Réal Caouette

David Réal Caouette (September 26, 1917 - December 16, 1976) was a Canadian politician from Quebec. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) and leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada and founder of the Ralliement des créditistes. Outside of politics, he worked as a car dealer.

His son, Gilles Caouette, was also a Social Credit MP and was briefly acting leader of the party.

Early political career

Born in Amos, in the Abitibi region of Quebec, Caouette was converted to the social credit philosophy in 1939. He was first elected to the House of Commons in a 1946 by-election in Pontiac as a Social Credit MP. He sat as a Social Credit MP once elected. In the 1949 election, his home was drawn into the newly created Villeneuve, and he was defeated as a Union des électeurs candidate.

Out of parliament

He ran again in the 1953, 1957 and 1958 elections, but was unsuccessful each time. He also ran provincially, for the Quebec Liberal Party, in the 1956 provincial election but was defeated. In 1958, he broke with Union des électeurs founders Louis Even and Gilberte Côté-Mercier, and joined Social Credit forming Ralliement des créditistes as the national party's Quebec wing of which he became the uncontested leader.

Leadership defeat

In 1961, he ran for leadership of the Social Credit Party, but lost to Robert N. Thompson, a Social Credit MP from Alberta. Some believe that Caouette actually won, only to be vetoed by the party's Alberta wing. Alberta Premier Ernest Manning had previously said that his province would never accept a francophone Catholic as party leader.

Breakthrough

In the 1962 election, Social Credit won 26 seats in Quebec. Caouette himself returned to Parliament as the MP for Villeneuve, a riding he held for the rest of his life (though it was renamed Témiscamingue in 1966). The party won only four seats in the rest of Canada, forcing Thompson to appoint Caouette as the party's deputy leader. Holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, Social Credit helped bring down the Progressive Conservative minority government of John Diefenbaker. However in the 1963 election, Social Credit was reduced to 24 seats nationwide.

Caouette fought for bilingualism in the House of Commons, winning a symbolic victory when he got the Parliament's restaurant to produce bilingual menus.^[1] In this, he anticipated the official bilingualism policy that would later be put into effect by Pierre Trudeau.

Caouette believed that since the party was most successful in Quebec, he should be leader of the party instead of Thompson. As well, Caoeutte and his followers remained true believers in the social credit monetary theories of C.H. Douglas while Thompson and the Social Credit Party of Alberta had largely abandoned the theory. Thompson refused to step aside, leading Caouette to leave the party, along with the rest of Quebec wing in 1963, to establish the Ralliement des créditistes as its own political party, independent of Social Credit.

Main article: Social Credit Party of Canada split, 1963

In the 1965 election, Caouette's Ralliement won nine seats, while Social Credit led by Thompson won five seats. In the 1968 election, Caouette's party won 14 seats while Social Credit won none.

The two parties were reunited under Caouette's leadership for the 1972 election, in which the party won 15 seats. Although the party continued to nominate candidates in other provinces, it never again won seats outside of Quebec.

Later political career

In the 1974 federal election, the Social Credit Party machine in Quebec was wracked by internal divisions. Caouette was suffering from a snowmobiling accident, and therefore the powerful voice that had carried Social Credit in prior elections was silenced. When he was able to speak, Caouette focussed his attacks on the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democratic Party, instead of the Liberal Party, which was Social Credit's main competitor in Quebec. Two weeks before the election was called, Caouette had informed the parliamentary caucus that he would resign as leader in the fall. Despite the party infighting, they managed 11 seats. Though this was one seat short of official status, the Speaker of the House of Commons agreed to recognize them as a party.

The decline of the party accelerated after Caouette resigned from the party leadership in 1976. Caouette had announced in 1975 that he would step down from the leadership within a year. He was hospitalized after a stroke on September 16,^[2] and died later that year.

After his death in 1976, Social Credit in Quebec and at the federal Canadian level went into decline. The party won only six seats under Fabien Roy in the 1979 election, and none in the 1980 or subsequent elections. The party eventually folded in the 1990s.

Political views

Caouette mixed Social Credit's traditional social conservatism with ardent Quebec nationalism. A populist leader and charismatic speaker, Caouette appealed to those who felt left out and pushed aside by financial institutions, traditional politicians, and what they perceived as elitist intellectuals.

Throughout the course of his career, Caouette was known for making controversial and intemperate statements. Shortly after World War II, Caouette claimed that his economic theories were the same as those of Benito Mussolini's government in Italy, and said that Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were his political heroes.^[1] During the October Crisis of 1970, he also claimed that leaders of the Front de libération du Québec should be shot by a firing squad.^[3] (The FLQ was an organization that sought to promote its goal of independence for Quebec through violent means, including bombing, kidnapping, and the murder of the province's deputy premier Pierre Laporte.) While such statements may have resonated with radical créditiste supporters, they undoubtedly impaired the party's popularity with the mainstream electorate.

“The disdain for outsiders always seemed to fit conveniently with the theory of conspiracy of the old parties. The Jews were another and equally convenient part of the Creditiste demonology and there was a continuing strain of anti-Semitism. After the 1962 triumph, Caouette revealed that his political heroes were Hitler and Mussolini. As late as a few years ago, his bookshelves contained The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.... If non-Creditisites were horrified, the loyalists did not seem to care.”—John Gray^[1]

See also

• Politics of Quebec
• List of Quebec general elections
• Timeline of Quebec history

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Montreal Gazette, “Real Caouette: Question now; can message survive?”, John Gray, 9 November 1976, p.9
2. ^ Montreal Gazette, 6 November 1976, p. 11, “Socreds gather to elect leader Sunday”
3. ^ Ibid.

External links

• Synopsis of federal political experience from the Library of Parliament

Preceded by none	Leader of Ralliement des créditistes 1958-1971	Succeeded by merged into Social Credit Party of Canada
Preceded by Alexander Bell Patterson	National Leaders of Social Credit 1971–1976	Succeeded by André-Gilles Fortin

Persondata
Name	Caouette, Real
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Date of birth	September 26, 1917
Place of birth
Date of death	December 16, 1976
Place of death