp described him as looking like "the driver of the getaway car", a condescending assessment which stuck with him, and which journalists and others often cited throughout his career, usually considering his eventual success. The only committee assignment he requested, and obtained, during his first term was to the Finance Committee.

Shortly before the 1965 election, Chrétien very briefly served as parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson. When Pearson recruited his "Three Wise Men" (Jean Marchand, Gérard Pelletier, and Pierre Trudeau) into the cabinet, Chrétien was disappointed at being bypassed, telling Pearson he deserved to be promoted to the cabinet. Starting in 1966, he served for a more substantial period of time as parliamentary secretary to Minister of Finance Mitchell Sharp. Sharp was to serve as Chrétien's mentor and patron, helping him rise through the ranks.

In 1967, Chrétien visited western Canada for the first time, which he was curious to see. In Vancouver, he declared in a speech about the demands for more powers for Quebec being made by Union Nationale Premier Daniel Johnson that "those who are in favour of a special status [for Quebec] are often separatists who don't want to admit they are separatists", which caused an uproar in Quebec, with Johnson saying he just wanted more powers for Quebec, not independence. When, in a speech during a visit to Montreal for Expo 67, French president Charles de Gaulle said "Vive le Québec libre!" ("Long Live A Free Quebec!") and compared the Quiet Revolution to the liberation of France from the Nazis, Chrétien demanded during a cabinet meeting that the government order de Gaulle to leave Canada.

Joins cabinet

Chrétien was appointed minister without portfolio in April 1967 and then minister of national revenue in January 1968, making him a junior minister in the cabinet. During the 1968 Liberal leadership race, Chrétien fought hard on behalf of his mentor Sharp, who aspired to lead the Liberal Party. When Sharp withdrew from the race, Chrétien followed Sharp in swinging his support behind the man who eventually won the race, Pierre Trudeau.

After the June 1968 election that gave the Liberals a majority government, Trudeau appointed Chrétien minister of Indian affairs and northern development. Trudeau and Chrétien were never close, as the gulf between the intellectual Trudeau and the decidedly non-intellectual Chrétien was too wide, but Trudeau did value Chrétien as an extremely loyal and competent minister, and as a "tough guy" trouble-shooter who could handle difficult assignments. Trudeau and his intellectual advisors in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) held Chrétien in contempt as someone who spoke French with a working-class accent and whose manners were unpolished, but they appreciated his toughness and ability to get things done.

While at Indian Affairs, Chrétien introduced the 1969 White Paper, a proposal to abolish treaties between Canada and First Nations and related legislation including the Indian Act. Critics charged that the goal was to assimilate First Nations people into the general Canadian population. First Nations groups widely opposed the White Paper, and it was later abandoned. It was the 1969 White Paper that first brought Chrétien to widespread public attention in English Canada. At a press conference announcing the White Paper, Chrétien openly clashed with Indian activists with one First Nations woman asking Chrétien, "When did we lose our identity?", to which he replied: "When you signed the treaties", which prompted boos and jeers. Another woman from the Iroquois reserve at Brantford asked Chrétien, "How can you come here and ask us to become citizens, when we were here long before you?", noting the Crown had granted the Grand River valley to Joseph Brant in 1784, to which Chrétien had no reply. Cree activist Harold Cardinal attacked Chrétien and Trudeau for the White Paper in his bestselling 1969 book The Unjust Society, accusing them of "cultural genocide" against the First Nations. To counteract such criticism, Chrétien adopted an Inuk boy from a local orphanage during a 1970 visit to the Northwest Territories. As Indian Affairs minister, Chrétien fell in love with the far north of Canada, whose beauty moved him, and he vacationed in the north every summer during his time while holding the Indian Affairs portfolio.

Minister of finance

In 1977, following the resignation of Finance Minister Donald MacDonald, Chrétien succeeded him. He was the first francophone minister of finance, and remains one of only three francophones to have held that post. Chrétien's time at Finance highlighted his "enforcer" status, namely as someone who often helped to execute Trudeau's policies, but who rarely helped Trudeau to make policy. During his time at Finance, Trudeau completely excluded Chrétien from any role in making financial policy, instead expecting Chrétien to simply carry out the policies that he and his advisors at the PMO had decided beforehand without consulting Chrétien at all.

Trudeau was extremely close to the West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and during the 1978 G7 summit in Bonn, Trudeau had extensive discussions with his friend Schmidt about how best to win re-election in 1979. Schmidt suggested to Trudeau that he respond to criticism of the deficits he had been running by bringing in some big cuts to spending, an idea that Trudeau took up. In 1978 Trudeau announced in a press statement $2 billion in cuts without bothering to inform Chrétien beforehand about what he had decided to do, leaving his finance minister looking clueless in the resulting press interview. Chrétien found this experience so humiliating that he seriously considered resigning in protest. Chrétien was especially humiliated by the fact that Chancellor Schmidt was better informed of about what was going to happen than he was, which underlined that he was not a member of Trudeau's inner circle.

Chrétien presented the two federal budgets to the House floor in 1978, one in April and the other in November.

Major role in referendum campaign

The Liberals lost the federal election of May 1979 to a minority Progressive Conservative government led by Joe Clark. However, the PC government fell when the House of Commons failed to approve its budget in December, triggering the 1980 Canadian federal election in February. Trudeau had originally resigned the Liberal leadership after his 1979 election loss, but no leadership election had taken place to choose his successor before the fall of the Clark government; this allowed him to rescind his resignation and lead the Liberals to victory with a majority government.

