The 1957 Canadian federal election was held June 10, 1957, to select the 265 members of the House of Commons of Canada of the 23rd Parliament of Canada. In one of the greatest upsets in Canadian political history, the Progressive Conservative Party (also known as "PCs" or "Tories"), led by John Diefenbaker, brought an end to 22 years of Liberal rule, as the Tories were able to form a minority government despite losing the popular vote to the Liberals.
The Liberal Party had governed Canada since 1935, winning five consecutive elections. Under Prime Ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent, the government gradually built a welfare state. During the Liberals' fifth term in office, the opposition parties depicted them as arrogant and unresponsive to Canadians' needs. Controversial events, such as the 1956 "Pipeline Debate" over the construction of the Trans-Canada Pipeline, had hurt the government. St. Laurent, nicknamed "Uncle Louis", remained popular, but exercised little supervision over his cabinet ministers.
In 1956, Tory leader George A. Drew unexpectedly resigned due to ill health. In his place, the PC party elected the fiery and charismatic Diefenbaker. The Tories ran a campaign centred on their new leader, who attracted large crowds to rallies and made a strong impression on television. The Liberals ran a lacklustre campaign, and St. Laurent made few television appearances. Uncomfortable with the medium, the Prime Minister read his speeches from a script and refused to wear makeup.
Abandoning their usual strategy of trying to make major inroads in Liberal-dominated Quebec, the Tories focused on winning seats in the other provinces. They were successful; though they gained few seats in Quebec, they won 112 seats overall to the Liberals' 105. With the remaining seats won by other parties, the PC party only had a plurality in the House of Commons, but the margin was sufficient to make John Diefenbaker Canada's first Tory Prime Minister since R. B. Bennett in 1935.
Background.
Liberal domination.
The Tories had last governed Canada under R.B. Bennett, who had been elected in 1930. Bennett's government had limited success in dealing with the Depression, and was defeated in 1935, as Liberal William Lyon Mackenzie King, who had previously served two times as prime minister, was restored to power. The Liberals won five consecutive elections between 1935 and 1953, four of the victories resulting in powerful majority governments. The Liberals worked closely with the civil service (drawing several of their ministers from those ranks) and their years of dominance saw prosperity.
When Mackenzie King retired in 1948, he was succeeded by Minister of Justice Louis St. Laurent, a bilingual Quebecer who took office at the age of 66. An adept politician, St. Laurent projected a gentle persona and was affectionately known to many Canadians as Uncle Louis. In actuality, St. Laurent was uncomfortable away from Ottawa, was subject to fits of depression (especially after 1953), and on political trips was carefully managed by advertising men from the firm of Cockfield Brown. St. Laurent led the Liberals to an overwhelming triumph in the 1949 election, campaigning under the slogan "You never had it so good". The Liberals won a fifth successive mandate in 1953, with St. Laurent content to exercise a highly relaxed leadership style.
The Mackenzie King and St. Laurent governments laid the groundwork for the welfare state, a development initially opposed by many Tories. C.D. Howe, considered one of the leading forces of the St. Laurent government, told his Tory opponents when they alleged that the Liberals would abolish tariffs if the people would let them, "Who would stop us? ... Don't take yourselves too seriously. If we wanted to get away with it, who would stop us?"
Tory struggles.
At the start of 1956, the Tories were led by former Ontario premier George A. Drew, who had been elected PC leader in 1948 over Saskatchewan MP John Diefenbaker. Drew was the fifth man to lead the Tories in their 21 years out of power. None had come close to defeating the Liberals; the best performance was in 1945, when John Bracken secured 67 seats for the Tories. The Liberals, though, had won 125 seats, and maintained their majority. In the 1953 election, the PC party won 51 seats out of the 265 in the House of Commons. Subsequently, the Tories picked up two seats from the Liberals in by-elections, and the Liberals (who had won 169 seats in 1953) lost an additional seat to the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF, the predecessor of the New Democratic Party (NDP)).
After over two decades in opposition, the Tories were closely associated with that role in the public eye. The Tories were seen as the party of the wealthy and of English-speaking Canada and drew about 30% of the vote in federal elections. The Tories had enjoyed little success in Quebec in the past forty years. By 1956, the Social Credit Party was becoming a potential rival to the Tories as Canada's main right-wing party. Canadian journalist and author Bruce Hutchison discussed the state of the Tories in 1956:
When a party calling itself Conservative can think of nothing better than to outbid the Government's election promises; when it demands economy in one breath and increased spending in the next; when it proposes an immediate tax cut regardless of inflationary results ... when in short, the Conservative party no longer gives us a conservative alternative after twenty-one years ... then our political system desperately requires an opposition prepared to stand for something more than the improbable chance of quick victory.
Run-up to the campaign.
In 1955, the Tories, through a determined filibuster, were able to force the government to withdraw amendments to the Defence Procurement Act, which would have made temporary, extraordinary powers granted to the government permanent. Drew led the Tories in a second battle with the government the following year: in the so-called "Pipeline Debate", the government invoked closure repeatedly in a weeks-long debate which ended with the Speaker ignoring points of order as he had the division bells rung. Both measures were closely associated with Howe, which, in combination with his earlier comments, led to Tory claims that Howe was indifferent to the democratic process.
