by Conrad Black
Observers confidently awaited Duplessis’s reply; he could not endure an assault like this in silence. He responded in a much-announced speech at a bridge opening at Valleyfield broadcast province-wide on September 26, 1954. He accused St. Laurent of wanting to return to the days of “the English governors.” All the provinces would be alike, and centralization would eventually deliver Quebec into the hands of a socialist government that English Canadians could conceivably elect but French Canadians would not. He found it “painful and distressing” that a Quebecker could seriously claim that the provinces were identical and that the protection of the rights of the French could safely be left entirely to the non-French. Quebec, he said, “would never exchange the invigorating air of our province for a federal oxygen tent, our rights as our own masters for the role and title of a pensioner, a ward.” He wondered what could have possessed St. Laurent to “lose his self-control to the point of disowning his race and his province,” and went on to complain that St. Laurent distributed 17 per cent of tax revenue to help the poorer provinces without allowing Quebec to exercise partially a concurrent jurisdiction to build schools and hospitals in Quebec “and calls it a Canadian policy.”16 He reiterated his willingness to meet with St. Laurent for negotiations without preconditions, and suggested Montreal, as the midpoint between Ottawa and Quebec and a city in the jurisdiction of both governments. He repeated his traditional formula: “Cooperation always; assimilation never.” St. Laurent, of course, was not suggesting assimilation, but he showed a serious absence of political judgment to imagine that the Québécois would believe the federal government could durably protect Quebec’s French life and culture as well and vigilantly as Quebec itself could.
The two leaders met nine days later in the Windsor Hotel in Montreal, amid a heavy press cordon. As always, the exchange was completely cordial. St. Laurent in effect conceded that he would have to credit the Quebec income tax and recognize the concurrent jurisdiction, but required that Duplessis cease his unfounded claim that direct taxes were a provincial priority. If Ottawa would renounce exclusivity in direct taxes, Quebec would renounce priority. Duplessis made the point that while Quebec was officially imposing a 15 per cent tax on the federal tax, it had so many exemptions, it was really 10 per cent. He would cut it to 10 percent and pledge to confine the spending to which the revenue would be dedicated exclusively to uncontested provincial spending responsibilities. St. Laurent, like all federal Liberals at the time, was passionately committed to the theory that all provinces had to be treated exactly the same and that anything else was a step down the slippery slope to national disintegration, but it was agreed that, structured as described, the same arrangements could be made available to all the provinces by the federal government. There would be a 10 per cent abatement of the federal personal income tax, but to avoid inflicting the requirement of two tax returns, it was agreed that Ottawa would collect the tax and pass on the 10 per cent provincial share to the provinces. Both leaders confirmed to the press that the meeting had been very cordial and constructive but that details would have to be worked out and nothing would be said about the nature of a compromise until a precise agreement had been reached.
St. Laurent’s initial communications to the other premiers was rather laborious and even pedantic, and he was at pains to write that Duplessis had requested the meeting and that he, St. Laurent, had attended out of “duty.” There were a great many meetings of technical committees, and finally, on January 6, 1956, St. Laurent wrote the premiers with a comprehensive federal proposal that had built a virtuous work of imagination on the necessity of compromise initially imposed by Duplessis. The federal government would make equalization payments to the provinces in order to assure to every province a return per capita from personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, and succession duties equal to the per capita average of the return to these sources from the two wealthiest provinces. The federal government also offered a tax-rental formula that assured a comparable return, averaged over two years, that provided a hedge against sharp reductions in revenue. All in all, it was a very creditable proposal, if unconscionably tardy. It increased Quebec’s revenues, got around insistence on identical treatment of the provinces while officially adhering to that view, and inserted greater flexibility in the tax-rental/autonomy choice, all through the altruistic and politically saleable device of the equalization grant.
