The Trudeau Cabinet:
A Memoir


DONALD S. MACDONALD

Donald S. Macdonald is a lawyer at the Toronto office of McCarthy Tétrault. From 1962 to 1978 he was member of parliament for Toronto Rosedale and from 1968 to 1977 a member of Trudeau’s cabinet, successively as president of the Privy Council and government house leader, minister of national defence, minister of energy, mines & resources, and minister of finance. He was chairman of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, 1982-85, and high commissioner for Canada to the United Kingdom, 1988-91.

ON APRIL 20, 1968, Pierre Elliott Trudeau formed what would become the twentieth ministry of the government of Canada. Although the swearing in occurred on that day, it was a temporary cabinet only. Some of the most senior portfolios were filled, but many of the other ministers were appointed as ministers without portfolio, or as acting ministers in certain departments. These were temporary assignments until the electors could decide which party would form the next government. The election on June 25 returned the Trudeau Liberals to power.

The first meeting of the full cabinet took place on July 6, 1968. For the nine years I was a member, this group of ministers constituted the core of the cabinet, although there were changes and additions as time went on. Two of the twenty-nine ministers had been members of the cabinet of Louis St. Laurent, and they, plus fifteen others, had been in the ministry of Lester Pearson. Of the remainder, nine of us had been members of parliament, but not ministers, in the previous parliament. Three new cabinet members had been elected to parliament for the first time in the recent election.

As often happens in the Canadian parliament, those ministers who had studied law, eleven in all, had the largest single vocation. It was noted at the time that there was a higher than usual percentage of ministers who had taken advanced degrees, particularly at foreign universities, and who had held professorial positions. In retrospect I can say, however, while higher education was no bar to success as a minister, it was no guarantee. Several of my colleagues whose judgment around the cabinet table and performance in parliament and in the country I most admired had only high school education. Good political judgment and the ability to win the confidence of the public are partly a gift and partly the dividend of hard-won experience.

Seven of the ministers had been candidates in the Liberal leadership race in the spring of 1968. They were different from the rest of us, for they had tasted the “royal jelly” of leadership. Each of these men had believed he had a special fitness, or “call,” for leading the country. Each one had a mission or an agenda that he felt he could carry out as leader; and each believed he had the particular skills to persuade Canadian voters. There must have been some feeling of disappointment, but these aspirants were consoled by the invitation to re-enter cabinet and undertake new responsibilities.

For those of us who had not experienced higher aspirations, the opportunity of serving as a minister was similar to that of any new job: anticipation of new challenges and experiences mixed with nervousness at undertaking something not done before. For those who had been private members, some as parliamentary secretaries, we all had thought, as we sat behind the ministerial rows in the House of Commons or faced the ministerial row in caucus: “I can do that job,” or, in some cases, “I can do that job better than the current minister.” Now the moment had come; now was the opportunity to prove it.

Members from the Pearson days confirmed that there was a sharp contrast in mode of operation between the Pearson and the Trudeau cabinets. In Pearson’s ministry, the discussion was much less highly organized, the documentation not as substantial, and the discourse not as disciplined. At times, several conversations had been going on in the room concurrently.

In the Trudeau ministry, much advance thought had been given to the structure of the cabinet process and its committees. Matters for discussion had to be preceded by carefully prepared documents. Except on emergency occasions, an oral briefing by the minister would not be an acceptable way of putting facts before the cabinet, and the documents and the issues to which they related would receive extensive advance discussion in one or more cabinet committees before coming on to the full cabinet’s agenda for final decision.

The cabinet committees were of two kinds: central control committees such as Priorities and Planning or Treasury Board, and functional committees, organized according to departmental subject matters. The prime minister chaired and regularly participated in the Priorities and Planning Committee, but he rarely participated in any other. Rather, he waited until the discussion in the full cabinet.

The controlled and intellectual approach to cabinet discussion was closely reflective of Trudeau’s own style. Highly disciplined in his own thinking processes and accustomed to examining with great care all available evidence before arriving at a conclusion, the process worked well and, apparently, effortlessly for him. Although I have always been a quick reader, I found absorption of all the material for each week’s cabinet meeting very demanding. I particularly admired Trudeau’s ability to ingest all this information and organize it in a way that would lead to cabinet decisions. I even adapted a line from a well-known hymn to describe Trudeau’s ability to absorb information: “A thousand pages in his sight are but an evening gone.”

