History from the podium
Judy LaMarsh was minister of National Health and Welfare in the Liberal government of Lester Pearson. One of her main tasks was to devise the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and to guide its legislation through a minority parliament. On 18 July 1963, she introduced a CPP resolution for debate in the House of Commons.
Ottawa lawyer and federal environment minister Catherine McKenna was a lead negotiator for Canada toward the 2015 Paris Agreement. It was signed by 195 countries and committed them to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. McKenna spoke to the agreement in the House of Commons in October 2016. She emphasized the need to place a price on carbon.
In his first speech in the House of Commons in 1968, NDP NP Broadbent said that Canada’s development of the welfare state had stalled, and he argued there was no true democracy without economic equality.
Free trade, or reciprocity, with the U.S., was the big issue in Canada's federal election campaign in 1891. The Liberal-Reform Party led by Wilfrid Laurier was for it, and the Conservatives, led by their aging leader Sir John A. Macdonald, were opposed. Macdonald gave a famous speech saying no to what he said would result in Canada's being absorbed by the U.S. He won the election.
When Canada went to war in 1939, Prime Minister Mackenzie King promised there would be no military conscription for overseas service. But the war dragged on with no apparent victory in sight. In this speech on April 7, 1942, King asked Canadians to vote in a referendum, not on conscription, but rather to relieve the government from its earlier promise. Eventually, the government imposed conscription near the war’s end.
A coloured image of the Red Ensign flag used by Canada prior to adoption of a new flag in 1965, and a second image of the Maple Leaf flag.
Canada's new maple leaf flag was adopted in late 1964 after months of bitter political debate between Prime Minister Lester Pearson and Opposition leader John Diefenbaker. Here is Pearson's speech to launch the flag debate in June 1964.
Preston Manning founded the Reform Party of Canada in 1987. The party was reorganized as the Canadian Alliance in 2000. Manning lost the leadership contest to Stockwell Day but remained in parliament until his retirement in January 2002. This is his farewell speech.
Quebec politician Henri Bourassa was angered in 1905 when when it was proposed that existing French language rights should not be applied to the new provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. He made this speech in the House of Commons.
In 1921, Agnes Macphail became the first woman elected to the House of Commons. She represented the United Farmers of Ontario, an agrarian populist group which refused to become a political party or to ally with any of the existing ones. Macphail believed that agriculture was the economic bedrock of the country but that farmers... Continue Reading →
