Laurier first employed the phrase in 1895, in response to the Manitoba Schools Question, a political crisis sparked when the premier of Manitoba withdrew public funding from Catholic schools, which were of great importance to the province’s French-speaking minority, and, by extension, to the province of Quebec. The next year, Laurier, the French-Catholic leader of the Liberal Party, won an election fought on the issue, ending the rule of the Conservative Party, which had led Canada almost continuously since its founding, in 1867
.. His approach, he said, would be to conduct an investigation, seek out the facts, and then use conciliation. He called it “sunny ways,” evoking the Aesop fable in which the sun and the wind compete to see which can force a man to take off his coat. The wind makes the man to cling more tightly to his garment, while the sun’s warmth induces him to take it off.
.. Harper’s critics have often seemed to suggest that his envisioned Canada was small-souled and excessively concerned with money. He did little to dispel that impression in his concession speech. Addressing his remarks to all Canadians, he said that he and his wife had gone into public life “because we believed that hard-working Canadians should keep more of the money they earn … because we believed that government should manage the people’s money the way people should manage their own.”