Joe Clark
16th Prime Minister of Canada
Charles Joseph Clark (born June 5, 1939) is a Canadian businessman, writer, and retired politician who served as the 16th prime minister of Canada from 1979 to 1980. He served as leader of the Official Opposition from 1976 to 1979 and from 1980 to 1983 and led the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from 1976 to 1983, and again from 1998 to 2003.
Despite his relative inexperience, Clark rose quickly in federal politics. He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1972 and won the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1976. He led the party to a minority government in the 1979 federal election, defeating the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau and ending 16 years of continuous Liberal rule. Taking office the day before his 40th birthday, Clark became the youngest prime minister in Canadian history.
Upon becoming prime minister, Clark introduced freedom of information legislation (which died upon the dissolution of Parliament) and oversaw the "Canadian Caper" rescue in response to the Iran hostage crisis; however, his 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 federal election. Clark and the Progressive Conservatives lost the election to Trudeau and the Liberals, who won a majority government and returned to power. As of 2026, he remains the most recent prime minister to have lost power following the defeat of his budget.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joe Clark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.