Just Watch Me

by John English

  The most striking change was the appointment of Allan MacEachen to the Department of External Affairs to replace Mitchell Sharp. MacEachen had been perhaps the most brilliant House leader in Canadian history and a superb constituency politician in his native Cape Breton, and External Affairs initially seemed an odd choice for him. However, he had studied economics at MIT, and he represented the party’s left and internationalist tradition, one that Trudeau was finding increasingly attractive.

  Two changes occurred at this time that had a profound influence on Canadian foreign policy over the next few years. First, Trudeau was no longer preoccupied with domestic political matters. The immediate threat of separatism receded after the October Crisis, and following the overwhelming victory of the Bourassa Liberals in the 1973 Quebec election, Trudeau extended his gaze to international affairs and the significance of what he could achieve there for Canada. In this respect Trudeau was similar to many other Canadian political leaders who find foreign affairs especially alluring as their tenure lengthens.24 Second, the times seemed propitious for Canada to be “a foremost power” with a foreign policy to match. Trudeau now wanted Canada to be at the centre of the swirl of events surrounding the crises of the mid-1970s—and even more significantly, others agreed. The energy shock and its profound impact on the international economic system, the world food crisis and the appalling evidence of its effects, and the stunning resignation of an American president facing impeachment all forced Americans and other Western nations to cooperate as they had not done since the early years of the Cold War. Moreover, for Trudeau, the international world was more congenial now that Charles de Gaulle was dead, Gerald Ford was in the White House, and Harold Wilson had regained office in Britain. He was finally ready to become a “citizen of the world” representing Canada.

  Just at this time, however, the weaknesses in Washington presented new challenges for Canada, including the expanding European Common Market (ECM) and an increasingly wealthy Japan. In response the new government dusted off the vague concept of a “third option” between East and West that it had conceived earlier and, in the fall of 1974, began negotiations for a “contractual link” with the Europeans and the Japanese.25

  The Common Market had added three new members in 1972, most significantly the United Kingdom. In British eyes, Trudeau, unlike John Diefenbaker a decade earlier, had behaved admirably as Britain took steps to enter the union. Trudeau told Peter Hayman, the British high commissioner in Canada, that “he considered [that] Britain dealt generously with Canadian problems during the negotiations.” Some Canadian officials admitted that the British entry into the market was “helpful” to Canada in “making her sit up and take notice about her own world trading position.” Certainly it seemed to affect Trudeau that way. With Kissinger declaring 1973 “the year of Europe,” Trudeau conferred with Ivan Head and Michel Dupuy, a senior External Affairs official, about the direction Canada should take in its foreign policy. They both urged a direct approach to Europe itself.26

  If reason and some traditional affection led to Europe, passion attracted Trudeau to the developing world. In his only campaign speech on foreign policy, he expressed his hope that Canada’s role in the world would be judged solely by “its humanism, its pursuit of social justice.” Earlier, on his 1973 China trip, he had said that “national greatness is measured not in terms of martial grandeur or even economic accomplishment but in terms of individual welfare and human dignity.”27 Trudeau was not alone in this interest. The energy crisis and, in particular, the surprising success of OPEC in creating a cartel combined with the world food crisis to focus international attention on development issues. The developing countries had formed a “G77” caucus within the United Nations, whose voice became significantly louder there and in other gatherings. It called for a New International Economic Order, which would create a major restructuring of international economic relations.28 Trudeau shared their concern about inequalities and what came to be called the North-South divide. After appointing MacEachen, he wrote a long letter to his new minister, emphasizing that he should take a leading role in expressing Canadian “concern about the widespread inequalities found in the world.” Trudeau had changed his mind since 1968: Canada could no longer act only at the fringes. Its voice must now be heard at the centre, where the major decisions affecting the “widespread inequalities” occurred.29

  Unfortunately for Trudeau and MacEachen, the Department of External Affairs was not the powerful ministry Lester Pearson had led in the fifties. Time and Trudeau’s own antipathy to the department had taken their toll. In the late sixties the department faced budget cuts and the transfer of some of its finest officers, including Allan Gotlieb and Basil Robinson, to other, domestic departments. Then, when the talented Ed Ritchie, the under-secretary of state for external affairs in the early seventies, had a stroke just after the 1974 election, his loss diminished the department’s voice even more at the Ottawa table. External Affairs greatly resented the role that Trudeau had given to Ivan Head, who not only carried out special missions for Trudeau, where he dealt with senior officials and politicians abroad, but also requested that departmental officers assist him in his tasks. With Sharp’s departure, Trudeau realized that the department must regain its confidence if Canada was to play a larger role on the international stage. He therefore appointed Robinson to replace Ritchie.30 But when Robinson tried to assert the department’s authority in foreign relations, Head resisted and even dismissed an External Affairs representative in his office, fearing he was “a spy” for the department. Obviously, External Affairs was no longer the central agency dominating Canada’s relations with the world, and it struggled to keep up with a prime minister who had finally developed a taste for internationalism.31

  Trudeau realized that he would have to make frequent trips to Europe and Japan before he could negotiate the contractual link he wanted with these countries. He took advantage of these occasions to raise two principal issues with his hosts: the new international economic order and nuclear non-proliferation. He was enraged in 1974 when India exploded an atomic device, made possible by Canadian development assistance in the 1950s and 1960s, and claimed that the bomb was for peaceful purposes and, for that reason, not in breach of the 1970 non-proliferation treaty. Canadian-Indian relations were soured for decades by this nuclear explosion.

