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May 22, 2012 |
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The Right Honourable Avril Phaedra Douglas "Kim" Campbell, Queen's Privy Council for Canada|P.C., Bachelor of Laws|LL.B. (born March 10, 1947, Port Alberni, British Columbia) was the nineteenth Prime Minister of Canada from June 13 to November 4, 1993. She is the only woman to have held the office of Prime Minister in Canada, and only the third (after Ertha Pascal-Trouillot in Haiti and Violeta Chamorro in Nicaragua) to lead a national government in North America. She was also the second woman in history to sit at the table of the G7|Group of Seven (now the G8) leaders, the eight most industrialized countries in the world, after British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She was never particularly fond of any of her given names, and consequently adopted the first name Kim in her teens. She earned a Bachelor of Arts|B.A. degree in Political Science from the University of British Columbia, going on to study towards (but not completing) a doctorate in Soviet Government at the London School of Economics. During her undergraduate years she was an active member of the Beta Upsilon Chapter of the Kappa Alpha Theta Women's Fraternity. She went on to earn, in 1983, an Bachelor of Laws|LL.B. from the University of British Columbia. She was Call to the bar|called to the British Columbia bar (law)|Bar in 1984; she practised law in Vancouver until 1986. Campbell married Nathan Divinsky in 1972. During their marriage, Campbell lectured in political science at the University of British Columbia and at Vancouver Community College. While still attending law school, Campbell entered politics as a trustee on the Vancouver School Board, rising to become the chair of that board. Divinsky himself had earlier been chair of that board. Campbell and Divinsky were divorced in 1983, and Campbell married Howard Eddy in 1986. Campbell ran unsuccessfully for the leadership of the BC Social Credit Party in the summer of 1986 (placing last with less than a dozen votes from delegates), but was elected in October of 1986 to the BC Legislature as a British Columbia Social Credit Party|Social Credit Party member for the Vancouver Point Grey electoral district. A few years later she resigned from the legislature to run in the Canadian federal election, 1988|1988 federal election as a Progressive Conservative Party of Canada|Progressive Conservative. She won, becoming the Member of Parliament (MP) for Vancouver Centre, in downtown Vancouver. Upon her election to the Canadian House of Commons in 1988, Campbell became Canada's first female Minister of Justice (Canada)|Minister of Justice (1990-1993). Then she briefly became the first female Minister of National Defence (Canada)|Minister of National Defence before running to succeed Prime Minister Brian Mulroney when he resigned as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1993. Campbell defeated Jean Charest at the Progressive Conservative leadership convention that June. As leader of the Conservatives, the ruling party in the House of Commons at that time, Campbell was, pursuant to Constitutional convention (political custom)|constitutional convention, asked by the Governor General of Canada to become Prime Minister of Canada; thus, Campbell was sworn in as Prime Minister. One important distinction is that she was never elected by the Canadian people, she simply assumed the position that Mulroney left behind. Also in 1993, Campbell and Eddy were divorced, although the divorce was finalized before she was sworn in as Prime Minister. Campbell's quick rise to fame from a relatively unknown Cabinet of Canada|cabinet member to Prime Minister of Canada came as a bit of a shock to many Canadians. The fact that she was a woman, the first to become Prime Minister, initially made her very popular. For a while, it seemed that she might have a chance of repairing the Conservative party's reputation, which had been badly damaged after a number of scandals during the Mulroney government. When an election had to be called in the fall of 1993, the party had high hopes that they may be able to remain in government, and if not, would at least be a strong parliamentary opposition|opposition to a Liberal minority government. However, Campbell's initial popularity soon wore off. The prime minister appeared to have troubles relating to "regular" Canadians, and many felt that she had an overly condescending and pretentious tone. During the election campaign, she stated that discussing a complete overhaul of Canada's social policies in all their complexities could not be done in just 47 days (the time allotted to an election campaign), although her comment is widely remembered as suggesting that "an election is no time to discuss serious issues". In addition, she was criticized as carrying much the same attitudes and positions of her widely detested predecessor epitomised in the activist chant, "Kim, Kim, you're just like him." Campbell also had a habit of making public relations blunders. A Conservative election commercial in which Liberal Party of Canada|Liberal leader Jean Chr??tien's 1993 Chr??tien ad|facial paralysis was mocked was largely regarded as the final nail in her campaign's coffin. The Somalia Affair took place during her "watch" as Minister of National Defence and became a handicap during her subsequent period of public life. When the Liberal Party of Canada took power, the incident became the subject of a lengthy public inquiry, aimed further at embarrassing Campbell and the Conservative Party. Despite all of the above, Campbell's Tories remained competitive in most polls; however, they were swept from power in a massive Liberal landslide victory|landslide, in which they were cut down to only two seats. Campbell herself was defeated in Vancouver Centre by Liberal Hedy Fry, and all the members of the Cabinet except one (Jean Charest) lost