Gary Filmon

Gary Albert Filmon , PC , OC , OM (born August 24, 1942 in Winnipeg , Manitoba ) is a Canadian politician with the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba (Tories) . From 1977 to 1999 he was a member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly . He ruled Manitoba Province as Prime Minister from May 9, 1988 to October 5, 1999. He was party leader of the Tories from 1983 to 2000.

biography

Profession and local politics

Filmon, who comes from a Romanian and Polish immigrant family, studied at the University of Manitoba after completing school and then worked as a civil engineer. He was also vice president and president of Success Business College from 1969 to 1980 . He was involved in local politics and served on Winnipeg City Council from 1975 to 1979. In this he was chairman of the committee for municipal systems and operations.

Minister and opposition leader

In 1979, Filmon ran for the Tories in a by-election in the River Heights constituency and was elected to the Manitoba Legislative Assembly. Sterling Lyon appointed him to the Cabinet on January 16, 1981, and appointed him Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs and the Environment and Minister for Housing. His term of office only lasted until November 30, 1981. Filmon had been re-elected two weeks earlier in the newly created constituency of Tuxedo, but the Tories as a whole lost the elections and had to leave the formation of a government to the New Democratic Party of Manitoba (NDP).

After Lyon's resignation, the delegates elected Filmon as the new leader of the Tories, making him the opposition leader in the legislative assembly. After he was able to assert himself as chairman of the party congresses in 1986 and 1987 against challengers, he was the party's top candidate in the elections on April 26, 1988. Filmon was able to rely on his popularity with urban delegates, although the rural elected officials had a majority in the Parliamentary group .

prime minister

Although the Tories won one seat less than in the last election, they became the strongest force in the legislative assembly and were able to form a minority government. Filmon was elected Manitoba's 19th Prime Minister on May 9, 1988. This was also due to the fact that the new NDP chairman Gary Doer decided not to form a coalition government with the Manitoba Liberal Party and instead supported the Filmons minority government. The inner-party tensions between urban and rural Tories MPs, as well as the constant willingness to compromise with other parties, meant that the government was always in danger of being overthrown by a motion of no confidence.

During his entire tenure as Prime Minister, Filmon was also Minister for Federal-Provincial Relations and, from 1991, Minister for State Services in French . He took part in the debate on the revision of the Constitution of Canada , which the Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had started. At first he spoke out against the Meech Lake Accord , which would have strengthened the status of the francophone province of Québec , but then agreed to a compromise negotiated by Jean Charest . Ultimately, the revision failed when the NDP MP and Indian representative Elijah Harper prevented the unanimity required by the law.

Filmon was able to rely on a narrow majority after the 1990 and 1995 elections. He took a conservative tax policy and a progressive socio-political course, which was characterized by the moderate pragmatism of his programs in the sense of a political center . The state telephone company was last privatized during his tenure . In addition, a law allowed individual locations to leave the Winnipeg metropolitan area. Filmon and his party got caught up in a scandal in 1998. Various “independent” candidates had been secretly supported by progressive-conservative party officials in the elections three years earlier in order to reduce the NDP candidates' chances of being elected.

Filmon himself was not involved in the scandal, but his government suffered reputational damage, including rising unemployment figures. In addition, the majority did not believe his announcements of tax cuts and simultaneous increased investments in the social system. The Tories were defeated in the September 21, 1999 elections and Filmon was forced to hand over the post of Prime Minister to Gary Doer. He then remained opposition leader until 2002 and then largely withdrew from politics.

Most recently, from 2005 to 2010, Filmon chaired the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), an independent government agency that oversees the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). In 2009 he was awarded the Order of Canada for his services .

Web links

• Article by Gary Filmon in the Canadian Encyclopedia
• Entry in rulers.org