Canadian federal election, 1962

Canadian federal election, 1962
	← outgoing members
265 seats in the 25th Canadian Parliament ; 133 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	79.0% [1] (0.4pp)
Prime Minister before election; John Diefenbaker ; Progressive Conservative	Prime Minister-designate; John Diefenbaker ; Progressive Conservative

Last updated March 17, 2019

The Canadian federal election of 1962 was held on June 18, 1962 to elect members of the House of Commons of Canada of the 25th Parliament of Canada. When the election was called, Progressive Conservative (PC) Prime Minister John Diefenbaker had governed for four years with the then-largest majority in the House of Commons in Canadian history.

The House of Commons of Canada is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the Sovereign and the Senate. The House of Commons currently meets in a temporary Commons chamber in the West Block of the parliament buildings on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, while the Centre Block, which houses the traditional Commons chamber, undergoes a ten-year renovation.

The 25th Canadian Parliament was in session from September 27, 1962, until February 6, 1963. The membership was set by the 1962 federal election on June 18, 1962, and it changed only somewhat due to resignations and by-elections until it was dissolved prior to the 1963 election.

Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Canada's southern border with the United States is the world's longest bi-national land border. Its capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. As a whole, Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land area being dominated by forest and tundra. Consequently, its population is highly urbanized, with over 80 percent of its inhabitants concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. Canada's climate varies widely across its vast area, ranging from arctic weather in the north, to hot summers in the southern regions, with four distinct seasons.

This election reduced the PCs to a tenuous minority government as a result of economic difficulties such as high unemployment and a slumping Canadian dollar, as well as unpopular decisions such as the cancellation of the Avro Arrow. Despite the Diefenbaker government's difficulties, the Liberal Party, led by Lester Pearson, was unable to make up enough ground in the election to defeat the government. For Social Credit, routed from the Commons just four years earlier, this election proved to be their most successful ever - they would never better the 30 seats won, losing seats in 1963 despite gaining a slightly better share of the vote.

A minority government, or minority cabinet or minority parliament, is a cabinet formed in a parliamentary system when a political party or coalition of parties does not have a majority of overall seats in the parliament. It is sworn into office, with or without the formal support of other parties, to enable a government to be formed. Under such a government, legislation can only be passed with the support of enough other members of the legislature to provide a majority, encouraging multi-partisanship. In bicameral parliaments, the term relates to the situation in chamber whose confidence is considered most crucial to the continuance in office of the government.

The Liberal Party of Canada is the oldest and longest-serving governing political party in Canada. The Liberals form the current government, elected in 2015. The party has dominated federal politics for much of Canada's history, holding power for almost 69 years in the 20th century—more than any other party in a developed country—and as a result, it is sometimes referred to as Canada's "natural governing party".

The Social Credit Party of Canada, colloquially known as the Socreds, was a conservative-populist political party in Canada that promoted social credit theories of monetary reform. It was the federal wing of the Canadian social credit movement.

This was the first election in which all of Canada's Indigenous Peoples had the right to vote after the passage in March 31, 1960 of a repeal of certain sections of the Canada Elections Act.^[2] For the first time ever, the entire land mass of Canada was covered by federal electoral districts (the former Mackenzie River riding was expanded to cover the entire Northwest Territories).

In Canada, the First Nations are the predominant indigenous peoples in Canada south of the Arctic Circle. Those in the Arctic area are distinct and known as Inuit. The Métis, another distinct ethnicity, developed after European contact and relations primarily between First Nations people and Europeans. There are 634 recognized First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia.

The Canada Elections Act is an Act of the Parliament of Canada which regulates the election of members of parliament to the House of Commons of Canada.

The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately 1,144,000 km² (442,000 sq mi) and a 2016 census population of 41,786, it is the second-largest and the most populous of the three territories in Northern Canada. Its estimated population as of 2018 is 44,445. Yellowknife became the territorial capital in 1967, following recommendations by the Carrothers Commission.

Overview

During its term of office, the Diefenbaker government had introduced reforms to social programs, a Canadian Bill of Rights, and other changes. The Tories tried to defend the decline in the Canadian dollar by pointing out the benefits to the tourism industry, exports, manufacturing and farming, and employment. They denied that the devaluation affected the price of bread, beef, gasoline and fruit and vegetables, saying that these prices were either set in Canada or were influenced by other factors.

The Canadian Bill of Rights is a federal statute and bill of rights enacted by the Parliament of Canada on August 10, 1960. It provides Canadians with certain quasi-constitutional rights at Canadian federal law in relation to other federal statutes. It was the earliest expression of human rights law at the federal level in Canada, though an implied Bill of Rights had already been recognized in the Canadian Common Law.

