The Honourable Walter L. Gordon PC CC CBE
Gordon, c. 1964
President of the Privy Council
In office 4 April 1967 – 10 March 1968
Prime Minister	Lester B. Pearson
Preceded by	Guy Favreau
Succeeded by	Pierre Trudeau (Acting)
Minister without portfolio
In office 9 January 1967 – 3 April 1967
Prime Minister	Lester B. Pearson
Minister of Finance
In office 22 April 1963 – 10 November 1965
Prime Minister	Lester B. Pearson
Preceded by	George Nowlan
Succeeded by	Mitchell Sharp
Member of Parliament for Davenport
In office 18 June 1962 – 24 June 1968
Preceded by	Douglas Morton
Succeeded by	Charles Caccia
Personal details
Born	Walter Lockhart Gordon (1906-01-27)27 January 1906 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died	21 March 1987(1987-03-21) (aged 81) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Party	Liberal
Spouse	Elizabeth Counsell ​ (m. 1932)​
Children	3
Relatives	Charles Drury (brother-in-law)
Profession	Accountant

Walter Lockhart Gordon PC CC CBE (27 January 1906 – 21 March 1987) was a Canadian accountant, businessman, politician, and writer.

Born in Toronto, the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Harry Duncan Lockhart Gordon DSO, a prominent Toronto businessman, and Kathleen Cassels, daughter of the first President of the Exchequer Court of Canada Walter Cassels. Like his father, Gordon was educated at Upper Canada College and the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario.

Upon graduation and after a brief unhappy stint in New York, in January 1927 Gordon joined the accounting firm Clarkson, Gordon and Company^[1]: 13, a prominent accountancy with roots to Upper Canada and the precursor to modern day EY Canada. The firm was at the time headed by Gordon's father (who became a name partner of the firm in 1913) and G.T. Clarkson, a grandson of the firm's founder Thomas Clarkson. He was a student there for four years, became a chartered accountant in early 1931.^[1]: 16

In the mid-1930s, Gordon joined the ownership group of Canadian Forum, a political periodical with nationalist and progressive orientation, for about a year^[2]. He and his wife were close friend with its editor Graham Spry^[3], and other leading members of the League for Social Reconstruction, an organization of left-leaning intellectuals.

Gordon's time at Clarkson Gordon provided him with extensive exposure to government machinery. G.T. Clarkson was a close personal associate of Ontario Conservative Premier Howard Ferguson, and the firm was regularly retained by the Ontario government in the 1920s, so much so that Gordon commented that there were times when he seemed to spend more time at Queen's Park than he did in the firm's office.^[1]: 14

In 1934, Gordon Clarkson was retained by the Commons Committee on Price Spreads, and young Walter was assigned to worked on the matter. He conducted an in-depth investigation into the merchandising and labour policies of the T. Eaton Company, produced a four-hundred-page report testified to the committee over five days.^[4] Thought this committee he became friends with future Prime Minister Lester Pearson^[5], then a young foreign service officer assigned to be commission secretary when the committee became a royal commission. Upon the completion of this prominent assignment, Gordon was promoted to be a partner of the firm in 1935.^[1]: 16

At the outbreak of World War II, Gordon Clarkson was retained by the Bank of Canada in support of the formation of the Foreign Exchange Control Board, one of the boards established following Canada's declaration of war for regulation and control of economic activities. It was the first government assignments which Gordon serves as the lead consultant from the firm, and later became chief of the board's examiners section(later renamed the Commercial Section).

In 1940 Gordon was invited by James Ilsley, one of the MPs on the price spread commission earlier who became finance minister that year, to join the finance department as someone with practical business experience.^[6] Gordon joined the department as a special assistant to Clifford Clark, the deputy minister of finance and one of the most influential Canadian public servants in the 20th century. Gordon's view of government was heavily influenced by Clark, Clark as Gordon saw Clark as "the dominating genius of the department and, in fact, of wartime Ottawa" and intellectually "the most exciting man" he had ever worked with. ^[1]: 33

In 1946, he chaired the Royal Commission on Administrative Classifications in the Public Service.

