John Fraser, former MP and Speaker of the House of Commons, holds a news conference in Ottawa on Feb. 9, 2000.FRED CHARTRAND/The Canadian Press
John Fraser didn’t initially want the job that is now key to his political legacy. In 1986, a year after he quit his post as Brian Mulroney’s fisheries minister over his role in a scandal involving tainted tuna, the opportunity arose for him to run for House of Commons Speaker.
Fellow MPs were asking Mr. Fraser, the Progressive Conservative MP for Vancouver South, to submit his candidacy for the post. “I said no,” he later recalled in an oral history.
Mr. Fraser had come through a challenging time. He had been pilloried in the media and even by his own party, with Mr. Mulroney saying it was “pretty damned obvious” that Mr. Fraser should never have allowed the tuna, branded by inspectors as unfit for human consumption, to be sold in Canadian stores
Still, he continued in politics. “He was very resilient, and very driven by making a difference, and serving your country,” Mary Fraser, one of his three daughters, said in an interview.
To young people aspiring to a political career, he once said, “You should never give up.”
Following his own advice, he yielded to persuasion on seeking the Speaker’s post. “I got talked into it,” he recalled in the oral history interview, which he did for the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre 28 years later.
Mr. Fraser’s name stood and he won, beating 39 other MPs. He became the first Speaker elected by secret ballot, ending the routine of the prime minister nominating an MP for the approval of other MPs. Today such elections are routine.
As Speaker, he was responsible for refereeing the proceedings of the House of Commons and directing its management, as well as fulfilling ceremonial duties.
Mary Fraser now says her father quickly learned that he had an ability to lead. “At the end of the day, that was what Dad was always passionate about – to effect change in the areas he cared about,” she told The Globe and Mail.
“I don’t think he initially realized the impact he could have in that role, and as he evolved in it, he came to realize his ability to collaborate with, and work in partnerships with members that crossed party lines.”
Later, Mr. Fraser came to an interesting view of the job. “I find that I am a combination of parish priest and social worker, adviser and conciliator and, often, a friend and confidant,” he wrote in the preface to The House of Commons at Work, a 1993 book.
Mr. Fraser would end up serving as Speaker for seven years, having been re-elected to the job in 1988. He was generally well-regarded for his work. The MP who might have left in scandal, lives on in reputation as a notable occupant of the office, with his portrait in the Commons, and a record of achievement that has inspired many, including the current holder of the office.
Mr. Fraser died on April 7 in Vancouver from complications of heart and kidney failure. He was 92.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May first met Mr. Fraser when he was Joe Clark’s environment minister, and credits him with charting Canada’s course for dealing with acid rain, among other issues. She said he was a Christian who believed we all have an immortal soul, and the Lord had put imperfect beings like all of us into this world. “We have a moral obligation to take care of that world,” she recalled him saying.
“I loved John Fraser a lot,” she said. “He became, for me, something of a mentor, definitely a friend.”
Mary Fraser once asked her father where his passion for the environment came from. “His initial response to me was, ‘I love to fish.’ As a kid he loved fishing and he respected and appreciated the importance of protecting the entire ecosystem.”
As Speaker, Mr. Fraser’s notable rulings included calling out the government for the “ill-conceived” move to run newspaper ads on changes to the Goods and Services Tax before the passage of legislation on the matter. As Gary Levy notes in his 1996 book Speakers of the House of Commons, the opposition had argued that the government had no right to assume the legislation would be passed. Also he ruled against the closing of debate over the 1988 Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement.
Mr. Fraser oversaw the creation of a public information office for the Commons. He enacted green measures around recycling and other issues in the operation of the House, and launched a task force on Commons accessibility for people with disabilities. He was also on hand, as Speaker, when the federal government announced redress for Japanese Canadians over internment actions during the Second World War.
Greg Fergus, the current Commons Speaker, was a teenage page in the House during Mr. Fraser’s run as Speaker. He remembers the guidance Mr. Fraser gave to the pages, students from across Canada who provide services to MPs in the Commons.
