# Paul Hellyer

Paul Theodore Hellyer PC (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.

## Early life

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.

## Early political career

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.

## Cabinet minister and Liberal leadership candidate

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.

## Politics 1969–1988

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 (PC) with an interest in housing, called for a more radical approach.
The 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 after a dispute with Trudeau over the implementation of the housing program.
From 1971, Hellyer sat in Parliament as an independent, and after failing to form a new political party called Action Canada, he was invited by PC leader Robert Stanfield 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 but lost his seat 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 he 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. He contested the Liberal nomination in the Toronto riding of St. Paul's in 1988, losing to Aideen Nicholson who had defeated Hellyer 14 years previously when a PC MP in the adjacent riding of Trinity.
Under Prime Minister Trudeau, Hellyer served as Canada's only Senior Minister from April 1968 until resigning from the post in 1969.

## Canadian Action Party

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'. This process was furthered by the passage of a unanimous motion at the CAP's convention in 2003.
In early 2004, after several extensions of the merger deadline, the NDP rejected Hellyer's merger proposal which would have required the NDP to change its name. Hellyer resigned as CAP leader, but remained a member of the party. Rumours that he might run for the NDP in the 2004 election proved to be unfounded.

## Extraterrestrial intelligence claims

On June 3, 1967, Hellyer inaugurated an unidentified flying object landing pad in St. Paul, Alberta. The pad was built as the town's Canadian Centennial celebration project and as a symbol of keeping space free from human warfare.
In early September 2005, Hellyer made headlines by publicly announcing that he believed in the existence of UFOs. On September 25, 2005, he was a guest speaker at an exopolitics conference in Toronto, where he told the audience that he had seen a UFO one night with his late wife and some friends. The Ottawa Citizen reported in 2007 that Hellyer was demanding world governments disclose alien technology that could be used to solve the problem of climate change. In an interview with RT (formerly Russia Today) in 2014, Hellyer said that at least four species of aliens had been visiting Earth for thousands of years, with most of them coming from other star systems, although there are some living on Venus, Mars and "Saturn's moon".

## Personal life and death

Hellyer was one of the earliest investors in the Toronto Sun in 1971. He served as a syndicated columnist for the newspaper between 1974 and 1984. He resided in Toronto and had three children and five grandchildren.
Hellyer died in Toronto on August 8, 2021 of complications from a fall, two days after his 98th birthday.

## Books

Hellyer has written several books on Canada and globalization, including One Big Party: To Keep Canada Independent, in which he promoted the merger of the CAP, NDP, and various left-wing activists to save Canada from the effects of globalization, as well as possible annexation by the United States.
* Agenda, a Plan for Action (1971)
* Exit Inflation (1981)
* Jobs for All: Capitalism on Trial (1984)
* Damn the Torpedoes (1990)
* Funny Money: A common sense alternative to mainline economics (1994)
* Surviving the Global Financial Crisis: The Economics of Hope for Generation X (1996)
* Evil Empire : Globalization's Darker Side (1997)
* Stop: Think (1999)
* Goodbye Canada (2001)
* One Big Party: To Keep Canada Independent (2003)
* A Miracle in Waiting (2010), update of Surviving the Global Financial Crisis
* Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Survival Plan for the Human Species (2010)
* The Money Mafia: A World in Crisis (2014)
* Hope Restored: An Autobiography by Paul Hellyer: My Life and Views on Canada, the U.S., the World & the Universe (2018)
* Liberation! The Economics of Hope (2020)

