Just Watch Me

by John English

  In Trudeau’s defence, it should be said that when he came to office, he faced distinct threats of violence unlike those any other Canadian prime minister had confronted in peacetime. His responsibility was great, and his tools were inadequate. Other democratic leaders who later faced similar threats of violence from domestic or external terrorism reacted similarly and, in many cases, more harshly. Spain, Germany, and Italy faced domestic terrorism in the seventies after the FLQ crisis, and each reacted with extra-judicial and restrictive legislation. There was, European historian Tony Judt writes, “a spontaneous response to the threat terror posed” to society and the legitimate left “because the ‘lead years’ of the 1970s served to remind everyone of just how fragile liberal democracies might actually be.”33 Later, when dealing with Irish and Islamic terrorism, for example, the British Labour Party under Tony Blair placed far greater restrictions on individual liberties than Trudeau ever contemplated. Indeed, Trudeau’s approach of responding quickly with overwhelming force and greatly enhanced intelligence systems became a model for other Western leaders, such as the social democrats James Callaghan of Britain and Helmut Schmidt of Germany.

  Trudeau himself would argue that he welcomed the creation of a democratic separatist party in Quebec, where the decision on the province’s future would be made by Quebec voters, not by an undemocratic fringe. Again Whitaker, who was also a leading and critical authority on RCMP security work, disagrees with critics who argue that Trudeau’s actions in October 1970 created a polarization between armed federalism and armed separatism. More support for this interpretation appears in the 1972 book written by former armed revolutionary Pierre Vallières, who “tacitly admitted” that Trudeau’s actions had a pacifying influence and who, in 1972, rejected violence in favour of the democratic path to independence. Once on that road, the separatists moderated their program, organized a democratic party, and played the political game. They did achieve power peacefully, but not separation. When Trudeau was defeated in the spring of 1979, the PQ had not held its promised referendum, in large part because Lévesque believed it would fail as long as Trudeau was prime minister. As Martine Tremblay, a leading Lévesque government official of the time, wrote much later: “The population is clearly unwilling to accept the second half of the bargain struck with the PQ in 1976. Substantive arguments on the issue have failed to win over disappointed federalists and undecided voters.”

  Immediately after Trudeau resigned, preparations for a referendum began in Quebec. Without doubt, his presence had made a supreme difference in separatist planning. Had his chief political challenger in 1968, the unilingual Bob Winters, or the Conservative leader, the unilingual Robert Stanfield, succeeded Pearson as prime minister or won the election of 1972, it is doubtful that the federal government would have responded to the challenge of separatism as effectively.34 Characteristically frank, Lévesque publicly declared after Trudeau’s defeat that the course ahead for separatism had become much easier. While denouncing Trudeau’s many flaws, Lévesque never failed to acknowledge the strength of his opponent and his major achievement in creating “French power” in Ottawa. The transformation of the public service, the rapid spread of bilingualism in its higher ranks, and the recruitment of brilliant young francophones to the federal public service to counter the highly effective Quebec bureaucracy were major accomplishments of Trudeau’s first decade in office. They became a major plank in the platform with which he confronted separatism.35

  Still, Trudeau was frequently criticized both during the 1970s and later on for his “obsession” with the separatist challenge. The price of that intense focus was a strained relationship with western Canada and a lack of attention paid to the economy. Western grievances against Trudeau have become the stuff of legend. Although the greatest wrong—the National Energy Program—occurred in the eighties, commentators in November 1979 frequently listed the “West” as an area where Trudeau had “failed.” The election returns in May 1979 certainly seemed to confirm those arguments, as Trudeau won only three seats and less than a quarter of the vote west of Ontario. Even though he had pledged, when re-elected in 1974, that he would pay close attention to the West, those plans were disrupted by the election of the PQ and the continuing spats with Premier Lougheed, who demanded that Canada move quickly toward a world price for oil despite strong resistance from eastern Canada. Although the relationship between the federal Liberals and the Alberta Conservative government actually improved in the later 1970s as Canada moved inexorably toward the world price, the Iranian Revolution then spiked oil prices, and the issue became even more inflamed.

