by Denis Smith
The Cabinet expresses its loyalty to the Prime Minister and its willingness to continue to give him full support.
Without in any way imposing any condition in respect of the foregoing resolution, Cabinet is of the opinion that immediate dissolution is most undesirable and that we should meet the House of Commons tomorrow and seek by every means to avoid defeat.
Harkness dissented, and said he would leave to write his letter of resignation. Green, in the chair, expressed the cabinet’s thanks for Harkness’s service in three ministries; and Harkness, grateful for this display of decency, shook hands around the table before departing.
Green, Churchill, Fleming, and Nowlan carried the message of reconciliation to Diefenbaker in the library, where he was quietly finishing a sandwich lunch in the company of Olive and his golden labrador retriever Happy. After brief reflection he returned and thanked the cabinet for its resolution of confidence. Diefenbaker suggested that some ministers should try to persuade Harkness to return, or at least to do no harm to the government in his letter of resignation. Hees and Fulton agreed to do so. At 2:30 pm the bizarre meeting ended.
Green and Churchill remained at Sussex Drive, and soon Diefenbaker called Fleming to return. He needed comfort. “We hashed and rehashed what had happened,” Fleming recalled, “and I felt little was being accomplished.” Olive served sandwiches, and about seven in the evening Fleming departed. Some time after that, when Nowlan and McCutcheon had joined the prime minister, Hees and Fulton returned to report they had persuaded Harkness to tone down his letter of resignation. Fulton then returned to the subject of the prime minister’s resignation for the good of the party and the country. McCutcheon grunted his support. Diefenbaker asked who should succeed him. Hees and Nowlan were apparently mentioned, but when Fulton added that the new prime minister might appoint Diefenbaker to succeed Patrick Kerwin as chief justice of the Supreme Court, Diefenbaker invited the two ministers to leave the house at once. During the evening Harkness’s letter arrived, with a note that it would be given to the press on Monday morning. He left cabinet declaring that “It has become quite obvious during the last few days that your views and mine as to the course we should pursue for the acquisition of nuclear weapons for our armed forces are not capable of reconciliation.” Harkness alone had made his position clear.175
On Monday morning, February 4, cabinet met again to discuss the resignation and the coming confrontation in the House. Diefenbaker told Fleming: “You are going to be prime minister before this day is over … You and I are going over to see the Governor General this afternoon.” Fleming doubted that Diefenbaker could dictate the succession, and later reflected: “Whether he meant this and whether he would have carried out his professed intention I do not know, nor will I ever know. He may have been in earnest, or he may have been testing out the strength of his position or my loyalty, or perhaps he was talking somewhat aimlessly.”176 Cabinet discussed its response to a Liberal Party promise of a royal commission on bilingualism and biculturalism, and agreed to propose a federal-provincial conference on the language question that afternoon. No one raised the subject of a replacement for the minister of defence. Diefenbaker also appointed his defeated friend David Walker to the Senate that day, and Walker joined him in Ottawa as the crisis deepened.177
When the House met, the balconies were crowded. Harkness made a statement on his resignation that concluded: “I resigned on a matter of principle. The point was finally reached when I considered that my honour and integrity required that I take this step.” The prime minister’s prolonged indecision and the cabinet’s division were now matters of public record. The supply debate opened on a no-confidence motion by Pearson, worded deftly to attract the support of Social Credit and the NDP: “This government, because of lack of leadership, the breakdown of unity in the cabinet, and confusion and indecision in dealing with national and international problems, does not have the confidence of the Canadian people.”178 Who could deny it?
For the government, the crucial votes in the House now belonged to thirty members of the Social Credit Party under the leadership of Robert Thompson and Real Caouette. For a few months after the 1962 election, Thompson had kept closely in touch with Conservative intermediaries, manoeuvring carefully to avoid the government’s defeat and an early election. Now his members reported dissatisfaction with the government in their constituencies, and his contacts with the ministry had ceased. Thompson, fearful that his party would precipitate the government’s defeat, wanted some significant concessions to offer his back-benchers. On February 1 he had sought out the journalist Patrick Nicholson to deliver a message to Senator McCutcheon. Social Credit would vote against the government on the supply motion unless it announced a timetable for action on four points: tabling the new spending estimates, introducing a new budget, carrying out some measures already approved by parliament, and clarifying the commitment on nuclear weapons.