A humble measure of the growing volume of documentation was the ever increasing size of the binders in which I carried my cabinet documents. Initially all the documents fit into a slim ring binder about the size of an ordinary portfolio. By the time I left cabinet in September 1977, I required a four-ring binder eighteen inches high by three inches thick—and even then I could barely accommodate the papers I needed.

When and how did we meet as a cabinet? When parliament was sitting, the House met from Mondays to Fridays, commencing each day with Question Period at 2:00 p.m., except on Friday, when the sitting began in the morning and was over in the afternoon. The full cabinet met on Thursday morning. Cabinet committees met Tuesday mornings and Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons after the Question Period, and sometimes on Thursday afternoons after Question Period if there were matters to deal with as a result of the morning’s cabinet meeting, or if there was such a volume that it could not be dealt with earlier in the week. Wednesday morning was reserved for the party caucuses and, on the government side, the cabinet, the MPS, and the Liberal senators would all attend. For the ministers, it was an opportunity to persuade the government’s own supporters to endorse courses of action that they were advocating, and for the prime minister it was an important occasion to pull together his parliamentary team and lay the groundwork for further actions. For the members of parliament, it was the best occasion during the week to make an impression on other MPS, ministers, and especially the prime minister. Caucus is the private member’s opportunity to shine, and if this shining takes some of the lustre off a minister, so be it.

The first meetings of the Trudeau ministry took place in the East Block of the Parliament Buildings, in the historic cabinet room where Sir John A. met with his cabinet. It is a pleasant room looking out onto the green lawns behind, and to the point where W.H. Bartlett must have set up his easel to do his sketch of the Rideau Canal locks and the Gatineau Hills beyond. But there was not enough room around the table to accommodate all the ministers; the symbolism of some ministers at the table and others in the second row was simply not acceptable. Meetings were therefore shifted to much more pedestrian premises on the third floor of the Centre Block at the opposite end of the corridor from the prime minister’s suite of offices. This room could accommodate a large green-baize table. The prime minister sat in a chair at the centre, with the ministers stationed around him in a pattern reflecting their seniority as privy councillors. Each was furnished with a water glass, a tablet of writing paper, and an ashtray. Many of the ministers smoked, although on occasion Trudeau would lead a silent protest by moving away from a cigar smoker to a more remote chair. Two telephone booths were recessed into the rear wall of the room, and on the opposite side was a table at which, in full cabinet, sat the Clerk of the Privy Council and a member of his staff to take the minutes.

As time went on, the cabinet meetings stretched into the luncheon period, and sandwiches, cold drinks, and coffee were sent in for the ministers. Access to the room came through two doors that led directly into the corridor. One time, an enterprising member of the press gallery, in the guise of being helpful, carried a tray of sandwiches into the room just to find out what the cabinet was talking about. It couldn’t have been very interesting because no one else tried it again!

In the same way that the prime minister occupies the dominant position among elected officials, so the Clerk of the Privy Council is first among public servants. The Clerk, along with deputy ministers and other senior officials of deputy minister rank, is appointed by order in council and is outside the bounds of the Public Service Commission. It is a post that is normally occupied by someone who has made a career of the public service and who has risen by ability and good political instinct to this senior position. In some sense, the Clerk is the prime minister’s deputy minister, but he or she is also the de facto head of the Public Service, playing an important role in senior appointments. The Clerk has a significant policy role, too, maintaining a careful balance between serving the government of the day but being available to serve its political opponents should the electorate make a change. The clerk is selected primarily for qualities of policy judgment. In the October 1970 kidnapping crisis, for example, a solution suggested by Gordon Robertson, who was then Clerk, was ultimately followed.

The devolution under Trudeau of the discussion of cabinet papers to cabinet committees had one important effect on the mode of cabinet government. Traditionally, no public official other than the Clerk of the Privy Council would appear in full cabinet. In the Trudeau government, it came to be accepted that a minister’s senior officials could appear with him in committee, and soon the officials themselves began to participate fully in the discussions. In the Ottawa in which I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, the senior public servants, particularly in economic departments and in External Affairs, were much admired, and many of the officials who advised us had been selected and trained by that earlier cadre of deputy ministers. Contrary to the image of the British permanent undersecretary portrayed in the television series Yes, Minister as an oily and obsequious character, some of the deputies I remember were outspoken; they backed away from no one except, perhaps, the prime minister when discussion became animated.

From the beginning to the end of my time in cabinet, Trudeau was incontestably the man in charge. The dramatic political events of the first half of 1968 in which he had risen to the leadership of the Liberal Party, and then won the election, gave him incomparable political prestige and strength. In the years that followed, although there would be criticisms in the country and in caucus of particular policies or actions, there was never any doubt that, as leader, he was essential for the government’s continued success.