Trudeau appointed Chrétien as Minister of Justice and Attorney General. In this role, Chrétien was a major force in the 1980 Quebec referendum, being one of the main federal representatives "on the ground" during the campaign. His fiery and emotional speeches would enthrall federalist crowds with his blunt warnings of the consequences of separation. During the referendum, Chrétien fiercely fought behind the scenes with the leader of the Quebec Liberals, Claude Ryan, who served as the chairman of the non committee, about the best course to follow, with Ryan favouring a more Quebec nationalist message as opposed to Chrétien's unabashed Canadian nationalist message. Chrétien delivered an average of 5 or 6 speeches a day during the 1980 referendum all across Quebec and always managed to work in a local reference in every speech.

Patriation of the Constitution

Chrétien also served as minister of state for social development and minister responsible for constitutional negotiations, playing a significant role in the debates leading to the patriation of the Constitution of Canada in 1982. On September 28, 1981, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could patriate the British North America Acts without the consent of the provinces, but also ruled this would be "odious". Chrétien informed the premiers opposing patriation that Ottawa would unilaterally patriate the Constitution, but was willing to talk at a final conference. During the resulting First Ministers conference in November 1981, two of the premiers, Allan Blakeney of Saskatchewan and Sterling Lyon of Manitoba, made it clear that their principal objection to the proposed Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was that it undermined the ancient British tradition of parliamentary supremacy. Ever since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the principle had always been that Parliament was the supreme lawmaking body in the land, and both Blakeney and Lyon were concerned that the Charter would give too much power to the courts.

Chrétien was the chief negotiator of what would be called the "Kitchen Accord", an agreement which led to the agreement of nine provinces to patriation. In the Kitchen Accord, Chrétien, along with Attorneys-General Roy McMurtry of Ontario and Roy Romanow of Saskatchewan, devised the compromise of Section 33, the so-called "notwithstanding clause", allowing Parliament and provincial legislatures to overrule the courts in Charter cases. Chrétien remembered that Trudeau "hated" the idea of Section 33 and that he had to tell him: "Pierre, if you don't take the notwithstanding clause, you don't have the Charter." Trudeau only accepted Section 33 when Ontario Premier Bill Davis, one of only two premiers supporting the federal government (Richard Hatfield of New Brunswick being the other), phoned him to say he would not support Trudeau in London if Trudeau did not accept Section 33, which Chrétien remembered changed Trudeau's attitude completely. In a 2012 interview, Chrétien defended the controversial Section 33, saying: "Because some would argue that in a society the elected people have to be supreme — not judges — and I subscribe to that. Look at what happened in the United States where the judges reign according to their so-called philosophy. That is not the tradition here." All of the English-speaking premiers accepted the compromise of Section 33, but Quebec Premier René Lévesque did not. Chrétien's role in the dealings would not be forgotten in his native province of Quebec (although the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Quebec was bound by it). One of Trudeau's aides, Barry Strayer, later said about Chrétien's role in the constitutional battle: "He was able to contemplate compromises that Trudeau would not have been able to. Everybody saw him as a honest broker. Without him you could argue it would not have happened."

Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources

In 1982, Chrétien was appointed Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, putting him in charge of enforcing the National Energy Program (NEP), which helped to make him a hated figure in Alberta. Chrétien himself was doubtful about the value of the NEP, saying at the time of his appointment as Energy Minister that, "We've got to back off on the NEP without destroying our credibility," but upon learning that Trudeau and his right-hand man, Finance Minister Marc Lalonde, were in favour of continuing the NEP, Chrétien decided to fall in line rather than risk his chances of one day winning the Liberal leadership. Chrétien's battles with Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed over the NEP helped to confirm his disdain for provincial politicians, whom he saw as petty people only interested in their own provinces at the expense of the nation.

1984: First leadership bid and relationship with Turner

After Trudeau announced his retirement as Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader in early 1984, Chrétien was one of the candidates seeking to replace him as leader. The experience was a hard one for Chrétien, as many of his longtime Cabinet allies supported the bid of John Turner, who was viewed as more electable, much to Chrétien's intense disappointment. During the leadership race in the spring of 1984, Chrétien ran as the defender of the Trudeau era and promised to continue all of Trudeau's policies, unlike Turner, who promised a break with Trudeau. During the leadership race, Chrétien presented himself as a folksy leftish populist and mocked Turner as a right-wing Bay Street snob who was out of touch with ordinary people. Chrétien opposed Turner's claim that the national deficit was not a problem, arguing in a speech, "We have to use the deficit to keep the dignity of our people." Chrétien attracted larger and more enthusiastic crowds than anything that Turner ever managed, but most of the Liberal Party establishment had rallied to Turner when he announced his candidacy in March 1984, which proved to be an insurmountable handicap for Chrétien. Chrétien was thought to be a dark horse until the end but lost on the second ballot to Turner at the leadership convention that June. Liberal Party president Iona Campagnolo introduced Chrétien as "Second on the ballot, but first in our hearts." Turner appointed Chrétien Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs.

After winning the leadership race, Turner wanted to reconcile with Chrétien and lead a united party into the coming general election, and so asked Chrétien what terms he would accept. Chrétien, angry about losing the leadership race, asked for terms he knew Turner could never give him, demanding to be appointed Quebec lieutenant, with control of patronage and organization in Quebec. However, Turner had already promised the position to André Ouellet in exchange for support in the leadership race. As a result, Turner compromised by creating a troika of Chrétien, Ouellet, and Lalonde to run Liberal operations in Quebec. The troika was a sham, and during the 1984 election, its three members spent more time feuding with one another than in combating the Progressive Conservatives.

Chrétien's demand for the Quebec lieutenancy was not his only issue with Turner, as he almost immediately clashed with the prime minister over the calling of an early election. As the last general election had been held in February 1980, the next general election could be held no later than February 1985. Chrétien advised Turner not to ask the Governor General to dissolve Parliament, but to instead keep it in session during the fall of 1984 to give the government a record to run on in a winter election in early 1985. Turner disregarded Chrétien's advice, believing that a boost in the polls after he assumed the premiership in late June 1984 justified asking for Parliament to be dissolved, and for an election to be held in September 1984.