The Liberals campaigned under the slogan, "Take a stand for tomorrow", and attempted to portray the Diefenbaker government as "feeble", with a divided cabinet. The Liberals criticized the PCs for their "reckless mismanagement of finances", the slowdown in the Canadian economy, a lack of confidence in government policies, job losses, and a lower standard of living than in 1956. The Liberals also argued that the steep devaluation in the Canadian dollar was increasing the cost of living for Canadians.

The 1962 election was the first contested by the social democratic New Democratic Party, which had been formed from an alliance between the old Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress. The party chose longtime Premier of Saskatchewan Tommy Douglas as its first leader. The new party was able to recover ground lost by the CCF in the 1958 federal election, when it was nearly wiped out. It won almost 50% more votes than the CCF had ever managed, but it failed to achieve the major breakthrough that had been hoped for when the party was created.

Social democracy is a political, social and economic ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal democratic polity and a capitalist economy. The protocols and norms used to accomplish this involve a commitment to representative and participatory democracy, measures for income redistribution and regulation of the economy in the general interest and welfare state provisions. Social democracy thus aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater democratic, egalitarian and solidaristic outcomes. Due to longstanding governance by social democratic parties and their influence on socioeconomic policy development in the Nordic countries, in policy circles social democracy has become associated with the Nordic model in the latter part of the 20th century.

The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was a social-democratic and democratic socialist political party in Canada. The CCF was founded in 1932 in Calgary, Alberta, by a number of socialist, agrarian, co-operative, and labour groups, and the League for Social Reconstruction. In 1944, the CCF formed the first social-democratic government in North America when it was elected to form the provincial government in Saskatchewan. In 1961, the CCF was succeeded by the New Democratic Party (NDP). The full, but little used, name of the party was Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (Farmer-Labour-Socialist).

The Canadian Labour Congress, or CLC is a national trade union centre, the central labour body in English Canada to which most Canadian labour unions are affiliated.

The NDP was shut out in Saskatchewan, its political base, where Douglas failed to win his own seat. Douglas's campaign was hurt by chaos in Saskatchewan brought about by the introduction of Medicare and a resulting strike by the province's doctors. Douglas was forced to enter the House of Commons through a by-election in British Columbia. Despite the initial problems, medicare proved popular, spread throughout the country, and is considered the NDP's (and Douglas's) major contribution to the Canadian social fabric.

Saskatchewan is a prairie and boreal province in western Canada, the only province without a natural border. It has an area of 651,900 square kilometres (251,700 sq mi), nearly 10 percent of which is fresh water, composed mostly of rivers, reservoirs, and the province's 100,000 lakes.

Medicare is an unofficial designation used to refer to the publicly funded, single-payer health care system of Canada. Canada does not have a unified national health care system; instead, the system consists of 13 provincial and territorial health insurance plans that provides universal health care coverage to Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and certain temporary residents. These systems are individually administered on a provincial or territorial basis, within guidelines set by the federal government. The formal terminology for the insurance system is provided by the Canada Health Act and the health insurance legislation of the individual provinces and territories.

By-elections, also spelled bye-elections, are used to fill elected offices that have become vacant between general elections.

Social Credit returned to the House of Commons after being shut out in the 1958 election. While leader Robert N. Thompson and three other Socreds were elected in the party's traditional base in western Canada, the party's real success came in Quebec. Réal Caouette led the party's Quebec wing to victory in 26 ridings. Indeed, their win of 30 seats overall represented the party's greatest federal showing ever. They would never again equal, let alone surpass, that number - though the party gained its highest share of the vote in the 1963 election (1962 being its second-highest by a very close margin), it ended up losing 6 seats.

The Socreds' success in Quebec was the result of several factors. Diefenbaker's poor French impaired the Tories' ability to communicate their message to francophone voters. In 1958, the PC's had successfully compensated for this handicap by utilizing the powerful electoral machine of the Union Nationale government under Maurice Duplessis. By 1962, Duplessis was dead and the Union Nationale was out of government. Nevertheless, many francophone Quebecers remained hostile to the Liberal Party. French-speaking voters had not yet warmed to the anglophone Pearson, and the controversy surrounding the new Liberal provincial government's radical agenda badly hurt the Liberal brand in rural Quebec. Nevertheless, while the Liberals actually lost significant vote share in Quebec (they scored more than six percentage points less compared to 1958), the split in the centre-right vote meant they still managed a plurality there both in popular vote and seats - the Liberals actually gained ten seats in the province, despite the decline in vote share.

In the end, despite their large losses the Tories' major saving grace was that the Liberals were only able to win seven seats west of Ontario; this election thereby began a pattern of the Tories dominating the provinces west of Ontario by a large margin (with only occasional breakthroughs by the Liberals and NDP) and the Liberals being forced to rely on Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, until the Tories' eventual demise as a party of government three decades later. The Tories were thus able to remain in power with the tacit support of the Socreds, as the two parties held enough seats between them to command a parliamentary majority. However, Diefenbaker declined to negotiate a more formal alliance between the two parties, something that would ultimately prove costly and result in the fall of his government the following year.

