Just Watch Me

by John English

  3. Albert Breton, “For the Prime Minister: A Personal Reading of Current Economic Events,” Nov. 12, 1971, ABP, privately held. The memorandum was circulated to the PCO and PMO only, and even then, only to the most senior officials: Lalonde, Head, Pitfield, Robertson, Crowe, Hudon, and Davey.

  4. Toronto Star, Jan. 29, 1972.

  5. Turner made these comments on an index card (cited by Paul Litt in his draft biography of John Turner). The finest treatment of the international ramifications of the political situation are found in Robert Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945–1984 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007), chap. 17.

  6. On Nixon’s reaction, see Helmut Sonnenfeldt to Henry Kissinger, Jan. 17, 1973, NP, NSC files, box 750, file “Canada, Trudeau,” National Archives, Washington. Richard Gwyn’s Northern Magus: Pierre Trudeau and Canadians (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980) captures exceptionally well the tensions within the government during this period. Written before archival documents became available, his chapter 9 on the 1972–74 period remains the best account of the Trudeau minority.

  7. “Cutting the Corporate Income Tax,” Breton to Trudeau, Jan. 19, 1973, ABP; “The Elasticity of the Tax Base,” Breton to Trudeau, March 1, 1973, ABP; Toronto Star, Feb. 20, 1973; Globe and Mail, Feb. 20, 1973; and Litt, Turner draft biography. Cabinet discussion (including the discussion of Feb. 13, 1974) is found in RG2, PCO, Series A-5-a, vol. 6422, LAC.

  8. Ron Graham, One-Eyed Kings: Promise and Illusion in Canadian Politics (Toronto: Collins, 1986), 203.

  9. The best account of this period is found in Douglas Hartle, The Expenditure Budget Process in the Government of Canada (Toronto: Canadian Tax Foundation, 1978). Breton to Trudeau, April 9, 1973, ABP.

  10. Breton to Trudeau, May 5, 1973, ABP; “Entrevue entre M. Trudeau et M. Lépine” [M. Lépine interview], May 5, 1992, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 23, file 8, part 1, LAC.

  11. Quotations from draft memoirs of Alastair Gillespie and conversations with Gillespie. The Barron’s quotation is from Gwyn, Northern Magus, 304. In 1981 Ian Drummond, the outstanding Canadian economic historian of his generation, assessed FIRA’s effectiveness: “What FIRA actually meant was hard to say. Naturally its promoters thought it did not go far enough, while many Canadian economists and businessmen thought it went rather too far.” He pointed out that it became more unpredictable in the later 1970s, but that it did approve more than two-thirds of all applications. See Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond, and John English, Canada since 1945: Power, Politics, and Provincialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 416–17.

  12. In their biography of C.D. Howe, Robert Bothwell and William Kilbourn describe how he received the nickname “Minister of Everything.” Howe, they write, “was informed of what was happening or what was about to happen everywhere in Canada. To Canadian business, Howe was synonymous with ‘Ottawa.’” C.D. Howe: A Biography (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979), 262.

  13. Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 443, 445.

  14. Douglas Owram, “The Perfect Storm: The National Energy Program and the Failure of Federal-Provincial Relations,” in Forging Alberta’s Constitutional Framework, ed. Richard Connors and John Law (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2005), 404–5. See also Allan Hustak, Peter Lougheed: A Biography (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979).

  15. OECD delegation, Paris, to External Affairs, May 2, 1973, GP, R1526, vol. 35, file Trade Issues, LAC; “Notes for the Prime Minister’s Opening Remarks at the Western Economic Opportunities Conference,” Calgary, Alta., July 24, 1973.

  16. Cabinet Conclusions, RG2, PCO, Series A-5-a, vol. 6422, Oct. 31, 1973. On the uncertainty about supply, see Tammy Nemeth, “Continental Drift: Canada-U.S. Oil and Gas Relations, 1958–1974” (PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2007), 316n166.

  17. Cabinet Conclusions, ibid., Nov. 22 and 27, 1973.

  18. Ibid., Dec. 12, 1973. Nemeth’s thesis (see note 16) suggests more continuity in policy than the Cabinet minutes suggest. The Cabinet debates indicate considerable confusion and reaction to events. Earlier, G. Bruce Doern and Glen Toner had emphasized how the government “reeled” from crisis to crisis, with little sense of where actions would lead. G. Bruce Doern and Glen Toner, The Politics of Energy: The Development and Implementation of the NEP (Toronto: Methuen, 1985), 91.

  19. Comments in J.T. Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs 1974 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 92–98.

