Pierre Trudeau's Essay on the Referendum


By Pierre Elliot Trudeau



LUCIEN BOUCHARD, ILLUSIONIST

By Pierre Elliot Trudeau

I Accuse Lucien Bouchard of having betrayed the population of Quebec during last October's referendum campaign. By distorting the political history of his province and of his country, by spreading discord among it's citizens with his demagoric rhetoric and by preaching contempt for those Canadians who did not share his view, Lucien Bouchard went beyond the limits of honest and democratic debate.

Truth must be restored in order to rehabilitate democracy in Quebec - this, I shall do by examining some of Mr. Bouchard's assertions between Oct. 14 and 27, 1995.

I - FAILURES AND THEIR CAUSES

Mr. Bouchard's Assertion:

"Countless negotiations have been held between Quebec and the rest of Canada over the past 30 years. All have failed..... Others have profited from our political weakness...." (Oct. 14, 1995 - Center Communautaire de St.Justin, Rosemount)

THE FACTS:

In 1964, in 1971 and in 1981, it was the government of Quebec that sabotaged the negotiations by going back on its word. The Meech Lake Accord, in 1990, is a different matter, and I shall address it later.

  1. In 1962, Premier Jean Lesage, with the strong support of his minister Rene Levesque, had negotiated and signed the Fulton-Favreau accord to patriate the Canadian constitution. In 1964, Mr. Lesage changed his mind and repudiated the accord. . In 1971 Premier Robert Bourassa negotiated a constitutional agreement giving Quebec a veto as well as several other linguistic and legal benefits. The Canadian government convinced the premiers of the other provinces to accept this agreement. When the time came to sign the "Victoria Charter" Mr. Bourassa announced to his colleagues that he had new requests to present and that he needed a brief delay for tactical purposes. A few days later, he announced that he no longer wished to sign the agreement that he, himself, had negotiated and proposed.
  2. On April 16, 1981, Premier Rene Levesque signed, with seven other provinces a constitutional agreement recognizing that Quebec was a province like all others, and did not have a constitutional veto ("this amending formula....recognized the constitutional equality of each of Canada's provinces'). The objective of this agreement was to force the Canadian government to resume negotiations with a solid bloc of eight provinces.

This tactic would eventually constitute an almost insurmountable obstacle to the patriation of the constitution once the Supreme Court of Canada in September 1981, declared that that, as conventions dictated, the Canadian government could not patriate without a "substantial level of provincial consent." The Gang of Eight's solidarity was broken on Nov. 4, 1981, when during a negotiation meeting and without warning his colleagues, Rene Levesque accepted a proposal from Canada's prime minister to resolve the constitutional stumbling block through a referendum. By going back on his word to his seven allies, Mr Levesque forced them to regroup in a common front without him.

II - DEMANDS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES

Mr. Bouchard's assertion:

"For 30 years, the fundamental reason why.... we were never able to convince English Canada (to concede) even Quebec's smallest historical demands is not that we sent people who were not good negotiators. we had the best ones. we had Rene Levesque." (Oct. 18, 1995 - St. Leonard)

THE FACTS:

Let us first examine the question of demands and then that of the negotiators.

  1. The true "historical" demands of French Canadians consisted essentially of one thing: respect for the French fact in Canada, mainly in the areas of language at the federal level and of education in the provinces where francophones were a minority. Thus the first two demands of premier Lesage, presented in July 1960 at the start of the Quiet Revolution, were : first, to reopen negotiations for patriating the constitution and its amending formula, and second, to adopt, within the constitution, a charter of fundamental rights, including the linguistic and educational rights of French speaking minorities outside Quebec.

    Despite Mr. Bouchard's assertion, the Fulton-Favreau formula satisfied the first requirement; the Victoria charter satisfied the first one fully and the second one partially; and the Constitution Act of 1982 entirely satisfied both requirements. In the three cases, these traditional demands were abandoned by successive Quebec governments when they went back on their word.

  2. Let us examine the question of negotiators where , as Mr. Bouchard said, "we had the best ones." More particularly, how can one explain that Mr. Levesque, the master negotiator - who only had to hold his own for a few more hours to turn to his advantage the enormous enterprise of constitutional revision which had started in 1967 and was to end on Nov. 4, 1981 - could suddenly betray the Gang of Eight's accord to accept my offer of a public consultation via a referendum? Though this question will doubtless never be answered, I offer the following hypothesis. Did he fear I would accept their proposal ? Mr. Levesque would then have been caught at this own game since, by signing this accord, he had supported a patriation formula, which included neither a distinct- society clause, nor a veto for his province.