  However, Western alienation from Ottawa and the Liberals had not begun with Trudeau: as Joe Clark discovered soon after his election, there was a fundamental incompatibility between eastern and western opinion. Lester Pearson, for instance, had won only 8 seats and less than one-quarter of the vote in Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1965. But Trudeau’s governments augmented the differences, with their emphasis on the Quebec issue, bilingualism, and regional development, all of which became increasingly unacceptable in western Canada. From the first years, there was an acute awareness that the focus on Quebec and the Constitution would cause problems in western Canada. Hugh Faulkner, who was first elected MP for Peterborough in Ontario in 1965, noticed the rift. He developed a great interest in national unity, and, during the Pearson years, he met with Trudeau and Pelletier to express his views on the issue and to learn theirs. After Trudeau’s election, however, he warned Pelletier that all the attention focused on Quebec was creating a sense of abandonment in the West. In response, Pelletier was blunt: francophones and anglophones must feel equal within the country, and other priorities must wait. Trudeau largely shared these views.

  As Trudeau looked westward in the mid-seventies, he saw personal income rising considerably more rapidly in Alberta and Saskatchewan than in eastern Canada, and unemployment rates strikingly lower. In 1976, for example, the unemployment rates in Saskatchewan and Alberta were, respectively, 4 and 3.9 percent, whereas those in New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario were, respectively, 11.1, 8.7, and 6.2 percent. A government committed to smoothing regional and linguistic differences had a clear choice, and Trudeau took it.36

  On the economy, later judgments on the Trudeau government’s work in the seventies have been much less harsh than those of contemporaries. Thus, a standard economic history summarizes the problem much as Trudeau did at the time: “Canadian policy officials were as uncertain of how to deal with the stagflation in the [early 1970s] as were their counterparts elsewhere.” Mistakes were certainly made, as economist Albert Breton told Trudeau regularly in the mid-1970s: the Bank of Canada should not have manipulated the exchange rate to protect Canada’s floating dollar; Bryce Mackasey’s unemployment reforms were wildly overgenerous; and government grants under regional development programs were too often based on local political whims. As for the wage and price controls, there is evidence that they did cause wage restraint, but the social costs were probably too high.

  Yet Canada’s failures were hardly unique: inflation levels in Western Europe exceeded Canada’s in the mid-1970s, and the German economic miracle became a nightmare for many of its industrial workers. Government deficits were common throughout the Western world as governments found that their social security systems, constructed in times of full employment, faced new strains. It was also a bad decade for the Americans as they adjusted to the sudden challenge of Japan and energy shortages, and their presidents paid the price: one was impeached and two were defeated. Critics of Trudeau frequently overlook the rise of the Canadian standard of living relative to the United States throughout the 1970s. The purchasing power of total real national income per adult rose from 72 percent of the American level in 1970 to 84 percent at the decade’s end—the highest it has ever been. In counterbalance to the complaints from the Canadian West, the most effective government intervention of the 1970s was probably Ottawa’s support of oil-sands development. A recent study ar
gues that without the considerable subsidies and direct support by Ottawa and, to a lesser extent, Alberta and Ontario, the oil sands would not have become an economic dynamo thirty years later. Ironically, the province that liked Trudeau least was the main beneficiary of a policy on which he personally insisted.37

  In the turmoil of the seventies, it is true that Trudeau focused on the problem of Quebec separatism to the detriment of policy development for the Canadian West, the economy, and, to a lesser extent, international affairs. Yet it is in foreign policy that Trudeau had some of his most significant success. He came to office calling for Canada to concentrate on its domestic troubles and worry less about being “helpful fixers” for the world. Later, he developed the reputation of having been whimsical and inconsistent in his approach to international affairs—an argument that neatly began with his proclaimed indifference in 1968, passed through his grand speeches on international development in the mid-seventies, and ended with a seemingly quixotic peace initiative in 1983–84 just as his public life was ending.38 Trudeau’s position on the international scene was also undermined by the fact that he got along poorly with Reagan administration officials and especially with Margaret Thatcher, and Canadian ambassador Allan Gotlieb’s assessment of Trudeau’s foreign policy in his 1980s Washington diaries is harsh.39