McCutcheon thought the request reasonable, and promised a response by Monday morning. In the meantime, there were further discussions between Thompson, Nowlan, and Churchill similarly aimed at reconciliation.179 Thompson also sent an emergency message to his Conservative friend in New Brunswick, Michael Wardell, whom Diefenbaker had recently appointed as chairman of a new federal agency, the Atlantic Development Board. Wardell was flown to Ottawa on Sunday afternoon from the RCAF base in Shearwater, Nova Scotia, in the company of the chief of the air staff. Thompson met him on arrival at Ottawa airport and briefed him during their drive to the Chateau Laurier, where Wardell telephoned Diefenbaker. As the prime minister absorbed the results of his chaotic cabinet meeting, Wardell gave him Thompson’s conditions for support:
T.’s terms: a simple statement by D. of his nuclear arms policy, or alternatively his acceptance of an inter-party committee on defence with the government retaining the sole responsibility for formulating policy. The statement was to be made in Parliament on Monday before the Liberal motion of no confidence, which would be on supply. The statement could embody three statements D. had already made which were “hidden in a mass of other words.”180
Wardell added Thompson’s other three points about the parliamentary timetable, “none of which,” he thought, “could conceivably create an issue.” In response, Diefenbaker “complained bitterly of T., said T. had lost no opportunity of publicly slighting him.” Diefenbaker was exhausted, and promised to see Wardell in his office early on Monday morning. Wardell then consulted Hugh John Flemming, who told him it was essential “to reach an understanding with Green overnight,” since Green was closest to Diefenbaker. “This advice,” Wardell wrote, “was, I think, fatal.” Wardell reached him, and Green said he had been with Diefenbaker during Wardell’s earlier call and knew everything.
Next morning Green was with Diefenbaker when he met Wardell in the prime minister’s East Block office – which was frenetic with ringing telephones, ministers and officials rushing in and out, and harassed secretaries. Wardell explained Thompson’s terms again, said they were modest, and asked for a message which Thompson could give to his caucus that morning. Diefenbaker was hostile: “Thompson never loses a chance to humiliate me … Let Thompson know I will not be kicked around.” But the prime minister left the issue for settlement with Green as he departed for the cabinet meeting, and Green offered no objection. Wardell told Thompson an agreement was possible.
At midday, Thompson gave Wardell a typed carbon copy of the Social Credit terms. He took them to Howard Green, who read them and said: “We shall have nothing to do with it. It is presumptuous and it is foolish of Thompson to make such suggestions.” He predicted dissolution and an early election. There was no further communication from Diefenbaker on the terms. As Nicholson judged, “He did not deign to give that ultimatum the recognition of a reply: but he resolved to meet the undoubtedly serious threat by supplying the information in his own way and at his own time.”181
Following Pearson’s speech on his no-confidence motion, Thompson entered the debat
e just before the dinner adjournment. He quoted with approval that day’s Globe and Mail editorial – which spoke of an early election as “a disaster” – and added that “We, in this party continue to stand on our previous policy … to go along with a reasonable discussion and debate on the supply motions that are yet to come and on the estimates which are yet to be brought forward.” But when debate resumed at 8 pm, his tone had changed. “We have reached the point where we almost reluctantly, shall we say, believe it would be worse for the country not to go to the people to ascertain their will, than it would be to prolong the life of this Government which is not fulfilling its responsibilities as it should.” He outlined the party’s four conditions for support. “We did not intend to issue an ultimatum. In spite of our last minute appeal asking, begging, pleading that the government fill the vacuum that had been created because they have not done these things previously, we have no action.” He moved an amendment to the Liberal motion framed around the Social Credit conditions:
This Government has failed up to this time to give a clear statement of policy respecting Canada’s national defence, and has failed to organize the business of the House so that the 1963-64 estimates and budget could be introduced, and has failed to outline a positive program of follow-up action respecting many things for which this Parliament and previous Parliaments have already given authority, and does not have the confidence of the Canadian people.182
Afterwards, he told Wardell that he had changed course because Diefenbaker had made no response to his approaches.183