1984–1993: In opposition

Relations between Chrétien and Turner were strained, especially after the Liberals' severe defeat in the 1984 election by the Progressive Conservatives, now led by Brian Mulroney. Chrétien was one of only 17 Liberal MPs elected from Quebec (the party had won 74 out of 75 seats there in 1980), and one of only four elected from a riding outside Montreal.

Chrétien was a major focal point of dissatisfaction with Turner, with many polls showing his popularity. His 1985 book, Straight from the Heart, was an instant bestseller that recounted his early life in Shawinigan, his years spent in the House of Commons of Canada as both a member of Parliament and Cabinet minister, and his failed 1984 leadership bid.

1986: Temporarily leaves politics

Chrétien, whose relations with Turner were very poor, resigned his seat and left public life for a time. On February 27, 1986, Chrétien, accompanied by his special executive assistant Jean Carle, went to Turner's office to hand in his resignation. Turner forced Chrétien to wait a considerable period of time during which Carle broke down in tears, and Chrétien was visibly angry when Turner finally received them, making for a tense and barely civil meeting. Chrétien's resignation was largely motivated by his desire to better organize against Turner in the leadership review, which was due in the fall of 1986. Now working in the private sector again, Chrétien sat on the boards of several corporations, including the Power Corporation of Canada subsidiary Consolidated Bathurst, the Toronto-Dominion Bank, and the Brick Warehouse Corporation. Chrétien professed to be retired from politics, but he told reporters within days of his retirement, "I will always be a politician. I love politics." Crucially, Chrétien did not disband the campaign organization that he founded in 1984, suggesting that his retirement had always been intended to be temporary.

In November 1986, when the Liberals held their leadership review, Chrétien attempted to organize against Turner, which led to a bruising battle between factions loyal to the two men. Chrétien used Turner's penchant for heavy drinking to spread rumors that Turner was an alcoholic who was simply too drunk most of the time to lead the Liberals to power effectively. He formally claimed to be neutral on the question of Turner's management of the Liberal Party, but lobbied as many Liberal MPs and senators as possible behind the scenes for their support in bringing down Turner. The intense emotions stirred up by the leadership review boiled over when Chrétien arrived to vote in the review, leading to a chaotic scene on the convention floor where police had to be called to quell physical fighting between Chrétien partisans and Turner partisans. Turner won the leadership review, earning about 75% of the delegate vote.

In the 1988 election, the Liberals only experienced a moderate recovery, doubling the number of seats they won in 1984. However, Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives won a second consecutive majority government, campaigning in favour of a free trade agreement with the United States. Having lost a second straight general election, Turner announced his resignation as Liberal leader in 1989, triggering the June 1990 Liberal leadership election in Calgary.

1990: Returns to politics and wins Liberal leadership

At a press conference in Ottawa on January 23, 1990, Chrétien declared that he would run for the Liberal Party leadership and proudly stated that the day would be remembered as the beginning of the "Chrétien era" in Canada. Chrétien's principal opponent in the contest, Paul Martin, was generally seen as the ideological heir to Turner, while Chrétien was seen to be the ideological heir to Trudeau. The fact that most of the Liberals who had supported Turner in the 1980s supported Martin in 1990 confirmed Chrétien's disdain for Martin, whom he saw as a Bay Street "big shot" like Turner.

The most controversial issue facing Canada during the first half of 1990 was the Meech Lake Accord, a set of proposed constitutional amendments that would have seen a significant devolution of federal powers to the provinces and included a clause that would have recognized Quebec as a "distinct society" within Canada. Chrétien had announced in a January 1990 speech that he was an opponent of Meech Lake but stated that he would support the accord with amendments, such as scrapping the controversial "distinct society" clause as written; having the preamble to the constitution instead declare that Quebec was a "distinct society"; and adding a new clause saying if any conflict arose between the constitutional recognition of Quebec as a "distinct society" and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the latter would always prevail. The "distinct society" clause theoretically could have been the basis of a wide-ranging devolution of federal power, since the clause might have empowered the Quebec government to pass any law short of secession to protect the "distinct society". This made the clause very popular in Quebec, but aroused passionate opposition in English Canada. In a much-discussed essay, Trudeau had warned that giving Quebec the constitutional right to be a "distinct society" would mean that Quebec could quite legally start to expel its anglophone minority. Chrétien's proposed amendments would have meant that the constitution would have recognized Quebec as a "distinct society" but effectively gutted any attempt to use that to grant any special powers to Quebec. In private, Chrétien opposed Meech Lake, but as the accord was extremely popular in Quebec, running as an out-and-out opponent of Meech Lake was judged to be too risky politically, causing him to conditionally oppose the accord in public. Meech Lake placed Chrétien in a difficult position, as it was very popular in Quebec and loathed by the Trudeau wing of the Liberals; Chrétien needed the support of both entities in the leadership race. He tried to avoid talking about Meech Lake as much as possible, which was a minefield issue for him; he instead stuck to generalities about national unity. Martin, by contrast, had declared himself an unconditional supporter of Meech Lake as it was; he was also quite willing to talk about his support.