“He encouraged us all to be … very nice to everybody you meet. Yes, of course, to MPs. But he said be nice to the cleaning staff, to the guards, to the people who work in the journals branch,” Mr. Fergus recalled in an interview.
He said Mr. Fraser told the pages they had an opportunity to learn from these people who know Parliament Hill. “I took that to heart,” Mr. Fergus said. “It’s only after his death that I realized that I have given that advice to everyone that I meet on the Hill. I’ve given that advice as Speaker. It made me think, ‘That’s where I got it from.’”
Jim Watson, whom Mr. Fraser hired in 1987 as his director of communications, said Mr. Fraser was committed to the institution of Parliament. “He was frustrated when Parliament wasn’t working. At the end of the day, his job was to maintain some degree of order so that the members did have that voice to speak up for constituents,” said Mr. Watson, who eventually became a provincial cabinet minister and mayor of Ottawa.
In the partisan environment of the Commons, Mr. Watson noted that Mr. Fraser, among other measures aimed at bringing MPs together, practised “culinary diplomacy,” inviting MPs from various parties for meals so all could get to know each other.
Mr. Fraser was a mentor on how to do politics right, Mr. Watson said, adding that the elder politician taught him to accept the fact that you are not always right, and the person you are debating is not always wrong, and that people largely get into politics for the right reason. “He was such a decent individual,” Mr. Watson said.
John Allen Fraser was born in Yokohama, Japan on Dec. 15, 1931, the son of Clarence and Lottie Fraser. Clarence was working in Japan, selling British Columbia lumber for H.R. MacMillan, who established the H.R. MacMillan Export Co., which would grow into forestry giant MacMillan Bloedel Ltd.
In 1934, the family returned to Canada, eventually settling in Vancouver. Young John was roughed up by other kids following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour because of the country of his birth, he later recalled. “I got home covered in mud and I was mad, as mad as you can believe. I was not cowed. I was just furious,” he said.
He went on, as a teenager, to work at a lumber mill in the B.C. Interior, and eventually to study law at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver. Many people were Liberal, or associated with the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the forerunner to the NDP, and Mr. Fraser, feeling, as he said, “mischievous,” leaned to the Conservatives.
In 1959, he met Cate Findlay in Vancouver through mutual friends. They shared a love of skiing, and he invited her to accompany him to Mount Baker in Washington State. They went in Mr. Fraser’s two-seater car so they didn’t have to give anyone else a ride and could get to the slopes more quickly, according to Mary Fraser. In 1960, they were married in the Ottawa-area town of Carleton Place, her hometown.
Before entering politics, Mr. Fraser worked as a lawyer in Vancouver. In 1968, he challenged Arthur Laing, who happened to be his father’s friend, for Vancouver South. Mr. Fraser was defeated but tried again in 1972, when Mr. Laing wasn’t seeking re-election.
Mr. Fraser won the seat, and embarked on his political career, which included a failed 1976 bid to lead the Progressive Conservatives.
In 1993, he declined to run for re-election, ending his career in elected politics. A year later, prime minister Jean Chrétien appointed him ambassador to the United Nations for the environment and sustainable development. He held the position until 2001.
He was busy after politics. Among other commitments, he served on the board of directors of the Pacific Salmon Foundation for 12 years, ending in 2007, as chair of the federal Pacific Fisheries Resources Conservation Council, as director of the Oceans Network Canada operated with the backing of the University of Victoria, and as an honorary lieutenant-colonel and honorary colonel for the Seaforth Highlanders.
“Until about five years ago, he was still involved in things, and then he just started to decline,” Mary Fraser said.
Her mother had dementia that started to escalate in 2014, and Mr. Fraser focused on caring for her. The couple had retired to Whistler, but that became too challenging. They moved into a seniors’ home that provided her care. Cate Fraser passed away in 2019.
Mr. Fraser, who was named to both the Order of British Columbia and the Order of Canada, leaves three daughters, Sheena, Anna and Mary, as well as seven granddaughters.
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