Jean Chrétien
Prime minister of Canada from 1993 to 2003 · Canada · Politicians · Born 1934 · age 92
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Something wrong?He steered Canada through a debt crisis with austerity budgets that flipped decades of deficits into surplus, held the country together during Quebec's 1995 knife-edge referendum on independence, and kept Canadian troops out of Iraq while sending them into Afghanistan - a ten-year run that made him both the Liberal...
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Jean Chrétien as minister of Indian affairs and northern development in 1968
Chrétien in 1980
When Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced his retirement in 1984, Chrétien ran for the leadership of the Liberal Party by portraying himself as the candidate who would best continue Trudeau's policies and defend his legacy.
Paul Martin was Chrétien's main opponent for the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1990. The campaign between them started a political rivalry that would endure throughout and beyond Chrétien's premiership.
Jean Chrétien with U.S. President Bill Clinton during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Seattle, November 17-19, 1993
Chrétien in 1996
Chrétien with Bishops and the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 1994.Awards
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Born in Shawinigan Falls, Quebec, in 1934, Jean Chrétien studied law at Université Laval and entered the House of Commons in 1963. He climbed through cabinet posts under Pearson and Trudeau - Indian affairs, Treasury Board, finance, justice - helping patriate the Constitution and draft the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. After losing the Liberal leadership race to John Turner in 1984 and a brief exit to the private sector in 1986, he returned to win the party in 1990 and swept to power in 1993 with Canada teetering on the edge of fiscal collapse. His government slashed spending, balanced the books by 1997 for the first time in three decades, and navigated the 1995 Quebec referendum to a narrow federalist win, later passing the Clarity Act to set terms for any future secession vote. He won again in 1997 and 2000, signed Kyoto, led the campaign to ban landmines, joined the Afghanistan war, and refused the Iraq invasion - but the Shawinigate and sponsorship scandals dogged him, and a grinding internal war with finance minister Paul Martin forced his resignation in December 2003. At 92, he remains the oldest living former Canadian prime minister.
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