Now there were wheels within wheels revolving. Nicholson, hearing a radio news flash reporting the Thompson amendment and predicting the government’s defeat, drove back to Parliament Hill in a snowstorm, found Hees in the House, and arranged to meet him after the adjournment at 10 pm. He was determined to bring Thompson together again with a Conservative minister, and Thompson agreed to join them later. But Nicholson’s own calculations had shifted. Once Hees had poured him a scotch-and-water from his “hospitable cupboard,” Nicholson suggested that he could see “a broad highway leading to a continuation in office under a new leader and supported by thirty Social Credit votes … I don’t know what he [Thompson] would say to you, because I haven’t discussed it with him, but I’ve a good idea he might tell you that a new leader of your party might change a lot of pictures. I know his view is that this would scotch the need for an election now, and his party would support almost any new P.M. who would get on with urgent business.” Hees was intrigued and agreed to meet Thompson, who was already on his way. But he wanted other ministers present, and quickly gathered Léon Balcer, Pierre Sévigny, and George Nowlan to his office by telephone. At about 10:30 pm Thompson joined the party – but took only ginger ale. He said there had been no response to his messages from Diefenbaker, and he was “through supporting this government of inaction.”
One of the Quebeckers declared: “The anti-Dief boys in the Cabinet will force him out; wouldn’t that satisfy the Socreds?” Thompson wondered why that hadn’t happened. He would only accept deeds. The drinking party muddled on into the night towards a conclusion, consuming two bottles of scotch on the way. George Hees was assigned to bell the cat. He would meet Diefenbaker the next morning to demand his resignation, and later in the day the dissenting ministers would confront the prime minister together to ask for his resignation or deliver their own. Thompson told them that if Diefenbaker resigned before the vote, his motion would no longer apply. Social Credit would certainly give reasonable support to a new prime minister willing to meet the party’s terms, but he would not accept Howard Green as prime minister. Well after one in the morning, Nicholson delivered Sévigny to his home.184 The core of dissident ministers had abandoned their pledge of loyalty within thirty-six hours of giving it to the prime minister.
At 8 am on Tuesday, February 5, George Hees called at Sussex Drive to urge the prime minister once more to resign. He predicted the government’s defeat in the House that day. No one, he said, would campaign with Diefenbaker if an election were called. But the government could be saved, with Social Credit support, if he resigned at once in favour of Donald Fleming. He mentioned once more, as an enticement, the vacant chief justiceship – on the very day of Patrick Kerwin’s funeral. Diefenbaker consulted Olive, telephoned Gordon Churchill, and told Hees he could go to hell.185 Later in the morning one group of ministers gathered at Hees’s main-floor parliamentary office (while the press swirled in the hallways outside) to consider their next step after the failure of Hees’s guerrilla attack. Unaccountably, they decided to wait twenty-four hours until after the parliamentary vote before challenging Diefenbaker again. They would ask for a meeting of ministers at 9 am, to precede the regular Wednesday caucus meeting at eleven. Meanwhile, Diefenbaker’s loyalist ministers, Churchill, Hamilton, Starr, Dinsdale, and Monteith, were rallying Conservative back-benchers – who had so far been left out of everyone’s calculations – to show their support for the Chief. A mid-morning radio report that George Nowlan had replaced Diefenbaker as prime minister was quickly denied, and the cheerleaders redoubled their appeals. As Diefenbaker made his way into the House at 2:30 pm he was greeted in the lobby by a cheering mass of faithful MPs.186
During a short question period, Paul Martin innocently asked Diefenbaker “if it was not communicated to the right honourable gentleman today that a number of his colleagues wished him to vacate the office of Prime Minister – and be replaced by one of his colleagues?”187 The variation on that rumour was that Thompson had demanded Diefenbaker’s resignation as his final condition for support – which was more or less true, although “demanded” was not quite the right word to describe what had emerged in the midnight hours. Wardell, who was in the Speaker’s gallery with Olive, asked her whether the prime minister was aware that Thompson had not imposed that condition. She thought not, and asked Wardell to send a note down to Diefenbaker. He wrote: “Dear Prime Minister: I talked to Thompson this morning. He stated the same terms as yesterday: with a short concise statement on nuclear arms repeating your own previously expressed three points. He made no condition of your own resignation from office.” The note was passed down by messenger. Diefenbaker read it, “looked up and nodded.”
