by John English
This, then, my dear Premier, is my understanding of the constitutional law and history respecting the claim for a provincial veto. Whether we are talking of patriation or of the amending formula, it is hard to understand how—by Order in Council or otherwise—you can maintain that a Quebec veto exists by law or custom.
Lévesque replied immediately by telex:
It was with sorrow, though little surprise, that I acknowledge your letter dated December 1, 1981, where you explicitly deny to Quebec what generations of Québécois have considered absolutely necessary to their survival in this polity, the veto that the Québécois have previously used in several instances. The letter strongly indicates the extent of the uprooting generated by the federal system.
Trudeau responded bluntly:
… let me remind you that it was you who signed the Premiers’ Accord of April 16, 1981 and, in so doing, you abandoned a veto for Quebec in the constitutional amending formula….
That a Premier of Quebec subscribed to such an affirmation will seem aberrant and, indeed, irresponsible, especially when one remembers that the federal formula I posed to you contained a right of veto for Quebec.
Let us be clear, then. On April 16th, your government subscribed to the notion of the equality of the province and there was no question then of Canadian duality or even of a special status for Quebec! If Quebec, then were to have a veto, one would also have to say that each of the other provinces had a veto too and the amending formula would have to be unanimity to respect the equality of the provinces. But the Supreme Court in its decision on the Patriation Reference stated that unanimity is not required for constitutional amendments. Therefore, if the provinces are equal and unanimity is not required, there is no veto either for Quebec or for any other province. This is precisely the position you agreed to on April 16th. [Emphasis in original]
With these defiant exchanges, the long debate between Trudeau and Lévesque on a series of significant issues drew to an end. They would encounter each other in the future, but in much less meaningful ways.9
Without doubt, the future of Quebec and of Canada was determined to a large degree in those final weeks of 1981. Their fate rested in part on the reactions of Lévesque and Trudeau to the events that suddenly unfolded. The question lingers: Was there an alternative outcome? Both men later reflected on this question.
In his memoirs Lévesque denounces the “cruel deception” that he and his colleagues faced in Ottawa during that November meeting with the other premiers and Trudeau. In reflecting on events that followed the referendum defeat in Quebec in May 1980, Lévesque takes deserved pride in his party’s quick recovery from that setback. For their success in the election campaign less than a year later, on April 13, 1981, he takes only partial credit: “Claude Ryan could do nothing but improve our chances,” he wrote, “and he didn’t miss a trick.” Immediately after the victory, Lévesque met with the seven other premiers who had developed their counterproposal for patriation of the Constitution without a charter, for an amendment process based on seven provinces with 50 percent of the population, and with provision for a province to opt out of an amendment if two-thirds of its legislature approved. Lévesque was intrigued but troubled, especially by the two-thirds requirement. He is candid about his objective: if a simple majority were required, he wrote, “this way, I speculated, might we not, little by little, be able to build the associate state we had been refused?” Lévesque admits he did not share his thoughts about an “associate state” with the other premiers, but neither did they share their private musings with him. After a late night and early morning meeting, the other premiers agreed to drop the two-thirds requirement in return for Lévesque’s promise “to solemnly affix my signature in the right place on an historic document headed up by the maple leaf flag!”10 At the time the plan seemed like a splendid stroke to cut down Trudeau.
As we have seen, April was a month of disasters for Trudeau, with Ryan’s defeat in the Quebec election, the Newfoundland Court of Appeal decision against his patriation plan, and the creation of the gang of eight with its own plan for patriation without a charter. Lévesque, understandably, was ebullient, if not overconfident. In his memoirs, he argues strongly that “opting out” with compensation, as was agreed by the gang, was of tremendous value to Quebec: “From state to state … we could create something very like a country in that fashion.” Admittedly, Quebec would lose its veto, but, Lévesque writes, “this old obsession has never turned me on.” The veto, he argues, was “an obstacle to development as much as an instrument of defence.”11 To him, the “opting out” path obviously possessed much more political weight.