One of the press clichés about Trudeau’s leadership was that he was dictatorial in Cabinet. That was never a just allegation. He recognized that cabinet ultimately has to make decisions on important questions, and that one of the roles of the prime minister in moments of cabinet division is to declare that decision. But on most questions he would not force his own views on the meeting or cut short those who disagreed with him. If anything, several of us considered that he was too patient, rather than too domineering, in letting protagonists with different points of view continue to fight it out around the cabinet table even after lengthy debates in committee. When the direction was clear and the time for a decision had arrived, Trudeau was still prepared to hear the arguments rehearsed once again. Some ministers were more prone than others to take advantage of his forbearance, and after one such occasion a cabinet colleague asked Trudeau why he had not stepped in much earlier to announce a decision. He responded that the subject was not one he knew from experience or on which he had firm opinions. He was prepared to learn as much as he could from a prolonged debate before having to make choices among the alternatives.

Of course, cabinet meetings were not always marked by statesmanlike serenity. Opinions were held strongly, and, like everyone else, ministers have their bad days. I had a number of sharp exchanges with Trudeau which temporarily soured our relations, and Don Jamieson recounted one of these episodes in his memoirs, A World Unto Itself. On a visit to the Soviet Union in May 1971, Trudeau had signed a Protocol on Consultations even though the cabinet had not discussed the matter. As minister of national defence, I asked that the minutes record my displeasure that we had been committed to a policy without prior consideration. On his return, Trudeau offered no explanation, but Jamieson remarked that a certain froideur continued between the prime minister and me for some time. Jamieson’s explanation for the fuss was that I was unhappy because the prime minister had been holding up publication of the white paper on defence, for which, as minister of national defence, I was responsible. At the time, I thought my problem was with the prime minister’s staff rather than with Trudeau himself. In the event, the white paper, called “Defence in the Seventies,” was published and remained the statement of defence policy not only for that decade but well into the 1980s. The Moscow foreign policy initiative has long since been forgotten, much like the Soviet Union itself.

While Trudeau was normally magisterial in chairing the cabinet, he could on occasion be very rude. One of my experiences came in 1969, again on the subject of defence, but before I was minister. My predecessor, Léo Cadieux, had been going through the agonizing experience of downsizing both the department and the number of uniformed personnel. One morning he brought into cabinet a proposal to eliminate two of the regular force infantry regiments (each of three battalions), one of which was the Highland regiment, the Black Watch of Canada. I pointed out that the Highland tradition was long and honourably established in the Canadian army and, indeed, in the broader Canadian community. In anglophone Canada, it is associated with everything from ceremonial civilian dinners to country ploughing matches. Downgrading the Black Watch would be unpopular not just in the Maritimes, but in other parts of Canada. Trudeau exploded. He would have no discussion, the matter had been agreed upon by the generals, and that was that. I would like to say that I had a rapier-like riposte, but I was so stunned at the rudeness that I said nothing more.

On reflecting on the incident, I am left in no doubt what the reaction would have been if the roles had been reversed. What if I, an Ontario minister, had proposed downgrading the Royal 22e Régiment, the Vandoos? The wails would have been anguished and the discussion lengthy. This was an example of the occasional insensitivity of Quebec ministers to attitudes and customs in other parts of Canada.

If there were many subjects on which Trudeau was prepared to defer to others, there were others that had been a matter of lifelong interest and study for him and on which he felt no want of confidence—the Constitution, the intricate politics of Quebec, the organization of modern government, and many fields of law. He was prepared to listen to and debate opposing views, but ministers were wise to make a good case, for he could effectively and quickly demolish a bad one. On many of these issues, he would give short shrift to irrelevant arguments that might becloud thinking. In time, in dealing with those areas that were of special interest to Trudeau, ministers learned to tread with caution, and with consideration about the direction the debate might take.

