Just Watch Me

by John English

  The seventies witnessed a fundamental shift in societal attitudes as Trudeau’s government and the provinces passed legislation to reform the Criminal Code and the Divorce Act. Between 1966 and 1972, for instance, the divorce rate rose from 84.8 per 100,000 people to 222. The impact of the reforms on homosexuality is more difficult to quantify, but it was also profound, as discrimination against homosexuals diminished in the workplace and in society in general. In the case of abortion, the rate rose from 3 per 100 live births in 1969, clearly a reflection of underreporting of an illegal activity, to 14.9 in 1975 and 18.6 in 1978. The last figure reflects the long fight by Dr. Henry Morgentaler to chip away at the restrictions on Canada’s abortion laws by establishing private clinics. In 1973, the year the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that abortion was legal until the fetus was viable, Morgentaler announced he had performed more than five thousand illegal abortions. He was charged and acquitted in a jury trial, only to have the Quebec Court of Appeal overturn his acquittal. The angry debates surrounding the Morgentaler trials continued in Parliament and in the courts for many years.

  Although Trudeau had profound reservations about many of these social changes—which he shared privately with his priest in confession, his more liberal wife, and fellow Catholics Marshall McLuhan and Justice Minister Otto Lang—he believed that the reforms he began and Turner completed were essential. In his view they provided legal recognition of a diverse and modern society where individuals bore responsibility for their own decisions and the state stayed out of the nation’s bedrooms. Because of this belief, Trudeau did not dissent when the courts ruled that Morgentaler should go to jail. As Trudeau saw it, the abortionist knew the law and made the decision to defy it; as a free individual, he was then obliged to accept the penalties the law imposed.13

  Trudeau may have been in advance of the current on social issues in the sixties, but by the mid-seventies, the powerful forces of social change, particularly in the women’s movement, had left his government in their wake. He tried to avoid the rapids when possible, preferring to adjust details such as the inequitable administration of legalized abortion throughout Canada, which meant that women in rural Canada had more difficulty obtaining abortions than did those who dwelt in the cities. Nevertheless, Trudeau’s government, in its reform of the Criminal Code, had set in motion powerful and existing forces of social change. In the United States, the courts, rather than the government, led the way and became an early target in the American culture wars. In Canada, the courts remained at the side, while the government followed the liberal path. This leadership not only loosened legal restraints on individual choice, but also moved toward the abolition of capital punishment in July 1976, when the House of Commons passed Bill C-84. Although there was considerable support for capital punishment on Conservative backbenches, much support from rural Quebec Liberals, and rising resistance to its abolition in the United States, Trudeau, the NDP, and former Tory leader Bob Stanfield—and his successor, Joe Clark—prevailed in their arguments that capital punishment represented vengeance, not justice. In Trudeau’s speech on the issue, which columnist Richard Gwyn called his “finest parliamentary hour,” the prime minister argued that “to retain [the death penalty] in the Criminal Code of Canada would be to abandon reason in favour of vengeance; to abandon hope and confidence in favour of a despairing acceptance of our inability to cope with violent crime except with violence.” Despite an April Gallup poll indicating that 69 percent of Canadians wanted to retain the death penalty, on the final vote 130 voted for abolition and 124 for retention. Executions came to an end in Canada. Trudeau had made a difference.14

  In the crucial area of Canada-U.S. relations, the primary task for any prime minister is to manage the personal relationship with the president as effectively as possible. Here Trudeau faced a particular challenge: “It cannot be said that Nixon and Trudeau were ideally suited for each other,” wrote Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s major foreign policy adviser. “A scion of an old Quebec family, elegant, brilliant, enigmatic, intellectual, Trudeau was bound to evoke all of Nixon’s resentments against ‘swells’ who, in his view, always looked down on him.” Fortunately, Kissinger and Trudeau got on well; each respected the other’s “clear enjoyment of social life,” which, in Kissinger’s definition, meant swarms of beautiful women and entertainment in swank places. Kissinger smiled quietly when the president denounced Trudeau as a “queer,” an “asshole,” or most often, “a son of a bitch.” Privately, Kissinger told others that he found Trudeau “foppish” and “a mother’s boy,” albeit a highly intelligent one.