## Electoral record

vte1949 Canadian federal election: Davenport, Toronto :
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% |
| | Liberal | Paul Hellyer | 11,431 | 39.0 | +10.5 |
| | Progressive Conservative | John Ritchie MacNicol | 10,476 | 35.8 | -12.9 |
| | Co-operative Commonwealth | David B. Archer | 7,366 | 25.2 | +6.9 |
| Total valid votes | Total valid votes | Total valid votes | 29,273 | 100.0 |
vte1953 Canadian federal election: Davenport, Toronto :
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% |
| | Liberal | Paul Hellyer | 8,919 | 41.1 | +2.1 |
| | Progressive Conservative | Harold McBride | 6,998 | 32.3 | -3.5 |
| | Co-operative Commonwealth | Fred Young | 4,968 | 22.9 | -2.3 |
| | Labor–Progressive | Hector Harold MacArthur | 802 | 3.7 | |
| Total valid votes | Total valid votes | Total valid votes | 21,687 | 100.0 |
vte1957 Canadian federal election: Davenport, Toronto :
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% |
| | Progressive Conservative | M. Douglas Morton | 8,989 | 40.7 | -0.4 |
| | Liberal | Paul Hellyer | 6,665 | 30.2 | -2.1 |
| | Co-operative Commonwealth | F. Andrew Brewin | 6,414 | 29.1 | +6.2 |
| Total valid votes | Total valid votes | Total valid votes | 22,068 | 100.0 |
December 15, 1958 by-election following Lockyer's death: Trinity, Toronto :
| Party | Candidate | Votes |
| Liberal | Paul Hellyer | 5,175 |
| Progressive Conservative | Joe Lesniak | 4,404 |
| Co-operative Commonwealth | John Elchuk | 1,724 |
| Labor–Progressive | Sam Walsh | 488 |
1962 Canadian federal election: Trinity, Toronto :
| Party | Candidate | Votes |
| Liberal | Paul Hellyer | 9,615 |
| Progressive Conservative | Stanley Frolick | 6,124 |
| New Democratic Party | Thomas Paton | 3,740 |
| Communist | Leslie Morris | 449 |
| Independent | Peter D'Agostino | 295 |
| Social Credit | David E. Hartman | 227 |
1963 Canadian federal election: Trinity, Toronto :
| Party | Candidate | Votes |
| Liberal | Paul Hellyer | 10,595 |
| Progressive Conservative | John Wasylenko | 5,171 |
| New Democratic Party | Thomas Paton | 3,512 |
| Communist | Leslie Morris | 391 |
1965 Canadian federal election: Trinity, Toronto :
| Party | Candidate | Votes |
| Liberal | Paul Hellyer | 9,897 |
| Progressive Conservative | John Brazill | 4,375 |
| New Democratic Party | Enzo Ragno | 2,773 |
1968 Canadian federal election: Trinity, Toronto :
| Party | Candidate | Votes |
| Liberal | Paul Hellyer | 13,126 |
| Progressive Conservative | Ed Robertson | 5,360 |
| New Democratic Party | Jim De Candole | 4,177 |
1972 Canadian federal election: Trinity, Toronto :
| Party | Candidate | Votes |
| Progressive Conservative | Paul Hellyer | 8,518 |
| Liberal | Aideen Nicholson | 8,334 |
| New Democratic Party | Edward Boucher | 3,725 |
| Unknown | Norman Freed | 330 |
| Unknown | Rae Greig | 134 |
1974 Canadian federal election: Trinity, Toronto :
| Party | Candidate | Votes |
| Liberal | Aideen Nicholson | 10,683 |
| Progressive Conservative | Paul Hellyer | 6,537 |
| New Democratic Party | Jonathan Cohen | 2,637 |
| Communist | William Kashtan | 234 |
| Marxist–Leninist | Jim Turnbull | 90 |
| Independent | Martin K. Weiche | 64 |
vte1997 Canadian federal election: Etobicoke—Lakeshore :
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% |
| | Liberal | Jean Augustine | 21,180 | 46.2 | +4.1 |
| | Progressive Conservative | Charles Donley | 10,509 | 22.9 | -8.0 |
| | Reform | Robert Beard | 8,697 | 19.0 | +0.2 |
| | New Democratic | Karen Ridley | 4,085 | 8.9 | +3.9 |
| | Canadian Action | Paul Hellyer | 770 | 1.7 | |
| | Green | David Burman | 315 | 0.7 | |
| | Natural Law | Geraldine Jackson | 139 | 0.3 | -0.3 |
| | Marxist–Leninist | Barbara Seed | 133 | 0.3 | +0.1 |
| Total valid votes | Total valid votes | Total valid votes | 45,828 | 100.0 |
vte2000 Canadian federal election: Toronto Centre—Rosedale :
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% |
| | Liberal | Bill Graham | 26,203 | 55.33 | +6.08 |
| | Progressive Conservative | Randall Pearce | 8,149 | 17.21 | -2.13 |
| | New Democratic | David Berlin | 5,300 | 11.19 | -9.22 |
| | Alliance | Richard Walker | 5,058 | 10.68 | +2.83 |
| | Canadian Action | Paul Hellyer | 1,466 | 3.10 | +2.44 |
| | Marijuana | Neev Tapiero | 722 | 1.52 | |
| | Natural Law | David Gordon | 224 | 0.47 | -0.11 |
| | Communist | Dan Goldstick | 121 | 0.26 | |
| | Marxist–Leninist | Philip Fernandez | 116 | 0.24 | -0.11 |
| Total valid votes | Total valid votes | Total valid votes | 47,359 | 100.00 |
| Total rejected ballots | Total rejected ballots | Total rejected ballots | 246 | 0.52 | −0.38 |
| Turnout | Turnout | Turnout | 47,605 | 57.19 | −9.82 |
| Electors on the lists | Electors on the lists | Electors on the lists | 83,243 |
| Sources: Official Results, Elections Canada, Poll-by-poll Result Files, Elections Canada, and Financial Returns, Elections Canada. |||||||
Note: Canadian Alliance vote is compared to the Reform vote in 1997 election.

## Archives

There is a Paul Hellyer fonds at Library and Archives Canada.