MPs and Prime Ministers often have reason to regret something they have said in the House in the midst of a heated debate. This was definitely true for Prime Minister Mackenzie King on this date in 1930.
During a debate about the provision of federal government funds to support the unemployed as the Great Depression began to firmly take hold in Western Canada, King blurted out that his government would only be assisting non-Tory provincial governments. He famously told the House he would not be giving any Tory government “a five-cent piece.” It doesn’t take much to imagine what great play R.B. Bennett’s Conservatives made of King’s remarks in the election campaign that soon followed.
You can read King’s statement here: "So far as giving money from this federal treasury to provide provincial governments is concerned," King said, "in relation to this question of unemployment as it exists today, I might be prepared to go to a certain length possibly in meeting one or two western provinces that have Progressive premiers at the head of their governments... But I would not give a single cent to any Tory government!"
King then (unfortunately for him) continued: "With respect to giving moneys out of the federal treasury to any Tory Government in this country for these alleged unemployment purposes, with these governments situated as they are today, with policies diametrically opposed to those of this government, I would not give them a five-cent piece."
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.