  However, it is inappropriate to impose such judgments on the 1970s because Trudeau was widely admired by nearly all his counterparts in that decade. Nixon did not like him, but Kissinger did, and Trudeau and his officials worked well with Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter to protect Canadian interests during the extraordinary turmoil of the early seventies. Ford and Carter both admired and liked Trudeau. All British leaders of the period respected him, including the Conservative Edward Heath, who came to value Trudeau’s contribution to Commonwealth Conferences. At those meetings, Trudeau won the affection of the major African leaders of the day, especially Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda, permitting him to serve as a valuable conduit between the West and the developing nations. Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, an extraordinarily talented leader, developed a warm friendship with Trudeau. And the closeness and respect of his relationship with Helmut Schmidt is reflected in their frequent letters. At Schmidt’s request, he became the leading figure within the G7, dealing with the difficult issue of the demand of developing nations for a new international economic order, and his work in those areas garners considerable praise from those who witnessed his efforts. The seventies were, in so many ways, a disappointing decade, but for Trudeau they were a better fit than the decade that followed.40

  Had Trudeau’s political life ended in 1979, he would probably not have ranked among the “great” Canadian prime ministers—Macdonald, Laurier, and King. However, Canadians would have acknowledged his extraordinary impact on his times and his many major contributions to Canadian public policy. Like John F. Kennedy, he was fond of quoting Robert Frost’s memorable phrase that there were miles to go before he slept—and they became kilometres in Canada thanks to Trudeau’s insistence in the seventies on a change to the metric system. The generation of the seventies would forever be, in filmmaker Catherine Annau’s words, Trudeau’s children.41 However, as winter’s chill fell upon Canada in 1979, Trudeau’s often difficult, unpredictable, but radiant path seemed to have reached its end.

  * Trudeau’s well-known penchant for keeping older objects had once again paid off. A car fancier wrote to him on February 16, 1979, saying that the Mercedes had tripled in value. This increase was, the auto enthusiast wrote tongue in cheek, “in the National Interest for the following reasons:

  “1. The convertible constantly emits a large cloud of blue smoke both denoting its lineage and allowing the R.C.M.P. to always know where you are.

  “2. Its top speed diminishes yearly, effectively eliminating any temptation on your part to exceed 55 MPH. When Justin reaches driving age, you will be able to jog faster than the automobile. What could be safer than that?” Douglas Cohen to Trudeau, Feb. 16, 1979, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 3, file 3-14, LAC. When Justin married, he drove away from the church in the Mercedes with his bride. He still drives it occasionally today.

  * Erickson and Kripacz were noted for their parties and regularly invited Trudeau to them. Sometimes they even arranged them around Trudeau’s presence in New York. On April 3, 1981, Trudeau had gone to New York with Jim Coutts and other members of his staff to attend a performance of the Canadian Opera Company. Trudeau stayed at the Pierre, his usual hotel in New York and, ironically, Richard Nixon’s New York home. Taking advantage of the occasion, Erickson and Kripacz held a dinner party two days later and invited the socialite conservative Pat Buckley, fashion guru Diana Vreeland, presidential chronicler Theodore White and his wife, Beatrice, New York Review of Books editor Robert Silvers and Lady Grace Dudley, actor Shirley MacLaine, singer Diana Ross, the chairman of Tiffany’s, and Canadians Stephanie McLuhan and Paul Desmarais. The rich and the famous mingled easily, and Trudeau was drawn especially to the spirited and unpredictable Shirley MacLaine. Another Trudeau lover told me that MacLaine, along with Margaret and herself, was one of the three women Trudeau said he adored. MacLaine shared the same birthday, April 24, with this woman and also with Trudeau’s close friend Barbra Streisand—a fact that intrigues astrologers. The Erickson guest list is found in TP, MG 26 020, vol. 17, file 13, LAC. Interview with Arthur Erickson, Sept. 2007; confidential interview.