In October 1970 I had the opportunity of observing at close hand not only Trudeau’s grasp of the issues of modern government but also his strength of character in his response to the kidnappings and murder carried out by Quebec terrorists of the Front de libération du Québec. Just two weeks before James Cross, the British trade representative in Montreal, was kidnapped, I had become minister of national defence. When word reached me in mid-morning that the British official had been taken at gunpoint and with the demand that a separatist agenda be met if he was to be released unharmed, I had no clear idea what we should do next. From the first of the emergency meetings during that stressful period, Trudeau adhered to the fundamental proposition that democratically elected governments could not give in to terrorist movements attempting to govern the country at the point of a gun. To flinch in the face of illegal acts and to surrender to them would only ensure that they would be repeated on an escalating basis. In the weeks that followed, it became apparent that the police authorities in Quebec were incapable of providing protection from further acts of violence. Premier Robert Bourassa urged the federal government to send in the Canadian Armed Forces and to invoke the War Measures Act, both of which it did. Given Trudeau’s personal stand against the regressive actions of the Duplessis government in the 1950s, these actions must have been particularly painful for him. But he did not flinch in the crisis. In the trichotomy of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as set out in the American Declaration of Independence, liberty had to be sacrificed temporarily if kidnappers and murder were not to succeed over time. In the end, liberty could be restored, as could the pursuit of happiness, but life, once taken, could not.

For the first Trudeau cabinet, the FLQ crisis was the most difficult period, but every government has to face major crises that are often unanticipated. It is these crises that test the qualities of ministers. Most practical are the “all rounders” the ministers who are prepared to think about and speak to the difficult political questions to be resolved. A number of my colleagues fitted into this category, and, not coincidentally, they included those who had less formal education but good political judgment. On these kinds of questions, it was seldom a matter of being absolutely right or absolutely wrong. The critical contribution was to make an attempt to think through the problems. One or two “elder statesmen” were a subset of this group, men whose experience on political questions was respected. Habitually these senior members waited out the early stages of discussion, but they came in at a later point, either unbidden or when called upon.

The opposite of the “all rounder” was the “departmental” minister. These cabinet members intervened only in matters that were within their departmental responsibility. Although skilful ministerial exposition of a departmental brief might be respected, these ministers failed in their overall responsibility to contribute to major political questions that affected us all. Another group, the “buttinsky” ministers, though essential to good cabinet discussion, were a major irritant to the minister whose subject was under discussion. The minister responsible for a particular proposal, having worked hard on it with his departmental staff, would naturally acquire a proprietary feeling for both the substance and the form put forward. Still, debate is important on political matters, and the “buttinskys,” who were well armed with opinions and prepared to sustain a contrary viewpoint, were frequently very useful.

As House leader, for example, I had the responsibility of putting to cabinet and then to parliament some substantial changes to the Rules of Procedure in the House of Commons. Some of the proposals were technical, but others were highly political in the sense that they would bring about sharp debate with the opposition. Now, every minister had experience sitting in the House and attempting to operate under the existing set of rules and, therefore, each one had an opinion. My proposal, the first I had ever submitted to cabinet, received a particularly bumpy ride from other ministers. At the end of the meeting, walking away from the room with one of my political mentors, I commented on the strenuous session I had experienced. My friend commented that, for two reasons, I should regard myself as fortunate that other ministers had intervened. First, there were ministers around the table who had much more experience in the House and with politics than I had and from whose experience I could learn. Far better to be given a corrective lesson in cabinet than to endure it publicly in the House or in the country. Second, a full cabinet discussion of any ministerial proposal, especially when changes are offered to and accepted by the sponsoring minister, transforms the proposal from that of the minister alone to that of the full cabinet. If ministerial acquiescence was won by full cabinet discussion, it ceased to be my proposal alone and became a cabinet decision on which I could expect full support. Moreover, he commented wryly, there was some poetic justice in my proposals being attacked by other cabinet members. I was a frequent “buttinsky” on substantive policy questions from other departments, and it was only just that I should get some of my own back!

My recollection is that, through my nine years’ experience as minister, personal relations among cabinet members were good. There may have been individual rivalries and antipathies, but they did not adversely affect the atmosphere of good relations among ministers. The time taken on the job, both in parliament and in the department, was such that we would not have many social occasions together. But firm friendships were founded, particularly among those who were living full time in Ottawa and who met occasionally on evenings and holidays. There were few days off. If House or cabinet business did not demand, ministers were on the road, either on the political business of the department or to tend their constituencies.

Trudeau always remained in a class apart from the other ministers. Perhaps every prime minister is in that situation, but I think it must have been particularly so with him because of his personal style. Although he had a range of interests stretching from the ascetic to the exotic, he treated everyone, except for a few old and close friends, with patrician reserve. He was a very private person, and he assumed that others sought that same level of privacy. When ministers were going through difficult moments in their personal lives, no word of support or reassurance was forthcoming. But when unhappiness came into his own life with the breakdown of his marriage, he, in turn, did not seek any support or encouragement. These were private matters for each one of us and, in his mind, no one else’s business.

