by Conrad Black
Gordon agreed to bring in the building materials tax changes gradually and to soften the 25 per cent Canadian ownership requirement to a believable expression of preparedness to comply, but once his retreat began, the assault on him was amplified, and Pearson declined to make any serious effort to save his colleague, to whom he owed a great deal and whom he had urged to go forward and pledged to support. Pearson was looking for a peacekeeping force to stand between himself and Diefenbaker, who was now in full cry, though he started late. Future nationalists, including University of Toronto NDP professor Mel Watkins and Quebec cabinet minister Eric Kierans, former head of the Montreal Stock Exchange, attacked Gordon, which was particularly disgraceful in light of their future policy advocacy. Apart from the incongruity of imposing taxes on building materials when trying to stimulate the economy, the only real problem was the 30 per cent tax on foreign acquisitions of Canadian companies. This meant there would be no such acquisitions, and that would decapitate the Canadian corporate transactional business; 10 per cent would have been quite sufficient, with exonerations for those who kept a substantial Canadian ownership level and gave it some board representation. Basically, Gordon was correct, but his tepid country did not honour him, then or subsequently. The charges of budget leaks were never proved or even made generally believable (although the home of one of Gordon’s assistant deputy ministers was ransacked by burglars, who left the text of the speech all over the floor but paid no attention to it).43
Walter Gordon withdrew the entire budget a few days later. It was a shocking fiasco, and quite unnecessary, and it revealed Pearson’s weaknesses in their most unflattering aspects. His better qualities were in evidence when he declined Gordon’s offer to resign, though only after tentatively offering finance to Sharp and Sharp’s trade and commerce portfolio to Lamontagne.44 But Gordon was a wounded figure hereafter, and was shabbily treated by everyone, including Liberal historians such as Michael Bliss, John English, and Bruce Hutchison (the latter two slavering Pearson apologists, though generally fairly reliable in other respects).* Parliament eventually adjourned for the summer, but any sense of having delivered the responsibility to govern to a smooth professional team, as the country remembered from King and St. Laurent and impetuously dispensed with in 1957, had lasted only fifty-three days, if that, and would not be reintroduced in Pearson’s time. There was always a sense that it was all a bit too much for him, that there was a slight unsynchronized delay between when the Liberal Party apparat came up with one of its often astute but sometimes sleazy or silly brainwaves and when it would click in Pearson’s mind, and there was the fear that it wasn’t really him who was running the government.*
Pearson was a man of exceptional qualities, and his government would accomplish some important achievements. Above all, he recognized that Quebec was a time bomb that had to be addressed, and though he had no idea how to address it, he knew to reach for people who could. He was not at all an unworthy occupant of the office, but the country had gone from a man of great but often misdirected and terribly erratic strength in Diefenbaker to a man of insufficient strength in support of generally good but not confident judgment in Pearson. King and St. Laurent had been right for forty years, seven of them together: the consummate manoeuvrer and the distinguished and principled chairman. Diefenbaker was an aberration, and Pearson was an improvement, but pas un chef, not someone in whom the country – though it liked him and would wish to believe in him – could repose the level of confidence a leader must earn and keep to be fully effective.
The government drifted. Judy LaMarsh ran into problems with her own officials trying to confect a national pension plan and then was straight-armed by the provinces. Pearson intervened and practised his legitimately celebrated diplomatic talents on the issue, but LaMarsh felt betrayed by her leader.46 Chevrier, though admirable and capable, was not the man to lead the federal Liberals in Quebec. He had first been elected in 1935 and was not really a Québécois, and in late 1963 he went to London, succeeding George Drew as high commissioner. The designated Quebec leader of the federal Liberals would be Guy Favreau, who had been Fulton’s deputy minister of justice and succeeded to that portfolio on Chevrier’s departure. He had only just been elected in 1963, and the burden that was to fall on him was as great and sudden as that assumed by St. Laurent when he entered King’s government at the start of 1942. He started well and received considerable credit for his role in the Fulton-Favreau formula for amending the Constitution, which would patriate it completely and provided for unanimous approval of amendments that affected provincial matters but only two-thirds of the provinces representing a majority of Canadians for other matters. Skirmishing arose over Quebec’s demands, which some English Canadians claimed would emasculate the federal government, and Tommy Douglas for the federal NDP objected to any “entrenchment” of property and civil rights, partly because of his party’s wealth-redistributive ambitions, and partly because he feared that such a step would produce constitutional sclerosis.
Jean Lesage claimed he was just trying to enable Quebec to play its full role in Confederation. Lesage had been re-elected in Quebec in 1962 with the public takeover by the provincial government of practically all the electric power it did not already own in the province, but he was already having difficulty balancing the nationalist and federalist tendencies within his own party. Pearson, though he did not know much about Quebec, recognized a flammable set of conditions that would have to be dealt with diplomatically, and in this case his talents were needed, and would be useful. Lesage had allowed himself to be carried along on the wave of modernization, and the secularization of the schools deprived the religious orders of a large number of their members: many of the teaching and paramedical personnel in the province exchanged holy orders for public service unions and performed the same tasks as before but at much greater expense to the taxpayers, and the union bosses were a good deal harder to deal with than the bishops had been (all of which Duplessis had predicted). One person was killed in a separatist bomb blast in a Montreal army recruiting office in April 1963, the first fatality from that cause. No one could see where it would end. As early as 1964, progressive English-Canadian Quebec-watchers were having serious doubts about where Quebec was going and at what pace, as, for the first time, discussion of the separation and independence of Quebec arose and became quite widespread and intense.
