{"id":533,"date":"2016-01-16T07:11:26","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T12:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation2e\/chapter\/9-12-the-1980s\/"},"modified":"2020-10-08T15:24:34","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T19:24:34","slug":"9-12-the-1980s","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation2e\/chapter\/9-12-the-1980s\/","title":{"raw":"9.12 The 1980s","rendered":"9.12 The 1980s"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"attachment_528\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\"A<\/a> Figure 9.50 Referenda notwithstanding, it was the story of Terry Fox that gripped Canadians in 1980, a drama that unfolded with a distinctive hopping gait and a tragic end. Fox is seen here ca. 1977 before his amputation.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe oil crises of the 1970s continued to damage the western economy, driving up government deficits in one country after the next (see Section 8.10<\/a>). Economic stagnation combined with inflation \u2014 a rare occurrence \u2014 to produce what was called \"stagflation.\" The dominant economic theory of the time in Canada, a kind of modified Keynesianism, offered limited help in dealing with this new phenomenon. Trudeau\u2019s 1975 to 1979 administration responded with [pb_glossary id=\"1875\"]wage and price controls[\/pb_glossary] and limited the ability of trade unions to bargain for improved incomes as a means of controlling inflation. This strategy undermined the postwar settlement and brought the Liberals into conflict with labour, thereby enhancing the NDP\u2019s position.\r\n\r\nAt the same time, the most \u2014 and increasingly \u2014popular economic theory on the right called for achieving growth through monetary policy. Monetarism (described in Section 8.16<\/a>) was invoked as a way of adjusting incomes outside of wage settlements. Coupled to a belief in the efficacy of free markets and the necessity of reducing the role of the state, these approaches together constituted the neo-liberal (sometimes referred to as neo-conservative) agenda. Canadians were not in a hurry to embrace these policies, but the outside world \u2014 specifically, the United States and the United Kingdom \u2014 did so from the late 1970s on. Canada was inevitably caught up in this tide.\r\n
\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_529\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\"A<\/a> Figure 9.51 Queen Elizabeth II adds her signature to the Canada Act<\/em>, 1982.[\/caption]\r\n

Trudeau\u2019s Return<\/h2>\r\nIt is worth noting that Trudeau\u2019s unpopularity in 1979 \u2014 particularly in the West\u2014 did not recover during the Clark administration. Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes returned a Liberal majority in 1980, in a campaign in which Trudeau was regarded by his own minders as a liability to be kept mostly out of sight. Apart from two seats in Manitoba, the West did not elect a single Liberal. If this reflected, in part, the Liberal approach to energy politics the situation only worsened with the subsequent introduction of the National Energy Policy (see Section\u00a08.10<\/a>). These developments were bound up in what became known as western alienation, a parallel to Quebec\u2019s dissatisfaction with Confederation and longstanding Maritime disenchantment.\r\n\r\nWhat sustained Trudeau\u2019s standing nationally was his constitutional achievement in 1982. Efforts\u00a0began\u00a0in 1980 to recreate the consensus between provincial leaders that was briefly achieved at Victoria (in 1971) but these ended in bitter disagreement between the premiers and Trudeau\u2019s designate in this process, Jean Chr\u00e9tien (b. 1934). A November 1981 meeting between Chr\u00e9tien and a group of Premiers in the kitchen of the Government Conference Centre produced what was called the Kitchen Accord (and its makers, inevitably, were the Kitchen Cabinet). L\u00e9vesque arrived the following morning and rejected the Accord as a betrayal of trust on the part of his colleagues, after which it was known in Quebec as the \u201cNight of the Long Knives.\u201d[footnote]This term alludes\u00a0to events in Germany in June and July 1934 in which the Hitler regime brutally purged and murdered its internal opponents as well as\u00a0critics outside the National Socialist Party.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nThe federal government then settled on a unilateral approach to the problem, one that the provinces challenged unsuccessfully in the Supreme Court. This left the path open for Ottawa to request of Westminster that the constitution be patriated to Canada. Faced with this seeming fait accompli, nine of the provinces agreed to an arrangement in which the new [pb_glossary id=\"1876\"]Charter of Rights and Freedoms[\/pb_glossary] would protect some of their interests through a [pb_glossary id=\"1878\"]notwithstanding clause[\/pb_glossary] in the forthcoming [pb_glossary id=\"1877\"]Canada Act<\/em> (1982)[\/pb_glossary]. An amending formula, however, was not settled on.\r\n\r\nQuebec remained a hold-out in these talks and has not relinquished that position since. At the time, Trudeau (probably correctly) believed that L\u00e9vesque would not consent to any proposal to reform a constitution from which he would prefer an outright break. Certainly, if Liberal premier Bourassa in 1971 felt pressure from nationalistes<\/em> to reject the Victoria Charter, the separatist premier L\u00e9vesque would feel that pressure even more.\r\n\r\nDespite the constitutional victory \u2014 as it was seen by many \u2014 Trudeau\u2019s personal popularity continued to sag. By 1984, he had spent 15 years in the job and helmed the country through some of its most troubled years. Generation gaps, campus unrest, FLQ bombs, the sexual revolution, second-wave feminism, two OPEC oil crises, the end of the postwar boom, the arrival in adulthood of all of the baby boomers, and two major constitutional battles \u2014 including a nail-biting referendum in Quebec \u2014 represent only a sample of the seismic forces that were metamorphosing the country and exhausting the prime minister.