Joe Clark

Joe Clark

Charles Joseph Clark (born June 5, 1939) is a Canadian businessman, writer, and politician who served as the 16th prime minister of Canada from 1979 to 1980. Despite his relative inexperience, Clark rose quickly in federal politics, entering the House of Commons in the 1972 election and winning the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1976. He won a minority government in the 1979 election, defeating the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau and ending sixteen years of continuous Liberal rule. Taking office the day before his 40th birthday, Clark is the youngest person to become Prime Minister. Clark's tenure was brief as the minority government was brought down by a non-confidence vote on his first budget in December 1979. The budget defeat triggered the 1980 election. Clark and the Progressive Conservatives lost the election to Trudeau and the Liberals, who won a majority in the Commons and returned to power. Clark lost the leadership of the party to Brian Mulroney in 1983. Clark returned to prominence in 1984 as a senior cabinet minister in Mulroney's cabinet, retiring from politics after not standing for re-election for the House of Commons in 1993. He made a political comeback in 1998 to lead the Progressive Conservatives in their last stand before the party's eventual dissolution, serving his final term in Parliament from 2000 to 2004. After the Progressive Conservatives merged with the more right-wing Canadian Alliance to form the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada in 2003, Clark instead sat as an independent Progressive Conservative, criticizing the merger as what he described as an "Alliance take-over", believing that the new party was drifting towards social conservatism. Clark today serves as a university professor and as president of his own consulting firm.

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