Auguste Charles Philippe Robert Landry

Auguste Charles Philippe Robert Landry (15 January 1846 – 20 December 1919) was a Canadian parliamentarian who served as Speaker of the Senate of Canada from 1911 to 1916.

Biography Landry was born Charles-Philippe-Auguste-Robert Landry in Quebec City, the son of Jean-Étienne Landry and Caroline-Eulalie Lelièvre, and educated at the Séminaire de Québec and at the Ste-Anne's Agricultural College, where he won awards for his work in agricultural science.

He wrote a number of pamphlets and articles on the scientific theory and practice of agriculture, was himself a successful farmer, and served for a period as president of the Agricultural Society of Quebec.

In Parliament, Landry introduced several bills to abolish the Supreme Court of Canada and the Exchequer Court, taking up the cause of Joseph Keeler after his death.

In 1892, he was summoned to the Senate of Canada on the advice of Prime Minister John Joseph Caldwell Abbott and sat as a Conservative. He also served as Mayor of Limoilou in 1899.

After the 1911 federal election brought the Conservatives into power after a fifteen-year absence, the new prime minister, Robert Laird Borden, appointed Landry to be Speaker of the Senate.

His interests in these questions made him a controversial figure as Speaker when the Senate was considering the issue of francophone schools in Ontario in the wake of the provincial Conservative government's passage of Regulation 17, which restricted French-language instruction. Landry felt passionately about the issue and accepted a position as President of the Franco-Ontarian Association d'éducation while he was Speaker. Many of Landry's rulings were challenged on the floor of the Senate, with several being put to a vote in a departure from the normal practice of accepting a Speaker's ruling as final. In the face of his diminished authority over the upper house and the fact that many of his rulings were being overturned, he absented himself from the Chair for several days, which resulted in calls for the government to dismiss him if he did not resume the Chair. Upon his return, he explained that he had absented himself due to the opposition by several government members to his rulings and the lack of support he enjoyed. Landry continued as Speaker for a further year before resigning. He remained a Senator until his death three years later in Quebec City and devoted much of his time to writing and campaigning on the issue of French-language rights in Ontario.