MICHAEL D. BEHIELS
Michael D. Behiels is a professor in the Department of History at University of Ottawa who specializes in Canadian and Quebec political history in the twentieth century, Canadian federalism, and constitutional renewal. He has published numerous books and magazine articles, including Prelude to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution: Liberalism versus Neo-Nationalism, 1945-1960 and The Meech Lake Primer: Conflicting Views on the 1987 Constitutional Accord.
IN THE 1995 Quebec referendum, Canada barely avoided a momentous political meltdown. Premier Jacques Parizeau came within a whisker of declaring the unilateral independence of Quebec. How had this near disaster come about? It was due, in part, to the fact that Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and his entourage insisted that Pierre Elliott Trudeau remain silent throughout the campaign. The intellectually bankrupt No forces went on to squander a sizeable lead in the polls once Lucien Bouchard replaced Parizeau at the head of the Yes forces. Yet, during the 1980 referendum, the Meech Lake accord débacle of 1987–90, and the 1992 referendum on the Charlottetown accord, Trudeau played significant and possibly decisive roles in maintaining Canada’s constitutional integrity. Three times he had beaten back the Quebec secessionists. Indeed, since the 1960s, he has been at the heart of our constitutional debates. Thanks to a combination of character and circumstance, he educated a generation of Canadians about their constitutional past, present, and future. With the support and participation of a wide cross-section of Canadians, Trudeau undertook the challenge of transforming the deferential Canadian political culture into one of genuine democratic deliberation. As a result, Canadians are finally coming to perceive themselves as a sovereign people.
Such a profound transformation of our political culture was neither understood nor appreciated by our political and chattering classes. They struggled valiantly to stem the erosion of their ability to control and ultimately dictate the evolution of Canada’s constitutional development in a manner that would enhance their powers and privileges. They feared and despised Trudeau’s presence in the debate. They tried unsuccessfully to curtail the participation of a whole range of women’s, aboriginal, and linguistic minority groups—defined as the Charter federalists because of their links with the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms—that lobbied intensively for the clarification, implementation, and expansion of those rights.
This political war over the theme “Who speaks for Canada: The people or the politicians?” began with the debate over the Meech Lake accord. It continued during two years of constitutional wrangling, culminating in the omnibus Charlottetown deal and referendum of October 1992. Exercising their constitutional sovereignty, a majority of Canadians rejected the ambiguous deal. Why did Trudeau feel compelled to play such a determining role in these struggles? Was he driven by a self-serving desire to protect the place he had carved out for himself in Canada’s constitutional history? Or was Trudeau drawn out of retirement to defend the very integrity of the Canadian nation-state by championing the sovereignty of all Canadian citizens to decide, in a democratic manner, their own constitutional future? No doubt, Trudeau was eager to defend his government’s constitutional accomplishments, especially the Charter. Although he reluctantly acknowledged the flaws of the Constitution Act, 1982—its notwithstanding clause, the absence of Quebec’s signature, and the lack of a referendum mechanism—he was determined to defend its fundamental precepts, the sovereignty of the people symbolized by the transfer of power from governments to citizens.
For Trudeau, all constitutional amendments must promote the vision of a sovereign Canada and a sovereign people. Polls showed that a majority of Canadians, including those in Quebec, supported the passage of the Constitution Act, 1982. Most Canadians hoped that the tiresome constitutional wrangling had come to an end, and they felt that the secessionist movement in Quebec was in decline. Very few Canadians, including Trudeau, suspected that his successor had a far different constitutional vision in store for them. Eager to be elected prime minister and prompted by his friendship with Lucien Bouchard, Brian Mulroney reopened the constitutional debate in the 1984 election campaign by promising Quebec voters to do whatever was necessary to get Quebec City’s “signature on our Constitution, with honour and enthusiasm.” Once in office, Mulroney rolled the constitutional dice to cement his profitable alliance with the Liberal government of Quebec premier Robert Bourassa. Together, their decision to release the genie from the constitutional bottle created a disruptive train of events that threatened the fabric of the Canadian nation-state. No wonder the lion was drawn out of his lair! Over the next five years a classic battle played out between two political titans, the passionate rationalist Trudeau and the ambitious, opportunistic Mulroney.