Leader of the Official Opposition

As Chrétien's leadership victory occurred on June 23, 1990 – the same day that the Meech Lake Accord failed to gain ratification – he was heavily criticized in the Quebec media for his opposition to the accord. Photographs of Chrétien embracing Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells, a prominent opponent of Meech Lake, at the convention attracted much negative comment in Quebec. His leadership was also shaken by the defection of francophone MPs (and Martin loyalists) Jean Lapierre and Gilles Rocheleau from the caucus to the new Bloc Québécois (BQ); Lapierre and Rocheleau contended that they could not serve under the anti-Meech Lake Chrétien. In a by-election for Laurier—Sainte-Marie on August 13, 1990, the Bloc's Gilles Duceppe badly defeated Chrétien's hand-picked candidate Denis Coderre, costing the Liberals a constituency they had held since 1917; many attributed this to Chrétien's opposition to the Meech Lake Accord. Upon becoming Liberal leader, Chrétien appointed his friend Eddie Goldenberg as his chief of staff, and formed a leadership team comprising John Rae and David Zussman as his policy advisors, his "surrogate son" Jean Carle as his special executive assistant, Warren Kinsella as his media adviser, and George Radwanski as his speech-writer. All members of this leadership team were later to play prominent roles in the Prime Minister's Office during Chrétien's time as prime minister.

In September 1990, Chrétien, seeing a chance to make a strong impression on public opinion after a shaky start as leader, reaped a major windfall after Mulroney introduced an unpopular Goods and Services Tax (GST), which Chrétien decided to vigorously oppose. Traditionally in Canada, the government had levied a 13.5% Manufacturer's Sales Tax (MST) paid by manufacturers, who passed on the cost of the tax to consumers in the form of higher prices. Since foreign manufacturers did not pay the MST, however, this placed Canadian companies at a competitive disadvantage in their home market. To compensate, the government had levied tariffs on manufactured imports to maintain a level playing field. When the free trade agreement with the United States came into effect in 1989, the government could no longer levy tariffs on American imports, leading to furious complaints from Canadian industry about having to compete with American companies who did not pay the MST. To save Canadian industry and the jobs of those Canadians employed in manufacturing from being destroyed by American competition, the Mulroney government decided in late 1989 to abolish the MST and replace it with the GST, whose 7% costs would be borne by consumers. On the proposed GST, Chrétien was torn between his belief that the tax was economically necessary and his desire to score political points by opposing a proposed tax that most Canadians hated; consequently, he was initially vague about where he stood on the GST. Only in September 1990, after months of vacillation, did Chrétien finally make up his mind to oppose the GST.

Prime Minister (1993–2003)

On November 4, 1993, Chrétien became prime minister. While Trudeau, Joe Clark, and Mulroney had been relative political outsiders prior to becoming prime minister, Chrétien had served in every Liberal cabinet since 1965. This experience gave him knowledge of the Canadian parliamentary system, and allowed Chrétien to establish a very centralized government that, although highly efficient, was also lambasted by critics such as Jeffrey Simpson and the media as being a "friendly dictatorship" and intolerant of internal dissent. Chrétien liked to present himself as the heir to Trudeau, but his governing style had little in common with the intense bouts of governmental activism that had characterised the Trudeau era. The Chrétien government had a cautious, managerial approach to governing, reacting to issues as they arose, and was otherwise inclined to inactivity.

Quebec

One of Chrétien's main concerns in office was separation of the province of Quebec, which was governed by the sovereigntist Parti Québécois for nearly the entirety of his term. When the 1995 Quebec independence referendum began in September, Chrétien was relaxed and confident of victory as polls showed federalist forces were leading by a wide margin. On October 8, 1995, Lucien Bouchard replaced the separatist premier of Quebec, Jacques Parizeau, as the de facto chair of the oui committee and, at that point, the support for the oui side started to dramatically increase, aided by the non committee's complacency. In the weeks leading to the referendum on October 30, 1995, the federal government was seized with fear and panic as polls showing that, under the leadership of Bouchard, the oui side was going to win. On October 30, 1995, the federalist non side won by the narrowest of margins, with 50.58%.

On November 5, 1995, six days after the referendum, Chrétien and his wife escaped injury when André Dallaire, armed with a knife, broke in the prime minister's official residence at 24 Sussex Drive. Aline Chrétien shut and locked the bedroom door until security came, while Chrétien held a stone Inuit carving in readiness. Dallaire was

a separatist who was angered by the result of the referendum.

In the aftermath of the narrow victory in the referendum, Chrétien started in late 1995 a new policy of "tough love", also known as "Plan B", where the federal government sought to discredit Quebec separatism by making it clear to the people of Quebec how difficult it would be to leave Canada. Though Chrétien had promised to enshrine recognition of Quebec as a "distinct society" in the constitution in order to win the referendum, this promise was quickly forgotten in the aftermath of victory with Chrétien arguing that the very vocal opposition of Ontario Premier Mike Harris to amending the constitution to recognize Quebec as a "distinct society" made that impossible. Instead, Chrétien had Parliament pass a resolution recognizing Quebec as a "distinct society", which had no constitutional force and was only a symbolic step. Though Harris's promise to veto any sort of "distinct society" clause in the constitution made fulfilling Chrétien's commitment to put such a clause into the constitution impossible, Chrétien did not seem to champion the idea of a "distinct society" clause with any great conviction.

In early 1996, the federal government launched an advertising program to increase the presence of Canada in Quebec, a policy that Chrétien believed would avoid a repeat of the near-defeat of 1995, and was to lead eventually to the Sponsorship scandal. As part of his "Plan B" for combatting Quebec separatism, in a speech in January 1996, Chrétien endorsed the idea of partitioning Quebec in the event of a oui vote in another referendum, stating all of the regions of Quebec that voted non would remain part of Canada, regardless of what the Quebec separatists thought. On February 15, 1996, Chrétien was confronted by a protester, Bill Clennett, during a walkabout in Hull, Quebec. Chrétien responded with a choke-hold, which was referred to by the press as the "Shawinigan handshake", after Chrétien's hometown.

