'Stockwell Burt Day, Jr.',
PC,
MP (born
August 16,
1950 in
Barrie, Ontario), is a
Canadian politician and a member of the
Conservative Party of Canada. He is a former cabinet minister in
Alberta, and a former leader of the
Canadian Alliance. Day is currently MP for the riding of
Okanagan—Coquihalla in
British Columbia and the
Minister of Public Safety. This portfolio includes the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the
Canada Border Services Agency, the
Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the
National Parole Board and the
Correctional Service of Canada. He is widely seen as a prominent voice for
social conservatives within the Conservative Party.
Early life and career
Stockwell Day was born in
Barrie, Ontario, in 1950, living in a number of places in Canada during his youth, including
Atlantic Canada;
Ottawa, where he attended
Ashbury College; and
Montreal, where he graduated from
Westmount High School. He attended the
University of Victoria and
Vanguard College, then known as Northwest Bible College, in
Edmonton, Alberta, but did not graduate from either.
His father,
Stockwell Day, Sr., was long associated with the
Social Credit Party of Canada. In the
1972 federal election he was the
Social Credit candidate running against
New Democratic Party leader
Tommy Douglas in the riding of
Nanaimo—Cowichan—The Islands. Day, Sr., supported
Doug Christie and was a member of the
Western Canada Concept.
From 1978 to 1985, Day was assistant pastor and school administrator at the
Bentley Christian Centre in
Bentley, Alberta. His school taught the
Accelerated Christian Education curriculum, which caused some controversy for its alleged
anti-semitism. Defending the curriculum publicly led to increased political involvement.
In his political career, Day has never campaigned on Sundays, choosing instead to set them aside as time for worship and to be with his family. This came under scrutiny in the 2000 election, when his religion became an election issue.
[1]
Career in provincial politics
In 1986, Day was elected to represent
Red Deer North in the
Legislative Assembly of Alberta as a
Progressive Conservative (PC), a position that he held until 2000.
In December 1992, newly elected Alberta premier
Ralph Klein brought Day into cabinet as his Minister of Labour, a position in which he oversaw controversial changes in his ministry, including layoffs in the civil service. In October 1994 Government House Leader was added to his responsibility. In May 1996, Day was made Minister of Social Services, and in March 1997, he became Treasurer. As Treasurer, Day oversaw a continued paying down of Alberta's debt while he cut taxes, instituting a
flat tax rate in 1999.
Leadership of the Canadian Alliance
In 2000, Day decided to run for leader of the newly-formed
Canadian Alliance party. After a heavily-publicized campaign, Day came in first on the June 24 first ballot of the
leadership election with about 44% of the vote, in front of former
Reform Party leader
Preston Manning and
Ontario PC strategist
Tom Long. In the following runoff election against Manning, held on July 8, Day received 63.4%.
In order to take a seat in Parliament, Day ran in a by-election in the riding of
Okanagan—Coquihalla in
British Columbia, vacated by Reform/CA MP
Jim Hart. Day won the by-election on September 11, 2000, arriving at his first news conference on a Jet Ski wearing a wetsuit.
2000 election
Clark and Day in the debates
A few weeks after Day entered the House of Commons,
Jean Chrétien called a
snap election for
November 27,
2000, which would not give the newly formed Canadian Alliance time to consolidate itself. Nonetheless, the new party went into the election with high hopes, as Day was expected to appeal far more to the crucial Ontario voters than his predecessors.
There were few if any important issues when the election was called, nonetheless the
Liberals frequently alleged that Day had a "hidden agenda", by making a campaign issue out of Day's
fundamentalist Christian beliefs (he is a devout
Pentecostal), and past comments about
homosexuality and
abortion. The Liberals used this tactic in order to
drive NDP and Progressive Conservative-leaning voters into voting Liberal, though at no stage in the campaign did polls suggest that the Canadian Alliance would form a majority government needed to implement such policies.
Liberal activist
Warren Kinsella mocked Day's belief in
Young Earth creationism by pulling out a
Barney doll during a television interview and stating that "this was the only dinosaur ever to be on Earth with humans". Media covering the Day campaign bus, nicknamed "Prayer Force One", whistled the
Flintstones theme song to mock the idea that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.
[2]
The Alliance's
direct democracy proposals, which would have required a referendum on any proposal supported by a petition signed by 3% of Canadian voters, was also frequently targeted as a suggestion of a hidden agenda. Some asserted that "special interest" groups would use the low requirements to put contentious subjects to a national referendum. The proposal was satirized by
Rick Mercer of ''
This Hour Has 22 Minutes'' — in a ''
reductio ad absurdum'' argument, Mercer proposed a national petition for a referendum to demand that Day change his name to
Doris.
Day was also a victim of an incident during the election. When making a "grand entrance" for a speech at
Conestoga College,
communist Julian Ichim splashed him from the front of the stage with 2 litres of
chocolate milk, saying he did it to protest Day's "homophobic, anti-immigrant and anti-poor agenda".
[3][4][5][6][7] Afterward, again on ''This Hour Has 22 Minutes'', actress
Mary Walsh jokingly offered Day chocolate milk, saying "all they had was homo, and I knew (Day) wouldn't like that."