In the spring of 1964, there was a Federal-Provincial Conference in Quebec City, which was a shambles. Lesage demanded the funding of Quebec’s own pension plan and objected to the federal government’s plan for student assistance. The meeting, which attracted a good many separatist demonstrators, broke up without any agreement. Federal forestry minister Maurice Sauvé and senior policy advisor Tom Kent urged upon Pearson a back-channel comeback to Lesage as they feared that the strains on the country could be irreversible. Pearson authorized their return with a proposal for a division of direct taxes much more generous to the province of Quebec, and Lesage agreed. All the pious and dogmatic humbug that King and St. Laurent had addressed to Duplessis about the subordinate role of provinces and Quebec being “a province like the others” went up the chimney with the velocity of a skyrocket. Judy LaMarsh was kept in the dark as the pension plan she had designed was scrapped and the chief responsibility of her department was negotiated away from under her by, or in the name of, the prime minister whom she served. LaMarsh had to be dissuaded by Kent from resigning as she smashed the framed photograph of Pearson on her desk.47 Following this arrangement, Quebec would have 50 per cent of direct taxes, not the 10 per cent for which Duplessis had to threaten double taxation to extract from St. Laurent in 1954, raised to 13 per cent with Diefenbaker. What Duplessis the Union Nationale troublemaker had politely but persistently asked for, Lesage the Liberal modernizer would abruptly take. And what St. Laurent the Liberal defender of Canadian federal and national integrity attempted to withhold, Pearson the Liberal saviour of Canada would gladly give away, in the higher interest of
Canada (and of the Liberal Party).
As the respected Ontario premier John Robarts (who succeeded Leslie Frost at a provincial Conservative convention in 1961) told the author, “Jean Lesage just bulldozed Mike Pearson.”48 The fact is that Lesage was essentially correct, but Duplessis would have settled for slightly less ten years before and would have thrown in permanent adherence to a domestic amending formula. Pearson had also been right in his arrangements with Lesage, but he should have extracted more for them. As it was, he could not even get Lesage to hold to the Fulton-Favreau formula, though it was very close to what was ultimately agreed, fifteen years later. All Lesage agreed to was a new division of taxing powers that was not assured to be permanent and with no guaranties that Quebec would not be back asking for more jurisdiction and threatening to secede if it didn’t get it, which of course is what happened.
While this drama was unfolding, Pearson acted on his promise to endow the country with a new flag and rather bravely unveiled a version of it at a legion hall in his Ontario constituency of Algoma East on May 1, 1964. It was indifferently received by that audience, and was a divisive issue in public opinion. The appropriate legislation was presented on June 15. The acerbic Pierre Trudeau, unaware of how imminent his destiny as a federal Liberal was, wrote that Quebec did not give “a tinker’s damn about the flag.”49 On September 10, after stormy parliamentary debate, the issue went to a committee of fifteen, which chose a single red maple leaf in a white field with red borders on either side, the flag of Canada the world now knows, over what was presumed to be Pearson’s choice, which had three maple leaves between two blue borders. With Pearson and Diefenbaker flinging insults at each other, and after a closure motion moved by Léon Balcer, Progressive Conservative member for Trois-Rivières (and Duplessis’s nephew), who was disgusted at the antics of his own leader, the flag was approved in a free vote, 163 to 78, at 2:15 a.m. on December 15, 1964. It was in fact one of the great moments of Pearson’s eventful career; it was his issue, and he had bulled it through. As the struggle with Quebec approached a critical stage, it would only have made the federal position more difficult with two unilingual English-speaking leaders, both past the normal retirement age (though not for Canadian prime ministers), debating, through interpreters, with the Quebec nationalists under a red ensign. It is a distinctive and a distinguished flag.
The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, also known as the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission, issued a preliminary report in February 1965 stating that “Canada is passing through the greatest crisis in its history.”50 On a Florida holiday, Pearson met Lesage and invited him to come to Ottawa and be the federal leader of the Quebec Liberals and presumed successor to him, as King had offered Godbout in 1941. Lesage declined because he could not leave Quebec and it was impossible to tell where the province was going. He told Pearson he had “a rampaging bear by the tail.”51 In career terms, Lesage’s decision was as fatefully mistaken as Godbout’s, and his political future would not be much more successful. Like Godbout, Lesage drank too much (but so did Macdonald and Churchill). Lesage was a much more effective premier than Godbout, a more formidable and worldly man, and was very bilingual. He was a serious barrister where Godbout, though a capable orator, was an apple farmer from Frelighsburg.