Domestic affairs

In November 1997, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit was held on the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus in Vancouver. Students on UBC's campus protested the meeting because of the poor human rights practices of some of the attending leaders; one of the leaders most criticized was Indonesian president Suharto. Demonstrators tore down a barrier and were pepper-sprayed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), with other peaceful demonstrators being subsequently pepper-sprayed as well. There was debate over whether the action was necessary. In response to Suharto's concerns about his "dignity" being called into question by protests, the Canadian government had promised him that no protesters would be allowed to get close, and in early August 1997, the PMO informed the RCMP that the prime minister did not wish for any "distractions" at the upcoming conference. Later that day, Chrétien, when asked by Nardwuar the Human Serviette about the use of pepper-spray, stated "...For me, pepper, I put it on my plate." On August 7, 2001, the APEC report was issued by Judge Ted Hughes; it cleared Chrétien of wrongdoing, but stated that the PMO's Jean Carle had improperly pressured the RCMP to attack the protesters.

In August 1999, the Anglo-Canadian media magnate Conrad Black was due to receive a British life peerage. Two days before Black was to receive his title, Chrétien advised Queen Elizabeth II not to accord Black a title of nobility, citing the 1917 Nickle Resolution whereby the Canadian House of Commons asked King George V not to grant any hereditary peerages or knighthoods to Canadians, thereby ensuring that Black was not raised to the peerage as he was expecting to be. A humiliated Black sued Chrétien for what he alleged to be an abuse of power, leading to the legal case of Black v Chrétien. In 2001, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ruled in Chrétien's favour, stating it was the prime minister's prerogative to advise the Queen not to give Canadians a British peerage if he felt so inclined, and therefore it was not an abuse of power as Black had claimed. Black gave up his Canadian citizenship to accept the peerage.

In July 2003 Chretien passed a bill to reform the way elections are financed. In the previous century, the political parties were largely left to their own devices. After these changes to the Canada Elections Act (SC 2000), each vote obtained by a party was subsidized. The subsidy entered into effect on January 1, 2004, at $1.75 per vote (indexed to the Consumer Price Index) as part of a set of amendments made by the 37th Canadian Parliament to the Canada Elections Act which for the first time set limits on political contributions by individuals and organizations (corporations, unions, non-profit groups). The per-vote subsidy was introduced to replace the reliance of political parties and candidates on corporate, union, and wealthy donors in order to reduce the political influence of such donors. The law provides a refund for 50% of the expenditure on the most recent election campaign.

Economic policy

Chrétien canceled the privatization of Toronto's Pearson airport. The consortium that was due to take ownership of Pearson sued for breach of contract, which led the government to settle out of court in April 1997 for $60 million in damages.

The first budget introduced by Martin, in February 1994, was described as a "mild and tame" budget focused only on the target of reducing the deficit to 3 percent of Gross National Product (GNP) within three years, and brought in modest cuts, mostly to defence spending. Until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Chrétien government tended to be hostile towards defence spending with the government's white paper "Defence 94" declaring that in a post-Cold War world there would be less and less need for armed forces, which accordingly meant reduced budgets for the military. Outside of defence spending, there were few cuts in the 1994 budget. In a radio interview with Ron Collister in March 1994, Chrétien stated: "To go to our goal of 3 per cent of GNP, all the cuts have been announced in the budget. There will not be a new round." According to the diplomat James Bartleman, Chrétien told him in early 1994 that major cuts to government spending outside of defence were out of the question, and instead he hoped that the economy would grow enough on its own that the deficit would disappear without any cuts. Chrétien's plans in early 1994 for economic growth were to increase exports by embracing globalization and free trade with as many nations as possible, arguing that the export offensive would stimulate the economy out of the early 1990s recession. The 1994 budget was widely criticized by journalists such as Andrew Coyne as useless in even achieving its target of reducing the deficit to 3 percent of GNP within three years, let alone eliminating the deficit, and led to a celebrated clash between Coyne and Martin in the boardroom of The Globe and Mail newspaper. In April 1994, interest rates in Canada started a steady rise that would continue until early 1995.

Chrétien was not keen on making deep cuts to government spending, but given the crisis caused by the skyrocketing interest rates had decided "reluctantly" there was no alternative. Once he had decided upon making deeper cuts than he promised, Chrétien proved to be firm supporter of the new course, and supported Martin's cuts to other departments despite the complaints of the other ministers. Chrétien's advisor Eddie Goldenberg later recalled that Chrétien was unyielding in the face of efforts by other ministers to "spare" their departments, and that Chrétien kept on saying "If I change anything, everything will unravel". In a 2011 interview, Chrétien recalled about the 1995 budget that: "There would have been a day when we would have been the Greece of today. I knew we were in a bind and we had to do something." In order to silence objections from left-wing Liberal backbenchers and Cabinet ministers, Chrétien ensured that the Program Review Committee chaired by Marcel Massé that would decide what programs to end and which to cut had a majority comprising the leftist MPs Brian Tobin, Sheila Copps, Sergio Marchi and Herb Gray, people who would not normally be supporting cutting programs, and thereby underlined the seriousness of the crisis. It was only with the budget that Martin introduced on February 27, 1995, that the Chrétien government began a policy of cuts designed to eliminate the deficit in order to reassure the markets. Much of the Liberal caucus was deeply unhappy with the 1995 budget, arguing that this was not what they had been elected for in 1993, only to be informed by the prime minister that there was no alternative. Chrétien himself expressed his unhappiness with his budget in a radio interview with Peter Gzowski in March 1995, saying about the budget: "It is not our pleasure sir, I have to tell you that. I've been around a long time. It's no pleasure at all. I'm not doctrinaire, a right-winger. I'm a Liberal, and I feel like a Liberal, and it is painful. But it is needed".