Within a month of the announcement of the Meech accord, the battle was joined. In a harshly worded letter dripping with sarcasm and contempt, printed in the Toronto Star and La Presse on May 27, 1987, Trudeau described the accord as a “total bungle” and Mulroney as the destroyer of the “Dream of One Canada.” For Trudeau, the 1982 amending formula had strengthened Ottawa’s bargaining power because unanimity, which had stalled patriation for sixty years, was no longer required for most issues. “Alas, only one eventuality had not been foreseen,” concluded the irate Trudeau, “that one day the government of Canada might fall into the hands of a wimp. It has now happened. And the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney, PC, MP, with the complicity of 10 provincial premiers, has already entered into history as the author of a constitutional document which—if it is accepted by the people and their legislators—will render the Canadian state totally impotent. That would destine it, given the dynamics of power, to be governed by eunuchs.” What Trudeau failed to mention was that the 1982 formula, based on the dubious premise of the equality of provinces, also gave every premier a veto over crucial matters. Paradoxically, it was this veto that proved to be the undoing of the Mulroney government’s constitutional deal.
Trudeau’s scathing attack stiffened Mulroney’s resolve to prove that the charge of disloyalty was wrong. When the first ministers met on June 2 to approve the legal draft of the principles set out in the accord, he counter-attacked. Fearing that Trudeau’s interference had dissolved the fragile unanimity, Mulroney devoted his opening remarks to questioning his predecessor’s motives. The Liberals had made such a mess of constitutional reform in 1982 by deliberately excluding Quebec that they had absolutely no right to criticize anyone trying to remedy the situation; moreover, he, not Trudeau, was prime minister. The tactic paid off. The premiers realized that to renege on their signatures would merely confirm Trudeau’s unflattering characterization of them as self-serving political opportunists hell-bent on destroying national unity by “selling out” to Quebec nationalists. Nevertheless, Trudeau’s forceful intervention, including two days of television interviews, forced the first ministers to make a significant alteration to the fundamental characteristics clause of the accord. The terms “French Canada” and “English Canada” were altered to “French-speaking Canadians” and “English-speaking Canadians.” This move away from a collective, two-nations definition of Canada only partly appeased Trudeau. He preferred that Canada be described succinctly as a bilingual nation-state with official language minority rights.
What was a former prime minister to do but join the fray? Trudeau pursued two strategies. He attempted through rational argument to convince the first ministers to fix the worst flaws of their constitutional handiwork before seeking legislative approval. If they refused, Trudeau hoped that his arguments would force them to respond to political pressure. Ideally, an irate public would convince at least one premier, fearful of defeat at the polls, not to ratify the accord. Initially, it appeared that neither strategy would succeed. Senator Lowell Murray, the minister of state for federal-provincial relations, took on the challenge of rebutting Trudeau’s critique. In the press and before the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on August 4, Murray described Meech as a “seamless web and an integrated whole” that could not be amended. His approach convinced committee members to support the accord. Several concerned citizens as well as various women’s, social, ethnocultural, aboriginal, and civil liberties organizations expressed their opposition to elements of the accord, but their interventions had no impact. At this early juncture, Canadians appeared reasonably pleased with the accord, expressing only modest concern over the “distinct society” clause.
Trudeau loyalists in parliament arranged for him to be invited to testify before the Special Joint Committee as well as the Senate Committee. Trudeau made the best of both occasions and expanded on the general criticisms he had outlined in his public letter. He also countered Murray’s attack on his role in the process of constitutional renewal since 1968. Coming at the end of monthlong hearings that had barely ruffled the government’s feathers, Trudeau’s intervention on August 27 strengthened the sagging determination of the accord’s critics. It also focused public attention on the radical nature and consequences of the Meech provisions. Few commentators appreciated the significance of the moment: the beginning of the end for the ill-fated accord. Inexorably, Canadians were drawn into a debate over what they came to perceive as an anti-democratic constitutional renewal process, one dictated by the 1982 amending formula controlled by the first ministers. Once this perception formed, it became easier for critics to draw attention to the accord’s substantive flaws. Eventually, this criticism emboldened the public to pressure the three wavering premiers who had not been part of the original deal.
What was it that Trudeau found so objectionable in the Meech Lake accord? It was revolutionary, Trudeau informed the Special Joint Committee, because its provisions would quickly transform Canada from a genuinely balanced federation, one in which the Canadian nation-state was greater than the sum of its provinces and territories, into a decentralized confederation dominated by provincial potentates intent on serving their own agendas. The accord would destroy any possibility of a truly national spirit by undermining the heart of the federation, the central government’s executive, legislative, and judicial powers. Once the provinces controlled appointments to the Senate and the Supreme Court, the premiers would exercise a de facto “kind of remote control,” almost a veto, over Ottawa’s sovereignty. The mandatory annual federal-provincial conferences, one on the constitution and a second on the economy, would cripple the federal cabinet by subjecting it to constant pressure from ten premiers. The provincialization of immigration, the curtailment of the federal spending powers in areas of provincial jurisdiction, the extension of the unanimity amending formula to a whole range of federal institutions and prerogatives such as the creation of new provinces, and the designation of Quebec as a distinct society (combined with a clause empowering the Quebec government to preserve and promote that distinctiveness) contributed to an irreversible enhancement of provincialism. In short, the accord said “goodbye to the dream of one Canada” and created a “sort of confederation or directory of eleven first ministers getting together to try and determine what direction the entire country … should take.”
