Just Watch Me

by John English

  To the public, Trudeau appeared playful once again. His charisma was back. Before the separation announcement, when he showed up in London in early May for the G7 meeting (which was then called the “economic summit”), Trudeau had captured the attention of the Times by wearing a “natty tan corduroy suit with an orange rose pinned to his lapel.” But he startled everyone at the elegant state dinner when he lingered behind as the Queen was leaving, and then, suddenly, performed an elegant pirouette. It was not a “spontaneously rude and impulsive gesture” but one Trudeau had planned carefully in the hours before the dinner. He resented the British protocol of separating heads of state such as Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, whom he disliked, from mere politicians who were not heads of state, such as himself and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.* The summit is long forgotten, yet the photograph of the poised yet bizarre gesture endures as perhaps the most famous Trudeau photograph of all.9

  Trudeau returned to London in June for the Commonwealth Conference, so he had ample opportunity to talk about the situation back home with veteran Canadian politician Paul Martin, who was serving as Canadian high commissioner there. He made it clear in May that his thoughts about leaving politics “a few months” before had disappeared. He was now sure he would win an electoral campaign, though he had been making no plans for one despite pressure from various Liberals. By June, however, after the by-election victories and the announcement of his separation, he seemed much more inclined to call an election. He asked Martin, an extraordinarily shrewd observer of politics, when the election should be called. Martin said it could be a good “weapon against Lévesque” and implicitly endorsed an early vote.

  In Ottawa the election fever built, stoked by poll results even higher than in the heady days of Trudeaumania. Wage and price controls were a political problem, but Judith Maxwell of the C.D. Howe Research Institute had pointed out in early 1977 that, despite considerable Canadian grumbling about Trudeau’s economic policies, real personal disposable income per capita had risen in Canada between 1969 and 1975—the Trudeau years—by percent annually, compared to only3.3 percent in Britain and 2.2 percent in theUnitedStates. Moreover, 1976 was the best year of the decade with a 5.9 percent growth of real GNP.10 In midsummer, after “fighting it off,” Trudeau agreed to consider an election, after he took a three-week holiday. Trudeau aide Colin Kenny said that “everything that happens is turned into an argument for an early election” by Trudeau’s closest political advisers, although the Liberal ministers and caucus were much less enthusiastic at their own gathering. Jim Coutts, the closest Trudeau aide, was particularly adamant in his support of an election, and in mid-August, Trudeau began to meet with his advisers, who, when polled, all strongly favoured a fall vote.

  There were, of course, some doubts and problems. There was the example of Ontario, where the Conservatives had recently called an election following favourable polls but had ended up with a minority. Moreover, Trudeau had appointed a task force on Canadian unity chaired by former Ontario premier John Robarts and Jean-Luc Pepin, who had stepped down from the largely irrelevant Anti-Inflation Board, and an election could easily appear as undermining its work. In early July Trudeau had also appointed the Royal Commission into Certain Activities of the RCMP (the McDonald Commission) and, again, an election could complicate its task. Then, on July 8, energy minister Alastair Gillespie fired the president of Atomic Energy of Canada for disastrous overruns on the Candu reactors sold to Argentina. Obviously, many potential landmines might explode during an election campaign.11

  Yet Clark seemed very weak; Trudeau was warmly welcomed in Jack Horner’s Camrose, Alberta; and the economy continued to improve. On August 2, when Coutts was spending a holiday at the farm of Paul Martin Jr., he told his host, who was contemplating entering politics, his reasons for wanting an election: “(1) The economy might not be good next year; (2) The Tories may select a new leader this November; (3) Inflation and unemployment will be up; and (4) National unity may not be the prime issue.”12 When he pressed these arguments on the prime minister, Trudeau promised he would decide by the end of August. On Friday, August 26, his office was hectic with preparations for a possible election, and the gossip mill was in full swing. Gossage captured the frenzy in his diary:

  “Bullshit!” Perhaps the loudest I have ever said it on the phone. This to counter another Gallery rumour that Friday was the day for an election call. Our office has been at a rolling boil all week.