  * Alexandre Trudeau perceptively commented: “I know my father opened up to women in a way he did not to others, and I also know he found refuge with them from the deadly serious matters which occupied him during his day job. In this sense, I don’t believe he sought to discuss political matters with them and, when he happened to, he took a didactic or poetic position (much as he sometimes did with us)—a reduction of his actual thoughts. Especially in later years, he chose women for their energy and unpredictability because they dazzled him and gave him an escape.”

  * Trudeau and Margaret had a marriage contract, which had been signed after their wedding. Trudeau’s brother, Charles, contacted Don Johnston, later a Trudeau Cabinet minister, about legal advice for “someone from Ontario” who was getting married. Johnston, who was Trudeau’s lawyer, gave the advice before the marriage, indicating that, under recent Quebec law, a marriage contract could be signed following the marriage. After they were married, Pierre and Margaret, accompanied by RCMP guards, showed up at Johnston’s home, to the astonishment of the Johnston neighbours, and signed the agreement. By its terms Margaret essentially had no claim on the assets of Trudeau-Elliott, the holding company for the Trudeau assets, which appears to have had a value of approximately $3 million in the early 1970s. Conversation with Don Johnston, June 2009. The marriage contract, signed in June 1971, is found in TP, MG 26 020, vol. 6, file 6-39, LAC. See also Don Johnston to Trudeau, June 29, 1971, ibid.; interview with Michel Jasmin, Dec.16, 1981, ibid., MG 26 013.

  * Cattrall, of Sex and the City, met Trudeau at a premiere of a movie in 1982, at which he asked for her phone number. Later, she got a message on her answering machine, requesting that she call him. She invited him to the Genie Awards in Toronto. In her words, “I was completely enraptured by him. He was so incredibly sexy.” When asked why he was sexy, she responded, “He was very soft-spoken, incredibly smart, sensitive and truly an extraordinary Renaissance man—we’d talk about yoga, and he meditated…. He had so much class, from the way he dressed to the car he drove.” To her, he represented “the best” of what it meant to be Canadian. Line Abrahamian, “Taking Chances, Making Choices: Face to Face with Kim Cattrall,” in Reader’s Digest (April 2005), 70–71.

  * Despite Horner’s electoral loss and much denunciation of him as a traitor in Alberta, he had no doubts about his decision. He wrote to Trudeau in 1984: “Having been born into a conservative family in western Canada, I, like a lot of conservatives, was skeptical of the direction you seem [sic] to be taking Canada. As time went on I realized you were a leader of men; you did really care about
the one Canada concept and all parts of Canada.” He regretted nothing. Horner to Trudeau, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 6, file 6-19, LAC.

  * Beneath the photograph of M. and Mme Deschenes was a quotation from Louis-Olivier Letourneux, a Canadian jurist of the 1840s: “Nationality, in our opinion, does not merely concern the distinctiveness of ways and customs, language, or religion; it is much more connected with the history of a people, its myths, its traditions, and its memories.” It was curiously appropriate for 1979, though written in 1845 (Between Friends / Entre Amis [Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976]). The constituency I represented as a delegate at the convention, Kitchener, reflected most of Ontario at the time. The majority of constituency executives wanted Trudeau to leave gracefully. Most—but not all—were willing to give him time. Leading Toronto Liberals who later played a prominent part in the Trudeau government and former Ontario Cabinet ministers were calling grassroots Liberals, urging them to prepare for the turnover. Later, they publicly denied making such calls. When I wrote about this activity in Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond, and John English, Canada since 1945: Power, Politics, and Provincialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), Drummond, an eminent economist who knew the individuals much better than I, received angry calls attacking the comments. I told Drummond, who asked for my source, that the Toronto-based complainant had personally called me. He reported my reply, and the request for a retraction was quickly dropped.