For committee members, the two most controversial issues were the distinct society clause and the devolution of powers to the provinces. Initially, Trudeau had chosen not to dwell on the distinct society clause except to point out that, if it was an interpretative clause, then the drafters intended that it mean something. Murray’s contention that the clause was meaningless—that it had no constitutional impact and would not give Quebec any additional powers to preserve or develop this distinct society—was insulting and misleading. The real problem was to determine exactly what the distinct society clause meant; otherwise, Canadians could be in for some nasty surprises. Trudeau noted that the federal and provincial governments had protected their section 91 and 92 powers of the Constitution Act with a non-derogation clause, but refused to extend that protection to citizens’ rights protected by the Charter. This omission required rectification. The distinct society clause, Trudeau said, was a hidden form of special status, something that was insulting, humiliating, and patronizing to every Quebecker. More important, since the clause, according to Bourassa, would override the Charter and transfer sovereignty in certain grey areas from Ottawa to Quebec, it was a fast track to sovereignty-association, the political option that a majority of Quebeckers had rejected in 1980.
Trudeau also dealt with the charge that his government had offered the provinces, at some point during his time in power, virtually everything in Meech. He conceded that he had been willing to negotiate matters pertaining to Senate and Supreme Court appointments, Ottawa’s spending powers, and immigration, but always on condition that Ottawa gained something in return. What, Trudeau asked, had Mulroney asked for in return for the accord’s gifts to the provinces? Nothing. Determined to set the record straight, Trudeau, waving his letter of March 31, 1976, to the premiers, demonstrated that he had never offered an amending formula based on unanimity. Trudeau’s preferred amending formula remained the one based on four regions, a formula agreed to by all provinces, including Quebec, in the Victoria Charter of 1971.
Trudeau’s appearance before the Senate on March 30, 1988, was a tour de force. Fully briefed, he expressed his profound disappointment that the Special Joint Committee had refused to carry out its legislative responsibility by recommending amendments to the accord despite the express recognition of its flaws, especially the impact of the distinct society clause on the Charter. He hoped that the senators would take their legislative responsibility more seriously, and he challenged them to “become a focal point for the most important constitutional debate, or certainly one of the most important, in this period of our history” by proposing amendments. With any luck, Canadians would be shocked into taking a closer look at the accord and insist that their provincial legislators analyse and amend it. If changes could not be made, the premiers had no other recourse but rejection.
Referring to a letter by Murray in the Globe and Mail of May 30, 1987, Trudeau agreed that the Constitution Act, 1982, had three main flaws: the absence of the Quebec government’s signature, the notwithstanding clause, and the opting-out provisions in the amendment formula. These flaws had resulted from the dynamic tensions of federalism. Various prime ministers, beginning with King at the federal-provincial conference of 1927, had attempted unsuccessfully to patriate the British North America Act. After 1945, Ottawa succeeded in building “a national will, a sense of national identity,” thanks to progressive domestic and foreign policies. By the 1960s, this development began to be undermined by the rise of Quebec nationalism, separatism, and provincial rights. Beginning with the 1964 Fulton-Favreau amending formula negotiations and proceeding on through the Victoria Charter of 1971, several provinces, copying Quebec, demanded new legislative powers in exchange for patriation and an amending formula. The election of a secessionist Parti Québécois government in 1976 accentuated the pressures for special status for Quebec and more powers for the provinces.
Trudeau reminded the senators that his government, after the 1980 Quebec referendum, tried to get provincial agreement to a limited package of amendments including patriation, a charter, and a version of the Victoria amending formula. When, at the September 1980 federal-provincial conference, Trudeau was presented with a greatly expanded list of provincial demands, he concluded that the premiers’ appetite for power was insatiable. If the constitutional logjam was to be broken, he knew that his government had two options: accept the unanimity rule and abandon his referendum promise to renew the federation, or proceed unilaterally to Westminster with a citizens’ constitutional package comprising patriation, a charter, and an amending formula.
