In the 1964 Great Flag Debate, he was one of a handful of Conservative MPs—a group led by his fellow Quebecer Léon Balcer—who broke with leader John Diefenbaker to support the adoption of the Maple Leaf flag. Grafftey sat as a Tory MP until losing his seat when the Liberal Party under Pierre Trudeau won the 1968 election in a landslide. During this period, he called for radical reforms to Canada's housing policies.[1]
Grafftey returned to Parliament in the 1972 election, and sought the PC leadership at the 1976 Progressive Conservative leadership convention, in which he placed last, with 33 delegate votes. Like many of the other challengers in the race who were eliminated in the early ballots, Grafftey supported the eventual leadership race winner Joe Clark.
He served as Minister of State for Social Programs and Minister of State for Science and Technology in the short lived 1979–1980 government of Joe Clark before losing his seat in the 1980 election. Grafftey supported Clark in the 1983 PC leadership convention, in which the latter lost to Brian Mulroney, and was largely shut out of Quebec PC circles during the Mulroney years.
Later political career
Grafftey attempted to return to Parliament in the 2000 election, but was unsuccessful. After suffering a serious injury which incapacitated him for most of the campaign, he came in third place behind the Bloc Québécois challenger and Liberal incumbent MP Denis Paradis. He did, however, finish with the second highest vote total of any Progressive Conservative candidate in the province of Québec.
In 2002, he was one of the first Progressive Conservatives to call openly for Joe Clark, who was then serving his second stint as Tory leader, to resign, offering himself as a replacement.[2] Grafftey eventually ran as a leadership candidate in the 2003 PC leadership contest.[3] He ran a campaign that was devoid of defining policy proposals but which focused upon his political experience, his bilingualism and his belief that he could recruit 300,000 new members to help the PCs win the coming election. Although, like most of the candidates in the race, he supported the twin Progressive Conservative pillars of North American free trade and support for decentralizing reforms to the Constitution of Canada, he often found himself in agreement with the left wing of his party, sharing maverick candidate David Orchard's opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Grafftey's candidacy received some media attention largely because he was the only candidate in the race who was fluently bilingual (in English and French) and had experience in governing. Yet Grafftey's age (75 at the time) was also mocked by political satirists as an indication of the lack of "new blood" in the PC Party. Grafftey withdrew several days prior to the vote for health reasons.[4] Analysts suggest that Grafftey had 72 committed delegates hailing largely from several Montreal-area ridings. Most of Grafftey's delegates entered the convention as "undeclared delegates". He did not attend the convention, nor did he endorse any other leadership candidate, though many of his rural backers went over to David Orchard.
After the 2003 convention, Grafftey briefly re-entered the political spotlight by joining David Orchard and other former Tories in opposition to a proposed merger of the party with the Canadian Alliance. Grafftey still insisted that he was a "Progressive Conservative". He ran in Brome-Missisquoi for the Progressive Canadian Party in the 2006 federal election and came in fifth place with 1,921 votes—4% of the total ballots cast.
Other interests
Grafftey was active in business circles up to his death and was the CEO of SafetySense, a company that publishes basic safety booklets for businesses and schools.
In 2001, he wrote a book on the state of Canadian politics entitled Democracy Challenged: How to End One-Party Rule in Canada.
Personal life
He has three children: Arthur Heward, Clement Tae Yong, and Leah Yoon Hee. His marriage to Alida Grace Visser ended in divorce.[5] He neither declared nor denied being gay. "I never had to come out, because it was never an issue. I was never in. I was always me," he once said. Grafftey declared his sexual orientation when he disrupted and stormed out of a service at St. George's Anglican Church in Montreal after the priest delivered what he considered a homophobic sermon.[5]