  Yet for all their differences and suspicions, Kissinger says that the two leaders “worked together without visible strain. They settled the issues before them and did not revert to their less charitable personal comments until each was back in his own capital.” In truth, Trudeau respected the realism of Nixon’s foreign policy—an approach he deemed lacking in postwar Canadian policy. He admired Nixon’s bold opening to China, although he interpreted it, to Nixon’s annoyance, as an American response to his own decision to recognize the communist nation. Trudeau was also an enthusiastic proponent of Nixon’s willingness to explore détente with the Soviet Union; Nixon, in turn, thought Trudeau too enthusiastic about the communists. Kissinger summed up the peculiar situation well: “United States–Canadian relations demonstrated that the national interest can be made to transcend personal sympathies.”15 Thus, Canada managed to escape the cancellation of the Auto Pact, lessen the effects of a variety of protectionist measures, conciliate the Americans when a strong anti-Americanism demanded a political response (as with the January 1973 condemnation of the bombing of North Vietnam), and play a strong hand well with the Americans when the OPEC crisis roiled North American energy markets.

  In their book on Canadian foreign policy, The Canadian Way, Trudeau and Head revealed that they were especially proud of their successful response, after the discovery of oil in Alaska, to the challenge to Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. They described in great detail how they propitiated various interests as they forged a new approach to international trusteeship for coastal waters—one that had profound influence on the multilateral negotiations surrounding the law of the sea:

  At the heart of the proposal, therefore, was the concept of international trusteeship. In the forefront of the development of international law, Canada would assume responsibility for protecting the vast and threatened Arctic ecological resource off its northern coasts, working all the while for appropriate international mechanisms to be designed and set in place. We would do this by pursuing two simultaneous goals: (i) the passage of protective legislation designed to prevent oil spills and other deleterious activity; and (ii) the negotiation of accepted international standards to embrace and further the Canadian position. We would emphasize that we were not acting in breach of international law, rather, in the special Arctic circumstances, we were acting on behalf of the international community in the absence of applicable law.16

  Although Americans rejected Canada’s assertion of sovereignty over Arctic waters, they lived with it. Too often commentators have taken Nixon’s personal contempt for Trudeau and the often angry words expressed in Parliament and Congress as a metaphor for Canadian-American relations in those times, but they are wrong. The interests of both countries were well served by their very different leaders. Nevertheless, things did become easier when Nixon left office, and Trudeau began a warm and enduring friendship with Gerald Ford, his Republican successor.*

  Trudeau’s early reforms in the way Parliament operated led to significant changes for its members. Funding for constituency offices for MPs, more office staff, party research bureaus, and travel allowances for members and their families altered the way that MPs worked and lived. In Parliament, committees were restructured and given a role in legislation, and House rules were modernized, especially with the use of time allocation, through which debate times were structured. Most important of all was the public f
inancing of Canadian election campaigns, which became an enduring feature of political life, both federally and provincially. The laws on election financing now provided for limits on donations, tax credits for those donations, and partial direct funding for candidates who acquired a certain percentage of votes. Liberal partisans grumbled loudly because the Conservatives, and particularly the NDP, benefited more from these changes than their own party did, but Trudeau persisted. Although many of these changes mirrored those in other Western democracies, one lasting and unique change Trudeau initiated was the introduction of bilingualism into Parliament, its committees, and, through example rather than legislation, the life of Ottawa. Robert Stanfield, who resigned after his 1974 loss, was the last unilingual leader of the Conservative Party. Parliament was a world transformed.17

