Just Watch Me

by John English

  23. Interview with Herb Gray, July 2007. Trudeau personally assured Gray that it was not Michael Pitfield, Gray’s former deputy minister, who had spoken against Gray. On Davey and the Cabinet, see Davey, Rainmaker, 192.

  24. I discussed this Liberal tradition and Trudeau’s role in international affairs in my article “In the Liberal Tradition: Lloyd Axworthy and Canadian Foreign Policy,” in Canada among Nations 2001: The Axworthy Legacy, ed. Fen Hampson, Norman Hillmer, and Maureen Molot (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001), 89–93.

  25. James Eayrs, “Defining a New Place for Canada in the Hierarchy of World Power,” International Perspectives (May/June 1975): 24; Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 346–48; and J.L. Granatstein and Robert Bothwell, Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), chap. 6.

  26. Peter Hayman, British High Commission, Ottawa, to Hon. H.A.A. Hankey, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, July 15, 1971, FCO 82/17.122837, National Archives of the United Kingdom. Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 164. I have also discussed the Third Option with Dupuy, who remained an enthusiast for the contractual link for many years.

  27. The foreign policy speech was given to the Canadian Jewish Congress, June 16, 1974. EAP, file 20-2-2-1, vol. 8821, LAC. The Chinese speech is quoted in Eayrs, “Defining a New Place for Canada,” 24.

  28. In the universities, the writings of Argentinian economist and international public servant Raúl Prebisch gained significant influence, especially in Canada, where a neo-Marxist cadre of political scientists found Prebisch’s theory of the economic dependency of the periphery on the centre to be illuminating. Trudeau thought these were little more than academic musings, for which he had increasingly less respect.

  29. Trudeau to MacEachen, Sept. 4, 1974, quoted in draft history of the Department of External Affairs.

  30. Robinson had justifiably earned great admiration for his ability to act as foreign policy adviser to the difficult John Diefenbaker, and he had good friends in the government, notably his fellow cricket players Alastair Gillespie and Donald Macdonald. Basil Robinson wrote the finest study of Diefenbaker’s foreign policy: Diefenbaker’s World: A Populist in Foreign Affairs (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988). The book indicates that Robinson’s time with Diefenbaker prepared him well for the equally difficult struggles with Head and, to a lesser degree, Trudeau.

  31. The comment about Head and the “spy” is found in the draft history of the Department of External Affairs and is made by the “spy” himself: Norman Riddell.

  32. Canadian Embassy, Denmark, to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, with attachment, June 6, 1975, EAP, RG 25, vol. 9246, file 20-CDA-9-Trudeau/SCAN, LAC; Ivan Head to Basil Robinson, May 12, 1975, ibid. Head attended the meeting, along with John Halstead, who was deputy under-secretary. Trudeau’s press secretary, Pierre O’Neill, and his executive assistant, Bob Murdoch, were also in attendance.

  33. Trudeau had played a role in changing the structure of the Commonwealth meetings, particularly at the meeting in Ottawa in 1973. He emphasized informality and careful preparation, including visits by Head to the member countries before the meeting. See Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 350.

  34. Canadian Embassy, Denmark, to Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, with attachment, June 6, 1975, EAP, RG 25, vol. 9246, file 20-CDA-9-Trudeau/SCAN, LAC; Ivan Head to Basil Robinson, May 12, 1975, ibid.

  35. Head and Trudeau, Canadian Way, 147. Speech in TP, MG 26 020, vol. 741, box 241, file Trudeau, Pierre corresp., news release, LAC.

  36. Mitchell Sharp, Acting Secretary of State for External Affairs, to Trudeau, Dec. 16, 1975, EAP, RG 25, vol. 9246, file 20-1-2USA, LAC.

