Frédéric Dorion was a Quebec politician and chief justice.
Education
Dorion studied at Laval University but left in order to enlist in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. He joined his family"s law firm in Quebec City after the war and was an organizer for the Conservative Party in Quebec during the 1930s.
Career
He led a group of Independent MPs in the Canadian House of Commons who were opposed to the implementation of conscription during World World War World War II Another brother, Noël Dorion, would also lead a political career as a Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament from 1958 to 1962. He was adamantly opposed to conscription during the World World War II conscription crisis. Dorion ran as an independent anti-conscription candidate in a November 30, 1942 by-election in Charlevoix—Saguenay defeating Thérèse Casgrain.
Three other anti-conscription Quebec MPs soon joined: Liguori Lacombe, Wilfrid Lacroix, and Emmanuel Doctorate"Anjou.
Roy described the party as opposed to the imperialism of the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties and as looking after the interests of Quebec residents in Ottawa. Dorion, in turn, accused William Lyon Mackenzie King"s Liberals of being in a "secret union" with the communist Labor-Progressive Party.
In 1949, Dorion spoke out against the extradition from Canada of Count Jacques Charles Noel Duge de Bernonville, a Vichy France police official who had been an aide to Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie and was wanted in France for having collaborated with the Nazis. Dorion represented the Count in his court proceedings and also told the House of Commons, "I am sure that if it had been Communist Jews who had come here instead of French Catholics we would not have heard a word about them."
Dorion announced he was joining the Progressive Conservative party on May 4, 1949, as that year"s election campaign opened and led the party"s campaign in the Quebec City area.
He was defeated in the 1949 election and again in the 1953 election running both times as a Progressive Conservative.
Dorion was appointed to the bench and became chief justice of the Quebec Superior Court in 1963 and served in that position for a decade. He is best known for writing the 1965 Dorion Report on federal government corruption after being appointed to lead a commission of inquiry into alleged bribery and coercion by ministerial assistants in the federal government known as the Rivard Affair.
Politics
In October 1944, Dorion and fellow Independent Member of Parliament Sasseville Roy formed the "Independent Group" (Le groupement des Independants), a loose political party of independent anti-conscription MPs with Dorion as leader. The Bloc populaire"s entry into provincial politics antagonized Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis, leader of the Union Nationale, who henceforth transferred his party"s federal support to Dorion and his followers in the 1945 federal election. After a failed attempt to launch a new political party led by Arthur Cardin, King"s former Public Works minister who crossed the floor in 1942 to oppose the government"s conscription policy, Dorion was re-elected as an independent in 1945.