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David Réal Caouette (September 26, 1917 - December 16, 1976) was a Canadian politician from Quebec. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) and leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada. His son, Gilles Caouette, was also a Social Credit MP and was briefly acting leader of the party.
Born in Amos, in the Abitibi region of Quebec, Caouette was converted to the social credit philosophy in 1939. He was first elected to the House of Commons in a 1946 by-election under the Union des électeurs banner. He sat as Social Credit MP once elected, but he lost the seat in the 1949 general election. In 1958, he broke with Union des électeurs founders Louis Even and Gilberte Côté-Mercier, and join Social Credit. He became uncontested leader of the créditistes in Quebec.
A populist leader and charismatic speaker, Caouette appealed to those who felt left out and pushed aside by financial institutions, traditional politicians, and what they perceived as elitist intellectuals.
In 1961, he ran for leadership of the Social Credit Party, but lost to the Robert N. Thompson, a Social Credit MP from Alberta.
His greatest success came in the 1962 election, when the Social Credit Party won 26 seats in Quebec. The party won only four seats in the rest of Canada. Holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, Social Credit helped bring down the Progressive Conservative minority government of John Diefenbaker. However in the 1963 election, Social Credit was reduced to 24 seats nationwide.
Caouette fought for bilingualism in the House of Commons, winning a symbolic victory when he got the Parliament's restaurant to produce bilingual menus. In this, he anticipated the official bilingualism policy that would later be put into effect by Pierre Trudeau.
Caouette believed that since the party was most successful in the Province of Quebec, he should be leader of the party instead of Thompson. As well, Caoutte and his followers remained true believers in the social credit monetary theories of C.H. Douglas while Thompson and the Social Credit Party of Alberta had abandoned the theories. Thompson refused to step aside, leading Caouette to leave the party, along with the rest of Quebec wing in 1963, to establish the Ralliement des créditistes.
In the 1965 election, Caouette's Ralliement won nine seats, while Social Credit led by Thompson won five seats. In the 1968 election, Caouette's party won 14 seats while Social Credit won none.
The two parties were reunited under Caouette's leadership for the 1972 election, in which the party won 15 seats. Although the party continued to nominate candidates in other provinces, it never again won seats outside of Quebec. In the 1974 election, the party won 11 seats.
After his death in 1976, Social Credit in Quebec and at the federal Canadian level went into decline. The party won only six seats under Fabien Roy in the 1979 election, and none in the 1980 or subsequent elections. The party eventually folded in the 1990s.
Throughout the course of his career, Caouette was known for making controversial and intemperate statements. Shortly after World War II, Caouette claimed that his economic theories were the same as those of Benito Mussolini's discredited government in Italy. During the October Crisis of 1970, he also claimed that leaders of the Front de Libération du Québec should be shot by a firing squad. (The FLQ was an organization that sought to promote its goal of independence for Quebec through violent means, including bombing, kidnapping and murder.) While such statements may have resonated with radical créditiste supporters, they undoubtedly blunted the party's popularity with the mainstream electorate.
See also
| Preceded by: Alexander Bell Patterson | National Leaders of Social Credit | Succeeded by: André-Gilles Fortin |