Article

Walter Lockhart Gordon

Published Online February 13, 2008

Last Edited December 16, 2013

Walter Lockhart Gordon, public servant, politician, author (b at Toronto 27 Jan 1906; d there 25 Mar 1987). Gordon was educated at Upper Canada College and the Royal Military College of Canada, becoming a partner in the accounting firm Clarkson, Gordon and Company in 1935.

Gordon, Walter Lockhart

Walter Lockhart Gordon, public servant, politician, author (b at Toronto 27 Jan 1906; d there 25 Mar 1987). Gordon was educated at Upper Canada College and the Royal Military College of Canada, becoming a partner in the accounting firm Clarkson, Gordon and Company in 1935. During WWII he served in the Bank of Canada and the Ministry of Finance; in 1946 he chaired the Royal Commission on Administrative Classifications in the Public Service, and 1955-57 the Royal Commission on CANADA'S ECONOMIC PROSPECTS.

Gordon's concern for Canadian economic independence led him into the Liberal Party after L.B. PEARSON became leader in 1958; in May 1963 Gordon became minister of finance in the Pearson government. His 1963 budget proposal for a tax on takeovers of Canadian firms was withdrawn under pressure, and his influence in Cabinet waned until his resignation after general election of November 1965. He returned to Cabinet as president of the privy council in 1967 to oversee the Watkins task force on the structure of Canadian industry, and resigned after completion of the report in 1968. In the 1970s he inspired the COMMITTEE FOR AN INDEPENDENT CANADA; in the 1980s he gave leadership to the movement for nuclear arms control and disarmament.