  Trudeau’s visit to Denmark in May 1975 was typical of his discussions at this time. When he met Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen, they talked about Arctic cooperation and the inevitable fisheries disputes. Trudeau then spoke of the rise of the European Economic Community (EEC), which had evolved from the European Common Market, and its impact on Canada: “As the European community develops it is Canada’s wish that the countries involved should understand Canada’s desire to cooperate with the community and to establish links with it,” he said. “Sometimes Canada is regarded as just a part of the United States. This, of course, is not true, and we have our own separate and distinct interests. We have our own nuclear reactor.” Trudeau then spoke at greater length on the “new economic order” and Canada’s desire “to ensure that the world economic system brings greater economic justice to the developing world.”32 As he did elsewhere, he referred to his experience with the Commonwealth as a model for a broader collaboration between developed and less developed countries. The Commonwealth, to which Trudeau was initially indifferent if not hostile, had captured his interest because of its collaborative approach to North-South interests.33

  After much discussion, Trudeau turned to nuclear questions, where “the Commonwealth Conference had not been encouraging.” There, he said, many nations “see the control of nuclear proliferation as an example of the white races trying to keep secrets from the brown and black peoples.” There was even “admiration for India.” To Trudeau’s surprise, Jørgensen accepted India’s claim that the explosion was for peaceful purposes. Trudeau responded sarcastically: “If it had been South Africa, would you believe them?”—and ended by
making “it quite clear that the Canadian Government believes in and supports” NATO. There had been divided opinion some years before, he admitted, but opposition had now disappeared.34 In all these visits, Trudeau gained support for the contractual link, though the discussions did not define what that link might mean or, concretely, what it would grant to Canada beyond any gains realized in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in the Tokyo Round negotiations.

  Trudeau’s attempts to expand Canada’s interest beyond the United States were supported when he was honoured with the freedom of the City of London, and the speech he presented at Mansion House reflected not only his far-ranging education and experience but the influence of his good friends Marshall McLuhan, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. The occasion, he began, bore significance because it occurred in Britain, where “the concept of freedom has been so debated, its meaning so extended, its practice so protected.” Now humanity must move on from the established “freedoms of” to the “freedoms from”: want, hunger, disease, nuclear holocaust, and environmental degradation.

  And we find that this struggle is more complex, more awkward, and more wide-ranging than we had thought possible…. What involves us today is a struggle of far greater proportions yet with far fewer handles for men and women to grasp. It is not the absence from the scene of a Pitt or a Churchill that causes men and women to wonder in what direction humanity is pointed; it is the nature of the adversary. More than eloquence and more than leadership is required to come to grips with monetary imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, and environmental pollution…. Yet these struggles are the essence of life on this planet today. They are not struggles that can be confined to a law court or a battlefield or a House of Commons; they require institutions and regimes of immense dimensions and novel attributes; they call—in the final analysis—for worldwide cooperation, for they demand that we struggle not against other human beings but with other human beings. They demand a common cause of humanity.

  There must be a new balance, Trudeau stated—“nothing less than an acceptable distribution of the world’s wealth.” To achieve this “global ethic” in a “global village,” all “are accountable.” “None of us can escape the burden of our responsibility. None of us can escape the tragedy of any failure. Nor, happily, will anyone escape the benefit, the joy, the satisfaction—the freedom—which will accompany the discharge of that responsibility.”35

  Ivan Head, Trudeau’s foreign policy adviser, was an idealist; Henry Kissinger, Ford’s foreign policy adviser, was a realist. Trudeau, pragmatically, could be both, and in 1975 Kissinger’s interests and Trudeau’s values and interests converged. Ironically, Canadian and American bilateral issues, particularly in energy, culture, and investment, had become more difficult. Kissinger, however, cared little for the minutiae of Canadian-American relations and focused instead on Canada’s role on the world stage. There he saw a performance of which he approved. Canadian skill could augment America’s strength at a time when the behemoth staggered. When Kissinger met Canadian officials in Washington in March 1975, he “found little to cheer about” on the international scene. He was unusually subdued as he proceeded “from one gloomy prognostication to another.” The Middle East was “a god dam mess,” and the Israelis were to blame for the failure of his latest efforts to achieve a settlement in the aftermath of the 1973 war. He told the Canadians that his officials sometimes became exasperated with the Canadians and recommended strong reactions against Canada, “but he did not do so because he felt that problems would solve themselves and this was almost always right.”