  37. Cabinet Conclusions, RG2, PCO, Series A-5-a, vol. 6456, June 19, July 10, and July 24, 1975; Canadian Annual Review 1975, 290–94; Toronto Star, July 16, 1975; and conversations with Barney Danson and Allan Gotlieb. John Holmes, a retired diplomat, director of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, and widely regarded as the leading analyst of Canadian foreign policy, deplored Trudeau’s decision. He was quoted in the Canadian edition of Time (Aug. 4, 1975) as saying: “Canada has set a very unfortunate precedent. The tragedy is that well-meaning people in Toronto and Ontario are encouraging rather than discouraging terrorism. The media have misrepresented the Palestine Liberation Organization. It is a fragmented organization. The moderates who are in control are themselves fighting to rid it of terrorist factions. To get a settlement in the Middle East, Israel will have to deal with the Palestinians, and who is going to represent them? By giving the Palestinians a platform, it removes some of the frustrations.” Holmes told me at the time that in response to his comment, he received much criticism, suggesting he was soft on terrorism and even anti-Semitic.

  38. Head and Trudeau, Canadian Way. Trudeau speaks about his poor relationship with Begin in his Memoirs, 217–18. When he discussed Begin with his friend Gale Zoë Garnett in 1981, he expressed his deep dislike of the man. Trudeau was also influenced by the fact that Likud was a religiously based party, while Labour was secular. Gale Zoë Garnett to Trudeau, June 11, 1981, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 4, file 4-42, LAC; conversation with Gale Zoë Garnett, Sept. 2007.

  39. Peter Hajnal, in The G8 System and the G20: Evolution, Role, and Documentation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), uses recently opened archival sources to trace the formation of the institution. This account also relies on Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 348–50, and Head and Trudeau, Canadian Way, 196–97. Head and Trudeau report that Trudeau was “critical of the department … when some senior officials employed in public statements the very kind of language to which he objected … [and] regarded as undignified and counterproductive” (197). Paul Martin, The London Diaries, 1975–1979 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988), 70–92, has excellent reporting on the emerging effort to exclude Canada from the new organization. The important American documents are Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Memorandum of Conversation with Canadian Ambassador Jake Warren, Oct. 22, 1975, and Mack Johnson, U.S. Embassy, Ottawa, to State Dept., Oct. 31, 1975 (Ford Papers, NSA Presidential Country Files, box 3, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library). On the Canadian side, the documents are found in RG 25, box 14123, file 3504-ESC, LAC, notably a Head “Memorandum for File” of October 3, 1975. On Puerto Rico, see “Report by Peter Towe on Preparatory Discussion for Puerto Rico Economic Summit,” June 14, 1976. The British position has been described as supportive, but the Martin diaries, as well as the External Affairs papers, make it clear that the British hesitated for fear of irritating the French, with whom relations were not good at the time. Apart from the general attitude to Canada, the French clearly opposed the notion of a second North American representative, and they anticipated, correctly, that Canada shared the American view on currency exchange issues.

  40. Thomas Courchene, “Proposals for a New National Policy,” in In Pursuit of the Public Good: Essays in Honour of Allan J. MacEachen, ed. Tom Kent (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1997), 75, and Richard Harris, “Canadian Economic Growth: Perspective and Prospects,” in ibid., 124–25.

  41. The assessment of the ministers is based on my reading of Cabinet Conclusions, interviews (which are less reliable), and documentation of the time. The quotation describing Hayek is from a sympathetic study of the conservative revolution by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy (New York: Touchstone Books, 2002), 80.

  CHAPTER TEN: WRONG TURNS

  1. On Finance’s position, see Douglas Hartle, The Expenditure Budget Process in the Government of Canada (Toronto: Canadian Tax Foundation, 1978), 6–12, which emphasizes the department’s anti-interventionist stand. Ron Graham, One-Eyed Kings: Promise and Illusion in Canadian Politics (Toronto: Collins, 1986), 203, 210–11; and Paul Litt, draft biography of John Turner. A useful biography of Galbraith, which illustrates his influence on Trudeau’s language and thought, is Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith: His L
ife, His Politics, His Economics (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005). Parker views Economics and the Public Purpose (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1973) as the product of Galbraith’s disillusionment with American capitalism and public policy after Vietnam, Nixon, and the financial crises of the early seventies. He agrees that Galbraith became a socialist at this time.

  2. Albert Breton, “Memorandum for the Prime Minister. Do Markets Work?” Jan. 16, 1976 (ABP, privately held). An excellent summary of Galbraith’s own recognition late in life that his concept of the corporation failed to take into account international competition and its altered form is found in a review of Richard Parker by Keynes’ biographer Robert Skidelsky, http://skidelskyr.com/index.php?id=2,85,0,0,1,0

  3. The statistics are taken from John Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs 1975 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 6, 313ff., and Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond, and John English, Canada since 1945: Power, Politics, and Provincialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), chap. 33. The Whelan comment about farmers’ exemptions is in Cabinet Conclusions, RG2, PCO, Series A-5-a, vol. 6456, LAC.