Lévesque’s characteristically frank comments in his memoirs explain why he did not speak of the veto as an issue when he departed furiously from Ottawa on November 5. Nevertheless, the storm came quickly when he returned to Quebec, where the nationalists denounced the loss of the veto as a catastrophe. And Trudeau, as we have seen, taunted him for giving up the jewel when he joined the gang of eight in April. Moreover, the other premiers blamed Lévesque for breaking their April agreement when he carelessly accepted Trudeau’s challenge to test patriation and the charter in a referendum during the fateful meetings of early November. Claude Morin’s account of the incident essentially confirms this interpretation, although it also suggests that, for Lévesque, the accord of April was already dead. In Morin’s opinion the purpose of creating the gang of eight was to destroy Trudeau’s plans for a charter when he patriated the Constitution. When the premiers, notably the distrusted Allan Blakeney, toyed with compromise, Lévesque’s hopes turned first to frustration, then to anger. The gains of April were lost; the harvest of November was betrayal.12
Consumed with bitterness, Lévesque then went too far. “I continued to rage and storm,” he writes. “From ‘the night of the long knives’ to ‘the most despicable betrayal,’ I couldn’t find words strong enough to express my burning resentment.” He even considered making Quebec anglophones take the “school medicine” francophones received in the rest of Canada, where many could not receive education in their official language. This “rage” brought “a release,” but Lévesque himself admits, “it became excessive.” It contributed to a sour mood of revenge at the Parti Québécois congress in December, one that split the party between hard-line sovereignists and those who favoured “association.”* Faced with a divided party, Lévesque threatened to resign. After he pushed back the radicals, he stayed, but Morin, the author of “étapisme” (separation by steps), gave up and left. Lévesque’s adviser Claude Charron followed in February 1982 after he was arrested for stealing a $125 jacket from an Eaton’s department store. Lévesque, his party split and dispirited and the economy collapsing, stumbled in his last term in office. Then, on June 20, 1985, after the party declared, against his wishes, that the next election would be fought on the issue of sovereignty, Lévesque resigned as leader of the PQ. Believing that commitment to run on sovereignty foolish, on October 3, he stepped down as premier.
Two years later, on November 1, 1987, Lévesque died of a heart attack. He was only sixty-five. Despite widespread knowledge of his deteriorating health, his death was a shock, and many wept openly on Quebec streets when they learned that Quebec would no longer be pervaded by his enormous presence. The Friday night before Lévesque died, Trudeau had seen Lévesque at a festival for Canadian authors, where Trudeau was launching a book of his speeches on international affairs. Wearing a tuxedo, a beaming Trudeau stared at Lévesque, who was gingerly holding the new book with Trudeau on the cover. A grinning Lévesque then reportedly turned toward Trudeau and said, “So you’re dramatizing again.” On hearing of his rival’s death, Trudeau mused, “When we were not talking about politics, we agreed.” He paid his respects on the Tuesday night as Lévesque rested in state in the old Montreal court house. As he entered the room, a young man shouted, “You have no business here.” Although Gérard Pelletier and Jean Marchand attended the funeral mass, Trudeau did not.13
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Death did not end the debate, particularly about the loss of the veto. In Lévesque’s words, his province stood alone after November 1981. The image lingered, threading itself through future political visions of what Canada and Quebec actually were and what they should be. Like Lévesque, in his Memoirs and in later interviews, Trudeau confronted the issue of whether Quebec chose, or was forced, to stand alone. In the Memoirs, he claims that Lévesque would never have agreed to the compromise on patriation because he was a separatist who did not want Canada to succeed. More revealing, however, is an extended 1992 interview with journalist Jean Lépine. Again and again Lépine returned to November 5 and asked why Trudeau did not make one final grand effort to bring Quebec into the agreement. Did he truly think Lévesque would never sign? At first Trudeau was brisk and brief, but as Lépine kept repeating the question, Trudeau expatiated on the point at length, arguing that Lévesque had left Ottawa demanding three changes—relating to language, mobility rights, and the lack of compensation for provinces when they “opted out.” He admitted that he had not been sure what Quebec would do, but he claimed that, within the following week, Lévesque had asked for three new items, including the veto. That request made negotiation impossible and even farcical. At that point Lépine returned to the question once more:
Now that you are in shape, I ask you once again the question I posed at the outset. My question was: today, when one recalls those events, one asks: Why did Trudeau, at the last minute on the 5th, seeing that Quebec would not sign, not make a supreme effort to bring Quebec onside? … Do you recall that you were sure at that moment that Quebec absolutely would not sign?