The Canadian parliament after the 1962 election Chambre des Communes 1962.png — The Canadian parliament after the 1962 election

National results

↓
116	99	30	19	1
Progressive Conservative	Liberal	SC	NDP	O

Voter turn-out was 79.0%. ^[3]

Party		Party leader	# of candidates	Seats			Popular vote
Party		Party leader	# of candidates	1958	Elected	% Change	#	%	pp Change
	Progressive Conservative	John Diefenbaker	265	208	116	-44.2%	2,865,542	37.22%	-16.35
	Liberal	Lester B. Pearson	263	48	99	+106.3%	2,846,589	36.97%	+3.57
	Social Credit	R.N. Thompson	230	-	30		893,479	11.61%	+9.02
	New Democrats (CCF)	Tommy Douglas	218	8	19	+137.5%	1,044,754	13.57%	+4.06
	Liberal-Labour		1	1	1	-	15,412	0.20%	+0.04
	Independent Liberal		7	-	-	-	10,406	0.14%	-0.03
	Independent		11	-	-	-	8,084	0.08%	-0.05
	Communist ¹	Leslie Morris	12	-	-	-	6,360	0.08%	-0.05
	Unknown		4	*	-	*	2,783	0.04%	*
	Independent PC		4	*	-	*	2,713	0.04%	*
	Candidat libéral des electeurs		1	*	-	*	1,836	0.02%	*
	Capital familial	H-G Grenier	1		-		393	0.01%	-0.01
	Co-operative Builders		1	*	-	*	261	x	*
	All Canadian		1	*	-	*	189	x	*
	Ouvrier Indépendant		1	*	-	*	152	x	*
Total			1,016	265	265	-	7,698,953	100%
Sources: http://www.elections.ca History of Federal Ridings since 1867

Notes:

* Party did not nominate candidates in previous election.

x - less than 0.005% of the popular vote.

¹ compared to Labor-Progressive Party results from previous election.

Vote and seat summaries

Popular vote

PC			37.22%
Liberal			36.97%
NDP			13.57%
Social Credit			11.61%
Others			0.63%

Seat totals

PC			43.77%
Liberal			37.36%
Social Credit			11.32%
NDP			7.17%
Others			0.38%

Results by province

Party name			BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PE	NL	NW	YK	Total
	Progressive Conservative	Seats:	6	15	16	11	35	14	4	9	4	1	1	-	116
	Progressive Conservative	Popular Vote:	27.3	42.8	50.4	41.6	39.2	29.6	46.5	47.3	51.3	36.0	55.0	47.8	37.2
	Liberal	Seats:	4	-	1	1	43	35	6	2	-	6	-	1	99
	Liberal	Vote:	27.3	19.4	22.8	31.3	41.0	39.2	44.4	42.4	43.3	59.0	45.0	52.2	37.0
	Social Credit	Seats:	2	2	-	-	-	26	-	-	-	-			30
	Social Credit	Vote:	14.2	29.2	4.6	6.8	1.8	26.0	3.6	0.8	0.2	0.1			11.6
	New Democrats	Seats:	10	-	-	2	6	-	-	1	-	-			19
	New Democrats	Vote:	30.9	8.4	22.1	19.7	17.2	4.4	5.3	9.4	5.2	4.9			13.6
	Liberal-Labour	Seats:					1								1
	Liberal-Labour	Vote:					0.6								0.2
	Total Seats		22	17	17	14	85	75	10	12	4	7	1	1	265
Parties that won no seats:
	Independent Liberal	Vote:		0.1				0.5	0.2						0.1
	Independent	Vote:	xx	0.1		0.3	0.1	0.2							0.1
	Communist	Vote:	0.2		0.1	0.6	0.1	xx							0.1
	Unknown	Vote:					0.1	xx		0.1					xx
	Independent PC	Vote:						0.1							xx
	Candidat libéral des electeurs	Vote:						0.1							xx
	Capitale familiale	Vote:						xx							xx
	Co-operative Builders	Vote:					xx								xx
	All Canadian	Vote:		xx											xx
	Ouvrier Indépendant	Vote:						xx							xx

xx - less than 0.05% of the popular vote

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References

↑ Pomfret, R. "Voter Turnout at Federal Elections and Referendums". Elections Canada. Elections Canada. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
↑ "Canadian Encyclopedia". March 31, 2016. Retrieved April 29, 2018.
↑ "ParlInfo Has Moved". www.parl.gc.ca. Retrieved 3 April 2018.

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[1] Pomfret, R. "Voter Turnout at Federal Elections and Referendums". Elections Canada. Elections Canada. Retrieved 23 February 2014.

[2] "Canadian Encyclopedia". March 31, 2016. Retrieved April 29, 2018.

[3] "ParlInfo Has Moved". www.parl.gc.ca. Retrieved 3 April 2018.

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