by Denis Smith
The prime minister and his ministers recognized that a large caucus would be difficult to manage: “You simply couldn’t give all that number of private members adequate attention, couldn’t give them sufficient responsibility,” recalled Howard Green.30 Soon after the election Diefenbaker told cabinet “that, in order to engage the interests of the large group of new government supporters in the House, thought should be given to the setting up of committees early in the session to investigate a number of problems.” He asked ministers for suggestions, and when the House reconvened in May, the government announced its intention to create two new standing committees on estimates and on veterans affairs as well as a select committee on broadcasting.31
Despite his initial good intentions, ministers and members saw Diefenbaker’s attitude to caucus change. He attended less often and he neglected to consult any longer about the details of legislation. According to Richard Bell, “caucuses became John Diefenbaker telling of his readings from Mackenzie King. At every caucus, we were regaled with something from Mackenzie King, who had become, for some reason or other that nobody could quite understand, John’s great hero.”32 This was, for Diefenbaker, a chance to display an old admiration and to identify himself with another master of the trade.
For the short run, the government had overwhelming public support. Its popularity in the polls continued to grow for six months in the afterglow of the election. But for the longer run, confidence would have to be maintained by new policies, clearly and simply defended. The easy reforms -adjustments to Liberal welfare programs, regional aid, and agricultural support - had occurred during the short parliament. Now the Tories would have to give content to the “Vision” and show that their plans for the country made sense. The prime minister’s congenital caution, disorganization, and shallow intellectual focus weighed against that likelihood, and no previous experience had prepared him for this success. Once confirmed in his majority, Diefenbaker gradually fell victim to his pride, which had always coexisted tenuously alongside his insecurity. The great victory fed and infected it. Two ministers noted the effects: Douglas Harkness believed that the victory “persuaded him that he was in an unassailable position. He was able to persuade himself that his views were always correct and that he could carry the Canadian people with him.” Donald Fleming observed that “1958 undoubtedly confirmed Dief’s opinion that we all owed our advancement to him.” Diefenbaker, he wrote, “could not bear the thought of losing ground,” and acted henceforth as though he was running a perpetual election campaign.33 His worth, his self-confidence, and his government’s justification all depended on the sustaining force of concentrated public adulation. He alone had created that adulation, and he alone could maintain it through his gifts of communion with the people. If it failed, that could only be because he had failed - or because he had been betrayed and conspired against. He had always resisted any admission of personal failure. Victory made him more isolated, more vulnerable, less able to share leadership with his cabinet team, and more dependent on what he could read in the winds of public taste. Within months of March 31 there were worrying hints of troubles to come.
THE FIRST OF THESE HINTS HAD A SURPRISING SOURCE. THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF Canada, whose collections had begun in 1880, had been buying European as well as Canadian art since 1907. In recent postwar years its director, Alan Jarvis, had vigorously pursued additions to the European collection with the blessing of the Liberal government. In February 1958 the gallery’s trustees sought cabinet’s permission to purchase the Breughel painting Landscape with Christ Appearing to the Apostles at the Sea of Tiberias at a price of $350,000, from funds previously appropriated. None of the Diefenbaker cabinet had perceptible reputations as patrons of the arts, and the party had criticized the previous government for its extravagant spending. With an election on their minds, they preferred to defer a decision on the gallery’s recommendation.34 On May 2 Davie Fulton, as the acting minister responsible for the gallery, brought a new recommendation to cabinet, asking approval to purchase both the Breughel and a Lorenzo Monaco at a total price of about $450,000. After some critical comment about the price of the Breughel, the purchase was authorized.35 Five days later Fulton reported