Just Watch Me

by John English

  CHAPTER FIVE

  VICTORIA’S FAILURE

  Trudeau’s marriage to Margaret was a beacon of sunlight that broke through the bleak political winter of 1971 as criticism rose concerning the government’s handling of the economy and, belatedly, the invocation of the War Measures Act. The major item on the agenda for the spring was the Constitution, a subject that had thrust Trudeau into prominence when he first came to Ottawa but which had attracted less attention after his legendary confrontation with Quebec premier Daniel Johnson in February 1968. Johnson’s premature death, the weakness of his successor, Jean-Jacques Bertrand, and other political exigencies had since slowed progress on the constitutional file. Moreover, the federal government had chosen to concentrate instead on the Official Languages Act, a statute that dealt with the place of francophones in Confederation and with minority language rights more generally.* Like the Divorce Act, it was a federal statute that had considerable impact on provincial jurisdictions.

  When Trudeau entered public life in 1965, he did not see any advantage in “opening up” the Constitution, with its hoary and traditional problems of the division of powers between the federal and provincial governments. However, the Ontario Confederation of Tomorrow Conference in 1967, the powerful force of Quebec nationalism expressed by Johnson’s position of “equality” or “independence,” the expansion of the welfare state (which caused the federal government to intrude into traditional provincial realms), and the rapid changes in society’s view of what individual behaviour the state should prohibit all meant that the Constitution remained an active file in the late 1960s for provincial and federal public servants and an increasing number of academics. In hindsight, most political commentators today believe that Trudeau’s reform of the Canadian Constitution fundamentally altered Canada.

  The Confederation of Tomorrow Conference began a new era of political consultation, in which federal and provincial officials got together on a continuing basis and their political masters also met far more regularly than ever before. Mackenzie King had loathed gatherings of premiers and the federal government and kept them to a minimum, but Trudeau had laboured long in the area of constitutional law, and his views on federalism had attracted others to his political candidacy. He enjoyed the debates on the balance of powers between provinces and the federal government, which had been at the core of the increasing number of federal-provincial consultations in the sixties. Moreover, while justice minister, he had published under his own name a government statement entitled A Canadian Charter of Human Rights and, under Prime Minister Pearson’s name, Federalism for the Future. His campaign for the leadership caught fire after his confrontation with Quebec premier Daniel Johnson at a February 1968 federal-provincial conference. In another document published a year later, The Constitution and the People of Canada, Trudeau set out the federal position on constitutional change. He himself headed the federal-provincial relations committee of the Cabinet, which ensured its pre-eminence within the structure of government. Similarly, provincial governments, Quebec most impressively in the sixties, developed their own agencies to deal with the myriad problems and opportunities their relations with the federal government presented. Political scientist Richard Simeon described this development as the emergence of federal-provincial diplomacy, and a handful of acronyms emerged to describe the various agencies dealing with federal-provincial interaction.1

  These agencies and committees met continually, although only three provinces—Ontario, New Brunswick, and Quebec—were deeply interested in their work. But two events in 1970 reinvigorated interest in the constitutional file: the March appointment of Bora Laskin to the Supreme Court of Canada and the April election of the Liberals under Robert Bourassa in Quebec. Laskin was the pre-eminent constitutional theorist in English Canada, and his appointment indicated that Trudeau wanted to have a more activist court. Laskin’s biographer Philip Girard notes that, despite their very different origins, “the two men were similar in many ways. Both were intellectuals with a strong desire to shape their society, and both were missionaries of legal modernism…. Both saw greater protection for individual rights as an antidote to the outmoded claims of ethnic nationalism…. Both wanted the federal government to play a greater role in national life than it had previously done. Both rejected Quebec’s claim for constitutional recognition.” Girard concludes: “If Laskin had not existed in 1970, Trudeau would have had to invent him.”2

  Trudeau also played some role in “inventing” Robert Bourassa, if only because the alternatives as Liberal leader were less preferable. When this newcomer became premier, Trudeau initially “thought he was someone with whom we could make progress. He was a new man, a federalist, an economist with a clear mind, and a politician not particularly noted as a nationalist.”3 He was not ideal, but better than the alternatives. That was enough for fresh dreams to blossom that spring.

  Trudeau’s own views on the Constitution were complex and are often caricatured as strongly centralist. They were not. When Allan Gotlieb, an astute young lawyer in the Department of External Affairs, had his first lunch with Trudeau in 1965, he was surprised to hear him speak about the need for decentralization and about respect for provincial jurisdiction. He had similarly astonished and even angered many Quebec colleagues in the mid-fifties when he had opposed federal grants to universities, which many of them saw as the solution to their low salaries and their crushing domination by Duplessis and the Roman Catholic Church. Trudeau was not in favour of conditional grants to the provinces because he believed they skewed provincial needs and interfered with the provincial responsibility for education. Nevertheless, like Laskin, he was a progressive, as well as being a legal modernist, and he believed that the law could take the lead in establishing social and economic justice. Those instincts increasingly drew him toward the centre and the importance of federal government leadership.4

