Whoever first decided to license Thalidomide for prescription use in Canada as a sedative for pregnant mothers has got to be a candidate.
William Lyon Mackenzie King
and around 22,000 Japanese Canadians would agree with me
From the business community, I might go with Conrad Black as well. And toss in Barbara Amiel for good measure and cover two spouses for the price of one.
Heading into PM waters, I could be persuaded of Brian Mulroney. Fairly easily.
Is there any particular individual responsible for the idea of “residential schools”? The attempted extermination of a culture and a possible inspiration for Apartheid has to count for something.
I nominate the “none is too many” guy, though he was likely just a low-level stooge enforcing the policies of his bosses.
Bastard.
Stockwell Day?
John Diefenbaker?
Can anyone outside Stockwell Day’s family even pick him out of a lineup anymore? To be a terrible person I think you have to be able to claim some infamy. Obscurity doesn’t cut it.
Canada hasn’t had a lot of evil individuals who managed to retain significant power.
I’d have to choose Lucien Bouchard. Aside from being a man totally devoid of principle, honor or honestly, he certainly destroyed the Conservative Party (albeit with unwitted help from Mulroney and the assistance of Preston Manning) which led to the Liberal win streak, which is what, in part, caused Sponsorgate. His influence has vastly increased the regional divisions in our country. I’m kind of buying him as an investment here, but in the long run I think he’ll be a clear #1 choice.
Sorry then. (And sorry for not responding earlier, I didn’t have Internet access during the week-end.) I have seen some hostility to Eastern Canada in general and Québec in particular coming from Western Canada and Alberta in particular (where you are), so I assumed that it was another crack at us, but I was wrong. Sorry.
Note that this would be another subject of debate: the reason of the hostility between the different parts of Canada (and I won’t pretend that Western Canadians are the only responsible for this, we also have some preconceived ideas toward you), and what could be done to resolve this. If we want to keep Canada in a single piece, I think that would be important.
Well, it could be argued that MacDonald was a racist (I think he was an Orangeman, for one), but of course Riel wasn’t without his faults either.
I guess so. But it remains associated to us (for example, no one will bring poutine out of topic when speaking about Alberta, but very often when speaking about Québec someone will say something about poutine – usually that it sounds or is disgusting – even though it has no bearing at all on the discussion), so I assumed this was the same thing. Again, sorry for the misunderstanding.
I wouldn’t call myself a “strong” believer in a federal Canada, but I do think that it’s not a bad idea. But I don’t see the swing towards regions as a bad thing either. Face it, the different parts of Canada are just that, very different from each other, with populations who have different wants and needs. I don’t think the federal government’s decisions can satisfy everyone, so I like it when I see that there is a movement to give more powers to the provinces of Canada.
The FLQ members, or at least, those who placed bombs and kidnapped people, are much better choices for the “worst Canadian” title in my book. It’s distinctly un-Canadian to use terrorism to advance your political ends. And note that as soon as they kidnapped Cross and kidnapped and murdered Laporte, they lost most of the sympathy they had before. Lévesque, Bouchard and Parizeau, on the other hand, tried to use the political system and to appeal to the electors to advance their political goals. That’s the Canadian way. And as I said in my previous message, of all three, I prefer Lévesque, since he accepted the fact that most Quebecers didn’t want (at the time) to separate from Canada. One thing I don’t like in the current independentist thought in Québec is the idea that most Quebecers would want an independent country, but many of them don’t know it yet, so we have to show them. How do they know that? They just try to reflect their opinions on everyone. It would be like Harper saying that most Canadians wouldn’t want same-sex marriage if they knew “what it was”, but they’ve just been badly educated.
Indeed, and I also said this. Those are the “bad” people we hear about the most, but in the end, their influence is minimal.
Although I’m not an expert on Canadian politics, wouldn’t Brian Mulroney be a serious candidate for the worst Canadian.
I wouldn’t nominate him, myself. Mulroney, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan all came along at a time when technology (small computers, mostly) were on the verge of allowing economic power to rapidly expand (though not always for the better). Though I disagree with all three on just about every social issue, I don’t deny they were what the 1980s called for.
I’m not rendering an opinion on the OP’s question, but just wanted to mention that Lucien Bouchard is married to my first cousin (my brush with greatness –haha).
A pleasant enough guy socially, it just seems a little odd that his fervent political ideals contrast to a degree with his personal life. His wife Audrey is an American, born & raised in S. California, and seems to have little interest in his politics or public life. He speaks primarily English at home/around the family, and spends a notable amount of time visiting my uncle near Long Beach. Or at least they used to anyway. I haven’t seen them for years.
Anyway, I’m out.
Whatever one thinks of Brian Mulroney, it’s insane to say he’s equivalent to Reagan and Thatcher on social issues; it’s like putting Paul Martin in a class of social values with Bill Frist and Tom DeLay.
Mulroney was an ardent opponent of capital punishment and resisted the institution of a new anti-abortion law. He was one of the leaders of the international anti-apartheid movement, one of the very first statesmen to really organize the economic boycott - a point on which he was opposed by Reagan and Thatcher. In 1990 Mulroney’s government proposed a 25% increase in immigration, which I believe was the only time in the history of the country immigration was proposed to be increased during an economic downturn. His government strongly enhanced policies of multiculturalism and bilingualism, introduced the Young Offenders Act, paid back Japanese Canadians for the money and property that had been stolen from them, and was probably the only Conservative government we’ve ever had that had broad support among both French and English Canadians. It was Mulroney who advised George H. Bush early in the Iraq-Kuwait crisis that he needed United Nations support for war.