Foreign policy

In 1999, Chrétien supported Canada's involvement in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing campaign of Yugoslavia over the issue of Kosovo, even through the operation was unsanctioned by the United Nations Security Council. There had been an Anglo-American resolution asking for the Security Council's approval of the NATO bombing, but it was vetoed by Russia. The idea of bombing Yugoslavia caused some discomfort within the ranks of the Liberal party as the NATO campaign effectively meant supporting Kosovo separatists against a government determined to prevent Kosovo's secession from Yugoslavia. Chrétien was personally uncomfortable with the idea of bombing Yugoslavia, but supported the war because he valued good relations with the United States far more than he cared about Yugoslavia. Chrétien's foreign minister at the time, Lloyd Axworthy justified Canada's involvement in the bombing of Yugoslavia on the grounds that allegations of massacres against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo made the use of force legitimate on humanitarian grounds, even without the approval of the UN Security Council. Likewise, Chrétien was later to tell Lawrence Martin that it was far better to intervene in the internal affairs of Yugoslavia to stop human rights violations in the Kosovo region by Serbian forces than to do nothing.

Chrétien was known to be a Sinophile and an admirer of the People's Republic of China. In November 1994, he led the first of four "Team Canada" trade missions comprising himself and nine premiers to China (Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau having declined to go), which had as their stated objective increasing Sino-Canadian trade. The Team Canada mission was meant to be the beginning of the export offensive that would stimulate the economy out of the recession, and also to achieve Chrétien's goal going back to the 1970s of a Canadian economy less dependent on trade with the United States. Under his leadership, China and Canada signed several bilateral relations agreements. The Team Canada missions attracted criticism that Chrétien seemed concerned only with economic issues, that he rarely raised the subject of China's poor human rights record, and that on the few occasions that he did mention human rights in China he went out of his way to avoid offending his hosts. Moreover, Chrétien attracted criticism for presenting the case for improved human rights in purely economic terms, arguing that a better human rights record would allow China to join the WTO and thus sell more goods to the West. Chrétien argued that there was no point in criticizing China's human rights record because the Chinese never listened to such criticism, and instead were greatly annoyed about being lectured by Western leaders about their poor human rights record. Given that Canada could not really do anything to change the views of China's leaders about human rights, Chrétien contended that the best that could be done was to improve Sino-Canadian economic relations while ignoring the subject of human rights.

Defence policy

In 1993, Chrétien canceled the contract to buy the EH-101 helicopters, requiring the search for new helicopters to start over, and paid a $478 million termination fee to AgustaWestland.

In January 1998, Chrétien's government announced that the CH-113 helicopters would be replaced by a scaled-down search-and-rescue variant of the EH101, carrying the designation CH-149 Cormorant. Unlike the Petrel/Chimo contract which Chrétien had cancelled in 1993, these 15 aircraft were to be built entirely in Europe with no Canadian participation or industrial incentives. The first two aircraft arrived in Canada in September 2001 and entered service the following year. His Maritime Helicopter Project was supposed to find a low-cost replacement aircraft. The candidates were the Sikorsky S-92, the NHIndustries NH90 and the EH-101, although critics accused the government of designing the project so as to prevent AgustaWestland from winning the contract. A winner, the Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone, would not be announced until after Chrétien retired.

Reelections

Chrétien called an early election in the spring of 1997, hoping to take advantage of his position in the public opinion polls and the continued division of the conservative vote between the Progressive Conservative Party and the upstart Reform Party of Canada. Despite slipping poll numbers, he advised the governor general to call an election in 1997, a year ahead of schedule. Many of his own MPs criticized him for this move, especially in light of the devastating Red River Flood, which led to charges of insensitivity. Liberal MP John Godfrey tried hard to interest Chrétien in an ambitious plan to eliminate urban poverty in Canada as a platform to run on in the election, which was vetoed by Eddie Goldenberg and John Rae of the PMO, who convinced Chrétien that it was better to stick with an "incrementalist" course of small changes than risk any grand project. The Progressive Conservatives had a popular new leader in Jean Charest and the New Democrats' Alexa McDonough led her party to a breakthrough in Atlantic Canada, where the Liberals had won all but one seat in 1993. Chrétien benefited when the Reform Party aired a TV ad in English Canada charging that the country was being dominated by French-Canadian politicians, which Chrétien used to accuse Preston Manning of being anti-French. In 1997, the Liberals lost all but a handful of seats in Atlantic Canada and Western Canada, but managed to retain a bare majority government due to their continued dominance of Ontario.

Chrétien called another early election in the fall of 2000, again hoping to take advantage of the split in the Canadian right and catch the newly formed Canadian Alliance and its neophyte leader Stockwell Day off guard. At the funeral of Pierre Trudeau in September 2000, the Cuban President, Fidel Castro happened to meet with Day. Later that same day, Chrétien met with Castro, where Chrétien asked Castro about his assessment of Day and if he should call an early election or not. Castro advised Chrétien to dissolve Parliament early as he considered Day to be a lightweight, and as Castro was a leader whom Chrétien respected, his advice was an important reason for the election. Finance Minister Paul Martin released a 'mini-budget' just before the election call that included significant tax cuts, a move aimed at undermining the Alliance position going into the campaign. Chrétien formed a "war room" comprising his communications director Françoise Ducros, Warren Kinsella, Duncan Fulton and Kevin Bosch to gather material to attack Day as a right-wing extremist. In the first weeks of the 2000 election campaign, the Canadian Alliance gained in the polls and some voters complained that Chrétien had overstayed his time in office and had no agenda beyond staying in power for the sake of staying in power. The fact that the Red Book of 2000 consisted almost entirely of recycled promises from the Red Books of 1993 and 1997 and various banal statements further reinforced the impression of a prime minister with no plans or vision for Canada and whose only agenda was to hang onto power as long as possible. However, the Liberal claim that Day planned to dismantle the health care system to replace it with a "two-tier" health care system along with a number of gaffes on Day's part in addition to Alliance candidate Betty Granger warning that Canada was faced with the threat of an "Asian invasion" (which furthered the Liberals' plan to paint the Alliance as a xenophobic and extreme right-wing party) started to turn opinion decisively against the Canadian Alliance. Day's socially conservative views were also attacked by Chrétien as the Liberals claimed that Day would make homosexuality and abortion illegal. The New Democrats and Bloc Québécois also ran lacklustre campaigns, while the Progressive Conservatives, led by former prime minister Joe Clark, struggled to retain official party status. On November 27, the Liberals secured a strong majority mandate in the 2000 election, winning nearly as many seats as they had in 1993, largely thanks to significant gains in Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Without Jean Charest as leader, the PCs who had done well in winning the popular vote in Quebec in 1997 fared poorly in 2000, and most of their voters defected over to the Liberals.

