What really happened, 40 years ago, for a country recognized worldwide for its moderate and democratic character to decide to adopt a new fundamental law without the consent of one of its founding nations? And why was this new fundamental law, signed by Queen Elizabeth II on April 17, 1982, not submitted to the citizens, by referendum, like many constitutions elsewhere in the West?
How can you explain to a fasting interlocutor that, during a conference which was to redefine the fundamental rules of a country, 10 out of 11 negotiators met overnight to announce, in the morning, that they had agreed on a new agreement which would reduce the powers of the 11and ?
The more we step back from the event, the more the thing seems inconceivable. To conceive of it, one must dive into the ethical conflict which opposed — not during the crazy night known as the “long knives”, but during the day which preceded it — the two protagonists: Pierre Elliott Trudeau and René Lévesque.
A brief reminder of the facts. In a key statement before the 1980 sovereignty referendum, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau promised that he would interpret a No vote as a mandate to make significant changes to the Canadian Constitution.
Following the defeat of the Yes, he mandated his Minister of Justice, Jean Chrétien, to launch a round of negotiations aimed at three objectives: 1) to ensure that the Constitution, until then a simple British law, be “repatriated” to Canada; 2) introduce an amending formula which would allow the text to be modified; 3) immediately insert innovations into the document, in particular a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, one of the effects of which would be to restrict Quebec’s ability to legislate in linguistic matters.
The Premier of Quebec, René Lévesque, had succeeded in negotiating with seven other provinces a text that satisfied the first two objectives, but obviously not the third. This detail is always omitted in federalist accounts, but it would have been enough for Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the Premiers of Ontario and New Brunswick to also sign this agreement for the Constitution of Canada to be repatriated unanimously, with the approval of the Quebec, with an amending formula and with a more flexible federalism than today. All of the following political psychodramas would have been avoided.
This is all the unsaid of the drama of 1981-1982.
Everyone has their own idea of democracy
On the morning of this Wednesday, which will end with the famous “Night of the Long Knives”, pretending to want to break the impasse, Trudeau proposes to Lévesque to submit the Charter of Rights (and perhaps the amending formula) to a referendum if, within two years, there is no agreement between the governments. “I’m sure a Democrat like you can’t oppose the holding of a referendum,” Trudeau told Lévesque, according to his Political memories published in 1993.
Lévesque finds the idea famous and accepts it because, he writes about Trudeau in his own memoirs (Wait until I remember, published in 1986), “he could seem sincere”. By accepting, writes for his part Trudeau, the Quebec Prime Minister “leaps on the bait”. The session is adjourned, Trudeau will announce to the journalists the advent of a new “Ottawa-Quebec alliance”.
According to the document filed by Trudeau and which bears the number 15/020, for the referendum to be deemed victorious, it would take a majority of Yes (everyone assumes 50% plus one) on the entire Canadian territory, but also a majority among Quebecers, among Ontarians, in the four maritime provinces taken as a whole and in the four western provinces taken as a whole.
The premiers of the other provinces are taking the federal proposal very seriously. Trudeau sees, he writes, tongue-in-cheek, that “the other prime ministers were choking with rage” at the idea of a referendum. And resented Lévesque for having complied. The referendum proposal having produced the expected effect, Trudeau torpedoed it at the end of the afternoon, tabling a new document, entitled Implementation Process (Implementation process) — oddly numbered 15/019, rather than 15/021, as if written before the one tabled in the morning.
Rarely cited in the accounts of this day, the document is essential. He explains how Trudeau intends to implement his morning referendum promise. It would suffice, to hold this vote, that:
1) all of the prime ministers present approve of it being held — which is obviously impossible;
2) 100% of the members of the House of Commons approve of it — which is laughable;
3) 100% of the members of the Senate approve of it — also laughable.
If any of these three conditions were not met, Trudeau’s draft federal constitution would be adopted without alterations. This document filed, Lévesque rebels, with good reason. The English-speaking provinces are reassured. End the referendum.
In his memoirs, Trudeau concludes: “The reaction of other prime ministers and that of his own officials made Lévesque realize that he had fallen into a trap. Lévesque doesn’t say anything else: “He got us.” Everyone has their own idea of democracy. In hers, the end had long justified the means. »
The victim in the dock
The narrative framework proposed by the federalists is that “René Lévesque cavalierly betrayed his strategic allies of the “group of eight”” by wanting to submit the draft constitution to the people by way of referendum. He gave way to prime ministers who wanted to shield the country’s most important text from debate and popular vote. And he only did it when Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the great democrat, pretended to propose this democratic mechanism. And it is Lévesque who, in this approach, is the bad player.
There is an epilogue to this sad masquerade.
Since the Supreme Court had given Ottawa the right to patriate and amend the Constitution without the consent of all the provinces, nothing prevented the federal government from organizing a referendum on its own authority. The provinces would have balked, that’s for sure. But Trudeau could have organized it unilaterally.
However, in a text published in 1990 (The Trudeau years), Pierre Elliott Trudeau surpasses himself. He attributes to “the intransigence of the provinces” the absence of “recourse to a referendum, thus preventing the citizens of the country from being the true arbiters of their own destiny”.
You can not make that up.
This text is an edited version of an excerpt from my book Emergency Release, published in 2000.