  The rapid expansion of the Canadian welfare state in the sixties, which had resulted from a series of challenges and responses between the federal and provincial governments, profoundly affected the balance of Canadian confederation. Trudeau, a Keynesian and an admirer of Scandinavian social democracy, believed that the federal government had a critical role to play in monetary and fiscal policy and in furthering the policies of equalization that had begun in 1957. He later wrote that he had sided with the provinces when he thought their jurisdictions had been infringed upon and with the federal government when its authority had been greatly diminished. Now, he argued, the provinces had achieved dramatic gains in resources because of equalization and the transfer of income-tax points, but “the feast had only made the provinces hungrier. Having outstripped the federal government in budgetary resources, they began looking for ways to outstrip it in constitutional jurisdictions as well.” Most provinces disagreed, of course. As in so many other areas, the sixties shattered the fabric of Canadian federal-provincial relations.5

  After Bourassa took office, Trudeau sent his senior aide Marc Lalonde and Gordon Robertson, the Cabinet secretary, to Quebec City to discover what his “bottom line” should be on constitutional reforms, and they had a series of meetings with Julien Chouinard, the Quebec Cabinet secretary, and his staff. Chouinard was a federalist and eager himself to reach an agreement. At a September meeting, the first ministers (as the political leaders now dubbed themselves) agreed that progress could be made, and they accepted Premier W.A.C. “Wacky” Bennett’s invitation to meet in Victoria in June 1971 to celebrate British Columbia’s entry into confederation. But in Trudeau’s words, the real “breakthrough” came in February, when the premiers agreed to patriate the Constitution and proceed “with such other changes as can be agreed upon quickly.” Most important was the amending formula, whereby any province “now containing at least 25 per cent of the population of Canada” could block any amendment. Quebec and Ontario had gained a perpetual veto.6

  Between February and June, officials worked out further details. Trudeau himself received and accepted advice
in May that he spend much more time in Quebec and less in his Ottawa office.7 The negotiations seemed to go well, and provisions were made for representation in the Commons, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. However, social policy and, in particular, the financing and operation of social programs, became the intractable difficulty. Trudeau was willing to “dovetail” federal and provincial social policy, but he insisted that the policies of the federal and provincial governments should not be incompatible and that the federal government had a role to play in ensuring equality of programs across Canada. A particular problem was the general social allowances plan—in effect, a guaranteed annual income. Claude Castonguay, the Quebec minister responsible for social welfare, tenaciously advanced these plans, but in a way that, to federal officials, cut Ottawa off from direct contact with citizens—and, of course, voters.8 Still, hopes billowed after the February meeting.

  John Turner, the minister of justice, flew from capital to capital testing the “bottom line” of each premier and stitching together the draft of a potential agreement. All proceeded well until May 31 in Quebec City, when Castonguay asked for revisions in section 94A of the British North America Act—the responsibility of the federal government for family allowances, unemployment insurance, and labour training. Turner, Robertson, Lalonde, and Trudeau recognized the danger immediately: the revisions threatened the agreement that had been hammered out among the other provinces in the draft charter.

  Trudeau was intense and anxious when he and Margaret flew with Gordon and Bea Robertson to Victoria in mid-June for the Victoria Conference. Pierre and Margaret wore T-shirts and jeans with their bare feet in sandals, and to Robertson’s amazement, Trudeau became so totally engrossed in his briefing books during the flight that he was oblivious to Margaret’s bare feet caressing his own. To their delight, she was already three months pregnant with their first child. His impressive concentration prepared him well for the four long days of discussion in a circus atmosphere presided over by Premier Bennett. The serious meetings were in camera, and Bennett contributed little as Trudeau and Bourassa focused on the revised section dealing with social policy, where Quebec insisted on provincial primacy and the right to federal funding for programs administered by the province. Only this issue remained when Trudeau met the press in the early morning of June 17, his eyes lined with fatigue, a yellow daisy drooping in his lapel. All the provinces had agreed to a basic charter of rights, guarantees of three Quebec justices on the Supreme Court, the recognition of French and English as official languages, and most significantly, the amending formula allowing a veto for Quebec. Before the deal could be signed, however, Bourassa asked for leave to consult his Cabinet about the social policy items and promised an answer within two weeks. For Trudeau, this almost unanimous agreement was a major accomplishment, won by “blood, sweat, and tears.” It would not satisfy everyone, but the new Constitution would be, “in the view of all of us, to the benefit of the Canadian people.” Once final approval was given by Bourassa and a few others after consulting their Cabinets, Trudeau exulted, “we’ll all wear a crown of laurels.” His enthusiasm was not contagious.9