This concept had the further advantage to the federal government of reinforcing the material value of federalism in seven provinces, as Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia would be funding the grants to the other provinces. St. Laurent further wrote Duplessis on February 18, 1956, promising that there would be no federal government attempt to limit pre-tax provincial natural resources royalties (one of the problems that arose in the university grants controversy) and raising the deductibility ceiling on a large number of lesser taxes and fees. St. Laurent was back a month later offering stabilization payments to assure 95 per cent of the average of the two previous years from the provincial revenue sources that were the subject of the discussions. He emphasized that this was as far as he could go. Duplessis put all this through the Legislature amid general congratulations from all areas of Quebec opinion for having achieved a very constructive breakthrough. Despite all the name-calling, in both directions, Duplessis had demonstrated that he wanted an agreement and not unending acrimony, and St. Laurent ultimately showed considerable imagination and flexibility. At the height of the debate, Liberal Quebec legislator René Hamel, a future Quebec attorney general, asked if Duplessis was courting or considering a separatist, secessionist option. Duplessis replied that he would only consider such a thing if the rest of Canada thought Quebec a burden to the country, and that he would entertain it reluctantly.17 If St. Laurent had struck while the iron was hot, he could have resolved all Canada’s future constitutional problems with Duplessis, the last Quebec premier who was enough of a nationalist to deliver the province to a permanent federal accord and who had the following and political agility to hold the line with the Quebec voters. By trying to portray Duplessis as a constitutional dog in the manger, the federal Liberals, and the federalists generally, embarked on a roller-coaster ride that would imperil the future of the country.
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By this time, the French had been defeated in Indochina as they attempted to defend a valley at Dien Bien Phu, in Northern Vietnam, in a guerrilla-infested area where their opponents held the surrounding hills. Eisenhower, when shown the French military plans, cautioned that it did not appear to him to be sensible, and as conditions worsened, the French asked for more and more aircraft and munitions and ultimately for an atomic attack on the Viet Minh communists. Eisenhower warned the French that while he could advance some supplies, he could not become directly supportive of a military effort to suppress Indochinese or Vietnamese independence. The French did not pay much attention and instead tried to broker their presumed ability to veto West German entry into NATO against American support in Indochina. Eisenhower was not having it. Both the chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur Radford, and Vice President Nixon, who were hawks on Indochina, were authorized by Eisenhower to ask Churchill if he would join in a move to help the French, conditional on French recognition of Indochinese independence, but Churchill declined. The Geneva Conference, intended to resolve the conflict, opened on April 26, 1954. Dien Bien Phu, with three thousand French soldiers and ten thousand pro-French Vietnamese, fell to the communist guerrillas on May 7. The French government of Joseph Laniel fell on June 12, a very routine event in the Fourth Republic (as de Gaulle had predicted), and Pierre Mendès-France was inducted as premier with a mandate to end the war, which he pledged to do by July 20. Sensing that a complete sellout was in the offing, Eisenhower reduced American participation to that of observer status only at Geneva.
Mendès-France and even Churchill and Anthony Eden were ambiguous about the European Defence Community (EDC) (the European members of NATO, which
was the way for West Germany to join the Alliance). This was the only avenue for the rearmament of Germany, but Churchill and Eden arrived in Washington in late June 1954, and Eisenhower offered them a deal: more atomic bombs to strengthen their deterrent force in their bomber fleet in exchange for support of the EDC and acceptance of the likely Geneva Conference agreement, which was independence for all components of Indochina, Viet Minh withdrawal from Laos and Cambodia, and division of Vietnam into two countries at the seventeenth parallel. The British were still wavering, but on July 21 the conference in Geneva ended as Eisenhower had foreseen, and it was agreed that there would be a pan-Vietnam election in two years on the issue of reunification. Of course, this was the merest face-saver for France, as Ho Chi Minh would take 100 per cent of the Northern vote and a substantial share of the Southern as well. China’s Chou En-lai told Mendès-France that he could deliver Ho Chi Minh if the French prime minister could deliver Eisenhower. The two feats of persuasion were not comparable. Dulles was in Geneva, and when informed in his bath that Chou En-lai had offered normalization of relations and immediate release of all Korean War prisoners, Dulles, on his own authority alone, declined. He famously refused to shake hands with Chou, something that still rankled eighteen years later when President Nixon arrived in Beijing and completed the handshake. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Southern Democrats were suggesting staying out of Vietnam but using atomic weapons on Ho Chi Minh, which Eisenhower dismissed as insane. But to warm up the French and Germans, he had Lyndon Johnson and Nixon put through the Senate a measure authorizing the president to “restore sovereignty to Germany and enable her to contribute to the maintenance of peace and security.” On Geneva, the United States had no need to sign but said it would not obstruct the performance of the terms. The American position was that a Vietnam reunification would require the support of both Vietnams separately, and Dulles immediately set about, on an initial suggestion of Nixon’s from the year before, recruiting members for a South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), modelled on NATO, and South Vietnam was a founding member. In conferring durable legitimacy on that country, Eisenhower was pulling the pin on a long-fused grenade.