\r\n\r\nIn the background, Trudeau\u2019s private life had gone from glamour to prurient gossip and judgment. It is important to note in this regard the different values that were manifest in 1970s and 1980s Canada: as Christopher Dummitt shows in Section 9.5<\/a>, a leader with a secret life as complicated and messy as that of Mackenzie King could be in the spotlight for 20 years without fear of public or press prying. By contrast, Trudeau\u2019s playboy lifestyle in the 1960s drew comment and criticism; his relationship with, marriage to, and divorce from Margaret Sinclair (b. 1949) \u2014 a woman 30 years his junior and described by the press as a \u201cflower child\u201d \u2014 was scrutinized at every turn. Sinclair came from the Liberal establishment in British Columbia (her father was a cabinet minister under Louis St. Laurent), but she was 22 at the time of her marriage and subjected to the first wave of political [pb_glossary id=\"1879\"]paparazzi[\/pb_glossary]\u2014 <\/b>whether at home, on official business, or visiting her favourite discotheque. <\/b>Sinclair\u2019s departure from 24 Sussex Drive (which she has described bitterly as \u201cthe Crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system\u201d[footnote]Quoted in Glen McGregor, \"The Gargoyle - 24 Sussex: 'The Crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system,'\" Ottawa Citizen, 19 June 2015.[\/footnote]) was a blow to Trudeau\u2019s own well-being. His role as the nation\u2019s most famous single parent was yet another way in which he was a pioneer among prime ministers.\r\n\r\nTrudeau\u2019s legacy is a complex one. His administrations were buffeted by demands for change, and they made many missteps along the way. There were important advances and substantial retreats as well. Material change \u2014 the Charter, the Constitution \u2014 was probably less consequential in some respects than the emotions he evoked in people. Early in Trudeau\u2019s prime ministership, the famously acerbic poet Irving Layton said, \u201cIn Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada has at last produced a leader worthy of assassination.\u201d Trudeau\u2019s undoubted intellectual powers, his coolly rational, Jesuitical way of arguing a point, his disregard for decorum (as when he slid down a bannister at the Chateau Laurier or did a pirouette behind the Queen), and his cut-throat debating style in the Commons aroused feelings of admiration and accusations of unbridled arrogance. As much as many of his predecessors have been disliked or their policies despised, Trudeau was simultaneously the most celebrated and hated man to hold the office. His successors would be held to a changed standard and all would prove to be \u201cno Trudeau.\u201d\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

Mulroney, Meech, and More<\/h1>\r\nAs neo-liberalism took hold in Britain and America, so too it acquired acolytes in Canada. The fading popularity of the Liberals worked to the advantage of the Conservatives. Clark\u2019s failure to hold onto power put his leadership in peril and, with it, the ability of the Red Tories to influence the party in a decade of rising social conservative values. In 1983, the Progressive Conservative Party\u2019s leadership convention ousted Clark and elected Brian Mulroney (b. 1939) as leader.\r\n\r\nBorn in Baie-Comeau, educated in Quebec, New Brunswick, and, Nova Scotia, Mulroney was conspicuously fluent in English and French and as much at home in boardroom Montreal as he was in rural Maritimes and Quebec. A political animal from an early age, he worked in Ottawa under the Diefenbaker government before shifting to corporate law. In the 1970s, he played an important and prominent role in the Cliche Commission enquiry into labour issues at the James Bay hydroelectric project. His disclosure of Mafia involvement in union actions put him in the public eye for the first time. The Commission also found Mulroney working alongside Lucien Bouchard (b. 1938) and in close contact with Bourassa, two political allies who would play important roles in the 1980s and 1990s. Understood to be an opportunist who could play the Blue and Red sides of the PC Party, Mulroney decided in 1984 to move his campaign in a direction that was consonant with highly popular neo-conservative regimes in Washington and London.\r\n\r\nThe 1984 campaign combined a swing to the right with a rejection of the Liberals \u2014 now led by the very uncertain John Turner (b. 1929). Turner, like Trudeau, had an earlier reputation as a good-looking, mid-century playboy (he had famously dated Princess Margaret in the 1950s) and as an effective Minister of Justice and then Minister of Finance under Trudeau. But he broke with Trudeau in 1975 over the issue of wage and price controls and spent the next nine years working on [pb_glossary id=\"1880\"]Bay Street[\/pb_glossary] as a corporate lawyer. He won a seat in the 1980 election but was not the robust fighter he had been years before. He made an easy target for Mulroney and, in one of the earliest televised debates between federal party leaders, Turner withered and crumbled under accusations that he lacked the nerve to reverse egregious patronage appointments made by Trudeau on his way out of office.