that funds had not, after all, been appropriated for the Breughel, and would have to be authorized in a supplementary estimate if the purchase were to proceed. Cabinet supported the minister’s decision to suspend negotiations for the painting.36 Three weeks later, after Ellen Fairclough had become the minister, Fulton told cabinet that agents for the gallery had already purchased both paintings before cabinet’s decision to halt the purchase, and that lawsuits might result from the cabinet’s reversal. He said that Jarvis’s statements on the issue “appeared to be inconsistent,” that Jarvis “was not too knowlegeable with respect to matters of finance and administration,” and that he should return to Canada at once to clean up the “mess.” Cabinet agreed.37 After several more discussions in which blame for the affair was focused on Jarvis, cabinet confirmed its refusal to provide funds for the purchases despite the likelihood of lawsuits. Jarvis resigned as director of the gallery, and - despite the government’s claims of financial prudence - appearances suggested that the ministry had been inept, philistine, and indifferent to its own and the gallery’s reputations for integrity.38
THE NEW PARLIAMENT OPENED ON MAY 12, 1958. THE PREVIOUS SPEAKER OF THE House, Roland Michener - who had gained respect and been re-elected as an MP - was generally expected to be named Speaker once more. But the prime minister, believing that Michener had deferred too much to the opposition, asked cabinet to consider the implications carefully. Would Michener’s re-election promote the notion of a permanent speakership -which Diefenbaker had favoured in opposition - and offend Quebec? Ministers thought not, and Michener was acclaimed with warm support from Liberal and CCF members. As the twenty-fifth parliament progressed, Diefenbaker’s patience with Michener’s conduct of the House quickly faded. Several times the sparks flew between them, and Diefenbaker privately berated his ministers for imposing Michener on him.39
The new House was dominated on both sides of the aisle by government members, while the opposition occupied little more than a fringe immediately to the Speaker’s left. Opposite the prime minister sat Mike Pearson, Paul Martin, Jack Pickersgill, and Lionel Chevrier, the lonely survivors of Liberal governments past. The new House leader of the CCF, Hazen Argue, and his tiny band of seven sat beside them, closest to the Speaker.
Given the visionary tone of the Conservative campaign and the scale of the triumph, the speech from the throne seemed remarkably prosaic. The cabinet’s preoccupation with unemployment was reflected in plans for expanded public works grants, extended aid for house building, and a six-week extension of unemployment insurance benefits for seasonally unemployed workers. At the same time, the speech warned of the need for public spending restraint to contain inflation. A new regulatory agency would be created for radio and television. Legislation for a bill of rights would be introduced during the session. The parliamentary committee system would be expanded, and a system of simultaneous translation would be installed in the House of Commons. The government’s proposed Commonwealth Trade and Economic Conference would take place in Montreal in September. This was no proclamation of a new age, but rather a signal of the government’s essential caution.40 Fleming’s first budget reached the House, after long gestation, on June 17. It too was a product of caution. Fleming had guided its preparation with obsessive care and concern for secrecy. “The papers which I was obliged to take home at nights,” he wrote, “I actually took into the bed with me.” The budget speech, delivered to an evening session in a crowded House, was the longest, most detailed, and most piously solemn in Canadian history. “I spoke for over two hours,” Fleming recalled, “and finished as strongly as I began. I did not take even one sip of water throughout.” Faced with the unexpected pressures of an economic slowdown and the previous year’s tax reductions and increases in spending, the minister announced a sm
all deficit of $39 million for 1957-58 and an anticipated deficit of $648 million for 1958-59 - the largest ever predicted. Fleming was unhappy with that prospect, offered only limited tax reductions, and admitted that the economic situation restricted the government’s options. But he ended with the confident claim that “we have not veered and shall not veer from our unshaken belief in the shining future of Canada.”41 The budget was mildly expansionary and seemed carefully balanced for the circumstances.