  Although Stanfield’s predecessor, John Diefenbaker, was one of seventeen Conservatives who voted against the Official Languages Bill, the Conservative Party leader, to his credit but perhaps to his political detriment, fought hard for official bilingualism despite strong opposition from his caucus and Progressive Conservative voters. In 1974 the popular mayor of Moncton, Leonard Jones, ran for the Conservative nomination on a platform of opposition to bilingualism. He won the nomination, but Stanfield immediately refused him as a candidate, saying, “I’m fully prepared if necessary to risk my leadership on the prospects of electoral success on this issue.” With Stanfield’s support, Trudeau laid the lasting foundations for official bilingualism: that policy assured federal bilingual services for all Canadians and supported bilingual education across Canada. To be sure, there were enormous problems of administration, but “through the carrot approach of funding minority-language education and second-language instruction, the federal government helped to make these programs commonplace … and official bilingualism became part of Canadian national identity.”18

  Two leading journalists assessed Trudeau’s career in June 1975, his tenth year in Parliament. Peter Desbarats reminded Saturday Night’s readers that Trudeau

  entered federal politics as an outspoken opponent of separatism and an advocate of establishing a meaningful French presence in federal politics and the federal bureaucracy….

  A decade later, the terrorist FLQ seems as faded a political force as the French-Canadian patriots of 1837. Separatism is still a vital element in Québec, but the stability that has prevailed for the past several years achieves one of Trudeau’s main objectives. The amount being spent on bilingualism helps to fulfil another. The federal programme is so comprehensive, and such an established part of the Ottawa scene, that Conservatives now feel they can scrutinize it without opening themselves to charges of racism.

  … if there are Canadians in future, including those who live in Québec, the first Trudeau decade will be remembered as a critical time when one man’s vision imprinted itself on the nation, and the man himself matched the challenge.

  Desbarats went on to say that Trudeau’s “achievement … [was] remarkable,” but Canadians barely noticed it.19

  Desbarats was not alone in giving favourable reviews. In Le Devoir, Claude Ryan surely surprised many readers—and Trudeau himself—with an uncharacteristic tribute to the prime minister and his colleagues Gérard Pelletier and Jean Marchand. Ryan began by acknowledging the longevity of the three “doves,” as they were called in French, or “wise men,” as the English dubbed them. He then commented on how the Quiet Revolution had required Quebec leaders to create a strong government in Quebec. The three “doves,” however, believed that to avoid an otherwise certain separatist movement, francophones needed influence in Ottawa; they also believed that all provinces must accept “common rules of the game” and that a central government should possess “real power.” He continued:

  The wishes of the three doves have been realized beyond all expectations as far as participation in the exercise of power … Not content to merely accept the challenge of power, they have used it in these past years in a manner which, far from being harmful, has placed Canada among the best-governed, most open and most tolerant countries in the world. This is no small accomplishment for a trio of Québécois who committed themselves ten years ago to the conquest of a veritable political Himalaya.

  … No other team of French-Canadian politicians measures up to them in terms of complementary personalities, culture, competence, knowledge of their milieu and the best of modern methods.20

  Three years later, however, in 1978, George Radwanski, a journalist sympathetic to Trudeau, published the first major biography of the prime minister and concluded: “Trudeau has been a disappointment. Despite a creditable over-all performance and a number of significant achievements, he has not accomplished nearly as much as might be expected of a man of his intellect and public appeal.”21 Radwanski’s judgments are a measure of the ferocity of the storms that swept away the previous favourable assessments. Ryan had ended his essay with a question: “Have the three doves created a new equilibrium that will finally rout separatism or have they merely held the fort with dignity and intelligence for ten years?” His premonition was fully justified.