Trudeau took the opportunity to deny that his referendum promise of constitutional renewal entailed a recognition of Quebec as a distinct society. “Honourable Senators,” declared an irate Trudeau, “how could it reasonably be inferred that I was attempting to win the referendum by setting Canada on a course that I consistently had denounced as deleterious as even losing the referendum itself would be? I really take objection … that, somehow, we have made promises to give the Province of Quebec, in a reformed Constitution, what the Separatists and some ultra nationalists were asking. There was no point in winning the referendum if we were going to give those who had lost it everything they were trying to get by winning it.” His government, he explained, might have been able to avoid the three flaws in the Constitution Act, 1982, had it not been for a highly questionable decision of the Supreme Court, on a reference forced upon the government by the Senate, which declared that the unilateral approach was legal but “was not conventional by virtue of a convention which was so obscure that they [the Supreme Court Justices] could not define it.” Trudeau had reconvened the premiers one last time on November 5, 1981. To obtain the support of a majority for the Canada Bill, he had accepted the notwithstanding clause, which allowed for an override of most sections of the Charter and the dissident premiers’ Vancouver amending formula. This formula, based on the equality of the provinces, included a veto over federal institutions and an opting-out clause for certain programs with full compensation. All the provinces, including Quebec, received additional powers over natural resources as well as the entrenchment of equalization grants. In short, Trudeau had compromised. He expected no less of Mulroney and Bourassa.
Was the Meech Lake accord a natural outgrowth of Trudeau’s previous constitutional offers since 1968 or the Constitution Act, 1982, as the Mulroney government repeatedly claimed? Trudeau reponded with an emphatic no. His government’s proposals had been structured to strengthen Canadians’ national will, their “vouloir vivre collectif.” In contrast, Quebec’s demands ran counter to the spirit and the letter of the 1982 Constitution since they “destroyed the existence of a national will and submitted it to the unanimous consent of the provinces.” In short, the flaws of the 1982 Constitution considered so abhorrent by Mulroney were made worse by the accord. The Bourassa government had concocted the accord to enable it to drive a stake into the heart of the Charter and to undermine Ottawa’s sovereignty in several areas. Successor Quebec governments would use their new powers to enhance Québécois political identity and the drive for secession.
Nowhere was this gambit more apparent, according to Trudeau, than in the distinct society clause. While Mulroney preached that the clause was meaningless, Bourassa proclaimed loudly that it was an all-powerful tool to obtain, through the courts, more powers in grey areas of jurisdiction. Quebec, Trudeau agreed, was a distinct society. Indeed, Ottawa had contributed immensely to fostering that reality. Furthermore, he reminded Mulroney that his government had proposed to entrench a reference to Quebec’s distinctiveness in a constitutional preamble, never in the body of the Constitution as an interpretative clause. These offers had always been rejected by Bourassa and René Lévesque as insufficient because Trudeau insisted on a reference to “the Canadian people.” Consequently, Trudeau said, “when you deliberately do not put it into a preamble but put it into an interpretative clause, that can mean only one thing—you are giving to the government of that distinct society powers that it did not have before.” The distinct society clause could only be construed as a mechanism for the Quebec government to obtain by stealth what it could not obtain directly—additional powers not available to the other provinces.
Trudeau was not surprised that Bourassa had pursued additional powers for Quebec. Constant juggling between the central and the provincial governments was simply the political dynamic of any federation. What was dangerous was that Mulroney proved such a weak defender of Canada’s sovereignty. Demonstrating his incompetence as a negotiator, he threw away “all the trump cards he had” by abolishing the National Energy Policy, handing Newfoundland shared administration of the offshore fisheries, and granting Quebec the right to sit at international summits. A weakened Mulroney then sat down with the premiers to haggle over Quebec’s demands. Little wonder Bourassa boasted he had obtained more in the field of immigration, appointments to the Supreme Court, and the distinct society clause than he ever dreamed. In return, Mulroney asked for and obtained absolutely nothing, not even the remedy of the flaws of 1982. His determination to obtain reconciliation at any price threatened to entrench the compact and deux nations theories at the heart of the Constitution.
“In 1987 the Quebec government was in [the Constitution],” concluded Trudeau, “but the Quebec people stand divided between themselves and from the rest of Canada as a distinct society. In 1980 there had been a victory of people over power; 1987 was a triumph of power over people.” The problem with Mulroney’s bungling was that Canadians stood to be the losers whether or not the Meech Lake accord was ratified. If it failed, Bourassa, backed by nationalistes and secessionists, would take Quebec out of the federation as he often stated they could. If the accord was ratified, it would create legal and political chaos, destabilize an already weakened federal government, and provide the opening for secession. Given this no-win situation, Trudeau argued, it was imperative that the senators call for a reference of the accord, especially its distinct society clause, to the Supreme Court, and that they propose significant amendments before sending the government’s resolution back to the House.
