Former Prime Minister Kim Campbell has recently been touted as a “reasonable” conservative voice by the mainstream media. Lately, she’s made several comments criticizing Conservative leader Andrew Scheer and has called western separatist sentiments “nuts.”
While briefly serving as prime minister in 1993, Kim Campbell had a less than spectacular few months while in office. She has been ranked as the worst short-term prime minister by Macleans and was quickly removed in the worst defeat ever suffered by an incumbent federal party in the nation’s history.
During her career in and out of office, Campbell has consistently made questionable decisions and comments. Here are six of Kim Campbell’s worst moments:
Led the tories to the worst election defeat ever faced by a federal party
In 1993 under Campbell’s leadership, the Progressive Conservatives plummeted from a majority government of 154 seats to an abysmal two seats in the House of Commons, losing its official party status.
Campbell herself ended up losing her seat in Vancouver Centre to a Liberal candidate, making her the second prime minister to lose a seat and the election at the same time. The party would never recover to its former strength and would dissolve after merging with the Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative Party of Canada.
Compared the oil industry to the Nazi’s perpetration of the holocaust
In August of this year, Campbell accused oil companies of having committed “crimes against humanity” and suggested that the people responsible were “Nuremberg worthy.”
During the Nuremberg trials, several leading Nazi officials were sentenced to death for their roles in perpetrating the Holocaust.
According to Statistics Canada, over 200,000 people are employed in the mining, quarrying and oil and gas industry.
Said Canadian soldier’s white supremacist past was “youthful folly” during racist murder investigation
While still the Minister of National Defence and running to become the leader of the Progressive Conservatives for the 1993 election, two Canadian soldiers beat a Somalian teenager to death.
When questioned by the media about one of the soldier’s alleged white supremacist connections and neo-Nazi beliefs, Campbell said she was aware of white supremacy in the armed forces “for ages,” and said that the suspect’s skinhead connections were “youthful folly.”
Said that she hopes President Trump’s resort gets hit by a hurricane
At the height of the Hurricane Dorian scare, Kim Campbell took to Twitter to tweet that she was “rooting for a direct hit on Mar-A-Lago!” a popular resort owned by U.S. President Donald Trump.
She followed these comments a day after saying that “We will see if Mrs. Post’s design can stand up to the assault!” in reference to the resort’s architect.
In response to the comments, the president’s son Eric Trump called the tweet “classless” and said, “Our family is rooting for the safety of millions of homes, businesses, families and wonderful people in a great State of Florida.”
Campbell eventually deleted the tweet and apologized for the comments saying it was “intended as sarcasm” and was a “throwaway line.”
Attacked Jean Chrétien’s visible disability in campaign advertisements
During her time as the newly minted Progressive Conservative leader, Campbell’s campaign aired attack ads poking fun at Jean Chrétien’s partial facial paralysis asking voters “Is this a prime minister?”
“They tried to make fun of the way I look. God gave me a physical defect, and I have accepted that since [I was] a kid,” said Chrétien in response to the ads.
Campbell’s campaign chair, the now-mayor of Toronto, John Tory, defended the ads saying “They have a point to make.”
Eventually, Campbell said the ads would be pulled and apologized for offending her opponent.
Told women that having “bare arms” was “demeaning” despite posing nude in 1990
In 2018, Campbell tweeted that she thought that it was “demeaning” for women to have “bare arms” television while sitting with suited men.
“I am struck by how many women on television news wear sleeveless dresses- often when sitting with suited men. I have always felt it was demeaning to the women and this suggests that I am right. Bare arms undermine credibility and gravitas!” said Campbell.
However, in 1990 Campbell posed for a Barbara Woodley photograph in the nude behind legal robes. When people brought up the hypocrisy of her position, Campbell defended the position claiming that her photograph was “art” and not “news.”
