by Denis Smith
According to Donald Fleming, the prime minister preferred to call a spring election without a budget. That would allow the cabinet to authorize patronage spending without any attempt to place it within a framework of fiscal policy – and would send the deficit skyrocketing for another year. Fleming argued with his usual passion for a budget, made his preparations, and at last got it in early April; but his appeals for spending restraint were unavailing. In late March and early April the ministry announced new federal loans for New Brunswick power projects, credits to China for additional grain purchases, new acreage payments for wheat farmers, extended freight rate reductions, more generous unemployment insurance payments, wider Maritime coal subsidies, and a frigate construction program for the Canadian navy. The throne speech had also promised increases in old age and disability pensions. The budget, on April 10, estimated a $745 million deficit despite what Fleming foresaw as a period of “rapid economic growth.” The press represented this as a modest victory for Fleming against the “big spenders.” Since the prime minister had ordered Fleming to deliver his speech in one hour, he was obliged to omit large parts of the text, to deliver the rest at breathless pace, and to ask the House for extra time. He finished at 9:50 in the evening – fifty minutes over the prime minister’s allowance – leaving Mike Pearson just ten minutes to reply. That was all he received, since the House never returned to the budget debate. One week later, after revealing the cabinet’s decision to build a causeway from the mainland to Prince Edward Island, Diefenbaker announced the dissolution of parliament for an election on June 18, 1962. The parliamentary reporter of the Montreal Star summed up the whole twenty-fourth parliament as “sometimes aimless, often ill-tempered, and always potentially explosive. Few will mourn its passing.”31
THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY, WHICH HAD FLOATED THROUGH THE MIRACLE-WORKING campaign of 1958, had lost its enchantment with the leader. On Diefenbaker’s suggestion, Allister Grosart called a meeting of key party organizers at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal in the early winter of 1962 to discuss electoral prospects. He was shocked to hear from them that, in Dalton Camp’s words, “the game was over … we’d probably lose the next election, or we’d take an awful pounding.” Diefenbaker, they said, was a liability and should be kept off television. Other ministers should be out on the road to turn the focus away from the prime minister. The dissatisfactions spilled out all day as Grosart recorded their complaints and challenged their judgments. By evening he too was a casualty: the meeting marked “the absolute end of any confidence in Allister … they didn’t believe in him and they didn’t believe he was in touch with reality and they didn’t think either that he would do anything about what they were telling him, or that he’d have any power or influence to do anything.” The day ended in a drunken banquet at which Grosart, the wine expert, tossed the first empty bottle over his shoulder to shatter on the floor behind him, as everyone sought unhappy oblivion in alcohol.32
Diefenbaker preferred not to believe the pessimistic reports. He wrote to Elmer on March 23 that polls showing Conservative support at 21 percent in the west, Liberal support at 25 percent, and 39 percent of electors undecided were wrong. “Our members in the House are very enthusiastic and are anxious for an election and certainly would not be in that state of mind if the polls mean anything. They were so far astray in 1957 and 1958, and I haven’t been advised of anything that would bear out the reports that are being given in this connection.”33 The people wanted an election, he believed. It would be “a tremendous battle,” he told another correspondent, not because his government deserved criticism, but because the air was full of Liberal propaganda. “There will be no limit to opposition attacks, however unfair … it has become regular procedure.”34
In response, Diefenbaker, on the encouragement of several supporters, was developing a campaign of attack that would cover both the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party. The election, he said, would be a battle between free enterprise and socialism. Diefenbaker had tried out the theme in a March 1961 speech that prompted an angry response from his friendly nemesis Eugene Forsey of the Canadian Labour Congress. “Frankly,” Forsey wrote, “that speech dismayed me … I don’t think you are doing yourself or your government justice. You are making it appear that your main concern is a doctrinaire devotion to an abstract theory called ‘free enterprise,’ to which you are prepared to sacrifice almost anything; whereas it seems to me that, on the contrary, you have tackled unemployment and other problems without any such doctrinaire preconceptions, but in the traditional Conservative spirit: pragmatic, empirical, common sense, down to earth, looking for the best practical solution, whether it involves more government interference or less, more public enterprise or less.”35 Diefenbaker drafted a reply suggesting that Forsey must have momentarily lost his calm detachment out of commitment to “the socialist party.” But he thought better and did not send it.