  We know the thumbscrews Coutts and Davey applied on Monday, Tuesday, and again on Thursday. Jim [Coutts] has been looking frantic for the first time this year. It almost is like a plot—the promised jobs, the elaborate ruses to keep things hushed. Monday is to be the decision.

  Trudeau did not wait until Monday to make up his mind. At day’s end on Friday, a downcast Colin Kenny called Gossage: “Well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” There would be no election.

  It was Trudeau’s worst political decision. Later, there were stories that Jean Marchand had urged him to hold off, but that is most unlikely, given that Trudeau no longer had faith in Marchand’s judgment. Others have argued that the federal Liberals faced danger because the essence of their election program would be official bilingualism in response to Lévesque’s Charter of the French Language—yet that is precisely the battle Trudeau longed to fight. In his memoirs Keith Davey, who favoured an election, claimed that Trudeau listened to caucus, but that suggestion is also unconvincing because the debates in August took place long after the summer caucus had ended. For Trudeau, backbenchers might no longer be the “nobodies” he had once declared they were, but they were definitely not a major influence on his decision.

  Patrick Gossage, who was “close to the charisma” of Trudeau in these months, has a simpler and more convincing explanation: “I think of the PM facing this lonely decision pushed on him by advisers who know little of his inner life.” He was reading the transcript of Alain Stanké’s “portrait intime” of Trudeau, and he pondered Trudeau’s comments during the interview: “I think of Trudeau, who seeks the peace … to know the name of every tree and flower, to count the blades of grass and ‘planter des radis.’”13 Even though Trudeau went through the motions of campaigning that summer in the Gaspé, in Camrose, and in Vancouver’s downtown, his heart and mind were elsewhere. In these short bursts, he performed brilliantly because, as always, he knew his lines well, but he was not ready to perform a play of several acts, which an election would inevitably be. Trudeau’s hesitations are understandable, even as he accepted Coutts’s reasons as to why he was wrong.14

  Reasons of the heart, sad ones, explain Trudeau’s lack of will for an election in the late summer of 1977. His private and public comments at the time betray his mood. He wrote to Marshall McLuhan in late July: “You continue to fascinate us with your treatises on the interaction and interrelation between technology and man. Your recent thoughts on the effects of the media on private morality present provocative though frightening observations of our society. One begins to wonder if our age of rapid communication leaves room for anything private—not just morality but thoughts and even creativity.” He needed some time for himself, away from the madding crowds of politics and photographers. In the summer he finally began to answer with brief notes the surprisingly numerous expressions of regret that friends had sent after the announcement of his separation from Margaret. To one letter from an old friend in the foreign service who said he knew it was “a hard blow, especially for a man like you, who attaches so much value to family life and the happiness of others,” Pierre answered simply: “Your note of May 30 touched me deeply. I would just like to say thank you.”15 He said little more to anyone about personal matters in those days.

  Coutts, of course, was disappointed, especially because he and some others in the Prime Minister’s Office had wanted to run in the election, but he accepted the decision, whatever its motives. Trudeau puzzled Coutts. Writing about him eighteen years later, he recalled that politics is normall
y a profession for the gregarious, but that, for Trudeau, the power to concentrate, one of his greatest assets, “was honed in hours spent alone. He enjoyed and required solitude to read, think, and write. More surprisingly, he also used his time alone to rehearse—for he was an actor”—as Trudeau so elegantly demonstrated with his pirouette in London. Margaret’s books and interviews are replete with examples of Trudeau’s powers of concentration and its corollary—the need to be alone and to keep personal distance. The prerequisite for these habits was discipline, a quality that Trudeau often extolled in the mid-seventies as disorder marked his public life and, for that matter, the decade. That essential discipline, the careful rehearsals, and the intense focus were simply not possible for him in 1977. He maintained an impressive silence about his private life, resisted those who called him to the political stage for his greatest performance, and gathered his resources to fight another day.16