Tory preparations for an upcoming election campaign were thrown into disarray in August 1956 when Drew fell ill. Tory leaders felt that the party needed vigorous leadership with a federal election likely to be called within a year. In September, Drew resigned. Diefenbaker, who had failed in two prior bids for the leadership, announced his candidacy, as did Tory frontbenchers Davie Fulton and Donald Fleming. Diefenbaker, a criminal defence lawyer from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, was on the populist left of the PC party. Those Tory leaders who disliked Diefenbaker and his views, and hoped to find a candidate from Drew's conservative wing of the party, wooed University of Toronto president Sidney Smith as a candidate. However, Smith refused to run.
Tory leaders scheduled a leadership convention for December. In early November, the Suez crisis erupted. Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson played a major part in the settlement of that dispute, and was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role. Diefenbaker, as the Tories' foreign policy critic and as the favourite in the leadership race, gained considerable attention for his speeches on Suez. The Tories attacked Pearson for, as they said, being an errand boy for the United States government; he responded that it was better to be such a lackey than to be an obedient colonial doing Britain's will unquestioningly. While Suez would come to be regarded by many as one of the finest moments in Canadian foreign policy, at the time it cost the Liberals support outside of Quebec.
Diefenbaker was the favourite throughout the leadership campaign. At the convention in Ottawa in December, he refused to abide by the custom of having a Quebecer be either the proposer or seconder of his candidacy, and instead selected an Easterner (from New Brunswick) and a Westerner to put his name in nomination. With most Quebec delegates backing his opponents, Diefenbaker felt that having a Quebecer as a nominator would not increase his support. Diefenbaker was elected on the first ballot, and a number of Quebec delegates walked out of the convention after his victory. Other Diefenbaker opponents, such as those who had urged Smith to run, believed that the 61-year-old Diefenbaker would be merely a caretaker, who would serve a few years and then step down in favour of a younger man, and that the upcoming election would be lost to the Liberals regardless of who led the Tories.
When Parliament convened in January, the Liberals introduced no major proposals, and proposed nothing controversial. Diefenbaker turned over his parliamentary duties to British Columbia MP Howard Green and spent much of his time on the road making speeches across the country. Diefenbaker toured a nation in which Liberal support at the provincial level had slowly been eroding. When the Liberals gained Federal power in 1935, they controlled eight of the nine provincial governments, all except Alberta. By early 1957, the Liberals controlled the legislatures only in the tenth province, Newfoundland, and in Prince Edward Island and Manitoba.
In March, Finance Minister Walter Harris, who was believed to be St. Laurent's heir apparent, introduced his budget. The budget anticipated a surplus of $258 million, of which $100 million was to be returned in the form of increased welfare payments, with an increase of $6 per month (to a total of $46) for old age pensioners—effective after the election. Harris indicated that no more could be returned for fear of increasing inflation. Diefenbaker attacked the budget, calling for higher old age pensions and welfare payments, more aid to the poorer provinces, and aid to farmers.
St. Laurent had informed Diefenbaker that Parliament would be dissolved in April, for an election on June 10. A final parliamentary conflict was sparked by the suicide of Canadian Ambassador to Egypt E.H. Norman in the midst of allegations made by a United States Senate subcommittee that Norman had communist links. Pearson had defended Norman when the allegations became public, and defended him again after his death, suggesting to the Commons that the allegations were false. It quickly became apparent that the information released by the Americans might have come from Canadian intelligence sources, and after severe questioning of Pearson by Diefenbaker and the other parties' foreign policy critics, Pearson made a statement announcing that Norman had had communist associations in his youth, but had passed a security review. The minister evaded further questions regarding what information had been provided, and the discussion was cut short when Parliament was dissolved on April 12.
Peter Regenstreif, who studied the four elections between 1957 and 1963, wrote of the situation at the start of the election campaign, "In 1957, there was no tangible indication that the Liberals would be beaten or, even in the opposition's darkest moment of reflection, could be. All the hindsight and "post hoc" gazing at entrails cannot change that objective fact."
Issues.
The Liberals and PC party differed considerably on fiscal and tax policies. In his opening campaign speech at Massey Hall in Toronto, Diefenbaker contended that Canadians were overtaxed in the amount of $120 per family of four. Diefenbaker pledged to reduce taxes and castigated the Liberals for not reducing taxes despite the government surplus. St. Laurent also addressed tax policy in his opening speech, in Winnipeg. St. Laurent noted that since 1953, tax rates had declined, as had the national debt, and that Canada had a reputation as a good place for investments. The Prime Minister argued that the cost of campaign promises made by the Progressive Conservatives would inevitably drive up the tax rate. Diefenbaker also assailed tight-money monetary policies which kept interest rates high, complaining that they were hitting Atlantic and Western Canada hard.
The Tories promised changes in agricultural policies. Many Canadian farmers were unable to find buyers for their wheat; the PC party promised generous cash advances on unsold wheat and promised a protectionist policy regarding foreign agricultural products. The Liberals argued that such tariffs were not worth the loss of bargaining position in efforts to seek foreign markets for Canadian agricultural products.
The institution of the welfare state was by 1957 accepted by both major parties. Diefenbaker promised to expand the national health insurance scheme to cover tubercular and mental health patients. He characterized the old age pension increase which the Liberal government was instituting as