  20. Lawrence LeDuc, “The Measurement of Public Opinion,” in Canada at the Polls: The General Election of 1974, ed. Howard Penniman (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1975), 230. The graph on that page is derived from Gallup surveys. Colin Kenny to Trudeau, Nov. 16, 1973, TP, MG 26 07, vol. 121, file 313-05, 1973–75, LAC.

  21. Pierre Trudeau, Memoirs (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993), 209–10; Margaret Trudeau, Beyond Reason (New York and London: Paddington Press, 1979), 184; and New York Times, Oct. 14, 1973. On the trade advantages, see Karen Minden, “Politics and Business: The Canada-China Wheat Trade 1960–1984,” in Canadian Agriculture in a Global Context, ed. Irene Knell and John English (Waterloo: University of Waterloo Press), 103–22. Minden demonstrates how Canada had advantages over other traders such as Australia and the United States that can be explained only by Chinese political favouritism. Alexandre Trudeau confirms the often-quoted remark that Trudeau considered Chou the most impressive.

  22. Michael Manley, quoted in Trudeau, Memoirs, 166; New York Times, Nov. 18, 1973.

  23. Canada Year Book 1978–79 (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services, 1978), 361–62, 864.

  24. See the excellent account in Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1974, 98ff., which includes correspondence between Lougheed and Trudeau.

  25. Ibid., 103–7. The letter is remarkably detailed and long.

  26. Ibid., 23. Canada, House of Commons Debates (7–8 May 1974). Trudeau admitted in his Memoirs that he had engineered the defeat: “If it’s called manipulative, then so be it. I had learned in 1972 that I almost threw the election away because I had been too theoretical, too unconscious of the need for a political machine, too oblivious to the need of the people working for us and to the need for the stimulation of the party. So I wasn’t about to commit the same mistake in 1974” (177).

  27. Davey, quoted in George Radwanski, Trudeau (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), 284.

  28. Toronto Star, June 5, 1974; Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1974, 38–39; and LeDuc, “Measurement of Public Opinion,” 239.

  29. Toronto Star, June 1, 1974; Trudeau, Beyond Reason, 166–75; and conversations with Jim Coutts, Bob Murdoch, Keith Davey, and Margaret Trudeau.

  30. Montreal Gazette, June 5, 1974; Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1974, 46–49; and Paul Desmarais to Trudeau, nd [June 1974], TP, MG 26 020, vol. 17, file 14, LAC. After the election, Trudeau visited the Desmarais estate on Anticosti Island, accompanied by Justin and Pierre’s brother, Charles. Trudeau told Desmarais that “your two sons, Paul and André, impressed me by their kindness and because their help allowed us fully to enjoy this brief holiday.” Trudeau to Desmarais, Aug. 20, 1974, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 17, file 13, LAC.

  31. Joe Wearing, a well-informed analyst with close Liberal ties, says that “such a campaign was not without its tensions, however: the campaign committee was reportedly upset with the overwhelming emphasis on the leader and, according to one assessment, ‘the whole campaign would have come apart if it had gone on for another week.’” The footnotes for this quotation reference interviews with Jerry Grafstein and Blair Williams, both members of the committee. Joseph Wearing, The L-Shaped Party: The Liberal Party of Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1981), 203.

  32. Stephen Clarkson, “Pierre Trudeau and the Liberal Party: The Jockey and the Horse,” in Canada at the Polls, ed. Penniman, 84–86.

  33. LeDuc, “Measure
ment of Public Opinion,” 232. Fifty-seven percent agreed that Trudeau had changed.

  34. The election results are in William Irvine, “An Overview of the 1974 Federal Election in Canada,” chap 2. in Canada at the Polls, ed. Penniman. See also Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1974, 70 (Davey quotation), and Trudeau, Beyond Reason, 174–75. A later academic study supports the view that leadership was a factor, but perhaps it was more the appearance of weaker leadership by Stanfield than strong leadership by Trudeau. Trudeau did not run ahead of the Liberal Party itself in this campaign, although he would do so in 1979. See Wearing, L-Shaped Party, 204, and J.H. Pammett et al., “The Perception and Impact of Issues in the 1974 Federal Election,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 10 (1977): 94–126.