  As Coutts and Davey feared, the polls started to turn soon after Trudeau decided against an election. By October, the Conservatives had gained five points from their July low, and the twenty-four-point lead the Liberals had enjoyed was only eight points by December. Bad news came early after Labour Day when Donald Macdonald, considered by Trudeau and many others as the leading anglophone minister, announced he was leaving politics. Earlier, Jean Chrétien had considered a move to contest the Quebec leadership, but, now he eagerly accepted Trudeau’s request that he replace Macdonald and become the first French-Canadian finance minister. The press in Quebec and elsewhere applauded his appointment, but, on the whole, the shuffle that brought only one new face to the Cabinet table (Norm Cafik of Ontario) was branded as unimaginative. Warren Allmand, who had been popular in the portfolio of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, publicly said he had been “shafted” when Trudeau moved him to Consumer and Corporate Affairs. Two other appointments attracted attention: Marc Lalonde went from Health and Welfare, where he had promoted a guaranteed annual income without success, to become minister of state for federal-provincial relations, and Monique Bégin, who had earlier refused the Ministry of State for the Status of Women because she thought it a token appointment, accepted the same portfolio because it was now attached to Health and Welfare. She became an outstanding minister.17 All told, however, the Cabinet shuffle did not represent the fresh start that a government in the third year of its mandate so badly needed.

  Trudeau had confided to Paul Martin in the summer that Macdonald was his finest Ontario minister. Why, he asked, were there not more able candidates, as in the days of St. Laurent and Pearson? Macdonald’s departure reinforced the impression that Trudeau could not work with other strong ministers, especially ones from English Canada. As Liberal fortunes fell in the autumn, journalists and some Liberals began to talk about John Turner again and to ask, often hopefully, “Will Trudeau go?” Then, after a brief respite, the economic problems returned to the front page. On the same day that Trudeau shuffled the Cabinet, Gerald Bouey, the governor of the Bank of Canada, warned that inflation, which had dropped in 1976, was rising again in 1977, while unemployment had reached 8.2 percent. “Stagflation” had settled in with a vengeance—and it affected workers and those on fixed incomes in particular. The rise in inflation was due partly to the continual fall in the value of the Canadian dollar, which the election of the Parti Québécois appeared to have stimulated. By October 14, 1977, it had fallen to just over 90 cents, the lowest level since the outbreak of the Second World War, and ten days later, it stood at 89.88 cents, a level previously seen only in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression. Although Bouey could correctly note that the adjustment in the currency rate would enhance Canadian competitiveness and create Canadian jobs, Bay Street and Main Street were increasingly nervous.18

  Queen Elizabeth opened the fall session of Parliament on October 18 with grace and dignity, qualities that soon disappeared in the House as television coverage was introduced, with predictable results. It was a raucous session as the government dealt with a faltering economy, controversies over bilingualism and the Quebec language bill, and continuing scandals related to the RCMP and its irresponsible reaction to the rise of separatism. Trudeau and Solicitor General Francis Fox trod clumsily on the fine line that separates a security force from political interference. As revelations accumulated of break-ins at news agencies and offices of the Parti Québécois, and of long lists of individuals regarded as security risks, including even NDP leader Ed Broadbent, their defences crumbled. Monique Bégin broke Cabinet solidarity when she told a group of Carleton University students that “Francis Fox should clearly state … that he … disagrees with what the police did, more than defending them or explaining that they might have had good reasons.” Increasingly, the beleaguered Fox agreed with Bégin as his anger with the RCMP mounted, but he tried to halt the Quebec-appointed Keable Commission from extending its investigations into areas of national security. To the federal government’s considerable embarrassment, on December 9 Judge James Hugessen of the Quebec Superior Court ruled against Fox and the federal government, stating that “the law should encourage frankness and openness in everything dealing with public matters.”19 Not surprisingly, the press dubbed it the Canadian Watergate.