Did Trudeau’s intervention have any impact on the public’s perception of the accord? In June 1987, 45 percent of Canadians considered the accord a good deal, while just over 25 percent rejected it and nearly as many had no opinion. After Trudeau’s intervention, public support declined to 35 percent by October 1987. Support rebounded to 40 percent by March 1988, thanks to a concerted campaign by the prime minister and the premiers. Nevertheless, by this time, a well-organized, broadly based opposition had emerged that would gain considerable momentum by the spring of 1989. This opposition included women’s groups, aboriginal organizations, linguistic minority and ethnocultural associations, civil liberties organizations, poverty and social groups, public sector labour unions, and an informal network of academics. Opponents were angered by the unwillingness of their political leaders to respond to what they considered were well-founded criticisms of the Meech accord. Indeed, they had no patience for political leaders who had lost their respect. The Charter, by granting citizens certain judicial powers over their provincial and federal governments, had given Canadians a sense of ownership in their Constitution. Only a few specialists and virtually no politicians understood this development.
Meech critics needed to convince just one premier not to ratify the accord and it would be history. They experienced momentary hope when New Brunswick’s Liberal leader, Frank McKenna, became premier on October 13, 1987, but it soon became obvious that McKenna was no Trudeau Liberal. His objections to the accord were purely provincial. The first real breach in the accord’s armour came when voters threw Manitoba’s NDP premier Howard Pawley out of power in April 1988. Conservative leader Gary Filmon now headed a minority government, with Liberal Sharon Carstairs holding the balance of power. Pressured by Mulroney, Filmon introduced Meech into his legislature on December 16, 1989, a day after the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the French unilingual commercial signage requirements of Quebec’s Bill 101. Despite a warning from Filmon, Bourassa used the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to introduce Bill 178, which reimposed unilingual signs. Manitobans, who had just re-embraced official bilingualism for their legislature and courts after the Supreme Court’s restoration of section 23 of the Manitoba Act, 1870, were incensed. Bill 178 proved the rightness of Trudeau’s warning about the real intent of the distinct society clause. Indeed, as Bourassa candidly explained, his government intended to use this clause to fire-proof all of Quebec’s current and future language legislation from legal attacks stemming from the Charter. Realizing the risks to Meech, Bourassa declared that he had to protect the integrity of the French language in Quebec. Given Carstairs’ strong opposition to Bill 178, Filmon had to withdraw the Meech resolution from the legislature because it was now clear that Quebec intended to use the distinct society clause to achieve special status.
The architects of Meech were thrown on the defensive, never to recover. By March 1989 support had dropped to 30 percent, and it continued to erode. In the eight turbulent months leading to the eventual demise of the accord in June 1990, opposition climbed to near 50 percent, while an all-out blitzkrieg by the accord’s supporters never managed to push public support above 35 percent.
Meech’s fate was sealed when a new premier of Newfoundland, Clyde Wells, arrived on the scene. A constitutional scholar and lawyer who argued the Trudeau government’s position successfully in critical constitutional cases, Wells led his Liberal Party to office in April 1989. He succeeded, in part, by promising to rescind the accord, and his preference for the Trudeau constitutional school of thought was reinforced when he hired Deborah Coyne as his constitutional adviser in October 1989. A friend of Trudeau’s, Coyne had caught Wells’ eye with her scathing critique of the accord published in the June 1989 issue of Policy Options. The Newfoundland premier quickly became the political rallying point for all Meech opponents, confronting and eventually turning back a tidal wave of pressure from Canada’s élites.
Ironically, it was Filmon who was responsible in the end for the demise of the accord. What Mulroney had not counted on was that Filmon, because he required the unanimous consent of the members, would not have time to push Meech through the Manitoba legislature. Filmon and Carstairs, sensing tremendous opposition from Manitobans, simply allowed the clock to run out. This unanimous consent was denied by Elijah Harper, a Cree member of the NDP caucus who took the opportunity to express the aboriginal community’s wholesale rejection of the accord. The Meech Lake accord died in Manitoba on June 23, 1990. Furious at Senator Murray’s last-minute effort to lay the blame on Newfoundland and its premier, Wells promptly adjourned the House of Assembly without a vote.