In 1947 Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier George Drew fired the chairman of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, and asked Gordon, a personal associate and squash partner of the Premier, to take on the job. Gordon declined the offer, but agreed to advise the commission on its restructuring and to recommend a new chair.^[6][7]

In 1948, Gordon was retained by federal defence minister Brooke Claxton to help decentralize the defence department and improve its efficiency. In 1949, he was retained by the federal government to report on the structure of the National Film Board.

From 1955 to 1957, Gordon chaired the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects. The commission's reports, issued in 1956 and 1957, expressed concern about growing foreign ownership in the Canadian economy, particularly in the resource sector, and made recommendations to redress the problem. The themes raised in the reports were revisited by Gordon in his government career.^[8]

According to Dr. Stephen Azzi, Walter Gordon is responsible for "New Nationalism" in Canada.^[9] This is the idea of supporting stronger ties with Great Britain, to prevent Canada being absorbed by United States.

In the 1962 federal election, he was elected to the House of Commons of Canada as a Liberal. He was Minister of Finance from 1963 to 1965, during Prime Minister Lester Pearson's first minority government. Gordon's 1965 budget, which included an 11% tax on construction materials and manufacturing equipment, as well as the expansion of social programs, was attacked by the Opposition parties. Gordon persuaded Pearson to call the 1965 federal election and co-chaired the Liberal campaign. When the election failed to return a Liberal majority, Gordon, taking responsibility for giving the prime minister poor advice, resigned from Cabinet and returned to the backbench.^[10] In 1967, he returned to Cabinet as President of the Privy Council from 1967 to 1968. He was noted for his economic nationalism and his support for new social programs.

Gordon disagreed, often sharply, with Pearson over the significant expansion in federal expenditures and the decline of sound financial management in Pearson's second administration, which began in 1965. The long friendship between the two men, which had begun in the mid-1930s, gradually unravelled.^{[1]: 300–301, 314}

Gordon supported Pierre Trudeau's winning 1968 bid for the Liberal leadership, after Pearson announced his retirement in late 1967. Trudeau, after he became prime minister, invited Gordon to join his Cabinet in April 1968. However, Gordon declined over some misgivings about being able to work successfully with Trudeau and decided not to run again for office in the June 1968 general election.^{[1]: 313–314}

After leaving politics in 1968, he returned to business. He continued to argue for economic nationalist causes and in 1970, along with Peter C. Newman of the Toronto Star, economist Abraham Rotstein, and University of Toronto professor Mel Watkins, founded the Committee for an Independent Canada.^[11] Canadian historian Jack Granatstein argues in Yankee Go Home? that the CIC "helped to create the atmosphere in which Trudeau's government established the Canada Development Corporation in 1971 to 'buy back' Canada."^[8]

Gordon was the Chancellor of York University from 1973 to 1977. He published his political memoirs in 1977, and died in 1987.

In 1976, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1946 for his war services. In 2009, 1681 Honourable Walter L. Gordon, PC, CC, CBE, FCA, LLD (1906–1987) was added to the wall of honour at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario.

There is a Walter Lockhart Gordon fonds at Library and Archives Canada.^[12]

Note: NDP vote is compared to CCF vote in 1958 election.

• Azzi, Stephen. Walter Gordon and the Rise of Canadian Nationalism (McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP, 1999).
• Smith, Denis. Gentle Patriot: A Political Biography of Walter Gordon, Edmonton 1973, Hurtig Publishers.

• Troubled Canada: The Need for New Domestic Policies, by Walter Gordon, 1961.
• A Choice for Canada: Independence or Colonial Status, by Walter Gordon, 1966.
• Storm Signals: New Economic Policies for Canada, by Walter Gordon, 1975.
• A Political Memoir, by Walter Gordon, Toronto 1977, McClelland & Stewart publishers, ISBN 0-7710-3440-7.

• Walter L. Gordon – Parliament of Canada biography