The French National Assembly rejected the EDC on August 30. Eisenhower immediately convened a NATO meeting and rammed through the admission of West Germany as a fully sovereign and effectively forgiven state. The French, having been soundly trounced by the Vietnamese communists, had kicked the Americans in the shins despite sound American advice and tangible help on how to avoid the fiasco, and had been rewarded by being given a public thrashing by the Americans for trying to blackball Germany. And the Nazi pariah and rubble heap of nine years earlier was parachuted into the Western Alliance and seated farther up the table than France. Churchill and Eden took note and accepted Eisenhower’s offer made in Washington. All this seemed largely to escape the Canadian leaders, who were still somewhat susceptible to Nehru’s affected pieties about American crudeness. West Germany formally joined NATO in April 1955 after Eisenhower and Adenauer had agreed that the West German army would not exceed twelve divisions.
A new front opened on September 3, 1954, when China started shelling the tiny offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu, in the Formosa Strait, which instantly became household words throughout the world. The nearer of the islands is closer to the Chinese mainland than Staten Island is to Manhattan. Chiang had stuffed them with soldiers and used them as jumping-off points for the harassment of the Communist Chinese and coastal shipping. Chiang claimed that the islands were essential to the security of Taiwan, which the Joint Chiefs of Staff considered to be nonsense, but they could not be defended without the assistance of the United States. The Joint Chiefs called upon the president on holiday in Denver with his in-laws on September 12 and asked him for the third time in six months to authorize the use of nuclear weapons on the Chinese and the deployment of American forces to Quemoy and Matsu, but the world was fortunate to have an American president who knew how to deal with high-ranking officers, and Eisenhower summarily refused. In December, Eisenhower signed a mutual defence treaty with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist China, by which an attack on either was an attack on both, but confined the definition of Nationalist China to the island of Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands, and Chiang formally committed not to reinitiate war with Mao. At the beginning of 1955, Eisenhower asked Congress to authorize any degree of force he thought necessary to defend Taiwan, the Pescadores Islands, and “closely related localities.” It was a sign of the nation’s well-placed confidence in him that the Formosa Resolution passed Congress – in the Senate 83–3, and in the House of Representatives 403–3 – although it was specifically understood that this included recourse to nuclear weapons. Churchill and Eden, and presumably St. Laurent and Pearson, with whom they discussed these things, told Eisenhower and Dulles that they should negotiate the handover of Quemoy and Matsu for a guaranty by China not to attack Taiwan. Eisenhower dismissed this as “more wishful than realistic.” The fact is that none of America’s allies except the frontline states like West Germany and South Korea had any real idea of how to deal with the communist powers now. Chou En-lai gave a conciliatory speech in Bandung, Indonesia, on April 23, 1955, Eisenhower replied in the same spirit, and the shelling of the islands was reduced then stopped altogether in May. It was a great victory for Eisenhower, who had chosen a testing place where he could afford to lose and American prestige was not really engaged.
In late January 1955, St. Laurent and Pearson had flown to a Commonwealth prime ministers’ meeting in London, which would be Churchill’s last. He was eighty and had announced his retirement, but he still dominated proceedings and gave his view that nuclear weapons (the hydrogen bomb was infinitely more powerful than the atomic bomb), would now, by the horror at the idea of them being used, ensure the peace. “Safety might be the child of terror and life the twin of annihilation,” as he put it with his usual gifted articulation. Nehru, with his usual anti-Western gloom, preferred the baleful thought that terror would be permanent and probably unlimited (unless, of course, humanitarian moralists like himself were heeded). He advanced his customary theory that recognition of the People’s Republic of China would reduce tensions. Everyone was eager to play the Americans’ hand for them, but at least Churchill and St. Laurent and Adenauer and a few of the others knew their places, unlike Nehru and many of the French.