  4. Cabinet Conclusions, May 22 and June 18, 1975, ibid. Litt, Turner draft biography.

  5. On Reisman, see Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall, The Heroic Delusion, vol. 2 of Trudeau and Our Times (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994), 112–13, 122. The account is based on comments Reisman made soon after his resignation. An excellent brief summary of the growth and restructuring of the Canadian social welfare system from the perspective of the mid-nineties is found in Ken Battle, “Back to the Future: Reforming Social Policy in Canada,” in In Pursuit of the Public Good: Essays in Honour of Allan J. MacEachen, ed. Tom Kent (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1997), 35–43. There are numerous contemporary descriptions of the creation of the Canadian welfare state, notably Dennis Guest, The Emergence of Social Security in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980); Rodney Haddow, Poverty Reform in Canada, 1958–1978 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1978); and Richard Van Loon, “Reforming Welfare in Canada,” Public Policy (fall 1979): 469–504.

  6. On Grandy’s and Reisman’s resignations, conversations with their former ministers Alastair Gillespie and John Turner. On Morris’s statement, see Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1975, 328. On the oil business and government, see Peter Foster, The Blue-Eyed Sheiks: The Canadian Oil Establishment (Toronto: Collins, 1979), 151—an early inside account of the period, which has stood the test of time well.

  7. The well-informed journalist W.A. Wilson claimed that Turner’s resentment of the “slighting way” Trudeau treated Reisman’s resignation became a reason for his own resignation (Montreal Star, Jan. 27, 1976). Wilson’s views are described in Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1975, 336. It notes also that business economists were, on the whole, positive. Breton wrote to Trudeau on June 27, 1975, criticizing the budget: “Inflation to-day is very different than it was only 18 months or even 12 months ago. Excess demand plays no role now; demand shift plays a very minor role; shortages for the same reasons are unimportant; there is enough unemployment in the private sector to dampen demands there. The new challenge is cost-push in the public sector and inflationary expectations.” ABP.

  8. As a spectator in that crowd, I can affirm this account. See Jack Cahill, John Turner, the Long Run: A Biography (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984), 182; George Radwanski, Trudeau (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), 224–26; and Vic Mackie, Montreal Star, Oct. 11, 1975. An interview with Trudeau at the time of the resignation is recorded on a CBC tape, showing him in a colourful sports shirt and white jeans, and includes comments by Turner about the cryptic nature of his letter (http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/prime_ministers/clips/13005/).

  9. Globe and Mail, Sept. 12, 1975.

  10. Christina McCall-Newman, Grits: An Intimate Portrait of the Liberal Party (Toronto: Macmillan, 1982), 230.

  11. Globe and Mail, Oct. 10 and Oct. 14, 1975; Radwanski, Trudeau, 198–99.

  12. Keith Davey, The Rainmaker: A Passion for Politics (Toronto: Stoddart, 1986), 201. Davey wrongly claims that the Anti-Inflation Board received “an overwhelmingly positive public response. And the prime minister’s credibility remained intact with all but his most virulent critics.” Stewart, an economist and former civil servant, obviously disagrees. Ian Stewart, “Global Transformation and Economic Policy,” in Towards a Just Society: The Trudeau Years, ed. Thomas S. Axworthy and Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Markham, Ont.: Viking, 1990), 158.

  13. On Hochelaga and Juneau, see Le Devoir, Oct. 17, 1975. On the presidency, see Joseph Wearing, The L-Shaped Party: The Liberal Party of Canada 1958–1980 (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1981), 205–6, where it is claimed that the appointment of Gerry Robinson as national director of the party by Keith Davey without adequate consultation was the major cause of the rebellion, although Christina McCall claims the major cause was general dissatisfaction with Turner’s resignation and the party’s overall troubles (McCall-Newman, Grits, 365). Interviews with many of the key figures, including Davey, suggest that McCall was correct. Davey himself claims he did not want the job and the appointment of Robinson actually took place after the fuss about his potential presidency. Davey, Rainmaker, 202–3. The description of the scandals is drawn from the excellent account in Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1975, 93–95, which reprints the full interview of Lalonde with Malling.