By this time, justice minister Guy Favreau had run into trouble. Drug dealer Lucien Rivard had tried to bribe a lawyer to persuade prison officials to release him, and Favreau had not consulted his own officials before determining not to prosecute Raymond Denis, who had allegedly assisted Rivard. There was also a peripheral involvement of the prime minister’s parliamentary secretary, Guy Rouleau, and Favreau had not mentioned this to Pearson. Favreau had shown a spectacular lack of judgment, and in the autumn of 1964 Diefenbaker massacred him with questions, ably seconded by Yukon Conservative MP Erik Nielsen. Finally, to get the Opposition off his back, Favreau called for a royal commission (the Dorion Inquiry) to look into the Rivard affair, and it criticized the minister’s judgment, requiring his resignation and the end of his brief tenure as heir to Lapointe and St. Laurent. He continued as president of the Privy Council and was named a Superior Court judge in 1967, but he died a broken man in July that year, aged fifty, a decent and capable person thrust into a very exacting position for which he was not qualified by reliability of judgment, and where he was abandoned by his patron. Pearson had not lifted a finger to help him and told Parliament that Favreau had not mentioned the Rivard affair until late November 1965, when, as he later acknowledged, it had been September 2. Pearson appeared weak and shifty, and was not conducting himself and his high office in a way calculated to inspire confidence, affection, or loyalty.
In November 1964, Maurice Lamontagne, secretary of state, and René Tremblay, the minister of immigration, were accused of accepting furniture they had not paid for from a bankrupt company. There were no allegations that Lamontagne had done any favours for anyone and it wasn’t really a scandal, but Pearson and his entourage by this time were in a state of panic, being tormented by Diefenbaker and his most virulent fellow-assailants. Lamontagne continued through 1965 but was finished, and the balance of his formerly promising career was an anti-climax. He went to the Senate and died in 1983, aged sixty-five. (Walter Gordon appointed him a director of his prosperous company, Canadian Corporate Management, where he suggested uncommercial initiatives such as seasonally reported earnings; that is, averaged according to management estimates of the next quarters.52) René Tremblay had ordered some furniture from the same company, but it wasn’t delivered and so he did not pay for it, until it was delivered. He had committed absolutely no impropriety, as even Nielsen acknowledged, but Pearson put him over the side anyway. Pearson named him as postmaster general, then dropped him, and he died in 1968, aged forty-five, having done nothing except carry the weight of the cowardice of his leader. A more serious legal problem was the ten-thousand-dollar bribe Yvon Dupuis was accused of taking for assisting in a racetrack licence application. He was fired as minister without portfolio by Pearson in January 1965 (having been appointed as a reward for his strenuous campaign against the Créditistes in 1963). He was acquitted in 1968, and was elected leader of the provincial Créditistes in 1973, but retired after being defeated personally in the Quebec election of that year. He lived on into his upper eighties, being a less sensitive man to aspersions than the tragic Favreau, Lamontagne, and Tremblay, who did not lack integrity, only judgment and support from where they had every right to expect it.
The Pearson government was in disarray and demoralized. For many years, Diefenbaker would convulse audiences in delight with such gambits as, “It was a warm evening, like this one, when the Liberals sent Rivard out to water the ice rink in his prison.” (Having failed to bribe his way out of prison, he had used a garden hose to escape over the wall. His legal problems ended after another stint of prison in the United States, and he lived on peacefully for nearly thirty years and died in 2002 at eighty-seven, a resourceful hood who became something of a folk figure.)
Despite all its problems and excursions, Pearson’s government did have an activist program, and it gradually put it through. Paul Hellyer unified the armed forces and gave them a common uniform. It was billed as a magnificent reform that would produce astonishing efficiencies. In fact, it proved a disaster, was unpopular in the forces, and caused public confusion. Hellyer was a competent and energetic man, and would eventually be the only person to be a serious contender for the leadership of both major parties, but he did not always have the highest quality judgment. (He attached more credence than he should have, especially given his position, to theories of intergalactic visitors.) The Auto Pact was signed, integrating the automobile fabrication activities of the United States and Canada in a way that proved quite satisfactory for Canada as an exporter and employer of auto workers. Clearly major initiatives were planned on the whole national unity and biculturalism front, and there was an air of slightly disorderly but still somewhat invigorating renovation a
broad.
The Toronto group that effectively ran the Liberal Party organization under Walter Gordon and Keith Davey, who would direct eight Liberal federal campaigns, convinced Pearson that all the problems he had had, with ministers being torn down by Diefenbaker and all his policy initiatives so contested, were the result of having a minority government and that what was needed was a return to the polls and the strong mandate of a parliamentary majority. This was deemed to be quite achievable against such a raving and obstructive antiquarian as Diefenbaker. Pearson’s heart wasn’t really in it, but he allowed himself to be persuaded, and in early September the House was dissolved for a general election on November 8, 1965. It was a lacklustre campaign, as the Liberals could not really convince even themselves that the addition of the five MPs necessary for a majority, since the government had not had even a remotely close call on a confidence vote, was anything to become excited about. But John Diefenbaker, now seventy and with his many and oft-caricatured mannerisms more pronounced than ever, was in his glory. At this sort of campaigning he was dangerous and had the irresistible charm of the underdog.