Nevertheless the theme still appealed to him. It would allow Diefenbaker to remind voters of his 1960 United Nations speech attacking Soviet communism and imperialism; it would identify the NDP as the party of regimentation; and by free association it would link a group of prominent new Liberal candidates and advisers with the wartime Liberal regime that had “paralysed Parliament and interfered with the rights of the provinces.” It would even, at its nastiest, allow the prime minister to suggest cryptically that “softness on communism” was not something that Pearson should risk discussing. Diefenbaker tried out the broadened theme during the throne speech debate of January 1962, and he used it intermittently during the election campaign, when it ran as a discordant background melody.36
The officially advertised party program was more constructive. It was partly the product of Leslie Frost and Oakley Dalgleish’s outline of incentives to business, and partly of a draft prepared in 1961 by an informal committee under Alvin Hamilton’s direction. “To be believable,” Hamilton told Diefenbaker, “it mentions what has been done on the first stage of the national development program. To appeal to the emotions, it speaks of the principles which guide the government. To build enthusiasm for the future, it outlines the eleven point program.” The program promised a range of incentives and benefits, most of them previously announced, that marked a new scale of bidding for the popular vote out of public funds. It was matched by an equally bountiful Liberal platform. The bidding war would continue for the next twenty years.37
The prime minister’s campaign, like his previous ones, saw him crisscross the country by plane, train, and car, touching Newfoundland and British Columbia once, the Maritime provinces twice, the prairies three times, Quebec four times, and Ontario five times, usually arriving back in Ottawa overnight on Saturdays for a single day at home between weekly journeys. There were major rallies in London, Edmonton, Victoria, Vancouver, Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, and Hamilton, and many visits to small town and rural constituencies where the party counted on fervent loyalty to the Chief.38
With none of Diefenbaker’s magnetism on the platform, Pearson took the advice of his American pollster, Lou Harris, to emphasize the Liberal team. Still, the iron law of parliamentary campaigns thrust him willy-nilly into personal battle with the prime minister. Pearson opened his campaign in Charlottetown at the end of April by challenging Diefenbaker to a television debate on the Kennedy-Nixon model. Diefenbaker scoffed and turned him down. As he had told Eisenhower in September 1960, “Why advertise your political opposition?”
Diefenbaker was incensed that someone else was doing that. Early in May, President Kennedy hosted a White House dinner for Nobel Prize winners from the Western hemisphere, at which Pearson was one of the honoured guests. In Diefenbaker’s eyes that was bad enough, but Kennedy compounded the crime in what was reported as a forty-minute private conversation with the Canadian opposition leader before the reception. Pearson told the press that they had discussed many subjects, including disarmament, NATO, and Britain’s application to the Common Market. When the departing American ambassad
or to Canada, Livingston Merchant, arranged what he thought would be a fifteen-minute appointment with Diefenbaker at his Sussex Drive residence to offer his farewell on May 4, he walked unwittingly into a hurricane. The meeting resulted in a flurry of tough talk in Washington and the threat of a major diplomatic incident.39
Robinson warned Merchant before the interview that Diefenbaker “was in an extremely agitated frame of mind” over the political use Pearson had made of his meeting with Kennedy. Despite the warning, Merchant was unprepared for Diefenbaker’s “disturbed and disturbing attitude.” What he heard was a two-hour “tirade” in which “the exchanges, while personally friendly, became heated.” Kennedy’s personal meeting with Pearson, the prime minister said, was “an intervention by the President in the Canadian election.” Pearson’s associates would be bound to use the meeting as evidence of Kennedy’s trust in Pearson: Walter Gordon had already done so the previous evening.
Diefenbaker added that he was “shocked” that Kennedy wished to get rid of Commonwealth preferences, and accused the Americans of thinking they “could achieve this by supporting Pearson who was prepared to accept without argument Britain’s unconditional entrance into the European Common Market.”
The Prime Minister then went on to say that Canada-United States relations would now be the dominant issue in the campaign. He said the campaigning would be more bitter than it was in 1911 and he referred to Champ Clark’s statement during the course of that campaign which it took the Canadians until 1917 to recover from. (According to my recollection, Champ Clark who was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, said publicly something along the line that it was inevitable that the United States should annex Canada. The basic issue of that campaign was the question of a reciprocal trade agreement with the United States and the outcome of the campaign was won and lost on the slogan of the Conservatives, “No truck or trade with the Yankees.”)
In his fury, Diefenbaker said he would have to confront the Liberal line head on – the claim that Pearson could better handle relations with Washington. “He thought he would probably be forced into this by the middle of or end of next week.”
In countering the Liberal line, he said he would publicly produce a document which he has had locked up in his private safe since a few days after the President’s visit to Ottawa last May. This document he says is the original of a memorandum on White House stationery, addressed to the President from Walt Rostow and initialled by the latter, which is headed “Objectives of the President’s Visit to Ottawa.” The Prime Minister says that the memorandum starts:
“1. The Canadians must be pushed into joining the OAS.
“2. The Canadians must be pushed into something else…
“3. The Canadians must be pushed in another direction …”
Diefenbaker told him, falsely, “that this document came into his possession a few days after the president left, through External Affairs, under circumstances with which he was not familiar, but his understanding was that it had been given by someone to External Affairs.” This authoritative evidence of the American intention to push Canada, Diefenbaker told Merchant, “would be used by him to demonstrate that he, himself, was the only leader capable of preventing United States domination of Canada.” The prime minister added that an investigation was under way to determine whether “some Liberal supporter of Pearson” in the Canadian Embassy in Washington had set up the interview with Kennedy. The incident, Diefenbaker said, would “blow our relations sky high.”