  14. John Updike, Memories of the Ford Administration: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 1992).

  15. Davey tells the swimming pool story in Rainmaker, 193–95, but identifies only two donors apart from Trudeau, one being “Honest Ed” Mirvish. Cossitt’s biography and his attack on Trudeau are found in Jonathan Manthorpe’s “The Tory Scourge of Sussex Drive,” Globe and Mail, May 31, 1975. See also Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 April and 5 June 1975). On the pay increase, see Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1975, 16–18; Canada, House of Commons Debates (19–30 April 1975); Toronto Star, April 11, 1975; and Globe and Mail, April 11, 1975. The Davey Papers indicate how significant the “rainmaker” considered Cossitt’s attacks to be.

  16. Scott Young, “Price of a PM,” Globe and Mail, Aug. 5, 1975. Cossitt made his allegations about expenses incurred by Trudeau in the House of Commons during the debate on the budget. Cossitt and Young corresponded about the allegations.

  17. The interview is found in Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1975, 96–98, along with Cossitt’s attack.

  18. Ibid., 98; and John Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs 1976 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), which reports on the Leeds Federal Liberal Association letter. See also Lang in Globe and Mail, Jan. 9, 1976. The meeting at the Toronto Club is reported in an account in the Globe that same day. Gillespie’s own account of the meeting is found in “Memorandum to file,” Jan. 13, 1976, GP, vol. 240, file 225, Gillespie meeting. LAC. An extensive description by Ed Cowan is found in New York Times, Jan. 19, 1976. The group Gillespie addressed was a powerful collection of Toronto business leaders. Besides Corrigan and Macdonald, it included Rod Bilodeau, the chair of Honeywell; Molson president James T. Black; Roy Bennett, president of Ford; Guy French, president of American Can; Richard Thomson, president of Toronto-Dominion Bank; Peter Gordon, president of Stelco; Ted Medland, chair of Wood Gundy; and a representative of INCO.

  19. The full text of Trudeau’s speech is in Globe and Mail, Jan. 20, 1976. The speech is wrongly reported as having occurred on January 19 in Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1976, which nevertheless has a good summary of the reaction. MPs, ministers, and the Prime Minister’s Office were deluged with letters, as were newspapers. See also Pierre Trudeau, Memoirs (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993), 197–98.

  20. Trudeau makes the comment about Galbraith in his Memoirs, 197–98. Galbraith confirmed the story to me before his death. Conversation with Don Johnston. The history of Parc Be
lmont describes Trudeau’s challenge to the board chair on the ground of irregularities but does not document his full involvement. Steve Proulx, Les Saisons du Parc Belmont 1923–1983 (Outremont: Libre Expression, 2005), 122–24. The extensive Belmont records are in TP, MG 26 01, vol. 2, files 2-5 to 2-12, LAC. When Belmont was sold in the mid-seventies for $2.4 million, the Trudeaus owned 146 of 480 shares.

  21. Alexandre Trudeau expressed this view to me in June 2009. He said his father also believed that business demanded freedom to act but then the same businesses came to him for assistance. This approach angered his father.

  22. H.I. Macdonald, “Economic Policy: Can We Manage the Economy Any More,” Canadian Public Policy: Analyse de politiques (autumn 1976): 4–5. Robert Campbell, Grand Illusion: The Politics of the Keynesian Experience in Canada, 1945–1975 (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 1987), argues that pure Keynesian approaches never did apply in Canada and that it was an “illusion” to believe they did. Certainly, in the sixties, policy makers stretched understanding of the concept beyond any that Keynes would have recognized.

  23. Enders to Sec. State, Washington, Aug. 12, 1976, National Security Adviser Presidential Country Files for Europe and Canada, box 3, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.

  24. Ibid. On Schmidt and his admiration for, and similarities to, Trudeau, see Trudeau, Memoirs, 200. Their correspondence was warm right from the start. Schmidt indicates that Trudeau impressed him on their first meeting, and Trudeau especially welcomed Schmidt’s support for Canada as a member of the G7.