Scandals and controversies

In late 2000 and early 2001, politics were dominated by questions about the Grand-Mère Affair (or the Shawinigate scandal). Opposition parties frequently charged that Chrétien had broken the law in regards to his lobbying for Business Development Bank of Canada for loans to the Auberge Grand-Mère inn. Questions were especially centered around the firing of the president of the bank, François Beaudoin, and the involvement of Jean Carle, formerly of the PMO, in sacking Beaudoin. Carle served as Chrétien's chief of operations between 1993 and 1998 before leaving to take up an executive post at the Business Development Bank. Chrétien claimed that Carle was not involved in any way with the loans to the Grand-Mère Inn, only to be countered by Joe Clark, who produced a leaked document showing that he was. After initial denials, Chrétien acknowledged having lobbied the Business Development Bank to grant a $2 million loan to Yvon Duhaime. Duhaime was a friend and constituent to whom the prime minister stated that he had sold his interest in the Grand-Mère Inn, a local Shawinigan-area hotel and golf resort, eventually providing evidence of the sale—a contract written on a cocktail napkin. Duhaime was a local businessman with an unsavoury reputation and a criminal record, who received a loan from the Business Development Bank that he was ineligible to collect on the account of his criminal record (Duhaime did not mention his record when applying for the loan). The bank had turned down the initial loan application, but later approved a $615,000 loan following further lobbying by Chrétien. When the bank refused to extend the loan in August 1999 under the grounds that Duhaime had a bad financial history, Beaudoin was fired by Chrétien in September 1999, which led to a wrongful dismissal suit that Beaudoin was to win in 2004. It was revealed that Chrétien had never been paid for his share in the sale of the adjoining golf course, and criminal charges were laid against Duhaime. On February 19, 2001, the RCMP announced that there they did not find sufficient evidence to lay criminal charges against anyone in regards to the Grand-Mère Affair, and Chrétien accused Clark of waging a "witch hunt" against the Liberals. On March 2, 2001, the federal ethics counselor Howard Wilson cleared Chrétien of wrongdoing in the Grand-Mère Affair. On April 5, 2001, the National Post received documents purportedly from an anonymous source within the bank, indicating that Chrétien was still owed $23,040 by Duhaime for his share in the Auberge Grand-Mère. The revelation of the Grand-Mère affair did not affect the outcome of the 2000 election. Chrétien and his circle believed that the breaking of the Grand-Mère story was the work of the Martin faction.

The major controversy of the later Chrétien years was the Sponsorship Scandal, which involved more than $100 million distributed from the Prime Minister's Office to Quebec's federalist and Liberal Party interests without much accountability. On May 8, 2002, the Sponsorship Scandal broke when the auditor general, Sheila Fraser, issued a report accusing Public Works bureaucrats of having broken "just about every rule in the book" in awarding $1.6 million to the Montreal ad firm Groupaction Marketing Inc. The money awarded to Groupaction in three dubious contracts appeared to have disappeared, and the firm had a long history of donating to the Liberals. Opposition critics further suggested that the public works minister at the time, Alfonso Gagliano, whom Chrétien had praised as a great patriot, was not just a mere bystander to questionable contacts associated with the sponsorship program that Fraser had identified. In response to the public outrage, Chrétien argued in a speech in Winnipeg that all this was necessary to stop Quebec separatism and justified by the results, stating that: "Perhaps there was a few million dollars that might have been stolen in the process. It is possible. But how many millions of dollars have we saved the country because we have re-established the stability of Canada as a united country? If somebody has stolen the money, they will face the courts. But I will not apologize to Canadians." Chrétien's argument that he had nothing to apologize for in regards to the sponsorship program, and his apparent condoning of corruption as justified by the results of saving Canada fared poorly with the Canadian public, which increasingly started to perceive the prime minister as an autocratic leader with a thuggish streak. A poll taken later in May 2002 showed that over half of Canadians believed that the Chrétien government was corrupt. The Sponsorship Scandal would tarnish Chrétien's reputation only a few years after he left office, and contributed to the Liberals losing their majority government in 2004 and losing power altogether in 2006.

Chrétien and Martin: Liberal Party infighting

Relations between Chrétien and Martin were frequently strained, and Martin was reportedly angling to replace Chrétien as early as 1997. Martin had long hoped that Chrétien would just retire at the end of his second term, thereby allowing him to win the Liberal leadership, and was greatly disappointed in January 2000 when Chrétien's communications director Françoise Ducros had fired "a shot across the bow" by confirming what had been strongly hinted at since the summer of 1999 in an announcement to the caucus that Chrétien would seek a third term.

Chrétien was due to face a leadership review in February 2002, but the Liberal national executive, which was controlled by partisans of Paul Martin, agreed to Chrétien's request in early January 2001 that the leadership review be pushed back to February 2003. In agreeing to this request, Martin believed that this was the quid pro quo for allowing Chrétien a decent interval to retire with dignity sometime in 2002, an interpretation that Chrétien did not hold.