  Trudeau’s world fell apart in 1975. The decade in politics had taken its toll on the long partnership of the “doves.” Pelletier was tired of politics, eager to escape the partisan bickering he had always detested. Although their relationship remained personally warm—he always signed his letters to Trudeau “fraternellement, Pelletier”—he saw less of his old friend after Pierre and Margaret married. In the fall of ’75, Trudeau appointed Pelletier as Canada’s ambassador to France, where their enduring friendship had begun almost three decades earlier in Parisian cafés as Edith Piaf sang in the background and they engaged each other in debates about communism, Catholicism, Quebec, Canada, and their future. With Pelletier, friendship aged like vintage wine, tasted occasionally but savoured greatly; with Marchand, however, the personal relationship had turned acidic. The fiery former labour leader resented his switch from the Department of Regional Economic Expansion to Transport in 1972, which he correctly viewed as a demotion, and he complained that Trudeau no longer consulted him. In the 1974 election, he had been co-chair with Keith Davey of the Liberal campaign. They did not get along, and Marchand remained bitter when, despite excellent results in Quebec, he received no promotion for his efforts.

  Initially a powerful minister with a warmth that won affection from staff and colleagues, Marchand began to falter. He started to drink heavily, and the ascetic Trudeau noticed. They met and talked about hypertension and other potential problems, but Marchand did not change his habits. In January 1975, when an NDP member asked him in Question Period about a long-delayed transport policy, Marchand astonished the House by replying that the government had “no overall policy.” The opposition heckled: “It’s a mess.” Marchand shot back, “Yes, of course it is … and more than you think.” As the opposition continued to goad him, Marchand claimed that “racism” was the reason for their criticism. It was a poor performance, rumoured to have been caused by alcohol, and Trudeau forced him to apologize to Stanfield and the House of Commons. On February 26 Marchand stepped down as Quebec leader within the federal Liberal Party and was replaced by Lalonde, whom he resented greatly. A few days later, as he left the Ottawa airport, Marchand hit another car and promptly sped away. A Porsche driver who witnessed the accident pursued him to his home, where he wrote down Marchand’s licence number and called the police. When Trudeau read the police report, he revealed his anger in his many underlines and exclamation marks. In July Marchand wrote to Trudeau and told him he could not make a planned trip to James Bay because his doctor had told him that his “blood pressure is going back up.” He thanked Trudeau for “ton encouragement.”

  On August 29, one day after Pelletier resigned to become ambassador to France, an Ottawa court convicted Marchand of leaving the scene of an accident. Trudeau visited him in hospital, where he had been admitted because of acute high blood pressure. Reporters besieged Trudeau when he left the hospit
al room: “Did Marchand resign?” Trudeau indicated that Marchand had offered his resignation but that he had refused to accept: “It was a very loyal thing [for Marchand] to do. He just wanted me to feel free to dispense with him, but I could not dispense with Marchand.”22 A few months later, however, a Cabinet shuffle allowed Trudeau to move Marchand to the fringes of Cabinet, where he served as a minister without portfolio until he angrily stormed out of Ottawa to fight the Quebec provincial election in 1976. The three wise men were now part of history, and Pierre Trudeau, who had initially seemed the most unlikely politician of them all, was the only survivor. He was lonely.

  After the 1974 election, the gravity shifted in the Trudeau government. The prime minister’s new Cabinet and staff reflected Toronto rather than Montreal, as Keith Davey played a major role in choosing the Cabinet. Once Jim Coutts became Trudeau’s principal secretary in 1975, these two men brought a more political focus to the Prime Minister’s Office. Because of the election results, Trudeau’s Cabinet choices were limited. In British Columbia, Minister of the Environment Jack Davis had lost and was replaced by Senator Ray Perrault, an indication of Liberal weakness in the province. There was no Alberta minister, and Otto Lang remained the sole Saskatchewan member and minister. In Ontario, Trudeau dropped Herb Gray and replaced him with Barney Danson, a popular and effervescent Toronto businessman. Jeanne Sauvé became the first woman in Trudeau’s government to head a full-fledged ministry when he appointed her minister of the environment (she had been a minister of state since 1972). Paul Martin, an MP since 1935 and three times a leadership candidate, was dropped from the Cabinet and appointed as high commissioner to London, where he kept an excellent diary. Thanks to the propensity of Canadian politicians to visit London, it is one of the finest sources of gossip about the Trudeau government in the late 1970s.23