[8]
Day stumbled during two campaign appearances in the first week. A photo-op at a technology firm meant to illustrate a "brain drain" to the US was undermined when the owner reported that he had moved ''to'' Canada from the United States eight years earlier. The next day, at
Niagara Falls, Day remarked that Canadian jobs were flowing south "just like the
Niagara River", when in fact the river flows north. In mid-campaign, the Alliance candidate in
Winnipeg South Centre,
Betty Granger, was quoted as voicing concerns about an "Asian invasion" in Canada. And in the televised leaders' debate, Day held up a handwritten sign saying "NO
2-TIER HEALTHCARE" in large letters to counter a ''
Globe and Mail'' newspaper headline earlier in the campaign. As props were against the rules, he claimed it was his briefing notes.
At one point, the Alliance was at 30.5% in the polls, and some thought they could win a minority government. On election night, the Alliance increased their seats over Reform totals from 60 to 66, and kept Reform's strong representation in western Canada, but the hoped-for breakthrough in
Ontario did not occur. The Liberals' attacks on Day ending up decimated the NDP and Progressive Conservatives.
On election night, controversy arose when a CBC producer's gratuitously
sexist comment about Day's daughter-in-law,
Juliana Thiessen Day, was accidentally broadcast on the Canadian networks' pooled election feed from Day's riding.
Post-election
Further controversies plagued Day following the election. While he had been a government minister in Alberta he wrote a letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate in April 1999 in which he criticized Lorne Goddard, a lawyer and respected Red Deer school trustee, for defending a man accused of possessing
child pornography.
[9] In it he alleged that Goddard himself supported child pornography. When Goddard sued for
libel, the Alberta government covered Day's legal bills. In December, the government lawyers settled out of court, but the legal costs and settlement totalled $792,000. Day was criticized for the costs and eventually re-paid the province $60,000, the settlement amount excluding legal fees. Further controversy ensued in February when it was reported that Bennett Jones, the law firm that had represented Day at taxpayer expense, donated $70,000 to the Canadian Alliance Fund shortly after Day settled. The Alliance launched an internal review that determined that nothing inappropriate had occurred.
In April it was reported that Day had approved the hiring of a private investigator to dig up dirt to smear the
Liberals. After confirming that he had met the man on April 7, Day denied this on the 8
th, claiming on the 9
th that he had read of the meeting in ''
The Globe and Mail'' and had assumed that it was correct.
Given the string of negative stories, many Alliance members became increasingly critical of Day's leadership. In late April, several members of Day's
Shadow Cabinet, including deputy leader
Deborah Grey, resigned their posts. In the following months, Gray and other MPs were ejected from the party for criticizing Day. Several of them, led by
Chuck Strahl, formed the "Independent Alliance Caucus" during the summer. Day offered an amnesty, but seven of them turned it down and formed the
Democratic Representative Caucus, led by Grey and Strahl. The DRC entered a short-lived coalition agreement with the
Tories, which was seen as an attempt by PC leader
Joe Clark to reunite the Canadian right on his terms.
Political career after leadership
Day arrives for his swearing in at Rideau Hall on February 6, 2006.
In the fall of 2001 Day agreed to step aside and recontest the leadership, and in the March 2002
Alliance leadership election, Day was defeated by
Stephen Harper on the first ballot. As a concession to Day, Harper appointed him as Foreign Affairs critic. Most of the DRC MPs, with the exception of
Inky Mark and
Jim Pankiw, rejoined the Alliance caucus on
April 10.
In March 2003 Day and Harper co-wrote a letter to ''
The Wall Street Journal'' in which they condemned the Canadian government's unwillingness to participate in the
2003 invasion of Iraq. Day later appeared as a speaker at a "Canadians for Bush" rally in the Niagara region, organized by controversial right-wing minister
Tristan Emmanuel.
In December 2003, the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party merged to become the Conservative Party. Day did not run for the leadership of the new party, but became its Foreign Affairs critic. He was easily re-elected to Parliament in both the 2004 and 2006 federal elections.
Minister of Public Safety
In February 2006, he was made the Minister of Public Safety in the Harper government and was sworn into the
Privy Council when he joined the
Cabinet of
Prime Minister Stephen Harper on
February 6,
2006.
In March, 2007, the federal Liberals accused former Alliance MP
Jim Hart of having accepted a payment of $50,000 to step aside in favour of Day before the 2000 byelection.
[10] Contacted at his home in the
Republic of Georgia, Hart - in a brief email statement to the
CBC - did not deny the allegations or impeach the authenticity of the evidence the Liberals had obtained.
[11]
References
1. http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2000/nov/001117b.html
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1042814.stm
3. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2000/10/05/allianceday001005.html
4. http://www.lilithgallery.com/articles/canada/The_Prank_That_Destroyed_StockwellDay.html
5. http://experts.about.com/e/s/st/Stockwell_Day.htm
6. http://old.uwstudent.org/article.php?story=20011207075939000
7. http://www.bulletin.uwaterloo.ca/2000/oct/06fr.html
8. http://www.jumptheshark.com/t/thishourhas22minutes.htm
9. http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2000-11-16/newsspread.html
10. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/03/22/day-riding.html Liberals allege ex-MP was paid off to give his riding to Day
11. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/03/23/hart-day.html Ex-MP doesn't deny documents at heart of Day nomination scandal
External links
★
Official website
★
Parliamentary website
★
Federal Political Experience from the Library of Parliament
★
How'd They Vote?: Stockwell Day's voting history and quotes
★
In Their Own Words: quotations by and about Canada's Conservatives
★
Climate quip puts Day on hot seat - Weblog joke gets chilly reception
★
The wit and wisdom of Stockwell Day
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