  Having calmed Canadian fears about bilateral problems, Kissinger asked MacEachen whether he could approach Israel “to urge it to adopt a more flexible attitude.”36 Earlier, a United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders had been scheduled to be held in Toronto, and Canada was now debating whether to permit it to go ahead. A U.N. vote in 1974 meant that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) could attend the conference, and Canada had consistently expressed strong opposition to the terrorist tactics of the organization. A few days before the meeting with Kissinger, MacEachen had condemned a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv “in the strongest possible terms.” There was, he declared, “no possible excuse for sheer terrorism which results in cold-blooded murder of innocents.” Regardless, he and his department believed that Canada could not refuse entry to the PLO representatives, but within the Cabinet, Barney Danson spoke for Jewish leaders who called on Canada to deny entry to the PLO. Ontario Premier William Davis, with the support of Liberal leader Robert Nixon and NDP leader Stephen Lewis, publicly called for cancellation of the Toronto conference. However, Senator Ray Perrault, British Columbia’s representative in the Cabinet, pointed out that cancellation of the conference would surely mean that a 1976 Vancouver conference on human settlements would face the same fate. The Cabinet thus agreed to condemn the Palestinians, conciliate the Jewish groups, and announce that PLO representatives would be admitted on an individual basis.

  Then, at a Cabinet meeting on July 10, Trudeau abruptly announced that “after much reflection, he … had reached the stage where he was not prepared to tolerate future violence.” He would “prefer the support of the Canadian people than admiration from certain international quarters,” and Canada would deny entry to the PLO. There was an angry discussion on all fronts, with some ministers pointing out that the United States had condemned Palestinian terrorism but had not condemned harsh Israeli retaliation. The Vancouver conference, others warned, would surely be a casualty, and even the 1976 Montreal Olympics could be threatened. Trudeau, who loathed terrorism, stood firm and said he was prepared to “accept the consequences of such a decision.” Moreover, the decision should be a wake-up call to the United Nations, “where questions of substance were increasingly being sacrificed to political issues.” MacEachen then met with the U.N. Secretary-General to request that the conference be postponed. The U.N. refused—and in short order, the conference took place in Geneva.37

  In their foreign policy memoir, neither Trudeau nor Head mentions this decision, though it attracted enormous attention, and astonishingly, they make only four brief references to “Israel,” three to the “Middle East,” and none to the Palestinians. Trudeau had disliked the United Nations ever since he had served as part of the Canadian delegation in 1966. The General Assembly’s raucous debates in the seventies and, in particular, its condemnation of Zionism as racism confirmed his low opinion of the organization. His aversion to terrorism intensified during the 1970s after the October Crisis and the rise of urban terrorism in Europe, as exemplified in the Baader-Meinhof gang and in the PLO massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

  Like the European left, generally, Trudeau admired Israel. He had done so since his visit in the late 1940s, when he saw Israeli desertlands transformed into lush orchards and green fields. He admired Israeli pluck, the egalitarian kibbutz, and the social democratic principles of the Israeli Labour governments of the postwar era. These beliefs were welcomed in his Mount Royal constituency, with its large Jewish population, which voted overwhelmingly Liberal. Trudeau’s identification with the struggle for civil rights in the fifties and sixties solidified his ties with the Canadian Jewish community, and his appointment of Bora Laskin, first to the Supreme Court and then, in December 1973, as chief justice of the Supreme Court, thrilled the Jewish community.* Yet there were complications.

  In his Mansion House speech, Trudeau had declared his determination to play a part in creating bridges between the North and the South, and the continuing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza had become an increasingly bitter issue in the South. The 1977 election of the Likud Party under Menachem Begin, who had been an Irgun terrorist under the British mandate, profoundly disappointed Trudeau. Begin then angered him when he said he would turn Toronto Jewish voters against the Liberals unless Trudeau moved the Canadian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “You
can tell them [Canadian Jews] what you want,” he retorted, “but I don’t think it would be very courteous—and I don’t think it would be very effective.” Joe Clark, who was then the Conservative leader, took Begin’s bait and endorsed the move—to his eternal regret. Trudeau never forgave Begin. Herb Gray recalled relatively little interest in Israeli issues in the early and mid-seventies within the Liberal Party but said that matters changed quickly: Trudeau’s irritation with Begin was so great that when Gray visited Israel, he sent the Israeli prime minister a sharp oral message: Be more constructive.38

  France, another early love for Trudeau, disappointed him because of its leaders and policies in the early seventies. When Canada had tried to secure the contractual link with Europe, French Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had been among the Europeans who were cool to the idea. He just would not treat Canada as a serious country. Then, in 1974, after the sudden death of Georges Pompidou, he became France’s president. Anxious to assert French leadership, particularly during an international economic crisis, Giscard invited the leaders of the world’s major economies to meet at a presidential château at Rambouillet in the late fall of 1975. Those invited included the leaders of the four largest economies—the United States, Japan, West Germany, and Britain—as well as Italy, which ranked seventh. Canada, number six, was ignored. Head was incensed, but attempts to secure an invitation failed despite strong support from the Germans, the Japanese, and the Americans. The United Kingdom gave late and lukewarm support. Trudeau told Kissinger that “Canada should not have to use up its credit on this question,” nor should the United States.* The North Americans should not approach the Elysée Palace on bended knee.