Future Prime Minister John Turner’s rise through Canadian politics continued on this date in 1972 with his appointment as Minister of Finance in Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet. He had previously served as Trudeau’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.
Turner would serve three years at Finance during a difficult period in Canadian and world economic affairs as stagflation entered the Canadian vocabulary and governments across the western world struggled to address it and other challenges. He continued to hold this all-important ministry through the 1974 election that saw Trudeau and his party returned with a majority mandate after two years of minority government that saw the Liberals propped up by the NDP in Parliament.
Trudeau had campaigned against wage and price controls during the campaign and when he changed his mind and implemented them, Turner resigned his post and returned to private life in September of 1975. He, of course, would return to politics in 1984 and was elected national Liberal leader and Prime Minister.
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.