  35. Trudeau, Beyond Reason, 174–75.

  CHAPTER NINE: MID-TERM PROMISE

  1. Rebecca DiFilippo, “Margaret Trudeau: Bipolar Disorder Drove Her Despair, Fired Her Courage,” Moods, fall 2006, 49. See also “The Trudeaus Today: Margaret, Justin and Alexandre Unite to Share Heartfelt Memories and Discuss Their Humanitarian Achievements,” Hello, Sept. 7, 2006, 70–80. Ms. Trudeau publicly revealed her illness at a May 5, 2006, press conference at the Royal Ottawa Hospital. She told the press that she dealt with her mood swings secretly: “It was never talked about in those days and barely recognized, no matter what sector of society you lived in. And so, in the public eye and under public scrutiny, I tried to manage as best I could” (Ottawa Citizen, May 6, 2006). She also gave an extensive interview to Anne Kingston for a Maclean’s article (May 19, 2006). In that interview, Ms. Trudeau indicated that she had first been diagnosed with bipolar disease in 2000. Interview with Margaret Trudeau, June 2009.

  2. Margaret Trudeau, Beyond Reason (New York and London: Paddington Press, 1979), 166–67. Trudeau confirms this account in Pierre Trudeau, Memoirs (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993), 178–79. Trudeau’s campaign team was worried about the approach until Margaret’s presence began attracting favourable press. She jousted particularly with Ivan Head but liked some Trudeau assistants, notably Bob Murdoch, who had known Margaret and her family earlier. Interview with Margaret Trudeau, Feb. 2006; conversations with several members of the Trudeau campaign in 1974.

  3. Trudeau, Beyond Reason, 193; Anne Kingston interview, Maclean’s, May 19, 2006. The comment on the “tunnel of darkness” is from Ottawa Citizen, May 6, 2006.

  4. Trudeau, Beyond Reason, 166. Margaret’s depression after Sacha’s birth had a deep impact on Pierre, according to one story told by Peter C. Newman. Trudeau, accompanied by Stuart Hodgson, commissioner of the Northwest Territories, flew over the North Pole in the winter of 1974. Trudeau took over flying the plane as they passed over the Pole, and Hodgson made arrangements for him to speak to Margaret, who was in Ottawa. The Trudeau housekeeper answered an excited Trudeau. Then, Newman continues, Trudeau told Hodgson that Margaret would not speak with him, and he “sobbed.” Hodgson asked gently, “Why did you marry her?” “Because I love her, I truly love her,” Trudeau replied. Peter C. Newman, Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales of People, Passion, and Power (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2004), 337.

  5. Keith Davey, The Rainmaker: A Passion for Politics (Toronto: Stoddart, 1986), 165; Richard Gwyn, The Northern Magus: Pierre Trudeau and Canadians (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980), 186; Paul Litt, draft biography of John Turner; and conversation with John Turner, Sept. 2008. Turner would report regularly to Cabinet on his dealings with U.S. Treasury Secretary George Shultz. See Cabinet Conclusions, RG2, PCO, Series A-5-a, vol. 6422, Aug. 1, 1973.

  6. Mitchell Sharp, Which Reminds Me … : A Memoir (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 166; Davey, Rainmaker, 187; and numerous conversations with J.W. Pickersgill, 1974. I lived in Mr. Pickersgill’s house during the election campaign and heard his reports on Reisman, with whom he agreed in many respects.

  7. On Reisman and the election, see Christina McCall-Newman, Grits: An Intimate Portrait of the Liberal Party (Toronto: Macmillan, 1982), 223–25. Breton to Trudeau, Dec. 21, 1972, ABP, privately held.

  8. The Trudeau decision, which Turner questioned, is described in Cabinet Conclusions, RG2, Series A-5-a, vol. 6436, Nov. 14, 1974. See also Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall, The Heroic Delusion, vol. 2 of Trudeau and Our Times (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994), 112–14.

  9. J.T. Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs 1974 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 346ff.

  10. McLuhan to Trudeau, Aug. 14, 1973, with attachment, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 9, file 32, LAC (emphasis in original). McLuhan’s approach to inflation bears comparison with that of John Kenneth Galbraith, who influenced Trudeau’s thinking at this time. Galbraith emphasized the role of advertising in creating artificial needs and tried to understand the impact of communications. McLuhan related inflation to the new economy as he understood it: “In order to understand inflation in a world of instantaneous and universal information it is necessary to see the old hardware of products and prices as they now interface with the new hidden ground of worldwide and instant information. It is not only a new ball-game it is a new ball-park with new ground rules when the old industrial production of hardware technology is suddenly located inside an environment of simultaneous electric information. The phrase ‘making money’ came in at the beginning of the twentieth century along with ‘making news.’ Both are aspects of the same information process. At electric speed, time and space are greatly abridged, if not altogether eliminated” (emphasis in original).