By early 2002, the long-simmering feud with Martin came to a head. A particular concern that had badly strained relations between the prime minister and the finance minister by early 2002 was Martin's control of the Liberal Party apparatus, especially his control over the issuing of membership forms, which he reserved largely for his own supporters. In January 2002, Brian Tobin complained to Chrétien that the Liberal Party machinery had been "captured" by Martin's followers to the extent that it was now virtually impossible for anyone else to sign up their own followers. This posed a major problem for Chrétien as the Liberals were due to hold a leadership review in February 2003. However, it was still quite possible that Chrétien would win the review by a slim margin.

In January 2002, an incident occurred which was to greatly damage Chrétien's relations with the Liberal caucus. After Chrétien reorganized the Cabinet in late January 2002, Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett criticised Chrétien at a caucus meeting for not appointing more women to the Cabinet. Chrétien exploded with rage at Bennett's criticism, saying that as a mere backbencher she did not have the right to criticise the prime minister in front of the caucus, and attacked her with such fury that Bennett collapsed in tears. In February 2002, reflecting a growing number of Liberal MPs' displeasure with Chrétien, the Liberal caucus elected the outspoken pro-Martin MP Stan Keyes (who had already openly mused in 2001 about how it was time for Chrétien to go) as their chairman, who defeated pro-Chrétien MP Steve Mahoney. Chrétien had expected Mahoney to win, and was reported to be shocked when he learned of Keyes's victory, which now gave Martin more control of the caucus.

Retirement

On February 18, 2004, François Beaudoin won his wrongful dismissal suit against the Business Development Bank of Canada. Justice Andre Denis ruled in favor of Beaudoin's claim that he was fired for political reasons in 1999 for trying to call the loan on the Grand Mère Inn, ruled that Chrétien's former aide Jean Carle and Michel Vennat were guilty of making false criminal and civil charges of wrongdoing against Beaudoin to discredit him for suing the bank, accused Carle of committing perjury during the trial and declared given the "unspeakable injustice" Beaudoin had suffered, told the government not to appeal his ruling because they would be wasting the tax-payers' money if they did. The lingering repercussions of the sponsorship scandal of 2002 reduced the Liberal Party to a minority in the 2004 election, may have strengthened the separatist case, and contributed to the government's defeat in the 2006 election. The scandal led to long-running, deep investigations by the RCMP, a federal inquiry, the Gomery Commission, chaired by Justice John Gomery (called by Martin in 2004), and several prosecutions and convictions; the legal process continued to late 2011, more than a decade after the scandal began.

Jean Chrétien testified for the Gomery Commission regarding the sponsorship scandal in February 2005. Earlier that year his lawyers tried, but failed, to have Justice John Gomery removed from the commission, arguing that he lacked objectivity. Chrétien contends that the Gomery Commission was set up to tarnish his image, and that it was not a fair investigation. He cites comments Gomery made calling him "small town cheap", referring to the management of the sponsorship program as "catastrophically bad", and calling Chuck Guité a "charming scamp". Subsequent to the release of the first report, Chrétien has decided to take an action in Federal Court to review the commission report on the grounds that Gomery showed a "reasonable apprehension of bias", and that some conclusions didn't have an "evidentiary" basis. Chrétien believes that the appointment of Bernard Roy, a former chief of staff to former PC prime minister Brian Mulroney, as chief counsel for the commission was a mistake, as he failed to call some relevant witnesses such as Don Boudria and Ralph Goodale. In his report of November 1, 2005, on responsibility for the sponsorship scandal, Justice Gomery ruled that Chrétien was not responsible for the awarding of advertising contracts in Quebec in which millions were stolen, but did accept Charles Guité's claim that he received his instructions on what program to sponsor and to spend how much money on each program from Jean Pelletier, the chief of staff at the PMO between 1993 and 2001 and Jean Carle, the director of operations at the PMO between 1993 and 1998 as the truth.

Legacy

Chrétien was ranked the 9th greatest prime minister in a survey of Canadian scholars in 1999, which appeared in Prime Ministers: Ranking Canada's Leaders by J.L. Granatstein and Norman Hillmer. Maclean's has consistently ranked Chrétien in the top ten on their assessments of Canadian prime ministers; he was ranked 9th greatest in 1997, 6th greatest in 2011 and 7th greatest in 2016.

Writing in Policy Options, historian and author Bob Plamondon pointed out that "After demonizing Chrétien, Quebec nationalists could not reconcile themselves to the reality that he gave their province new tools to protect the French language and culture. Canada had not been as united in the previous 50 years as when Chrétien left office. Economists were left to wonder how Chrétien turned around the national finances without triggering a recession. Canadians said in a survey that staying out of Iraq was the country's greatest foreign policy achievement. University presidents still marvel at how Chrétien rebuilt Canada's intellectual infrastructure, turning a brain drain into a brain gain."

Historian Michael Bliss wrote that Chrétien was "moderately competent and only moderately corrupt." Bliss also wrote, "Jean Chrétien's career shows how much can be accomplished in Canadian politics by someone who is ambitious, hard-working, and has good luck — even if they speak English with a very thick accent."

Supreme Court appointments

Chrétien chose the following jurists to be appointed as justices of the Supreme Court of Canada:

Michel Bastarache (September 30, 1997 – June 30, 2008)

William Ian Corneil Binnie (January 8, 1998 – October 21, 2011)

Louise Arbour (September 15, 1999 – June 30, 2004)

Louis LeBel (January 7, 2000 – November 30, 2014)

Beverly McLachlin (as chief justice, July 7, 2000 – December 15, 2017; appointed a puisne justice under Prime Minister Mulroney, March 30, 1989)

Marie Deschamps (August 7, 2002 – August 7, 2012)

Morris J. Fish (August 5, 2003 – August 31, 2013)

Honours