page_title: Jean Chrétien
section_title: First mandate (1993–1997)
hierarchical_section_title: Jean Chrétien / Prime Minister (1993–2003) / First mandate (1993–1997)
caption_attribution_description: English: MP Jesse Flis, Bishop Georgije Đokić of Canada, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, Patriarch of Serbia Pavle and his successor as Patriarch then-Bishop Irinej of Niš.
context_page_description: Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien PC OM CC QC is a Canadian politician who served as the 20th prime minister of Canada from November 4, 1993, to December 12, 2003.
  Born and raised in Shawinigan, Quebec, Chrétien is a law graduate from Université Laval. He was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1963. He served in various cabinet posts under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, most prominently as minister of justice, minister of finance, and minister of indian affairs and northern development. He also served as deputy prime minister, and secretary of state for external affairs in John Turner's short-lived government. He became leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in 1990, serving as leader of the opposition before leading the party to a majority government in the 1993 federal election. He was reelected with further majorities in 1997 and 2000.
  Chrétien was strongly opposed to the Quebec sovereignty movement and supported official bilingualism and multiculturalism. He won a narrow victory as leader of the federalist camp in the 1995 Quebec referendum, and then pioneered the Clarity Act to avoid ambiguity in future referendum questions.
context_section_description: On November 4, 1993, Chrétien was appointed by Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn as prime minister. While Trudeau, Joe Clark and Mulroney had been relative political outsiders prior to becoming prime minister, Chrétien had served in every Liberal cabinet since 1965. This experience gave him knowledge of the Canadian parliamentary system, and allowed Chrétien to establish a very centralized government that, although highly efficient, was also lambasted by critics such as Jeffrey Simpson and the media as being a "friendly dictatorship" and intolerant of internal dissent. The political scientist Donald Savoie wrote that under Chrétien's authoritarian style of leadership that "Cabinet has now joined Parliament as an institution being by-passed" while Simpson wrote that Chrétien possessed " a streak of terrible pettiness and vengeance directed against those who have crossed him". Reflecting the relative impotence of Parliament, the most powerful advisors to Chrétien were a triumvirate comprising his wife Aline, his chief of staff Jean Pelletier and his right-hand man Eddie Goldenberg, none of whom held a seat in the House of Commons. Chrétien liked to present himself as the heir to Trudeau, but his governing style had little in common with the intense bouts of governmental activism that had characterised the Trudeau era. The Chrétien government had a cautious, managerial approach to governing, reacting to issues as they arose, and was otherwise inclined to inactivity. The most common critique of the Chrétien government, especially in its first 15 months or so from late 1993 to early 1995 was that the government had been "sleepwalking".
  In 1993, Chrétien canceled the contract to buy the EH-101 helicopters, requiring the search for new helicopters to start over, and paid a $478 million termination fee to AgustaWestland.
  Chrétien cancelled the privatization of Toronto's Pearson airport. The consortium that was due to take ownership of Pearson sued for breach of contract, which led the government to settle out of court in April 1997 for $60 million in damages.
  Chrétien phoned U.S. President Bill Clinton in November 1993 to ask him to renegotiate aspects of NAFTA. Clinton bluntly refused, saying that it had been extremely difficult to get Congress to ratify NAFTA, and if NAFTA was renegotiated, then he would have to submit the renegotiated treaty again for ratification, which was not something that he was going to do just for the sake of Chrétien. Clinton informed the prime minister that he could either scrap NAFTA or accept it as it was, and that the most he could offer were a few cosmetic concessions like writing a letter saying the United States was not interested in taking over Canada's energy and water. Chrétien chose the latter, and sought to portray Clinton's letter as a major American concession that constituted a renegotiated NAFTA, though in fact Clinton's letter was not legally binding and meant nothing. Only treaties ratified by Congress are legally binding on the U.S. government and presidential letters impose only a moral obligation, not a legal one, on the U.S government.
  A major issue for the first Chrétien government was the large national debt that had been inherited from the Trudeau and Mulroney eras. One of Chrétien's first acts had been to not to renew the contract of the governor of the Bank of Canada, John Crow, who was replaced with Gordon Thiessen on February 1, 1994. Crow's policy of high interest rates in the early 1990s to achieve 0% inflation had made him almost as unpopular as the GST, indeed so unpopular that Chrétien had promised to fire him if he should become prime minister. Chrétien who was fearful of the market reaction if he should sack the Bank of Canada governor, sent the new finance minister Paul Martin to meet with Crow in December 1993 to tell him that he could remain as governor provided that he was willing to forgo his 0% inflation target and end the punishingly high interest rates, which Chrétien believed to be a major cause of the recession. Crow told Martin that the government should min
caption: Chrétien with Bishops and the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 1994.
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