But then how can we explain that he then reneged on my referendum proposal which he had accepted a few hours before? Was he negotiating in good faith, or rather, was he trying to sabotage any federal-provincial co-operation designed to solve the constitutional problem?

III- THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES: SHEER FABRICATION

Mr. Bouchard's assertion:

"Although there was an alliance with Rene Levesque to reach a reasonable agreement, these seven English Speaking provinces... abandoned him in the course of one night." (Oct., 23, 1995 - CEGEP de Limouilou)

It should first b noted that when Mr. Bouchard speaks of a "reasonable agreement" he does not know what he is talking about. This agreement explicitly rejected both the notion of distinct society and that of a veto, two items which Mr. Bouchard is constantly seeking for Quebec.

THE FACTS:

The 'Night' in question is of course that of the so-called "Long Knives," a label shamelessly borrowed from Nazi history by separatists suffering from acute paranoia. ( See note)

What really happened? When Rene Levesque betrayed his allies of the Gang of Eight by accepting my referendum proposal, he lost his credibility with them. The seven English speaking premiers were in disarray and the session was adjourned to the following day, Nov. 5. But it should be underlined that the seven English provinces did not, as Mr. Bouchard says abandon Mr.Levesque. Rather, it is Mr. Levesque who abandoned them. He plunged the knife into the heart of the very accord he had signed less than seven months earlier. And when Mr. Bouchard, in his Oct. 25 speech to the nation , says that (Mr. Levesque's) "so called allies...went to meet Jean Chretien in an Ottawa hotel room in the middle of the night, " this is historical falsehood.

Here is how the newspapers reported these events at that time:

As soon as the meeting was adjourned, around noon on Nov. 4, Mr. Levesque is quoted as saying "For us, it (the Trudeau proposal) seems to be a respectable and extraordinarily interesting way of extracting ourselves from this imbroglio" To which Claude Charron, one of his ministers, added: "For us, it is the ideal solution." Le Devoir reported that "at that point, the Quebec delegation was jubilant and , at the risk of offending its partners of the Common Front, did not hesitate to climb on board with Ottawa." (Le Devour, Nov. 5,1981)

The "Risk of offending its partners" was not an imaginary one, the Quebec delegation finally realized in the afternoon of Nov. 4. This led Rene Levesque to repudiate my referendum proposal without any explanation other than saying "It is all Greek to me." Michel Vastel, a journalist then with Le Devoir, wrote: "By the end of the day , the bridges were burning between Levesque and his former allies." He added that later, while everyone thought agreements were under discussion, "a senior Quebec official, who had been asked why he did not make a last-ditch effort to keep the provinces together, glumly answered: 'After what has happened this morning, we have lost all credibility'" (Le Devoir, Nov. 6, 1981)

For more details on the press commentaries, see Le Desaccord du Lac Meech in max Nemni's book Le Quebec et la Restructuration du Canada (pp. 177-179) and William Johnson's A Canadian Myth (pp. 180-183).

Part Two

LANGUAGE , EDUCATION AND THE VETO

Mr. Bouchard's assertion:

T he Constitution Act of 1982 "reduced Quebec's powers in the fields of language and education--- Rene Leveque refused it. Claude Ryan refused it . The National Assembly refused it." (Oct. 25, l995. 7pm., Radio-Canada television)

THE FACTS

In the areas of language and education, the Constitution Act of 1982 enshrined precisely the "traditional requests from Quebec". Here is what Claude Ryan had to say about it the day after Lucien Bouchard made the above comment. "The Constitution Act of 1982 is not as dreadful as some like to pretend. It is a very reasonable law: it gave a Charter of Rights to all Canadians, Quebecers and others alike, and it reinforced the protection of linguistic rights for francophones throughout Canada." And elsewhere: "I heard Mr. Bouchard last night saying that (the Constitution of 1982 ) had stripped Quebec of important rights in language and education. In my humble opinion, it's not true. It's just not true."

While he disapproved of the "fact that the act had been enacted without Quebec's signature" Claude Ryan recognized that "objectively, the changes brought about by the act of 1982 were very good changes, except where the amending formula is concerned." Oct.26,1995. Interview with Bernard Derome, Radio Canada television and Chateau Frontenac, RDI).

