Government Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau

The conservative leader Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau becomes Prime Minister for Quebec following the resignation of the liberal government of Henri-Gustave Jolly de Lotbinière, blocked by the Legislative council, with prevalence conservative, which refuse to vote its subsidies to him, and by the lieutenant-governor Theodore Robitaille who refuses his application to start elections. The mandate of the government of Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau extends from the October 31st 1879 with the July 31st 1882.

Composition

Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau: Prime Minister, Minister for Agriculture, public Minister for Labor.

Joseph Gibb Robertson: provincial treasurer.

Theodore Package: provincial secretary.

William Warren Lynch: Solicitor General.

Louis-Onésime Loranger: public prosecutor.

Edmund James Flynn: police chief of the Grounds of the Crown.

Cabinet reshuffle in 1882:

Elisee Dionne: Minister for Agriculture, public Minister for Labor.

Chronology

October 31st 1879: assermentation of the Chapleau cabinet in front of the lieutenant-governor Theodore Robitaille. Two of the ministers, Theodore Package and Edmund James Flynn, are liberal defectors, but none is ultramontane wing of the Conservative party. It is the fight open between the two branches of the Party.

Winter 1880: negociations between Chapleau and liberals of Honore Draper with an aim of forming a coalition government. Chapleau wants to thus counter a possible opposition of the ultramontanes in Room, which could reverse the government. The negotiations do not succeed because Mercier asks for the abolition of the Legislative council, it to what Chapleau is opposed.

May 29th 1880: inauguration of the third session of the Fourth Legislature.

July 20th 1880: Quebec comes to an agreement with the Bank from Paris and the Netherlands for a loan from $4 million. It is about the first economic agreement between Quebec and France since the treated of Paris of 1763.

January 1881: inauguration of the Franco-Canadian Building and loan association. Its funds of $5 million (25 million old francs) will be used to agree of the loans to the farmers, with the municipalities and the government itself.

Spring 1881: Chapleau and Mercier negotiate again to form a coalition government. Draper is ready to accept a conservative as chief of the coalition but requires the resignation of Chapleau as a preliminary. The negociations are again broken.

April 28th 1881: beginning of the fourth session of the Fourth Legislature, marked by an accounting scandal. Chapleau and Theodore Paquet would have received $14,000 each one for their assistance to found the Building and loan association.

November 7th 1881: Chapleau announces elections for on December 2nd.

December 2nd 1881: Chapleau increases its majority in Room, at the time of the general elections, with 52 conservatives against only 13 liberals.

January 28th 1882: J.G. Robertson resigns of its post of provincial treasurer, being said in dissension with the next privatization of the Quebec, Montreal Ottawa and Westerner .

March 4th 1882: Quebec announces officially the privatization of the Quebec, Montreal Ottawa and Westerner (the railroad of northern bank of the St. Lawrence). The western part is sold with the Canadian Pacific Railway Co for $4 million, the part is at a loan syndicate for the same amount. This trade union is managed by Louis-Adélard Sénécal, a close friend of Chapleau. The opposition shouts with favoritism.

March 8th - May 27th 1882: first session of the Fifth Legislature. Chapleau succeeds of sorrow and misery to make vote the sale of the railroad.

July 31st 1882: Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau makes the jump in Ottawa where he becomes the Québécois lieutenant of John A. Macdonald. This one appoints it Secretary of State. Joseph-Alfred Mousseau succeeds to him like Prime Minister.

Characteristics

The Chapleau government is the first Québécois government to negotiate an international economic agreement (either with France). It supports colonization in Laurentides (the epopee of the cleaned Labelle) and starts to recommend the industrialization of the province. Attracted by the capacity in Ottawa, Chapleau however leaves its Party divided between the ultramontanes and the conservatives of the school of Cartier . The government Mousseau will have misery to manage this crisis.

Sources

Robert Rumilly. History of the province of Quebec .

Jacques Lacoursière. popular History of Quebec , volume III. North. 1996.

Paul-Andre Linteau, Rene Durocher and Jean-Claude Robert. History of contemporary Quebec , volume I. Boreal Express train. 1979.

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