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Sinclair Stevens
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sinclair McKnight Stevens, PC (born February 11, 1927) is a former Canadian parliamentarian.
He was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1972 federal election as a Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament. Stevens ran as a candidate in the 1976 Progressive Conservative leadership convention. He finished seventh on the first ballot, and withdrew in favor of the eventual victor Joe Clark. He served as President of the Treasury Board in the short lived (1979-1980) Clark government.
Stevens turned against Clark, and was an early supporter of Brian Mulroney's leadership bid which culminated in victory at the 1983 Progressive Conservative leadership convention. After the 1984 election, which resulted in a Tory landslide, Stevens became Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion.
He was forced to resign from Cabinet in 1986 following allegations of conflict of interest. In December 1987, a special commission of inquiry headed by Justice William Parker ruled he had violated conflict of interest allegations on fourteen counts. Stevens lost the party nomination in his riding in a bitter fight and left Parliament in 1988.
In December 2004, a Federal Court judge declared null and void the findings of the Parker Inquiry. The court ruled that Parker's definition of conflict of interest exceeded that in the guidelines governing ministers in the Mulroney Cabinet, and that Stevens' behavior did not violate the guidelines that governed him.
Stevens returned to prominence as a bitter opponent of the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives into the Conservative Party of Canada. Stevens backed an unsuccessful lawsuit to try to block the merger.
As of 2006, Stevens runs Freedom International Association along Noreen Stevens and Alice Patry, a registered corporation that controls the domain bloc-harper.com. This website promotes the idea that Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and now Prime Minister, and Gilles Duceppe, leader of the separatist Bloc Québécois, are collaborating to weaken Canadian federalism, to the point that - whether intended by Harper or not - it will lead to the separation of Quebec from the rest of the country.