Patricia Dora Carney (May 26, 1935 – July 25, 2023) was a Canadian politician who served as a member of parliament from 1980 to 1988 and as a Senator from 1990 to 2008.

A member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, she first ran for the House of Commons of Canada during the 1979 Canadian federal election, but was defeated. She ran again in the election the following year and won, representing the district of Vancouver Centre. After winning a second term in the 1984 elections, she held three cabinet positions under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney: minister of Energy, Mines and Resources from 1984 to 1986, minister of International Trade from 1986 to 1988 and President of the Treasury Board for eight months in 1988. She was the first woman named to each of these three major economic cabinet positions. She did not seek a third term during the next federal election in 1988, and was succeeded by future prime minister Kim Campbell. In 1990, Mulroney appointed her to the Senate, where she served until her resignation in 2008.

Early life

Carney was born in Shanghai, Republic of China to parents Dora May Sanders and John James Carney (1894-1976), a First World War veteran and Lieutenant with the 72nd Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada from British Columbia, Canada who relocated to Shanghai and worked as a public health inspector and police officer for over twenty years. Carney had three siblings, a brother named Thomas (Tom), a twin brother named John James (Jim) and a younger sister, Norah (Nora). As a result of her father's studies and subsequent work as a veterinarian, the family moved to Guelph in 1944 and then to Victoria, British Columbia a year later. They moved again in 1949 to Nelson in British Columbia's Kootenay Region. In 1956 when Carney was twenty-one years old, Carney married the Vancouver Province's rewrite chief, Gordon Dickson.

Carney attended the University of British Columbia and graduated in 1960 with a bachelor's degree in economics and political science. Carney became a close friend of Stuart Hodgson and accompanied the Commissioner and his party in the 1971 Canadian North Pole expedition an aborted attempt to reach the Pole by Twin Otter in a bid to establish the route for tourist adventurers. Carney was joined by her brother during the flight in and out of the Polar Basin.

In the early 1970s, Gemini North was commissioned to conduct a survey of local opinion about the installation of a gas pipeline along the Mackenzie River Valley. Carney organised an information tour of the valley with stops at all the river settlements where the fly-in pipeliners conducted workshops explaining to the local people details about the pipeline project. The pipeline's tour was shadowed by the president of the Northwest Territories Indian Brotherhood, James Wah-shee, and was seen in native rights circles as a demonstration of the Brotherhood's aim to be consulted before any pipeline work started. Shortly after this tour the Brotherhood applied for a development caveat to stop all development on treaty land. This caveat eventually led to the pipeline inquiry which resulted in the project being shelved.

A fictionalized account of these events was published in 2008.

Political career

Member of Parliament

Carney first ran for the House of Commons of Canada as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the 1979 election and was defeated. She was elected in the 1980 election as the Member of Parliament (MP) from Vancouver Centre.

Cabinet minister

When the Tories formed government under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney as a result of the 1984 election, Carney was appointed to Cabinet as Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, and was responsible for dismantling the previous Canadian government's unpopular National Energy Program.—voted against the restrictive, anti-abortion Bill C-43 proposed by her successor as MP for Vancouver Centre and fellow Conservative party member, Kim Campbell. Despite "heavy, heavy pressure" from Campbell and other party members, In 2023, Carney recalled that "Conservative senators were not expected to vote down their own government's bill. We had the option to simply abstain."

In 2000, Carney acted on concerns that landmark lighthouses on both Canadian coasts were being neglected by teaming up with Senator Mike Forrestall from Nova Scotia to introduce the Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act, a private members bill which enjoyed consistent multi-party support in subsequent minority Parliaments and which received royal assent in 2008.

On October 11, 2007, the Prime Minister's Office announced that Senator Carney intended to resign, two years in advance of the mandatory retirement age of 75 years. She officially resigned on January 31, 2008. In 2011, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada "for her public service as a journalist, politician and senator."

Archives

There are Patricia Carney fonds at Library and Archives Canada and the University of British Columbia.

Death

Carney died on July 25, 2023, at the age of 88.

Electoral history

References

  • Senator Pat Carney personal site