  These problems had little impact on the government’s position, even though they received justifiable press attention. The focus was on the challenge of Quebec separatism, and other issues faded into the background. Trudeau had scored well in his first encounters with Lévesque and had strengthened his position within the Liberal Party and the country. Indeed, in that round he probably saved his own political life. By the end of 1977, however, the scandals surrounding the RCMP, the intractable problems of the economy, and the ongoing quarrels between the provinces and the federal government had eroded Canadians’ confidence in Trudeau. In fact, he had lost confidence himself. When he met the esteemed novelist Mordecai Richler for lunch in September, Dick O’Hagan, his press secretary, urged him to reassure the cynical author, who planned to write a highly critical article about the separatist movement and Quebec for the Atlantic Monthly. Trudeau said he could not because “he was less than sanguine himself about the country’s future.” He looked “worn,” Patrick Gossage observed on September 21, and his government was losing its way: “At the nexus of a nation in considerable agony, I can see many failed opportunities and little teamwork or exercise of common sense. There has been a ‘study’ of the PM’s use of time and 90 percent is ‘operational.’ Now more time is to be devoted to long-range thinking and planning, and the Cabinet shuffle reflects this. Fine, but who will look after nuts and bolts?” In Gossage’s view, the Cabinet system paralyzed, rather than facilitated, decision making, and a new framework was imperative.20

  At O’Hagan’s prompting, Trudeau had begun regular press conferences after the PQ victory and, reluctantly, met with reporters more frequently. He even agreed to cooperate with journalist George Radwanski on a proposed biography. He gave him eight one-hour interviews in the winter and spring of 1977 and told aides and his sister, Suzette, to cooperate. This extraordinary access provided Radwanski with insights into Trudeau long denied to others. When published in 1978, the book, simply entitled Trudeau, revealed details that had long been shielded from the public. In the opening chapter, “A Day in the Life,” Radwanski follows Trudeau from 9:07 a.m., when the limousine departs from 24 Sussex, until 6:16 p.m., when it bears him home. On that early July day, Radwanski saw a disciplined and hard-working prime minister who relied heavily on some very talented people, notably a core group of four who met with him each morning when Parliament sat: Michael Pitfield (the clerk of the Privy Council), Jim Coutts, Dick O’Hagan, and de Montigny Marchand (a member of Pitfield’s Privy Council team). There were occasional “wisecracks,” Radwanski wrote, but even though Parliament would soon rise and there were no outstanding issues, “the demands on Trudeau’s time [were] too many to allow anything but a brisk pace.” The same pressure continued throughout the day. At the end of the chapter, Rad
wanski reports on the study that the PMO had done of Trudeau’s time: the prime minister worked 250 hours per month, far more than most Canadians.* On the day Radwanski “trailed” him, he had worked eleven hours, but he was “publicly visible” for only eighty-eight minutes of it.21

  The quotidian details of Trudeau’s life—the telephone system that allowed him to reach senior aides simply by pressing a button, and the box of chocolates for his sweet tooth—are interesting, but it is the comments about Trudeau made by close colleagues that fascinate. Mitchell Sharp, for example, had served as a senior minister until 1976 and remained a major figure in Ottawa. Nevertheless, he was astonishingly frank in his assessment of Trudeau’s current difficulties: “One of [his] serious faults is his lack of sensitivity to human relations. He has never been able to generate a feeling amongst his followers that any individual follower is important to him except for close personal friends like Marchand and Pelletier. He told me once: ‘I find the most difficult part of this job is dealing with people.’ He’s a man who inspires, but who seems to lack warmth in his personal relations. I’ve heard this from so many people. They’re here, they’re gone, with never any appreciation expressed. He never says, ‘I’d like you to help me.’ It has had an understandable effect.”