After the Formosa Strait episode, Eisenhower let it be known that he would consider a peace treaty with Austria leading to the evacuation of that country by the Soviets as a sufficient demonstration of their seriousness to justify a summit meeting if the Soviet Union desired one. This was done, and the Big Four, including France, met in Geneva starting on July 18, 1955. Anthony Eden, who had just succeeded Churchill, and Mendès-France’s successor, Edgar Faure, led the British and French delegations, while the Soviet Union sent a patchwork of Kremlin factions led by Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Marshal Georgi Zhukov. They were divided and ill at ease. (Khrushchev purged the other three within a couple of years.) Eisenhower began what proved to be the de-escalation of the Cold War with his Open Skies proposal by which each side would allow aerial inspection and reconnaissance from the other. The Russians were confused and suspicious and rejected the proposal without serious explanation. The conference was a minor success in ambiance even if it did not accomplish much, and it was the first such meeting since Potsdam ten years before. The fact was that beneath his syntactically challenged and affable manner, Eisenhower had moved with consummate skill to equip the West with the fearful might of a rearmed Germany while ending the Korean War, which his predecessor had failed to do in two years, and he had stayed out of Vietnam while possibly salvaging half the country. He and Chou En-lai were the smart players in this high-stakes game, and Eisenhower was in no need of advice on how to defend Western interests and avoid war from the venerable Churchill, and even less so from the earnest Pearson, and less still from the rose-fondling posturer in New Delh
i. The West was in capable hands.
In an exchange of notes in 1955, the United States and Canada agreed a series of radar detection lines. The Pinetree Line, close to the U.S.-Canada border, was just coming into operation. Canada opened up the Mid-Canada Line at about the fifty-fifth parallel, but it was agreed that a more elaborate Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, already built across Alaska, was needed in the Arctic to provide early detection of intruders for interception and early retaliation. This led to some debate in Canada, but it was eventually agreed that the United States would pay for it and it would be manned jointly. As it was an entirely defensive system, it was a politically manageable issue, and it was a further step in a process of joint continental defence that originated in King and Roosevelt’s time nearly twenty years before.
In Quebec in 1956, the entire opposition formed an electoral coalition to challenge Duplessis, the Créditistes being nominated as official Liberals in a number of districts. Réal Caouette, who would go on to national fame as a federal candidate, as well as old nationalist René Chaloult, and Le Devoir parliamentary reporter Pierre Laporte, all ran as Liberals. Several federal Liberal ministers intervened to help Lapalme, including Jean Lesage; Ernest Lapointe’s son, Hugues; and Roch Pinard. Duplessis’s campaign was the usual rather hilarious affair, and very lavishly financed, reflecting the tangible benefits of a long incumbency. But the Liberals were well sponsored by their federal big brothers and enjoyed the support of most of the television media, especially Radio-Canada, the French service of the CBC. (René Lévesque was their most prominent commentator and was ostentatiously hostile to Duplessis.) When Lapointe and Pinard joined Lapalme in accusing Duplessis of being insufficiently protective of Quebec’s farmers against Ontario margarine, Duplessis was ready: the federal Liberals had admitted to Canada and its unsuspecting breakfast tables 500,000 dozen “communist eggs” from Poland. This unlikely charge had Lesage and the others scrambling around for two weeks. Taking advantage of his rural electrification program, which had been very successful, Duplessis po-facedly announced, “A vote for the Union Nationale is a vote for electricity; a vote for the Liberals is a vote for the oil lamp.” In the end, Duplessis ran on his record of low taxes, a balanced budget, huge construction projects, public works, job creation, school and university construction, social programs, almost no unemployment, peace and tranquility, and a firm establishment of the jurisdiction of Quebec. And he ran on his own personality, which captured the humour, the combativity, and the bourgeois solidity of French Quebec. He made no compromise with the coalition of his opponents and their criticism of his authoritarianism.