Fleming retained the limelight in the following month, when the government made a massive intervention in the bond market with a conversion loan to refinance the outstanding issues of wartime Victory Bonds, totalling $6.4 billion - or almost two-thirds of the national debt, all due to mature before 1967. Soon after the budget speech, the governor of the Bank of Canada, James Coyne, proposed to Fleming that the whole of this Victory Bond debt should be managed by a single longer-term conversion, at attractive interest rates, to be launched almost at once through a highly publicized promotion campaign. The minister and his deputy accepted the scheme, and Fleming took it to the prime minister for his approval before submission to cabinet. Diefenbaker agreed and set a date for cabinet discussion, while Fleming proceeded with arrangements, conducted in utmost secrecy, to launch the conversion. At cabinet on July 11 Fleming introduced his plan, but was confronted by “several western ministers” who objected to the prospect of higher interest rates and certain cash adjustments. Fleming recalled: “The opposition was so outspoken that Dief began to wilt and weaken. Instead of lending the plan his support he withdrew to the neutral sidelines. I was appalled at the situation, because with Diefenbaker’s full approval we had commenced calling in the organizers to meet in Ottawa. I was irretrievably committed to the plan, as Diefenbaker had committed himself, but I could not withdraw my support as he appeared about to do.”42
Diefenbaker played briefly for time. Howard Green and Davie Fulton were instructed to meet with Coyne and representatives of the financial community, and to report their judgments to cabinet the next morning. Fleming prepared to resign if his commitment was not sustained, but to his relief, Green and Fulton gave their support and cabinet approved the conversion loan. It was launched with Fleming’s announcement in the House on July 14, with a two-month period for conversion. That evening Fleming and Diefenbaker promoted the loan in a national television broadcast, Diefenbaker in English, Fleming in French. No word of Diefenbaker’s hesitation and the cabinet’s division emerged, but for Fleming the affair “inevitably shook my confidence in the reliability of Diefenbaker’s promises of support. I never fully accepted them after that.”43
But Fleming did not fully reveal the source of his disquiet. The evening of the loan announcement, Diefenbaker and Gordon Churchill met with Fleming to tell him - according to Churchill’s account - “that now he had got what he wanted, he would have to be more careful in saying ‘no’ to some of the other worthwhile projects coming before cabinet.” Churchill believed that Fleming would now have to accept the western ministers’ package of financial assistance to prairie farmers.44
By September 15 about 90 percent of Victory Bonds had been converted. Fleming described the campaign as “not only the largest financial operation in Canada’s history, but the greatest success.”45 The market was more equivocal, and holders of the new bonds began to sell at discounted prices. For a short time the Bank of Canada bought bonds to support the price, but abandoned this policy in October rather than create an expanding flow of new money. In the following year the bank began to explain its new monetary restraint by referring to an excessive growth of the money supply in 1958. As high rates of unemployment continued into the 1960s, the bank’s restraint became an increasing irritant for Diefenbaker and his government. What had initially seemed a bold and successful financial operation became, before long, an unanticipated source of difficulty for the cabinet. The loan decision, and Diefenbaker’s hesitation, reflected a still-implicit conflict between the restrictive approach of James Coyne and the bank, at that time supported by his minister Donald Fleming, and the expansionist instincts of the prime minister. By 1961 Fleming had shifted sides, and the irritant had festered into an infection requiring surgery. In retrospect, Merril Menzies believed that “Mr Diefenbaker knew perfectly well that he had been sold a terrible bill of goods, very much against the interests of Canada.” As a matter of convenient housekeeping, the cabinet had accepted the conversion loan, with its restrictive consequences, at a moment when that was bound to discourage economic recovery. “This,” said Menzies, “demonstrates something that I’ve often felt about Mr Diefenbaker - that when his experience and technical knowledge in the sometimes complex and very disputatious field of economics weren’t quite adequate to analyse a problem or a policy, his instinctive feel about it was often right on. When he listened to his instincts, he was right. But when he listened to his advisers during this critical period of 1958 and 1959, he was almost entirely wrong.”46