Yes I was sure…. I just proved to you that [Lévesque] did not know what he wanted. He gave three pretexts, three reasons not to sign the accord and then, one week later, he said that the accord was unacceptable for three other reasons. Put yourself in my skin!
Clearly, the persistent questioning troubled Trudeau.
The accord was not perfect, but it was essential, as Trudeau told his dissenting aide, André Brunelle. Lesage had denied Pearson patriation in 1964, and Bourassa had undermined the Victoria Charter in 1971. By November 1981 the sentiment at the table among federalists was strong—time had run out—and that sentiment extended far beyond the table. Two of Trudeau’s closest confidants on the constitutional file sent their thoughts to him soon after the deal was sealed. Ramsay Cook wrote on November 8: “I guess it is not quite the constitutional package you would have liked, but it is a pretty good one…. At any rate, congratulations for your great steadfastness in seeing this through.” Trudeau replied: “As you know, it is not quite the constitutional package I would have liked, but I respect the spirit of compromise that allowed us to find common ground.” F.R. (Frank) Scott, who had fretted about Canada’s constitutional woes for decades, reacted in a similar way: “Unhappy as I was at some parts of the package—and no doubt you were—I was delighted that you called a halt to further negotiations.” Time had indeed run out. The process was “a mess,” as Trudeau told an interviewer, but it was a new mess with richer ingredients.14
It was not the constitutional package that Trudeau would have liked, but it was far better than the alternative of continuing constitutional deadlock and a country without individual rights entrenched in a charter. On November 5 Trudeau noted “with much regret” the absence of a provision for a referendum in the case of constitutional deadlock. The image of middle-aged men in suits deciding such fundamental issues by themselves denied what Trudeau called “the ultimate sovereignty of the people.” Moreover, the notwithstanding clause bothered Trudeau, as did the limitations on mobility rights. And there was also that lack of a veto for Quebec.
Trudeau countered the Quebec claim that the denial of the veto was a historic wrong because, as he so often pointed out, Lévesque had ceded the veto in April 1981 when he had joined the gang of eight. But Jean Chrétien in his memoirs says that Lévesque’s request for a veto at the November meeting was proper, “not for Quebec as a province but for a minority population with unique concerns in linguistic and cultural matters.” He regrets that Lévesque’s belated plea was not granted but points out, correctly, that the opposition of even one province to the request was enough to deny it, and there were many ready to join those ranks. Oddly, Trudeau is silent in his memoirs on the subject. However, in 1983 he told Ramsay Cook, who had criticized the amending formula, that he “hoped that historians would record [Trudeau’s] reservations” about Quebec’s loss of the veto and “the fact that [he] had favoured one which included a Quebec veto.”