their seats. This was despite the Conservatives having finished third in the popular vote, barely behind the Reform Party. The concentration of support for Reform in Western Canada|the west and the Bloc Qu??b??cois in Quebec prevented the Conservatives from winning seats under the first past the post electoral system. Although many pundits saw the unprecedented scope of her defeat as a reflection of the unpopularity of her predecessor Mulroney rather than as a rejection of Campbell, she quickly resigned her position as party leader. Campbell returned to lecturing in political science for a few years, this time at Harvard. Then, in 1996, the Liberal government that had defeated Campbell appointed her Consul General to Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles, a post in which she remained until 2000. In 1997, Campbell collaborated with her husband on the production of a musical, Noah's Ark in Los Angeles. In 2002, she lectured at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is also Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders, a network organised by the Kennedy School. In 2004, she was included in the list of 50 most important political leaders in history in the Almanac of World History compiled by the National Geographic Society. She was cited for her status as the only woman head of government of a North American country to date, but controversy ensued among academics in Canada over the merit of this honour. She is also a member of the Club of Madrid, an independent organization whose main purpose and priority is to contribute to the strengthening of democracy in the world. Its membership is by invitation only and consists of former Heads of State and Government. The current President of the Club of Madrid is Fernando Cardoso, the former President of Brazil. On January 1st, 2004, Ms. Campbell assumed the role of Secretary General of the organization's secretariat in Madrid. She continues as a Lecturer of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University to this day, in addition to her duties at the Club of Madrid. She also is the director of several publicly traded companies in high technology and biotechnology. On November 30, 2004, Campbell's official portrait for the parliamentary Prime Minister's gallery was unveiled. The painting was created by Victoria artist David Goatley. Kim Campbell said she was ???deeply honoured??? to be the only woman to have her picture in the prime ministers' corridor, stating ???I really look forward to the day when there are many other female faces.??? The painting shows a pensive Ms. Campbell sitting on a chair with richly coloured capes and robes in the background, symbolizing her time as a cabinet minister and as an academic. The unveiling took place amidst protests against President of United States|U.S. President George W. Bush visiting Canada http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/11/30/campbell041130.html. Image:Kimcampbellofficialportrait2004.jpg|thumb|200px|Prime Minister Kim Campbell's official portrait unveiled in 2004. Campbell took her political rise and fall with good grace. For several years she devoted herself with energy and imagination towards expanding her role and duties as the Canadian Consul General in Los Angeles and worked as a popular sessional lecturer at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. As Justice Minister, Campbell brought about a new rape law whose passage firmly entrenched that in cases involving sexual assault, "no means NO." While Campbell had little time to usher in legislation during her six brief months as Prime Minister, she did implement radical changes to the structure of the Canadian government. Under her tenure, the patronage bloated federal cabinet's size was cut from over seventy-five cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries to just twenty-three and the number of cabinet committees was reduced from eleven to five. Jean Chr??tien essentially kept governing with Campbell's structure for his ensuing decade of Liberal rule, though the use of patronage has increased with Prime Minister Paul Martin's appointment of a thirty-eight member federal cabinet in July 2004. While the Progressive Conservatives teetered on the brink of destruction after her leadership, they did regain party status and survived as a distinct political entity for another ten years after the 1993 election debacle. The party subsequently merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative Party of Canada in 2004. Campbell remains one of the youngest women to have ever assumed the office of Prime Minister in any country, and one of the youngest to have left the office.
start box succession box| before=Brian Mulroney| title=Prime Minister of Canada| years=1993| after=Jean Chr??tien succession box| before=Brian Mulroney| title=Progressive Conservative Party of Canada|Progressive Conservative Leaders| after=Jean Charest| years=1993 succession box| before=Pat Carney, Progressive Conservative Party of Canada|PC| title=Member of Parliament for Vancouver Centre| years=1988-1993| after=Hedy Fry, Liberal Party of Canada|Liberal end box canPM Category:1947 births|Campbell, Kim Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics|Campbell, Kim Category:British Columbia MLAs|Campbell, Kim Category:Canada Reads Panelists|Campbell, Kim Category:Canadian lawyers|Campbell, Kim Category:Canadian political scientists|Campbell, Kim Category:Female heads of government|Campbell, Kim Category:Members of the Canadian House of Commons from British Columbia|Campbell, Kim Category:Members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada|Campbell, Kim Category:Prime Ministers of Canada|Campbell, Kim Category:Progressive Conservative Party of Canada MPs|Campbell, Kim fr:Kim Campbell no:Kim Campbell pl:Kim Campbell pt:Kim Campbell This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Kim Campbell".
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