Mulroney and Bourassa decided to exploit the feigned outrage of the nationalists and secessionists, the majority of whom had rejected Meech, to make a second attempt to impose the accord on the Canadian public. Encouraged by Mulroney, Bourassa adopted a “knife to the throat of English Canada” constitutional strategy. First, he called on the Quebec Liberal Party’s Constitutional Committee to prepare a report outlining his government’s constitutional options. The Jean Allaire Report, Un Québec libre de ses choix (January 1991), sanctioned the political/juridical dismantling of Canada to enable the creation of a Quebec/Canada confederal system. It called for a massive devolution of powers to Quebec along with the abolition of all appeals, including those under the Charter, to the Supreme Court. Most important, the report proposed a fall 1992 referendum to approve either this radical constitutional restructuring or the secession of Quebec along with an economic association with Canada. This political bombshell was reaffirmed in the March 1991 report produced by the Special Committee of the National Assembly on Quebec’s political and constitutional future. Its report, signed by Bourassa and Parti Québécois leader Jacques Parizeau, called for an October 1992 referendum on either the secession of Quebec or a binding constitutional offer from Ottawa and the provinces. Bourassa put the strategy into operation by having the National Assembly pass Bill 150, which required a referendum. Under this scenario, Mulroney had to deliver a constitutional package acceptable to Quebec or face a referendum on secession by late October 1992.
Mulroney forged ahead with his part of the plan. In September 1991 he initiated the Canada Round, with a set of twenty-eight constitutional proposals entitled Shaping Canada’s Future Together. Attempting to reconcile competing Canadian, aboriginal, and Québécois nationalisms, the document contained a pot-pourri of amendments from the Meech Lake accord and the federal government’s Charest Report, the concept of aboriginal self-government, the devolution of substantial powers to the provinces, a triple-E Senate, and the entrenchment of executive federalism through a permanent Council of the Federation. Between March and July this complex package was fine-tuned during a closed-door process involving aboriginal representatives and federal and provincial ministers. Then, in August, Bourassa was drawn into a series of secret first ministers’ meetings that produced the Charlottetown Report, listing more than sixty amendments and twenty-five yet-to-be-negotiated political accords. This Charlottetown accord was subjected to a referendum, the ultimate democratic test, on October 26, 1992.
Between June 1990 and late September 1992, Trudeau had made no public statement on the constitutional renewal process or its substantive elements. Some Liberals had consulted him, but he remained critical of both the post-Meech process and its substance. Trudeau encouraged Chrétien to insist on a national referendum, but he refrained from participating in the campaign until late September. The small but well-connected No organization, Canada for All Canadians, co-founded by Deborah Coyne, Robert Howse, Robert Jackson, and Michael Behiels, encouraged Trudeau to join the fray in early September. The No forces outside Quebec had only a fraction of the financial and human resources available to the Yes forces led by the Mulroney government, the NDP and Liberal parties, and corporate Canada. Canada for All Canadians believed that Trudeau’s participation could redress this imbalance. Its founders were informed that he would intervene on his own terms and at the time of his choosing. Trudeau’s judgment proved impeccable, and the impact of his timing and critique devastated the Charlottetown accord.
His intervention, an article entitled “Quebec’s Blackmail” published in the late September issues of Maclean’s and l’Actualité, was a bombshell. Trudeau castigated Quebec’s corrupt “blackmailing” political culture as well as the dishonest myths perpetrated by Quebec’s “humiliated” chattering classes. He charged that the master blackmailer was Bourassa: the premier had commissioned the Allaire Report, which demanded that “the rest of Canada must hand over nearly all its constitutional powers, except of course the power to give [Quebec] lots of money. And to put a bit more kick in the blackmail, no opportunity is missed to point out that Quebec’s [alleged] right of self-determination is written in this premier’s program.” Trudeau heaped scorn on the nationalists and ridiculed the distinct society concept that the Parti Québécois had fashioned in 1982 as a tool to obtain the sovereignty-association rejected in 1980. But this was merely his opening volley.
On October 1, 1992, at the now-famous Maison Egg Roll, a Chinese restaurant in working-class St-Henri, Trudeau regaled supporters and critics of the recently revived Cité libre magazine with a damning critique of the report. Characterizing Charlottetown as “a mess that deserves a big NO,” Trudeau dissected the deal’s contradictions, myths, assumptions, and erroneous principles. He warned Canadians that they should take their democratic responsibilities very seriously by basing their choice in the referendum on reason rather than passion. Their individual choices would determine whether they would “live in a society in which personal rights, individual rights, take precedence over collective rights … in which all citizens are equal before the law and before the State itself.” Indeed, if the theory and practice of collective rights prevailed over individual rights, Canadians would find themselves facing “a dictatorship, which arranges citizens in a hierarchy according to their beliefs.” Charlottetown’s omnibus interpretative Canada Clause turned the 1982 Charter on its head by creating a hierarchy of collective rights.