  11. G. Bruce Doern and Glen Toner, The Politics of Energy: The Development and Implementation of the NEP (Toronto: Methuen, 1985), 88ff.; Cabinet Conclusions, RG2, Series A-5-a, vol. 6436, Jan. 17, 1974, LAC; and Tammy Nemeth, “Continental Drift: Canada-U.S. Oil and Gas Relations, 1958–1974” (PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2007), chap. 4.

  12. New York Times, July 10, 1974. Unemployment was a low 4.9 percent in June 1974, and Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1974 summarized the year as one in which “the Canadian economy performed reasonably well” (346).

  13. The statistics on divorce are from Canada Year Book, 1978–79 (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services, 1978), 167; those on abortion, from Statistics Canada: http://cansim2.statcan.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.pgm?regtkt=&C2Sub=HEALTH&ARRAYID=1069013&C2DB=&VEC=&LANG=E&SrchVer=&ChunkSize=&SDDSLOC=&ROO TDIR=CII/&RESULTTEMPLATE=CII/CII_PICK&ARRAY_PICK=1&SDDSID=&SDDSDESC. On Morgentaler, Trudeau, and Lang, see articles by Andrew Thompson and Otto Lang in The Hidden Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The Faith behind the Politics, ed. John English, Richard Gwyn, and P. Whitney Lackenbauer (Ottawa: Novalis, 2004). Cabinet responses to the Morgentaler decision can be seen in Cabinet Conclusions, RG2, Series A-5-a, vol. 6457, June 26 and July 3, 1975. Trudeau expressed concern that the overturning of the Morgentaler decision was leading to a questioning of the jury system.

  14. Canada, House of Commons Debates (14 July 1976). Capital punishment was retained for treason and military crimes, but it was removed from the Criminal Code and replaced by twenty-five-year mandatory sentences for first-degree murder (Globe and Mail, June 23, 1976). There is a full account of the debate in John Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs 1976 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 9–12. The Gwyn description and the Gallup poll results are contained in this account.

  15. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1979), 384–85, and National Security Advisers, Memoranda and Conversations, box 7, Gerald Ford, Kissinger, and Scowcroft, Dec. 3, 1974, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. See also Nixon presidential tapes, rmn e534a, July 6, 1971; rmn _625b, Nov. 10, 1971; rmn_629a, Dec. 11, 1971; and rmne759_10, Aug. 19, 1972. See the fine assessment of the relationship in Robert Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945–1984 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007), 314ff.

  16. Ivan Head and Pierre Trudeau, The Canadian Way: Shaping Canada’s Foreign Policy, 1968–1984 (Toronto: Mc
Clelland and Stewart, 1995), 39.

  17. In his study of parliamentary reform, Thomas Axworthy puts the Canadian situation within an international context. While deploring Trudeau’s famous remark about MPs being “nobodies” fifty yards from Parliament Hill, Axworthy credits Trudeau with several reforms: “There can be little doubt that the enduring parliamentary legacy of the Trudeau era is embedding the committee system and giving the government Standing Order 75-C for time allocation.” Everything Old Is New Again: Observations on Parliamentary Reform (Kingston: The Centre for the Study of Democracy, Queen’s University, 2008), 47.

  18. Stanfield is quoted in Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1974, 56–57. See also Matthew Hayday, Bilingual Today, United Tomorrow: Official Languages in Education and Canadian Federalism (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2005), 181. See especially chapter 3, where he discusses the period 1970–76.

  19. Peter Desbarats, “Future Canadians May Regard Trudeau as a Success,” Saturday Night, June 1975, 9–12.

  20. Claude Ryan, “The Three Doves Ten Years Later,” in The Trudeau Decade, ed. Rick Butler and Jean-Guy Carrier (Toronto: Doubleday, 1979), 290–91. [Originally published in French in Le Devoir, June 10, 1975.]

  21. George Radwanski, Trudeau (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), 345–46, 350. Radwanski’s last chapter is entitled “A Leader Unfulfilled.” He dates his introduction January 1978.

  22. Canada, House of Commons Debates (22 Jan. 1975); John Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs 1975 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 7, 87–88; Marchand to Trudeau, July 11, 1975, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 8, file 20, LAC; interviews with Marc Lalonde (Aug. 2007), Alexandre Trudeau (April 2007), Jacques Hébert (July 2007); and conversations with Pauline Bothwell. The comments on the hospital visit are in Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1975, 88. The police report on Marchand is found with Trudeau’s annotations in TP, MG 26 020, vol. 8, file 20, LAC. According to the police report there was a female companion with Marchand. Her presence was the apparent reason for his decision not to use the government chauffeur and for his erratic behaviour when he struck the other car.