Historians, especially in Quebec, have not reflected Trudeau’s hopes, but the fundamental truth remains. Until 1981, Trudeau’s governments had always supported the Quebec veto. Could a Herculean effort by the federal leaders have persuaded nine provinces to change the amending formula? Probably not, but the blurred historical memory of those times may suggest that Trudeau should have taunted Lévesque less about his compromise with the gang of eight and emphasized more his personal regret that his own province, with its “linguistic and cultural” differences, lost a significant power within the Canadian federation. Moreover, the later attempts to deal with the veto through the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords revealed how much this loss affected Quebec and Canadian constitutional history. Meech Lake and Charlottetown had a huge impact on the views about the events of November 1981 held by most Quebec intellectuals and politicians—not only separatists but also federalists such as Brian Mulroney and Daniel Johnson Jr.15
But hindsight obscures political and personal considerations. In April 1981 Trudeau was stunned by the Newfoundland court decision, irritated by hesitations among British parliamentarians, politically wounded by Lévesque’s re-election, and challenged by the creation of the gang of eight. His constitutional project, his “magnificent obsession,” seemed about to collapse. That it did not was the result of his deft manoeuvres, Lévesque’s carelessness, and, as he said to Cook, the spirit of compromise that suddenly swept through the Ottawa conference centre during those fraught days in early November. Trudeau’s disappointments with the final agreement were the product of those compromises. He negotiated; Lévesque, suspicious and increasingly angry, missed his chances. Perhaps the two did agree when they did not speak of politics, but politics was so central to their lives that discord normally prevailed. Asked by Lépine to sum up his views of Lévesque, Trudeau said that he never really knew what Lévesque wanted—he did not know whether he was an “indépendantiste” or whether he truly believed in “la souveraineté-association” or whether, “like Claude Morin,” he saw sovereignty-association as a series of “steps to be taken to reach complete independence.”
“What did you respect about Lévesque?” Lépine asked.
“Well, I respected that he was … I respected that he … Well, an interesting sort, he was lively, he was obstinate, he … I don’t have anything to say about Mr. Lévesque.”16
Lévesque’s biographer Pierre Godin correctly observes that Lévesque and Trudeau “had contributed to a complete redefinition of Canada.” In a Canada on the edge of breakup, they dominated their times. Both had, through their jousting, sarcasm, and struggle, “forced English Canada to look at Quebec’s place in the federation in a new light.” It was a shared accomplishment and, for Canadians and for Québécois, one of enormous significance. For Trudeau, patriation of the Constitution, with the addition of the charter, reversed the course of constitutional history, which had derailed in the seventies, with defeat at Victoria leading to a desperation that ended in utter failure in 1979. His reach was long when he returned to power in 1980, but his grasp almost equalled it. The dissenting premiers, perhaps fearful of their electorates’ condemnation if they killed the charter, with Lévesque as their fellow executioner, went far beyond the meagre crumbs they had offered Trudeau in April 1981 when his position had seemed so weak. In the end, the charter was changed little, opting out was limited, equalization of the provinces was e
ntrenched, individual rights were guaranteed, and the role of the federal presence in the lives of Canadians was assured. Ironically, Claude Ryan, with his commitment to special status for Quebec and decentralization in favour of the provinces—a position close to Conservative leader Joe Clark’s vision of “a community of communities”—would probably have been a more effective opponent of Trudeau than Lévesque. As Romanow said when he left the conference, “in a bizarre way,” Lévesque’s arguments meant that “we have a stronger Canada now.” If that was so, Trudeau’s determination to counter those arguments had made it so.17
Trudeau’s public reward came on a chilly April 17, 1982, when in an outdoor ceremony in front of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, Queen Elizabeth II, wearing a turquoise coat with matching hat, formally signed the Royal Proclamation of the Constitution. As the strong wind blew Trudeau’s sprinkling of hair, thirty-two thousand loyal and drenched spectators applauded. Nine premiers sat nearby, but the absent Lévesque was in Montreal, leading a protest march. Trudeau began by declaring that at long last Canada had complete national sovereignty. Then, as he began to talk about Quebec, the clouds darkened, rumbles of thunder began, and heavy rain followed. The Queen’s words intermittently broke through the storm, as when she called the achievement “a defiant challenge to history.” After a state dinner on the Saturday night, where the architects of the new Constitution were honoured, the Queen departed from the capital. Trudeau accompanied her to the airport, and once she entered the plane, he surprised the onlookers with a sudden, elegant pirouette. On the historic day of the signing ceremony, Trudeau had ended his remarks with the words: “Let us celebrate the renewal and patriation of our Constitution, but let us put our faith, first and foremost, in the people of Canada who will give it life.” It remains, rightly or wrongly, Trudeau’s lasting challenge to the people and their history.18