At the top of the pole, thanks to the distinct society clause, was a Franco-Quebec community that had at its disposal a legislature and a government to preserve and protect it. Next came the aboriginal peoples of Canada with their vaguely defined third order of discretionary, non-democratic ethnic governments, empowered to promote aboriginal languages, cultures, and traditions. Under the third category, Canadians and their governments were only “committed” (in the French version Bourassa insisted that the weaker term attachment be used) to the vitality and development of the official language minority communities. Such language ensured that provincial rights would always trump minority rights in disputes before the Supreme Court. The court-enforceable equality rights of the Charter, in Trudeau’s view, were weakened considerably by the Canada Clause, which merely required a vague, redundant commitment by Canadians to racial and ethnic equality, “a respect for individual and collective human rights and freedoms;” and the equality of female and male persons.
While the clause stipulated that “Canada is a democracy committed to a parliamentary and federal system of government and to the rule of law,” Trudeau reminded Canadians that aboriginal governments could replace parliamentary democracy with non-elected traditional forms of government. Furthermore, while the clause confirmed the principle of the equality of the provinces, it was clear that Quebec was more equal than the others, since it constituted the “only distinct province in the Constitution.” Not mentioned, but clearly at the very bottom of this hierarchy, were ordinary Canadians, “the little people” as Trudeau sarcastically reminded his audience. Invariably the courts would be clogged trying to sort out interminable conflicts between these competing collective rights and commitments. The Canada Clause, the counter-revolution of the political classes, strengthened the power of the state at the expense of the Charter and the sovereignty of the people.
Trudeau reminded his audience of the lies and the procedural absurdities that offended democratic sensibilities and common sense. First, Canadians were being asked to approve a counter-revolutionary package of constitutional amendments without being shown either the legal texts or the twenty-five yet-to-be negotiated political accords. Second, the proponents argued dishonestly that ratification would bring an end to Quebec’s constitutional demands. Finally, “high-level politicians and even high-level bankers want us to believe that voting YES is ‘a yes to Canada’ while NO is a ‘no to Canada.’ ”
Not a single intervenor in the audience or during the media press conference laid a glove on Trudeau. He parried all questions with sarcasm and wit, refusing to back down. He reminded the media that the No votes of Canadians were not the same as the No votes of the separatists. Parizeau’s No was intended to advance secession. The No vote of ordinary Canadians was simply a vote against a bad constitutional package rather than a vote, as the Yes propagandists maintained, against Canada. Separatists “say NO because they want a weaker Canada. I say NO because I want a stronger Canada.”
When the ballots were counted on the evening of October 26, the Charlottetown deal was soundly defeated by a margin of nearly 10 percent, 54 to 45. The No side won by over 60 percent in the West, while the Yes side carried the Maritimes and the Northwest Territories. Ontario, where all the pundits expected the Yes side to win by a wide margin, produced a draw, 49.8 percent for the Yes side and 49.6 percent for the No side.
Did Trudeau’s intervention in the referendum campaign have a dramatic impact on the outcome? Was he responsible, as some have claimed, for the No victory? Without doubt, the large and well-funded, Yes coalition would have preferred that he remain silent. Mulroney was very conscious of the mauling Trudeau had inflicted on the defunct Meech accord, and, most assuredly, he was not anxious to see him attack the Charlottetown deal. With Trudeau’s intervention, the hundreds of small, unconnected No organizations gained legitimacy, as well as an enhanced sense of purpose. The No forces believed that their cause was just and that they were expressing the sovereign will of the people. After Trudeau’s interventions, activity at the Ottawa-based Canada for All Canadians took on a feverish pitch as requests for speakers and literature poured in. Increased access to the media was dramatic—in fact, too overwhelming to handle. Most important, Canada for All Canadians’ television and radio advertisements, featuring non-political talking heads explaining the deal’s flaws, proved influential with ordinary Canadians.