In this confusing atmosphere of speculation and intrigue, Diefenbaker took the floor. He attacked the Liberals, the military establishment, and the Americans, and eventually addressed himself to the Créditiste members who would decide the government’s fate that evening: “If our hands are tied, they are tied not by the other two parties but by the official opposition. They bear the responsibility … We place before you our views on defence … We will bring in new estimates … within … one week … We will bring down a budget… by the end of February.” On everything but the nuclear issue, Thompson’s conditions had been fully granted. The Liberal opposition, Diefenbaker claimed, had simply treated the Social Credit Party as a joke. Pearson “loves thee, but he loved you not until yesterday.” They should not join his league. Diefenbaker asked the House for its confidence. “The other day I saw the benefits of calling an election, thinking only of the political consequences in our favour. But I asked, ‘What will its effects be on a rising economy in the years ahead and the months ahead, unless we get those things on the statute books that would continue the upsurge of the economy of Canada?’ ”188
But it was too late. Thompson awaited only the deed, and the deed had not been committed. His party would vote against the government. “What numbed or paralysed John Diefenbaker,” Fleming wondered, “that he did not raise a finger to ward off defeat in the House when that could have been done?” He could not answer the question. When the House returned after dinner, the bells rang for the division on the Social Credit amendment, and 256 of the 265 members took their seats. Only two Conservatives were absent: Douglas Harkness, who was in his office, and Art Smith, who stood behind the curtains to watch the vote. When the roll was called, the Halifax Conservative Edmund Morris and the NDP member Harold
Winch abstained, and two NDP members, H.W. Herridge and Colin Cameron, voted with the government. Otherwise, party lines held, and the government was defeated 142 to 111. The amended Liberal motion passed by the same count. The chamber erupted in singing, yelling, and paper-throwing while the prime minister made his barely audible announcement that he would go to the governor general the next day. The House adjourned into the teeming hallways. Upstairs, dissident ministers and their wives gathered at Pierre Sévigny’s office while a Canadian Press reporter diligently recorded their names. Stories of the secret plans for Wednesday morning’s cabinet coup, when the Chief would be unseated, flowed freely that night with the alcohol.189
Overnight, Hamilton, Green, and Churchill had arranged to reverse the order of the two meetings planned for the morning. The dissidents had already proven themselves disorganized, not to say feckless, and they had no effective means of preventing the further delay in confronting the prime minister. The caucus would take place at nine, the cabinet meeting at eleven. They would have to take their chances, first of all, in a meeting where western members loyal to John Diefenbaker held the majority. In a defensive campaign to sustain the prime minister that had been, on balance, as inept as the campaign against Diefenbaker, this was an astute move.
Both Oakley Dalgleish and John Bassett had been closely in touch and in loose collaboration with the cabinet dissidents over the previous two weeks. As the House vote approached on Tuesday evening, Dalgleish printed his postponed editorial, titled “Now Is the Time…,” on the front page of Wednesday’s Globe, calling for the prime minister’s retirement so that “a strong man might succeed him” and avoid the government’s defeat. But “now” was too late: minutes after the paper went on sale on the streets, the government fell. Dalgleish altered a few sentences to bring the editorial up to date for the final edition. It condemned the government’s paralysis since the previous June, and lamented that the country had been thrown into “an election that could well be disastrous.” The fault lay squarely with John Diefenbaker, who took no economic decisions after the 1962 emergency measures, who could not honour the country’s military commitments to the United States, who obstructed Britain’s efforts to enter the European Common Market, and who “continued to cling to the post of leader” after abdicating its responsibilities. His ministers – who could, Dalgleish claimed, have led the country sensibly – had been “frozen in enforced inactivity” by the prime minister. The editor offered Diefenbaker a dignified exit – or perhaps (still banking on what the dissidents said they would do that morning) simply the appearance of one: