RICHARD GWYN
Richard Gwyn is a regular columnist on national and international affairs for the Toronto Star. As the syndicated Ottawa columnist for the Star from 1973 to 1985, he covered most of Trudeau’s years in power, and he distilled these impressions and observations into his biography of Trudeau, The Northern Magus. His most recent book, Nationalism without Walls, was published in 1995.
IN THE APRIL 21, 1997, edition of Maclean’s, two dozen historians delivered their collective judgment on Pierre Elliott Trudeau. They concluded that his accomplishments ranked him as High Average, one rung below the single Near Great, Louis St. Laurent, and two below the predictable trio of the Great: William Lyon Mackenzie King, John A. Macdonald, and Wilfrid Laurier.
Even this comparatively modest assessment exaggerated the historians’ appreciation of him. The writers noted that Trudeau’s achievement in surviving in office for so long—his fifteen years has been exceeded since 1945 by only four other world democratic leaders—had earned him bonus marks in addition to the comparatively scanty number he had accumulated by his actual policies and programs. The historians were harsh, almost contemptuous, about his record. “The disappointment of the century … who left Canada dramatically more divided and drastically poorer than he found it,” declared Desmond Morton of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. “A resounding failure, both on the grounds of public finance and national unity,” concluded René Durocher of Université de Montréal.
This censoriousness by our historians about Canada’s recent political leaders—Lester Pearson was likewise ranked in the B-minus category—provided useful fodder for argument among the chattering classes. Perhaps the historians were overcritical of contemporary figures who had to operate in the blinding glare of the media, cope with a much more sophisticated and demanding electorate, and deal with vocal and well-organized interest groups. Conversely, they may have been more indulgent towards antiquities whose errors, when re-examined years later, tend to get overwhelmed by the gentilities of official papers and the self-serving circumlocutions of memoirs.
The real criticism to be made of the historians’ judgment is that they were not behaving like historians. They were looking at the trees rather than the forest. Trudeau can only be judged by fitting him into the context of contemporary Canada and, as any analysis of things Canadian must do, by accepting the inevitability of paradox and ambiguity.
A severe critic of Trudeau, York University political scientist Kenneth McRoberts, has perhaps put the case best for the former prime minister, even while condemning him for “bringing Canada to the point of collapse.” In Misconceiving Canada, McRoberts describes Trudeau’s hostility to nationalism, specifically to the bicultural, deux nations concept. In McRoberts’ view, this approach was, and is, the only one that might keep Quebec within Canada. Still, he admits that the devil has some good tunes. It is a “profound irony,” he writes, that “Trudeau, the self-declared anti-nationalist, is embraced by much of English-Canada as the ‘saviour’ of the Canadian nation and ultimately emerges as the champion of Canadian nationalism.” Trudeau’s strategy, although aimed at Quebec, had the largely unforeseen effect of “transforming English Canada.” Bilingualism, multiculturalism, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as the notion of the equality of all citizens and provinces, have met the needs and aspirations of most Canadians outside Quebec. Yet, in McRoberts’ view, because this vision leaves no space for Québécois to be fully themselves, it has brought the country to the brink of collapse.
But McRoberts misses the central point. Whether Canada is collapsing or not these days, it is most certainly inchoate as a nation-state, and deeply divided. Yet Canadianism has never been healthier. The idea of being Canadian now commands wide and deep appeal. For some new citizens it’s a mere convenience; for the great majority it’s a real achievement. The same can be said for the native-born. Canadianism means membership in a collective enterprise that, however diverse, pluralist, regionalized, or postmodern, inspires genuine pride, commands a real sense of belonging, and participates in a remarkable and virtually unparalled human enterprise.
Put simply, today’s Canada is Trudeau’s Canada. More accurately, today’s concept of Canadianism is Trudeau’s concept, plus other enduring aspects like Pearson’s legacy of internationalism or the traditions of civility in public discourse which can be traced back to the peace, order, and good government of the Loyalists.
Before assessing Trudeau’s legacy, it may be useful to address the lesser points cited by the historians to justify their judging Trudeau less consequential to Canadian affairs than the competent corporate lawyer St. Laurent.
Certainly, Trudeau left Canada “drastically poorer” than he found it in terms of public finances. But in the 1970s and 1980s, every country piled up its national debt, not least the United States under its free-marketeer president Ronald Reagan. The remedy—essentially of saying no—was not applied until the advent of Margaret Thatcher. The real closure on Thatcher’s success did not occur until 1997, when a Labour government returned to power committed to maintaining her fiscal and economic policies while modulating her social and cultural ones. It is improbable that Trudeau, or anyone, could have sold fiscal restraint and a lowering of expectations about government in the way that Finance Minister Paul Martin was able to do in the mid-1990s. Not until the early years of that decade did public opinion switch from blaming government meanness to criticizing government fiscal indulgence for social and economic problems. During his nine years in office after Trudeau, Mulroney failed to make any dent on the deficit. South of the border, George Bush was equally helpless. Trudeau may well have been an economic dilettante, but most democratic leaders of his generation were the same.
The really serious judgment, and for Trudeau the wounding one personally, is that he left the country far more deeply divided than he found it and that he failed resoundingly on the issue of national unity. This cause was the focus of Trudeau’s entire political existence. Assessing his contributions as destructive is the equivalent of saying that Macdonald bungled his opportunity to create a real country in 1867 and that King perpetuated the Depression. If true, Trudeau ought not be rated High Average but positioned below John Diefenbaker or bracketed with Kim Campbell.
The question is one of timing. In the spring of 1998 we are clearly more deeply divided than ever before. Had fewer than 30,000 Quebeckers, half the winning margin, changed their minds from No to Yes while in the ballot boxes on October 31, 1995, Canada today would not merely be divided but separated into two nation-states—assuming that Jacques Parizeau meant what he wrote in his memoirs. Before that came the failures of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, the return to power in Quebec of the Parti Québécois, the emergence and near-triumph of the Bloc Québécois in Ottawa, and the rise of support for sovereignty in the polls to as much as 60 percent (it still hovers at the half-way mark). The charismatic Lucien Bouchard has replaced Parizeau, and he will almost certainly win re-election. Ahead looms another referendum, most probably in 1999. At that time, Canada’s champion is again due to be Jean Chrétien.
A western regional party, at best uncomprehending about Quebec, at worst hostile to its aspirations, is now the official opposition. Its election campaign featured a TV commercial depicting Quebec politicians, whether federalist or separatist, as Guilty Men, along with a denunciation by its leader of “Quebec-based politicians.” This saying out loud of the long unsayable has radically changed the tone of the national debate. The truth, unpalatable but undeniable, is that Reform and Preston Manning are echoing faithfully the sentiments of a large number of Canadians. These sentiments encompass an indifference to Quebeckers’ aspirations and an irritated weariness with the entire topic. Seldom has there been so little in the centre holding the country together.
Some observers nevertheless claim to see shafts of light in the endless unity tunnel. A crashing federal miscalulation in the weeks before the last referendum was not to inform Quebec that separation meant separation. Already, Justice Minister Ann McClellan is co-opting into the official wisdom Manning’s long-standing call for a Plan B. Never again will Quebeckers make up their minds on the basis of wishful thinking and blind ignorance, as happened in 1995, when 25 per cent and more of those intending to vote sovereigntist told pollsters they assumed that, after separation, they would still send MPS to Ottawa and experience no unsettling economic or financial consequences. Such realism may alter the outcome. So may the growing realization of the economic consequences, already so painfully visible in Montreal, of protracted political uncertainty. In this optimistic scenario, Quebeckers are approaching a mood when they will be ready to proclaim a victory and call the sovereigntist troops home, provided they are designated a symbolic, distinct society.
A contradictory, pessimistic scenario is equally plausible. Bouchard’s emotional appeal is too powerful to be overcome. To be young in Quebec is to be a sovereigntist, and only the aged are federalists. Western and Reform opposition groups make a distinct society offer unfeasible, and, in humiliation, Quebeckers vote for sovereignty whether they want it or not.
The point here is not that one scenario will turn out to be more accurate than the other but that one of them will happen at some point in the near future. By that time Trudeau will have spent a decade and a half in retirement and be nearing eighty. He may not even be around to kick at all.
Only some extreme version of the victim theory, of politics and of life, can hold Trudeau responsible forever for everything that may happen long after he left command. It would certainly be glib to blame everything that has happened since upon Mulroney. His motives were generally honourable, if mixed, because they included envy of Trudeau. Nevertheless, at Meech Lake and at Charlottetown he reached too far, opening up a second front at a time when, by his war for free trade, he was alienating many of the English-Canadian nationalists whose support he needed to win his constitutional conflict. Similarly, Chrétien’s hands-off approach to the 1995 referendum has been widely castigated. As always in politics, accident played an important part. Premier Robert Bourassa turned off other Canadians by his unilingual sign legislation, which seemed like a turning away from the bilingualism into which many people had poured their effort and idealism. The stubbornness and self-conviction of Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells was an x-factor that few could have anticipated (although the massive public support for Wells, which powerfully reinforced his intellectual convictions, ought to have been detected and factored in). Later, almost no one anticipated Bouchard’s hypnotic appeal.
At the moment Trudeau actually left the bridge in 1984, Canada’s ship of state was headed towards safety. The recent referendum of 1980, for which he had been the federalist champion, had ended in triumph. The overall result was convincing and even seemed to be permanent. A majority of Québécois had voted No, and the sovereignists were headed towards defeat and displacement by the nominally federalist Robert Bourassa. Reform and the Bloc Québécois did not exist, and Bouchard was still practising law in Chicoutimi.
The link between that time and the present is that Trudeau’s patriation of the Constitution and enactment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 constituted a political and emotional land-mine that was bound to explode one day. This connection is accurate enough in hindsight, but was far from certain then. Although the Quebec legislature roundly condemned the act as a deception and an intrusion, ordinary Quebeckers showed few signs of shock. There were no public protests or demonstrations, and the polls measured no increase in support for sovereignty. Quebeckers quickly lost most of their interest in politics, whether nationalist or federalist, turning instead to the phenomenon of Quebec Inc. and the first ever crop of successful francophone entrepreneurs.
Because of all our succeeding troubles, the victim analysis—Trudeau made us do everything that we’ve done—retains considerable appeal. The best expression of this view is contained in two recent books, McRoberts’ Misconceiving Canada (1997) and Guy Laforest’s Trudeau and the End of a Canadian Dream (1995). Both argue that, by his “bitter struggle against duality” (Laforest’s phrase) and by wrongly “see[ing] the secession of Quebec in apocalyptic” terms (McRoberts’ phrase, based on Trudeau’s remark that the breakup of Canada would be “a crime against humanity”), Trudeau has straight-jacketed the country into a “One Canada” vision that precludes a solution based either on a Canada-Quebec condominium (Laforest) or a “con-federalism” (McRoberts). In short, Trudeau dashed sovereignty-association as an alternative to separation.
The obvious counter commentary is that though there may be a distinction between the two, there is no real difference. If the rest of the country does have to cease being “a nation that dares not speak its name,” it may well do so more effectively when it does not have to look over its shoulder constantly to check how its partner is getting along. Rump Canada’s national self-interests would call for a settlement—restoration of at least the native-occupied Nouveau Québec so that the new country would still stretch from sea to sea—that no Quebec negotiator could agree to. And other Canadians would never agree to any deal that did not encompass an immediate cutoff of all subsidies, at present worth several billion a year, and an immediate return of all federal agencies. The new con-federal Canadian family would quickly be as unhappy as the present one.
It is also far from certain that the mood of most Quebeckers in the next referendum will be as antagonistic and as reckless as it was in 1995.
The single most memorable comment on Trudeau was crafted by his biographers Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall a decade after he retired: “He haunts us still.” Another relevant comment was uttered two decades ago by a close friend: “He sucks all the oxygen from a room.” While doing absolutely nothing, strolling down a street, shopping, standing patiently in a film queue, releasing familiar political thoughts about the Constitution to the press, Trudeau continues to hypnotize, intimidate, and inspire.
It is hard to think of any other contemporary figure who so dominates the national public consciousness. Or to name anyone, on the vital and uniquely Canadian issue of national unity, who still commands so much respect or so much hatred.
Asked to name a hero, Trudeau is the only one that young Canadians can think of, especially now that Wayne Gretzky is aging. Fading campaign posters, particularly the one of him in the gun-fighter’s pose, can still be spotted in restaurants, shops, offices, homes, and, most especially, among ethnic admirers. His quite awful book of memoirs sold 150,000 copies, and a cottage industry keeps cranking out selections of his writings and speeches. His TV series drew millions to their screens. In the spring of 1997 two plays about him were performed in Toronto, a revival of Linda Griffiths’ 1980 tour-de-force, Maggie and Pierre, and the latest in Michael Hollingsworth’s historical chronicle, Pierre Trudeau and the Quebec Question. Both were sellouts. In the winter of 1997, when he attended the inaugural lecture of the series established to honour Senator Keith Davey, Trudeau upstaged the speaker, John Kenneth Galbraith, at the reception that followed, even while he determinedly stood aside. One political veteran remarked, “He’s the one ex–prime minister everyone wants to be seen standing beside.” Any time Trudeau flicks an eye, he becomes an item in Frank magazine.
Some of this attention is just nostalgia—a means to revive warm memories of Expo 67, of mini-skirts, of youth in the ascendency, and peace and love. It is a way to recall more innocent times, before the global economy, down-sizing, and fiscal constraint, when it was still credible to assume that governments could, and should, solve most of the country’s problems. It is an entry to those years, before all our protective barriers came down, when there was substance to the cause of economic and cultural nationalism.
A large part of this attention is contemporary politics. Canadians are still voting for Trudeau. They did it in 1990 by their massive support for his surrogate, Clyde Wells. They did it during the 1992 Charlottetown referendum, when his Maison de Egg Roll manifesto told them that to oppose the accord was not to oppose Quebec. In the 1995 referendum, Chrétien’s adamant opposition to distinct society, until the last frenetic week, had its source in Trudeau. Now Manning’s call for equality of the provinces anchors its single claim to political respectability in Trudeau’s identical call, though for radically different motives.
Trudeau haunts us still because of his style, his elegance, his intellect, his fearlessness, and his ruthlessness. He teases, taunts, inspires, and bugs the hell out of Canadians because they know he is utterly un-Canadian, but exactly what they want other people to think Canadians are like. He haunts because he has given us an idea of what being Canadian means—the only idea that gives us any national cohesion now that the alternatives we face are an association of two sovereignties or further decentralization within a nationstate that is already the most-decentralized in the world.
Without doubt, Trudeau’s patriation of the Constitution and enactment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was a provocation to and a humiliation of Quebec’s highly influential political class. Not so to Quebeckers in general, who, represented by federal MPS in all parties, were strongly supportive of these acts. Of the four signatures on the new Constitution, all but one—Queen Elizabeth II’s—are those of Quebec francophones. Here, many critics rest their case. Unexamined is what would have happened if the Constitution had remained at Westminster and if the Charter had remained a cabinet document.
At the cusp of the millennium, the Charter has become a surrogate citizenship, a summary description of Canadianism, for a clear majority of Canadians. If, as a nation-state, Canada is “not a real country,” the Canadianism this society nurtures has become a passionately held conviction. Much of this Canadianism we owe to Trudeau: bilingualism; multiculturalism; cultural and racial diversity; regional variety; tolerance; civility; internationalism; the equality of all provinces, a presumption that does not require them to be treated as identical, but ensures that they will feel full partners in the whole; and the equality of all citizens, bracketed, in finely calibrated Canadian ambiguity, with a recognition of the need to nurture group rights and identities.
For a regionalized, decentralized, multinational, pluralist, and heterogenous nation-state without a distinctive language or a dominant ethnic group, condemned to be influenced deeply by its super-power neighbour, that list adds up to an inspirational projet national. If the United Nations is any credible judge, Canada is on track towards fulfilling that project. According to international agencies, it is also doing quite well in terms of global economic competitiveness, despite Trudeau’s legacy of red ink.
This Canada, largely Trudeau’s making, is so successful a nationstate—or, more accurately, a society—that for any group to leave it, Québécois or others, would be an act of collective idiocy. This accomplishment is the real reason for believing that there is light at the end of the unity tunnel.
In his person and by his ideas, Trudeau made a signal contribution to the evolution of the idea of Canadianism. Few other national leaders have left such a legacy—perhaps, Charles de Gaulle in rebuilding postwar France, Franklin D. Roosevelt by educating Americans to trust themselves rather than fear the Depression, and Lee Kwan Yew by inventing Singapore out of a barren island. The incomplete legacy that Trudeau leaves behind is the unity of Canada itself. Since we are responsible individuals rather than victims, the task of keeping the nation united is now up to us all.