Topics

On This Day in Canada’s Political History: Kim Campbell Becomes Canada's First Female Defence Minister

  • Arthur Milnes
  • January 4, 2021
January 4, 1993.  It was on this date in 1993 that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney shuffled his cabinet in a major way.  One of the most notable ministers who were part of the shuffle was British Columbia’s Kim Campbell.Mulroney shifted Kim Campbell to National Defence where she made history, becoming Canada’s first-ever female defence minister.  And, just a few months later, Ms. Campbell would become the nation’s first female Prime Minister.Thanks to Mr. Mulroney’s Memoirs, where he published sections of his private diary, kept while he was PM, historians and all political history junkies are allowed a glimpse into a Prime Minister’s mind as he prepares for a major shuffle on his cabinet team.

“The key move Monday morning is that of Kim Campbell to DND and DVA, along with her appointment to the operations committee of cabinet, where she will replace Joe Clark,” Mulroney wrote. “Kim is one of my favourites in cabinet – tough, disciplined, intelligent, combative, bilingual – and I think she could effectively replace me as party leader and prime minister.  There are of course others, thankfully of equally impressive skills – Wilson, Charest, Valcourt, Beatty, (Benoit) Bouchard, to name but a few.”

Mulroney also wrote that he expected that the fast-approaching Inauguration of Bill Clinton and his equally youthful Vice President, Al Gore, might prove a positive for all the PC leadership hopefuls expected to enter the race to replace the 18th Prime Minister.

“It will also have a favourable impact upon the leadership aspirations of younger people such as Kim, Charest, Valcourt, Beatty, and others I have promoted and whose careers I have sought to advance,” Mulroney added, also noting that Liberal leader Jean Chretien, by contrast, was close to 60 years-old. Political junkies like myself wish more Prime Ministers -- e.g., Mackenzie King, Sir Robert Borden and Lester Pearson -- had been as diligent as Brian Mulroney and left diaries in their wake.[caption id="attachment_531030" align="alignnone" width="489"] Kim Campbell (Facebook)[/caption]Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also proudly served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.