How was he ANYTHING like Reagan, socially speaking?
There were a few similarites in cuts to social spending, but keep in mind that comparing Canadian politics to American politics requires a massive leftward correction factor, to the point where an anti-Apartheid stance (for example) doesn’t seem particularly extreme while in the U.S. it was the province of their left wing.
In any case, he’s not even the worst Prime Minister, let alone Canadian.
I’d nominate Diefenbaker, if only for his destruction of the Avro Arrows.
For individual acts of evil committed, I guess **Robert Pickton ** is our man, with either **Paul Bernardo ** or **Clifford Olsen ** running second.
For acts of evil intended on future Canadian soil, I’m actually tempted to throw in Jeffrey Amherst, though he wasn’t born here and didn’t spend long here. Surely some kind of dishonourable mention is earned by Conqueror-of-Montreal’s plan to wipe out the First Nations by smallpox-infested blankets?
For individual acts of evil by a prime minister, we have a fair number. King is a perfect choice there – not only for the destruction of Japanese communities and for the internment camps, but also for his policy of not accepting Jewish refugees during the Nazi era in Germany.
But Macdonald is a strong competitor in the race for the bottom – Riel’s murder wasn’t just the killing of single dangerous political figure, but a last ugly act in the country’s betrayal of the Métis.
For the more subtle but pernicious destruction of the country’s fabric, Mulroney gets my vote. Sure, Chrétien and Martin have walked farther on the road to tearing this country apart, but it was Mulroney who set the direction – he was the one who swerved off the highway Trudeau and his predecessors put us on, and we are still, in many ways, living in the Mulroney era. You have to go back to Borden to find someone who did so much damage to the country’s sense of itself.
The true bottom-feeders of Canadian politics, however, run provinces. Finding good premiers for each province is tough, and that’s understandable. At the federal level, you have diverse regions to balance if you want to be re-elected. At the municipal level, you have to live directly with any mistakes you make. But for a province? You can play the city-versus-the-country game, and take total power with only half support.
Who would we begin with there? The incredible racism of Amor de Cosmos? The anti-democratic politics of Maurice Duplessis? Parizeau was a racist bigot, **Ralph Klein ** is a homophobic bigot. And I could go on forever about the political history of BC.
Bryan may mean “social” as in “social programs,” though I don’t disagree with anything you said about “social” as in “socially conservative.”
And I agree with severus regarding the FLQ vs. the PQ. I’m sorry, but treason has to involve, at minimum, an attempt at or advocacy of the violent overthrow of the government or the conquest of Canada.
Advocating the democratically achieved, peaceful secession of a province is not treason, no matter how much we may disagree with it, and, if I may editorialize, we federalists would do much better to give reasons why the federation should stay together than to threaten or vituperate those who disagree.
You two are the only ones to use the word “treason” or “traitor” in the thread.
Hamish, I don’t mean to drag other threads into this, but this is your standard line when discussing a politician you don’t like; that s/he destroyed the “Fabric of society” or was a “catastrophe” and such, without actually explaining what the catastrophe was.
You used about a hundred words there and didn’t actually say anything Mulroney did wrong. How in God’s name could Mulroney have committed “damage to the country’s sense of itself?” What the hell does that even mean? As a matter of fact, objectively speaking, how can you possibly claim the country’s sense of itself is wounded now as opposed to the way it was in 1983? Canada has probably never had a greater sense of identity and patriotism than it does today. I certainly remember far more bellyaching about Canada lacking a national identity in 1983 than I do today. In fact, I hardly ever hear that crap anymore.
Objectively speaking, what did Mulroney do wrong? I mean, I think he did several things really badly, but I* can actually say what they were*; he jacked the national debt up, helped destroy the Progressive Conservative party, and gave the separatists a shot in the arm. What’ve you got?
I disagree. The real bottom feeders run MUNICIPALITIES. I can’t decide if Toronto City Councillors show up for council meetings in prison vans or short buses.
In this thread, yes, but it’s certainly been used often enough, and it’s the only way I can think of to consider René Lévesque the ‘worst Canadian.’
A lot of the reasons people hate Mulroney aren’t even relevant anymore.
Cozying up to the Americans? That was going to lead us into being the 51st State. We’re probably further away from that than since 1812. And Bush makes Reagan look like Clinton to us, in retrospect.
Free Trade? Again, was going to get us annexed, and was going to lead to economic ruin. It turned out to be the best thing possible for the Canadian economy. Only David Orchard and his lonely one-man parade seems to think it was a mistake.
The GST? It replaced a tax that was higher, but hidden, although on different things. The Liberals said they were going to get rid of it, but it’s pretty much a fact of life at this point, and as Gorsnak pointed out in an earlier thread, a lot of people get more back in their GST rebate than they spent towards it.
Meech Lake? Do people even remember what that was about anymore?
You absolutely can ding him on bringing seperatists into his cabinet, but it’s really more to do with what they decided to do, isn’t it? Yes, the PCs collapsed after he left, leaving us in this regional squabble we have now, but: see above reasons. Doesn’t it all seem a bit silly now?
Honestly, the thing I’d hate him most for now is his idiot son.