At the working level, in contrast, he was supportive, he was good company, and he stimulated the best from his ministers. I created more than my share of problems for the government, but he always gave full support. After briefing him on the current disaster, his response would be: “Okay, what are we going to do about it?” The first person plural was a very important reassurance.

I served in parliament with three prime ministers, John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson, and Pierre Trudeau, each one different, each with his own particular strengths. My relations with Diefenbaker were different from those with the other two because he was the leader of the opposing party, one against which I campaigned. But I came to understand the things he stood for and the fact that he stood strongly for them, even though most of the time I disagreed with him. Along with all the other Liberals, I smarted from the skill with which he attacked us in debate. Diefenbaker very much represented the Canada of my parents’ generation, a country substantially rural, devoted to the British connection, and still in the process of coming to terms with the French fact, multiculturalism, and the changed place of Canada in the world. He was a skilled trial lawyer and, of the three prime ministers, the most accomplished “House of Commons man.” On political issues on which he was totally in the wrong, he could put forth a defence of his position that would skilfully interweave his strong points, the misstatements of his opponents, and contested material. On such occasions we felt not that he was right, but that he had done a better job of showing how we were wrong than we had in championing our position. What seemed like a formidable defence from him at the time, however, would not look so strong in the media, detached from his oratorical skills. His timing was superb, his dramatic sense effective. Like Churchill, he had read extensively in history and political biography, and he had a formidable memory for the telling phrase. One could understand after hearing him in the House why he had been one of the most effective jury lawyers of his time.

The skills of a jury lawyer, however, are not those of a political leader who, day in, day out, must guide and coordinate a cabinet. On substantive issues he was true to the desires of his Canada, but many other Canadians had changed the subject. In the three elections in which I campaigned against him, he consistently won the support of rural Canada, in Ontario and the Maritimes as well as in the West. But in the changing Canada of the 1960s, with the shift in population to the urban areas, with Canada’s wider involvement in the world, with voting Canadians who had come to maturity after the emergence of the dominion as a sovereign nation and major player in Second World War, his issues were often irrelevant.

Pearson’s strengths were very different. Unlike Diefenbaker, Pearson did not enjoy the House of Commons or the hustings; they were places he had to be to do his job, but they were not his locales of choice. His political skills were in personal dealings with cabinet colleagues, caucus, and a group of friends in the media and the business world. His was a sunny personality with a quick humour that could ease tension. He was a team leader.

He had a policy agenda attuned to urban Canada of the 1960s. With the economic success of the North American economy, he was concerned to overcome the deprivation of ordinary Canadians that he had witnessed during the Depression. The Canada Pension Plan, better housing, and medicare were all on his agenda, and in his five years as prime minister he carried them all into legislation. In retrospect, his ministry achieved a remarkable legislative record—always without a parliamentary majority. The “great men” of the press gallery, including Charles Lynch and Arthur Blakely, used to write that Pearson was not a good politician. He was a much better politician than they were political analysts.

As a soldier and aviator in the First World War and as a diplomat in the 1930s and 1940s, Pearson had the opportunity to reflect on the questions of Canada’s evolving national identity and role in the world. He guided Canadian policy on this second issue, first as undersecretary and then as secretary of state for external affairs. He took on the political fight to establish symbols of Canadian identity, the Order of Canada, the Maple Leaf flag, and the national anthem. It was on the flag that Pearson and Diefenbaker clashed most directly and Pearson prevailed, both in parliament in 1964 and with Canadians ever since.

I was not a member of Pearson’s cabinet and cannot compare styles of management, but as a member of caucus I formed an opinion of his technique. He used to say that one of his preferred vocations would have been as manager of a major league baseball team. He also remarked that in every crisis there is an opportunity. The baseball manager has to respond to crises on the field which are unpredictable and unstructured, but which provide opportunity, and it was in dealing deftly with crisis as a diplomat, minister, and prime minister that Pearson excelled.

I have already commented on the style and qualities of Pierre Trudeau, so I will close by comparing him with his two predecessors. His intelligence and education prepared him to deal with most public policy questions, but his lifelong convictions about the importance of good relations between French- and English-speaking Canadians and the importance of a united country lifted him to another plane in national leadership. In his career before politics, he had been free to espouse positions without the necessity, fundamental for politicians, of persuading his countrymen to support the goals he advanced. Over the eleven years that he and I were colleagues, I witnessed the development of his formidable skills in public persuasion. Many times since I have been greeted by strangers who say: “I didn’t support him, but Trudeau was what a prime minister should be!”