Paul Hellyer

Paul Theodore Hellyer (August 6, 1923 – August 8, 2021) was a Canadian engineer, politician, writer, and commentator.

He was the longest serving member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada at the time of his death.

Hellyer was born and raised on a farm near Waterford, Ontario, the son of Lulla Maude (Anderson) and Audrey Samuel Hellyer.

Upon completion of high school, he studied aeronautical engineering at the Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute of Aeronautics in Glendale, California, graduating in 1941.

While studying, he also obtained a private pilot's licence.

After graduation, Hellyer was employed at Fleet Aircraft in Fort Erie, Ontario, which was then making training craft for the Royal Canadian Air Force as part of Canada's war effort in World War II.

He attempted to become an RCAF pilot himself, but was told no more pilots were necessary, after which he joined the Royal Canadian Artillery and served in Canada as a gunner for the duration of the war.

Hellyer earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto in 1949.

First elected as a Liberal in 1949 federal election in the riding of Davenport, he was the youngest person ever elected to that point in the House of Commons of Canada.

He served a brief stint as Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of National Defence.

He was then named Associate Minister of National Defence in the cabinet of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent.

This post was short-lived, though, as Hellyer lost his seat when the St. Laurent government lost the 1957 election two months later.

Hellyer returned to parliament in a 1958 by-election in the neighbouring riding of Trinity, and became an opposition critic of John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservative government.

When the Liberals returned to power in the 1963 election, Hellyer became Minister of National Defence in the cabinet of Lester B. Pearson.

This was the most significant period in Hellyer's political career.

As Minister of Defence, he oversaw the drastic and controversial integration and unification of the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Air Force into a single organization, the Canadian Forces.

Hellyer contested the 1968 Liberal leadership election, placing second on the first ballot, but slipped to third on the second and third ballots, and withdrew to support Robert Winters on the fourth ballot, in which Pierre Trudeau won the leadership.

He served as Trudeau's Transport Minister.

Under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, he also served as Canada's only Senior Minister from April 1968 until 1969, when he resigned from the post.

In 1969, Hellyer issued a major report on housing and urban renewal in which he advocated incremental reforms rather than new government programs.

He called for greater flexibility in Canada's mortgage loan system, and encouraged corporate pension funds to invest more money in housing programs.

His approach did not meet with universal acceptance.

Some provincial and municipal governments were openly skeptical, and Heward Grafftey, a left-leaning Progressive Conservative with an interest in housing, called for a more radical approach.

Hellyer's report also called for the suspension of the "wholesale destruction of older housing" and for "greater selectivity... in the demolition of existing houses".

Grand urban renewal projects would come to an end as a result of his Task Force.

Hellyer resigned from the cabinet in 1969 over a dispute with Trudeau over the implementation of the housing program.

Hellyer sat in Parliament as an independent beginning in 1971.

After his 1971 attempt to form a new political party, Action Canada, failed, Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield invited him to join the PC caucus.

He returned to prominence as an opposition critic and was re-elected in the 1972 election as a Progressive Conservative.

He lost his seat, however, in the 1974 election.

Despite this loss, Hellyer contested the PC leadership election of 1976.

His views were too right wing for most delegates, and alienated many PCs with a speech attacking Red Tories as not being "true conservatives".

He finished a distant sixth of eight contestants on the second ballot; Joe Clark won the leadership.

Hellyer rejoined the Liberal Party in 1982, but remained mostly silent in politics.

In 1988, he contested the Liberal nomination in the Toronto riding of St. Paul's, losing to Aideen Nicholson, who had defeated Hellyer 14 years previously when he was a PC MP in the adjacent riding of Trinity.

In 1997, Hellyer formed the Canadian Action Party (CAP) to provide voters with an economic nationalist option following the collapse of the National Party of Canada.

Hellyer believed that both the Progressive Conservative and Liberal parties were embracing globalization, and that the New Democratic Party was no longer able to provide a credible alternative.

CAP also embraced Hellyer's proposals for monetary reform: that the government should become more involved in the direction of the economy by gradually reducing the creation of private money and increasing the creation of public money from the current ratio of 5% public / 95% private back to 50% public and 50% private.

His party remained a little-noticed minor party, and Hellyer lost bids for a seat in the House of Commons of Canada in the 1997 and 2000 elections.

Following the 2000 election, and a resurgence for the New Democratic Party, Hellyer approached NDP leadership to discuss the possibility of merging the two parties into 'One Big Party'.