I, myself, shared Mr. Ryan's reservation with regard to the amending formula. But it should be remembered that the formula used in the constitution of l982 was based on the one proposed by Mr. Levesque and the seven other provinces that formed the Gang of Eight. This formula gave no veto to Quebec while the one proposed by my government included a veto.
Thus on Dec.2,l981, Le Devoir published my reply to a letter from Premier Levesque dated Nov.25,l981, requesting a veto for Quebec. I said, in part: "Between l971 and Nov.5, l981 every government I headed put forth an amending formula which would have given Quebec a veto. We only abandoned the principle after you had done so yourself" by signing the Accord of the Eight and after "you had once again proposed (this accord) during our sessions of Nov.2,3,4 and 5."

Furthermore, failing that veto, the Accord of the Eight gave the provinces a right to opt out which was enshrined in section 38 (3) of the Constitution Act of 1982. This allows each province to refuse any constitutional change that would diminish its "legislative jurisdiction" or its "rights and privileges".

Mr. Bouchard is showing that he knows nothing about the 1982 constitution when he alleges that the Chretien government - after a No vote - will want "to perpetuate the current situation which gives the federal apparatus and the English-speaking provinces… the power to impose anything they want on Quebec." (Oct 17,1995, 7:25 p.m., Westin Hotel, Montreal.)

Such stupid allegations- and they were legion- flow more from hallucination than from the science of politics.

THE 1982 PATRIATION

Mr. Bouchard's assertion:

"In 1982, the constitution was patriated against our will …. Because the interests of English Canada impelled them to act in this fashion." (Oct. 27, l995,-Radio Canada TV)

THE FACTS

Mr. Bouchard certainly has a strange way of interpreting our constitutional history! Wasn't it rather the French Canadians who had traditionally striven to free themselves from colonial ties with Great Britain by patriating the Canadian Constitution from London? As for "interests", those of the predominately English provinces were generally the same as Quebec's: to exchange their consent to patriation for increased provincial powers.

Since 1927, every Canadian government , from that of MacKenzie King to that of Bennett, St. Laurent, Diefenbaker and Pearson, has tried in vain to persuade the provinces to end this vestige of colonialism. All had failed and Canada was the only country in the world to have as its constitution a law located in another country which could be amended, for the most part, only by the other country. In 1982, we were emerging from an extensive constitutional debate begun in l967 by the provinces. Canadian citizens had had enough of it and the matter needed to be laid to rest.

-115 years after becoming a country, Canada still depended upon London's consent to amend its constitution. Could Canada face yet another defeat when the only opposition to patriation came from a provincial government set upon destroying the country? Would the project have to grind to a halt because of an adversary who wanted sovereignty for his province, but who refused it for his country?

Three provinces, including Quebec, had asked the Supreme Court of Canada to define the rules of the constitutional game. The ruling was that patriation could happen only in the presence of a "substantial level of provincial consent". This requirement was amply satisfied with nine provinces out of 10 giving their consent.

Quebec's premier was opposed to patriation but, as the rules of the above-mentioned game stated, he had no veto. In any case he had explicitly waived this veto on signing the Accord of the Eight. It was clear that his government wanted nothing to do with a project that could be advantageous to the Canadian federation.

Moreover 70 of the 75 members elected to the federal parliament by Quebec had voted for patriating the constitution while in Quebec's national assembly, 38 members - led by Mr. Ryan - out of l08 had voted on December 1, l981, which for all practical purposes , slammed the door on current efforts to seek compromises.

Thus less than 40% of all elected representatives of Quebec were opposed to the constitutional agreement. One may dispute this arithmetic analysis by arguing that Quebec's government is the only body allowed to speak for Quebecer's, but this claim is the very essence of separatism. If one believes in Canada, one must equally believe that , in matters constitutional, Quebec members elected to the Canadian Parliament represented Quebec's electorate just as much as the members of the Quebec National Assembly did.

Furthermore, polls have shown that the patriation of the constitution was not being rejected by the people. In March 1992, a CROP poll indicated that 48 percent of Quebecers blamed Mr. Levesque's government for refusing to sign the accord, while only 32 per cent agreed with it. In June of the same year, a Gallup poll found 49% of Quebecers agreed with the Constitution Act and only 16 per cent disapproved. -------------------------------------------

NOTES

In international usage the term "Night of The Long Knives" refers to Hitler's execution of 1000 leaders and member of the Nazi S.A. Brownshirts in June , l934 . With this slaughter the Gestapo destroyed Hitler's internal opposition..