Robert Coates (politician)

Robert Carman Coates, PC, QC (born March 10 1928) is a former Canadian politician and Cabinet minister.

Coates was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1957 election as the Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Cumberland, Nova Scotia. Coates was a backbencher during the John Diefenbaker and Joe Clark governments. He was appointed to the Cabinet of Brian Mulroney as Defence Minister following the Tory victory in the 1984 election.

Coates' main initiative was the re-introduction of separate uniforms for the naval, land and air branches of the military. Liberal Paul Hellyer had unified the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army and Royal Canadian Air Force into an integrated Canadian Forces with a single uniform in 1967. Coates and other Progressive Conservatives had long derided this decision as disrespectful of tradition. Although it provided a huge boost to military morale, particularly in the navy, the restoration was strongly opposed by the then-Chief of Defence Staff, General Gerard Thériault, on grounds that the dark green imposed in the 1960s was the only possible "distinctly Canadian" uniform colour. While Coates reintroduced distinctive uniforms for each service, he was unable to reverse the unification of the forces.

After this promising beginning, Coates was forced to resign from Cabinet on February 12, 1985, three months after taking office, for breaching security by visiting a restaurant/bar in West Germany that unexpectedly featured strippers, with secret North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) documents in his possession. The resignation was the first to hit the Mulroney government. Coates returned to the backbench, and did not run in the 1988 election.

External links

* [http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/key/bio.asp?Language=E&query=734&s=M Federal Political Biography from the Library of Parliament]