Munsinger affair

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The Munsinger affair was the first political sex scandal in Canada of national significance. It concerned Gerda Munsinger , an alleged prostitute from Germany who was suspected of being a spy in the service of the Soviet Union . From 1958 to 1961 she had a love affair with two ministers from John Diefenbaker's Conservative government. The affair became known to the public in 1966 and caused a sensation in Canada.

prehistory

Munsinger moved to Canada with her husband Michael, an American occupation soldier, and later divorced him. She then made closer acquaintance with several business people and politicians. Among them were Deputy Defense Minister Pierre Sévigny and Transport Minister George Hees . Sévigny even signed her application for naturalization. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police checked Munsinger's origins and found that she had lived in the Soviet zone of occupation for some time after World War II and thus posed a security risk. The matter was settled behind closed doors: Justice Minister Davie Fulton had her deported to Germany and Sévigny resigned in 1963.

Exposure

After the Gusenko affair of 1945, Canada's national security issues were typically not the subject of public debate. In 1966, however, the subsequent Liberal government came under fire over another case. It concerned security holes that had enabled the Vancouver postman George Victor Spencer to leak information to two Soviet spies. In a House of Commons debate on March 4, former Prime Minister Diefenbaker called Justice Minister Lucien Cardin a “dwarf in the clothes of a giant” because of his handling of the case. Cardin fought back by referring to the Munsinger case (he deliberately mispronounced the name as Munsignor , but those in the know knew who he meant by that).

A week later he informed the press that it was a certain Gerda Munsinger and claimed that she had since died of leukemia . But Robert Reguly, a reporter for the Toronto Daily Star , found Munsinger in Munich . She confirmed the love affairs, but resisted the accusation of being a spy. The story dominated the Canadian media for weeks and was followed with so much tension that parliament came to a standstill. Prime Minister Lester Pearson set up a commission of inquiry, which Diefenbaker saw as a politically motivated attack. Supreme Judge Wishart Spence's investigation report concluded that the former head of government should have dismissed the guilty ministers, but found no breach of security regulations.

In order to divert attention from the affair and move on to other matters, Pearson started a public debate on the death penalty , which was finally abolished in Canada ten years later.

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