Meanwhile, Fleming faced, and acceded reluctantly to, the pressures for fresh assistance to prairie farmers. A series of transportation and grain-growing subsidies were proposed to cabinet, with Diefenbaker’s adamant support, by early August. Fleming warned cabinet of the increasing deficit, hinted at the need for an increase in taxes, and again considered resignation. But before the end of August he had accepted the cabinet’s approval of two measures of supplementary spending totalling $115 million, to provide for acreage subsidies and for foreign loans for the purchase of Canadian wheat and flour. Fleming rationalized his loyalty by noting that his big project, the Commonwealth Trade and Economic Conference, was about to open in Montreal.47
The conference was the culmination of Diefenbaker’s 1957 campaign to promote the Commonwealth. Its preparation rested with Fleming, Churchill, and Macdonnell, and civil servants from several departments. The massive meeting, with more than 160 delegates from fifteen independent or “emerging” nations, lasted for two weeks in early September. As chairman of the conference, Fleming defined its purposes as the expansion of trade, the development of resources, and the strengthening of economic, cultural, and spiritual ties among the Commonwealth’s member nations. With so broad and unspecific a mandate, it was above all an exercise in mutual education, good fellowship, and managed propaganda. Any possible subjects of disagreement, such as the convertibility of sterling or Diefenbaker’s proposal for a Commonwealth bank, were excised from the agenda during the early planning stages. “There was no bargaining at the conference,” Fleming wrote, “indeed not even a semblance of it.” At the end, the conference produced a 9000-word report announcing a major Commonwealth scholarship program financed largely by the United Kingdom and Canada, improved international telephone services, and a new Commonwealth economic council to meet annually. Coincidentally, Britain announced the removal of some import restrictions on agricultural products. All delegations left Montreal in good spirits, lauding the conference as a beacon for mankind and patting each other, and themselves, comfortably on the backs for their cooperative efforts.48
DESPITE HIS BUSY SCHEDULE OF CABINET MEETINGS, ALMOST DAILY APPEARANCES IN the House for Question Period, and ceremonials for visiting VIPs - during early summer there were visits by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, President Heuss of Germany, Prime Minister Nkrumah of Ghana, Prime Minister Macmillan, and President Eisenhower - the prime minister could not resist taking up a steady flow of invitations for speeches and honorary degrees. He was working long hours, eating well, and putting on weight. “What a life it is to be Prime Minister!” he told his mother jokingly in May after “a hot and heavy couple of days in the House - trading punches with Mr. Pearson and enjoying myself in doing it.” In June there were speeches to the Zionist Assembly and the International Conference of Baptist Youth in Toronto; honorary degree ceremonies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec; the Macmillan visit; and a day of celebrations on June 21 to mark the first anniversary of Conservative pow
er. “I hope,” he wrote about the Baptist meeting in Maple Leaf Gardens, “in this case I will have a speech ready and not be in the position I usually am in being unprepared in every regard until the last moment.” The week following that address he spoke in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, and Ontario and reported to his mother that “it has been a long and trying week and I am glad there are no more ahead.” Ten days later, after three days with the Eisenhowers and some late nights of anxiety over British and American military intervention in the Middle East, Diefenbaker wrote that “Olive and I are not taking any more social engagements than are absolutely necessary. I don’t think I could do my job as Prime Minister if I were to accept five percent of the social engagements.”49 But honorary degrees were another matter: the offers were piling up, and in September and October he accepted four more, at the University of British Columbia, Toronto, the University of New Brunswick, and Laval.50 Speeches, too, remained irresistible and unprepared. October 2: “I haven’t got any kind of a speech that is good, but I will have to make the best of it.” October 18: “Last evening I spoke at a dinner here to the Press Gallery - and as usual didn’t have a speech ready, so had to rush one into existence at the last moment.” October 22: “Altogether I am piled up with work. We will be returning tonight and I have to get ready for tomorrow when I speak to the Women’s Canadian Club here.”51 Very occasionally, the burden of an unprepared speech was too much for him: “I was supposed to speak to the University Professors meeting here this noon hour but decided a few minutes ago not to go.”52