Nevertheless, there are two schools of thought on Trudeau’s impact on the campaign. One argues that his intervention was not the dramatic turning point in Yes campaign fortunes. While its members point to the many tensions within the Yes coalition and its inept, fear-mongering advertising campaign, they conclude that the primary explanation for the rejection resides in the complexity and confusing nature of the deal. In fact, Canadians were aware of the deal’s many problems and contradictions before Trudeau’s intervention, which simply confirmed their opposition. For the second school, Trudeau’s timely intervention in the referendum debate had a cataclysmic impact, one that crossed party, class, gender, ethnic, religious, and regional lines. Indeed, support for the Charlottetown deal outside Quebec declined by an incredible twenty points to 40 percent immediately after Trudeau’s speech. Many Trudeau loyalists, they maintain, had mistakenly believed, because of his silence, that he favoured the agreement. The moment they realized this was not the case they felt free to express their opposition openly.
The real explanation for the resounding defeat of the deal resides somewhere in between. Trudeau’s participation in the debate prompted many Canadians to educate themselves about their Constitution. Most important, Canadians came to understand more fully than at any time in their history that the Constitution belonged to them and that it was they who ultimately held the only effective sovereignty over changes to it. The 1992 referendum gave Canadians their opportunity. Trudeau had merely reminded them how far they had come since 1982 and that they must exercise their democratic rights without fear of reprisal from the political and economic élites. Indeed, by acting on their democratic instincts, Canadians moved closer to defining themselves as a sovereign people.
And yet, this new-found sense was challenged severely by the Quebec secessionists in the 1995 referendum. In 1993 Jean Chrétien’s Liberal Party trounced the moribund Conservative government of Kim Campbell as the voters vented their rage at the retiring Mulroney. Québécois voters elected fifty-four Bloc Québécois members under the leadership of Lucien Bouchard. For health reasons, Bourassa resigned as premier and his successor, Daniel Johnson, was quickly defeated by Jacques Parizeau, who promised Quebeckers their first referendum on outright secession. Bouchard, realizing that a forthright question would bring yet another humiliating defeat, pressured Parizeau into accepting a convoluted, ambiguous referendum question that stressed an economic partnership between an independent Quebec and what remained of Canada. Bouchard was confident that his partenariat formula would win the support of the 20 percent of the Québécois voters who are strong nationalists. Indeed, he helped persuade them that only a direct threat of secession would force Ottawa and the provinces to accept Quebec’s demands outlined in the Meech Lake accord.
An overconfident Chrétien decided not to lead the No forces in the referendum, convinced that his strategy of devolving powers to the provinces through administrative arrangements would appeal to Quebeckers. While the prime minister remained aloof from the battle, the leader of the No forces, Daniel Johnson, unwisely decided not to challenge the constitutionality of Parizeau’s disingenuous Bill 150, which set the parameters for a Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Nor was Johnson effective in demonstrating either the blatant dishonesty of the referendum question or the undemocratic nature of Quebec’s referendum law. Johnson erroneously believed that he could win the votes of Québécois nationalists by getting Chrétien to offer Quebeckers a variant of the Meech Lake accord. During the last week of the campaign, when it became clear to an astonished Chrétien that the No forces were about to lose the referendum, he panicked and promised Quebeckers a distinct society clause and a constitutional veto. In a further desperate move, the Liberal government helped organize a mass rally in Montreal of some 100,000 Canadians from all parts of Canada. Some argue that these developments prevented a catastrophe by enabling the dispirited No forces to eke out the narrowest of victories. While the jury is still out, it is clear that the referendum result inflicted great damage on the cause of Canadian unity. Many Canadians recoiled at the fact that a majority of francophone Quebeckers had rejected Canada, and they insisted that Ottawa take the lead in setting terms and conditions for any subsequent referendum or possible secession.
On February 3, 1996, Trudeau broke his silence with a blunt attack in the press on Lucien Bouchard, accusing him of betraying the population of Quebec during the referendum. In his usual meticulous fashion, he dissected the distortions at the heart of Bouchard’s powerful, demagogic rhetoric: “By calling upon fallacies and untruths to advance the cause of hateful demagoguery, Lucien Bouchard misled the electors during last October’s referendum. By his actions, he tarnished Quebec’s good reputation as a democratic society and he does not deserve the trust of the people of his province.” The close referendum result and the near defeat in the June 1996 election forced the Chrétien government, guided by Stéphane Dion, to adopt Trudeau’s strategy of attacking the propaganda, ideological dogma, lies, and distortions of Bouchard and his supporters. Chrétien was also convinced by many of Trudeau’s supporters, as well as by Guy Bertrand, lawyer and former separatist turned federalist, to challenge the constitutionality of Quebec’s Bill 150 in a reference to the Supreme Court. As a result, Canadians will be much better prepared come the next referendum on secession. Trudeau’s constitutional legacy, then, has proved to be both enlightening and enduring.