Fabien Roy
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Fabien Roy (born April 17, 1928) was a Canadian politician in the 1970s. Roy was elected to the parliaments of Quebec and Canada, and advocated social credit theories of monetary reform.
Roy was born in Saint-Prosper, Quebec. He studied accounting, sales management, and human resources in the Saint-Georges seminary, and commercial law, political economy and business administration at Laval University. In 1980, following his departure from politics, he studied property valuation.
He was an accountant for the Saint-Propser agricultural co-operative from 1945 to 1949, and secretary of the Federation of Co-operative Trucking (Quebec South district) from 1949-1952, and for the Sherbrooke district from 1952-1953. He founded the F. Roy Transports trucking company, which he ran from 1953-1962.
He was Director-General of a credit union in La Chaudière from 1962 to 1970, and member of the administrative and executive councils of a Quebec credit union federation (Fédération des caisses d'établissement du Québec) from 1968 to 1970. In 1970, he was director of recruitment and sales for the federation. In 1960, he co-founded the Saint-Prosper Chamber of Commerce, and became president in 1963.
From 1962 to 1968, he was president of the Dorchester riding federal Ralliement créditiste association, and regional organizer for the party in the 1962, 1963, 1965 and 1968 federal elections.
From 1964 to 1965, he was provincial vice-president of the party. He was elected to the Quebec National Assembly for Beauce riding in 1970, and held the post of chief whip of the Ralliement créditiste du Québec caucus from 1970 to 1972.
He was parliamentary leader of the party from 1972 to 1975, and lost a bid to become leader at a February 1973 leadership convention. In the 1973 provincial election, he was returned to the National Assembly for the riding of Beauce-Sud.
He was president of the party from 1973-1974, but was expelled on November 3, 1975. He founded the Parti national populaire with former Liberal cabinet minister Jérôme Choquette on December 14, 1975, and was re-elected in the 1976 provincial election as the only PNP Member of the National Assembly.
He was appointed leader of the federal Social Credit Party of Canada on March 30, 1979, and resigned his National Assembly seat on April 5, 1979.
He was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the May 22, 1979 federal election with five other Social Credit Members of Parliament.
While his party provided some support to the minority Progressive Conservative Party of Canada government of Joe Clark, the Social Credit caucus abstained on a crucial vote on the government’s budget, which led to the defeat of the Clark government and an election on February 18, 1980.
The abstention by Social Credit on this important vote contributed to the growing perception that the party had become irrelevant following the death of iconic leader Réal Caouette. Roy and all other Socred candidates were defeated in the 1980 federal election. The death of the Social Credit candidate in the riding of Frontenac, Quebec resulted in the postponement of the election in that riding to March 24. Roy sought to return to the House of Commons in the by-election, but lost to the Liberal candidate. Roy resigned from the leadership on November 1, 1980.
Roy returned to business and community involvement, serving as director of Geoffrion Leclerc from 1981-1988, director of a community college (Cégep Lévis-Lauzon) from 1984-1985, member of the Beauce economic council from 1981, as well as participating in Rotary Club activities and local celebrations.
Source: Quebec National Assembly website (http://www.assnat.qc.ca/fra/membres/notices/q-r/royf.htm)
External link
- Social Credit's last stand (http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-73-1181-6515/politics_economy/federal_elections/clip9) CBC report on Roy's 1980 election campaign
| Preceded by: Charles-Arthur Gauthier | National Leaders of Social Credit | Succeeded by: Martin Hattersley |