Ernest Lapointe

Lapointe earned his law degree from Laval University. He was called to the bar in 1898 and practiced law in Rivière-du-Loup and Quebec City.{{cite web |last1=Neatby |first1=H. Blair |title=Ernest Lapointe |url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ernest-lapointe |website=Canadian Encyclopedia |access-date=23 January 2022 |date=13 February 2008}}

Lapointe was elected by acclamation to the House of Commons of Canada for the riding of Kamouraska as a Liberal through a by-election on February 12, 1904. Lapointe was later re-elected in the 1904, 1908, 1911, and 1917 federal elections.

Lapointe resigned his seat in 1919 and successfully ran in the Quebec East seat vacated by former Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, who died.

File:Distinguished Canadians received by President Coolidge at White House. Interesting callers at the White House today were the Minister of Justice of Canada Hon. Ernest Lapointe (left) and the LCCN2016889115 (restored).png, and Quebec Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau at the White House in 1927.|Justice Minister Ernest Lapointe with Canadian Ambassador to the United States Vincent Massey, and Quebec Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau at the White House in 1927.]]

In 1921, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King appointed Lapointe to his cabinet as minister of marine and fisheries. During his tenure as minister, Lapointe reduced tariffs. In 1924, Lapointe became minister of justice, and served in that position until the Liberals' defeat at the polls in 1930. However, the Liberals under King returned back to power in the 1935 federal election, and Lapointe once again regained his old post. From 1924 to 1930 as justice minister, Lapointe expressed his support for King's commitment to Canadian autonomy and accompanied him at the Imperial Conference of 1926. Lapointe also chaired the Canadian delegation in the discussions that led to the Statute of Westminster in 1931.

File:ErnestLapointe.jpg

Lapointe served as King's Quebec lieutenant and was one of the most important ministers in Cabinet. King did not speak French; he relied on Lapointe to handle important matters in the province. Lapointe gave a strong Quebecker voice to the cabinet decision, something that had not existed since the defeat of Laurier in 1911.Conrad Black, Rise to Greatness: The history of Canada from the Vikings to the present (2014) p 520

In the late 1930s, Lapointe recommended that the federal Cabinet disallow several Acts passed by the Alberta Social Credit government of William Aberhart, arguing that Aberhart was attempting to grab too much power and encroach upon federal jurisdiction.

Lapointe did not recommend disallowance of the Padlock Act passed by the Quebec government of Maurice Duplessis, fearing that doing so would only aid the Union Nationale government.{{harvnb|Creighton|1970|p=225}}

Lapointe helped draft Mackenzie King's policy against conscription for overseas service in 1939, and his campaigning helped defeat the Duplessis provincial government in 1939. During the 1939 provincial election, Lapointe made many speeches in the province of Quebec, in which he argued that if Duplessis was to be re-elected, every French Canadian minister would resign from the federal cabinet, leaving it without a francophone voice. Having been a Liberal MP during the 1917 conscription crisis, Lapointe knew how much a new crisis like the last one would destroy the national unity that Mackenzie King had tried to build since 1921. Duplessis lost in a landslide to Liberal Party of Quebec leader Adélard Godbout, who sought to co-operate with the federal government.

Lapointe died in office in 1941, in the midst of the war. King decided to appoint the reluctant Quebec leading lawyer Louis St. Laurent to the cabinet as the new minister of justice.

Lapointe's son, Hugues Lapointe, served as a member of parliament from 1940 to 1957 and lieutenant governor of Quebec from 1966 to 1978.

• Betcherman, Lita-Rose. Ernest Lapointe: Mackenzie King's Great Quebec Lieutenant (2002). 435 pp.
• MacFarlane, John. Ernest Lapointe and Quebec's influence on Canadian foreign policy (U of Toronto Press, 1999)
• Neatby, H. Blair. "Mackenzie King and French Canada." Journal of Canadian Studies 11.1 (1976): 3+

There is an Ernest Lapointe fonds at Library and Archives Canada.{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=Ernest Lapointe fonds, Library and Archives Canada|url=http://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=fonandcol&id=99056&lang=eng|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=|website=}}

{{CanElec1-by|27 October 1919|On Laurier's death, 17 February 1919}}

{{CANelec|CA|Laurier Liberals|Ernest Lapointe|6,222}}

{{CANelec|CA|Parti nationaliste|François-Xavier Galibois|2,283}}

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{{1921 Canadian federal election/Quebec East}}

{{CanElec1-by|19 January 1922|On Lapointe's acceptance of an office of emolument
under the Crown, 3 January 1922}}

{{CANelec|CA|Liberal|Ernest Lapointe|acclaimed}}

{{end}}

{{1925 Canadian federal election/Quebec East}}

{{1926 Canadian federal election/Quebec East}}

{{CanElec1-by|2 November 1926|On Lapointe's acceptance of an office of emolument
under the Crown, 5 October 1926}}

{{CANelec|CA|Liberal|Ernest Lapointe|acclaimed}}

{{end}}

{{1930 Canadian federal election/Quebec East}}

{{1935 Canadian federal election/Quebec East}}

{{1940 Canadian federal election/Quebec East}}

• Conscription Crisis of 1944

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book

|title=Canada's First Century

|url=https://archive.org/details/canadasfirstcent0000crei

|url-access=registration

|first=Donald |last=Creighton

|publisher=Macmillan of Canada

|year=1970

}}

• {{Canadian Parliament links|ID=16539}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20070220231626/http://www.collectionscanada.ca/king/05320113/053201130429_e.html Biography from Library and Archives Canada]

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Category:1876 births

Category:1941 deaths

Category:Liberal Party of Canada MPs

Category:Laurier Liberals

Category:Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Quebec

Category:Members of the King's Privy Council for Canada

Category:Lawyers in Quebec

Category:Quebec lieutenants

Category:Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada)

Category:Canadian members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom

Category:Université Laval alumni

Category:20th-century members of the House of Commons of Canada