  Laurels became thorns when Bourassa returned to Quebec to face withering attacks on the new Constitution. On June 22 Claude Ryan wrote in Le Devoir that acceptance would be, for Quebec, “une fraude tragique.” Bourassa met his Cabinet that same day and, at two o’clock the following afternoon, announced that Quebec would not sign the Victoria Charter. The province, he stated, demanded more control over the federally funded social programs. He had called Trudeau that morning, saying that he couldn’t sell the deal and that Ryan was threatening to write a series of editorials arguing that Bourassa had given up Quebec’s “bargaining power.” Furious, Trudeau slammed down the phone, and in the years to come, he never forgave Bourassa. Turner told a friend they were “all a little shell shocked.” After making his public announcement, Bourassa entered the National Assembly and all the members, federalist and separatist, rose and applauded. Meanwhile, Ryan mocked Trudeau in Le Devoir, saying that “the student he thought he had found in Quebec City is less meek than he appeared.”10

  The collapse of the “house of cards” built at Victoria was but the first indication of the unravelling of Trudeau’s vision of federalism. The Globe and Mail reflected the anger of English Canada in a biting editorial alleging that “Quebec Premiers do not come to the bargaining table to bargain but to demand, to tell the rest of Canada, ‘I deliver the pattern of the future and you abide by it.’” In the past, the Globe claimed, it had supported decentralization as compensation for past wrongs, but no more.11

  Trudeau and Bourassa were civil in their public responses to the failure of the Victoria Charter, and privately both leaders tried to determine whether there was any chance of rescuing it. Bourassa certainly had major hurdles in Quebec: the press and the public service were vehement in their demands before and after the conference. Moreover, separatism, federalism, and socialism intersected prominently in the social policy issues. In June, for example, La Corporation des enseignants du Québec linked independence with socialism, arguing with some merit that the goals of a socialist society could be better achieved through an independent Quebec state, freed of the political and judicial restraints imposed by a national government that was not socialist. The Parti Québécois similarly made socialism a fundamental part of its political program. More conservative nationalists rejected this logic but accepted the primacy of the government in Quebec City over the one in Ottawa. During the remainder of the summer, Bourassa tried to deal with individual issues one by one, beginning with family allowances. “If Ottawa rejects this proposition, it means it wants a unitary federalism, a rigid federalism”—and that, he said, Quebec could not accept. “If war is necessary, I will make war.”12

  In Ottawa there were also rumblings of war. Constitutional specialist Jean Beetz, who was close to Trudeau and Lalonde, called for a firmer federalist stand against “les grands feudataires” of the provinces—particularly Bennett, who had demanded equal weight for British Columbia against Quebec and Ontario; William Davis, the new Ontario premier, who nervously avoided any constitutional commitment to bilingualism that would affect his province’s school system; and Bourassa, who refused to grant the federal government primacy in the field of international affairs while at the same time demanding provincial paramountcy in all areas of social policy. John Munro, the federal minister of health, continued to work with Claude Castonguay on the family allowance question. At times they seemed near an agreement, particularly when, in March 1972, the federal government proposed a compromise permitting the provinces to decide who should receive family allowances within their jurisdictions. Trudeau argued that this would “meet the basic requirements necessary for the government of Quebec to establish the integrated system of family allowances that it wishes to introduce.” However, Quebec’s anger about a federal pension increase and Ottawa’s frustration with Quebec’s own decision to break away from the Canada Pension Plan undermined the negotiations. Beetz urged Trudeau to patriate the Constitution unilaterally after the next election and to proclaim his intention during the campaign, “to capture public opinion.” Trudeau underlined these words in Beetz’s memorandum, though he kept silent during the fall election campaign. The thought lingered, however.13

  Critics, notably the senior Quebec civil servant Claude Morin, have charged that Trudeau was too rigid in his dealing with Bourassa and that the process which had begun well in the sixties but collapsed in Victoria in 1971 was Trudeau’s failure:

  The Quebec choice and membership in the Canadian federal system as we know it are henceforth irreconcilable objectives. The two could co-exist in the past, since federal and Quebec powers were less in contact. Today they overlap; tomorrow they will overlap more. In a country with federal and provincial governments the effective performance of government and the welfare of the citizens require … that there be only one political institution with the decisive legislative and admini
strative power, and that the authority of this power be unchallengeable. Otherwise, if both orders have comparable powers … [they cancel] one another out in ceaseless bickering…. [I]t would be totally deceptive in such a case … to place our faith in consultation and co-ordination.14

  The logic of this argument led Morin to take the “Quebec choice” in 1972 and join the Parti Québécois. The polarization he has described here occurred rapidly as the Union nationale and the Créditiste parties weakened and the choice for Quebec voters was, starkly, between the Liberals and the Parti Québécois.15

  Trudeau welcomed the division for the clarity it brought to the separatist/nationalist demands, and recent research has proved that the impact of the family allowance payments on individuals was rarely the major issue in the actual debate in 1971. What mattered, rather, was power—whether the federal or the provincial government had primacy.16 Fundamentally, in Trudeau’s eyes, the debate concerned the nature of federalism and whether Quebec’s sociological and historical differences required legal and constitutional expression. As he wrote in his memoirs: “The Castonguay proposal meant that the federal government would become just an institution to raise taxes, but it would never have any direct relations with the citizens of Quebec. If we had agreed, I saw this as the beginning of a trend in which, eventually, other provinces would want to do the same thing and the government of Canada would end up being the tax collector for a confederation of shopping centres.”17