Merchant reported that Diefenbaker was tired by an overnight flight from Newfoundland, where he had experienced “an exhausting and frustrating whistle-stop campaign,” and that he was uneasy about his keynote address planned for that evening in London, Ontario. “He was excited to a degree disturbing in a leader of an important country, and closer to hysteria than I have seen him, except on one other possible occasion.” Merchant felt that Olive was concerned about his state: She was “hovering over him when I arrived and obviously doing the same when I chatted with the two of them for about ten minutes before departure.”
Merchant attempted a response, and reported that Diefenbaker was “willing to hear me out.” He told the prime minister there was no reason to criticize Kennedy for taking the occasion to discuss international affairs with a prominent Canadian visitor. “It was childish to assume that this constituted any effort or intent to intervene in Canadian domestic politics.” He offered his word that the US administration had no favourite party in Canada, and assured him of the president’s great personal respect. But he implied that Diefenbaker was lying about how he had obtained the document, and delivered a stern diplomatic warning. “I urged him in strongest terms to discard any thought of revealing publicly the document which he said he had in his possession. I said that I had never seen or heard of it and that it was not conceivable to me that if such a memorandum were genuine, it could have been transmitted officially or unofficially to anyone in the Canadian Government.” If the document was genuine, it was confidential advice to the president which “had no official status and was not intended for Canadian eyes. Moreover, I said that were he to reveal it publicly, there would be a serious backlash, if not in Canada, then certainly in the United States. People would ask how the Prime Minister had come into possession of such a privileged internal document addressed to the President of the United States, and why it had not been immediately returned, without comment or publicity.”
Merchant felt he had made an impression on Diefenbaker, but could not be sure whether the prime minister would refrain from using the Rostow memorandum in the campaign. He had known Diefenbaker, at other times, to be agitated “only to find that two or three days later the storm had passed. On this occasion, however, his only assurance as I left, was that he would not raise this issue tonight, and in fact, he said half jokingly… that he would not bring it up until I had left Canada, since, as he said, it would be up to another American Ambassador to pick up the pieces and he didn’t want to spoil my last few days in Ottawa.”
The ambassador concluded: “We have a problem.” At best, having blown his top, Diefenbaker would think again and act responsibly. “It is necessary, however,” he advised, “that we take out any available insurance against the worst.”
Merchant told George Ball that there was nothing to gain by interference in Canadian elections, or in the appearance of doing so. A successful intervention would label the winner as “a running dog of the United States” who would be “inhibited from acting along lines agreeable to us.” After an unsuccessful intervention, “the winner would hate us.” Since appearances had now given Pearson an advantage, he suggested some balancing gesture in Diefenbaker’s favour, such as a quickly staged and informal meeting between Kennedy and Diefenbaker, arranged at the president’s initiative.
As Merchant intended, this message was conveyed at once to the president. Kennedy’s national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, gave detailed instructions to Ball on a response, and Ball passed these on to Merchant on May 8, along with a copy of the original Rostow memorandum.40 In a footnote for Merchant’s information only, Ball said tartly that Kennedy had “no intention or desire” for an early meeting with Diefenbaker. The prime minister was on the campaign trail in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta during the week, so Merchant asked to see him as soon as he returned to Ottawa on Saturday, May 12. Merchant hoped that “the cryptic nature of my message will exert restraint on him,” although Diefenbaker had threatened “at some Quebec whistle-stop last night” to discuss the subject of a Canadian-made foreign policy later in the campaign.41 While awaiting Diefenbaker’s return, Merchant met with Robinson and conveyed Washington’s concern about the general course of Canadian policy and the prime minister’s “tirade.” He told Robinson he had a message from Kennedy which, he hoped, “would have a restraining effect.” Robinson, who was now due to be posted to the Canadian Embassy in Washington, left the meeting “overwhelmed by the size of the problem of explaining Cana
dian policy in Washington, especially on defence.”42
Diefenbaker received Merchant at home on Saturday evening. The ambassador’s instructions called for a coy diplomatic dance, which he performed. Afterwards, he reported the interview by telegram to Washington.
I opened by saying I had delayed my departure by reason my grave and growing concern over our talk on May 4. I said I had not reported to the President his stated intent to reveal in present campaign his possession of confidential document of the President presenting advice of member his personal staff. I said I had only reported to the Department his belief Pearson intended capitalize in campaign on private conversation with the President on Nobel Prize occasion which I said had been informal twenty-minute chat in advance of formal dinner. Then I said I had independently obtained copy Walt Rostow’s memo which I found unexceptionable and concerning four subjects which had been frequently discussed and regarding which I had thought PM’s personal attitude favorable. Verb “push” I said corresponded to British “press” or Canadian phrase “seek to persuade.”
