John Turner

Biography

John Napier Wyndham Turner (June 7, 1929 – September 19, 2020) was the 17th prime minister of Canada, serving from June to September 1984. He served as leader of the Liberal Party and leader of the Opposition from 1984 to 1990. Turner practised law before being elected as a member of Parliament (MP) in the 1962 federal election. He served in the cabinet of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as minister of justice and attorney general from 1968 to 1972 and then as minister of finance from 1972 to 1975. As a cabinet minister, Turner came to be known as a leader of the Business Liberal faction of the Liberal Party. Amid a global recession and the prospect of having to implement unpopular wage and price controls, Turner resigned from his position in 1975. From 1976 to 1984, Turner took a hiatus from politics, working as a corporate lawyer on Bay Street. Trudeau's resignation in 1984 triggered a leadership election, which Turner successfully contested. When he was sworn in as prime minister after winning the leadership election, Turner was not an MP or senator — the last time this would occur until Mark Carney in 2025. Turner held the office of prime minister for just 79 days, as he advised the governor general to dissolve Parliament soon after being sworn in. He went on to lose the 1984 election in a landslide to Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives, leading the Liberals to the second-worst defeat for a governing party at the federal level (in terms of proportion of seats). Reentering parliament as the member for Vancouver Quadra, Turner stayed on as Liberal leader and led the Opposition for the next six years. In the 1988 election, he vigorously campaigned against Mulroney's proposed free trade agreement with the United States, and led the Liberals to a modest recovery. Turner resigned as party leader in 1990 and did not seek re-election as an MP in 1993. Turner was Canada's first prime minister born in the United Kingdom since Mackenzie Bowell in 1896, Canada's seco

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