Canada’s 13th Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, was on his feet in the Commons on this date in 1960 defending his plan to extend the franchise to Indigenous Peoples so they could vote in federal elections. In doing so, he was following in the founder of his party’s footsteps. Sir John A. Macdonald, of course, had secured voting rights to Indigenous men in Central and Eastern Canada in 1885. This move by Sir John A. was so progressive, a later government cancelled it.
You can read an excerpt from Mr. Diefenbaker’s remarks in the Commons below.
Prime Minister John Diefenbaker: (The) the provision to give (the Indigenous) the vote, is one of those steps which will have an effect everywhere in the world – for the reason that wherever I went last year on the occasion of my trip to Commonwealth countries, it was brought to my attention that in Canada the original people within our country, excepting for a qualified class, were denied the right to vote. I say that so far as this long overdue measure is concerned, it will remove everywhere in the world any suggestion that color or race places any citizen in our country in a lower category than the other citizens of our country.
I say this to those of the Indian race that in bringing forward this legislation the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (Mrs. Ellen Fairclough) will reassure, as she has assured to date, that existing rights and treaties, traditional or otherwise, possessed by the (Indigenous) shall not in any way be abrogated or diminished in consequence of having the right to vote. That is one of the things that throughout the years has caused suspicion in the minds of many (Indigenous people) who have conceived the granting of the franchise as a step in the direction of denying them their ancient rights.
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.