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_2339\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1084\"]\"Results<\/a> Figure 9.52 Colour the nation blue. The Progressive Conservatives in 1984 were the first in the postwar era to dominate in every region. [Long Description]<\/a>[\/caption]The Liberal record in tatters, Mulroney did more than inherit office from a failing government. He built huge momentum across the country. Although Diefenbaker had made headway into Quebec, it was Mulroney who reestablished the party of Borden in that province, winning 58 of 75 seats. This massive majority in the Commons, however, did not translate into an easy legislative ride. The Senate was dominated by years of Liberal appointments with little likelihood of change on the horizon. For the first time in decades, the upper house was inclined to scrutinize legislation and send it back to the Commons for amendment. These practices frustrated Progressive Conservatives who were hungry for change, and stimulated calls for senate reform. Mulroney faced other challenges, however, and some of these were internal. Having been out of office for a generation (notwithstanding the Clark regime of nine months), there was a backlog of demands from\u00a0patronage appointment hopefuls. As well, the country was running a significant deficit, and attempts to reduce it only imperiled Mulroney\u2019s ability to fund projects that would reward the party faithful.\r\n\r\nThe prime minister responded with closer relations with the United States and constitutional reforms.\r\n

New Reciprocity<\/h1>\r\nFree trade had always been an issue associated with the Liberal Party; now Mulroney seized upon it from a neo-liberal angle. The Auto Pact already provided for severely lowered tariffs in that sector and there were other sectoral trade discussions underway since the 1960s. Reducing trade barriers further and more generally was seen in the 1980s as a means to boost activity in a slow moving Canadian economy. It also suited Mulroney\u2019s pro-American attitudes, which were put on display at a St. Patrick\u2019s Day meeting in Quebec City in 1984 with President Ronald Reagan. The \u201cShamrock Summit\u201d between the two Irish-North American leaders laid the groundwork for a freer marketplace, a sign that Ottawa was absorbing the neo-liberal view that government regulation of trade was stifling growth. The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that followed was resisted bitterly by some manufacturers and many spokespersons for the cultural sector. The acclaimed author, Margaret Atwood (b. 1939), was only the most prominent of the many writers and artists who challenged the proposed agreement on the grounds that it would result in the destruction of Canadian culture. In a presentation to a parliamentary committee on free trade, she said, \u201cCanada as a separate but dominated country has done about as well under the US as women, worldwide, have done under men; about the only position they've ever adopted towards us, country to country, has been the missionary position, and we were not on top.\"[footnote]Quoted in Frank E. Manning, \u201cReversible Resistance: Canadian Popular Culture and the American Other,\u201d in David H. Flaherty and Frank E. Manning, eds., The Beaver Bites Back: American Popular Culture in Canada <\/i>(Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press, 1993): 4.[\/footnote] The final agreement provided protection to Canadian education systems, the health sector, and cultural industries; it did not, however, cover off American access to Canadian water (for the economic impacts of the FTA, see Section 8.16<\/a>).\r\n\r\nThe final draft left many Canadians uneasy and concerned about national sovereignty in an integrated North American economy. The NDP\u2019s opposition was predictable, given its record of concerns about American commercial and cultural imperialism; the Liberal Party also threw its weight against the proposed treaty, thereby claiming the anti-reciprocity position that was, for a century, a trademark of John A. Macdonald\u2019s Conservative Party. Faced with obstruction in the Liberal-dominated Senate, Mulroney opted to take the issue to the polls. The 1988 election that followed became a single-issue campaign, a poll on whether to accept the FTA. Although Tory dominance survived only in Alberta and Quebec, the NDP and Liberals split the vote everywhere else and were unable to avoid a second Mulroney majority. The FTA was proclaimed and in effect on 1 January 1989.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_2340\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"640\"]\"Political<\/a> Figure 9.53 \u201cGet lost. I\u2019ve already been tricked.\u201d Mulroney\u2019s success in the Free Trade election belies the fact that his government otherwise faced comprehensive criticism. [Long Description]<\/a>[\/caption]\r\n

The Meech Lake Accord<\/h1>\r\nThe possibility of constitutional change was able to take advantage of\u00a0the momentum created by the Canada Act. <\/i>The most critical piece was the issue of an amending formula. Mulroney\u2019s popularity in Quebec was largely built on his commitment to meaningful change in this area, so long as it would address Quebecers\u2019 concerns. L\u00e9vesque indicated a willingness to seek a resolution, a move that undermined his support in the PQ, led to his resignation as leader, and the Party\u2019s defeat at the hands of Bourassa\u2019s revived Liberal Party in December 1985. In April 1987, Mulroney invited the provincial premiers to a retreat at Meech Lake, where a nine-hour meeting produced agreement on an amending formula, a [pb_glossary id=\"1881\"]distinct society[\/pb_glossary] clause for Quebec, a system for filling senate openings and Supreme Court positions with individuals recommended by the provinces, and greater provincial influence over immigration issues. This was the only thing that was accomplished with alacrity in the brief life of the [pb_glossary id=\"1882\"]Meech Lake Accord[\/pb_glossary]. In June 1990, the Accord was dead, unable to make it through the various shoals of Canadian politics. What had gone wrong?\r\n\r\nThe signs at first were promising. The opposition leaders\u2014 John Turner for the Liberals and Ed Broadbent (b. 1936) for the NDP \u2014 endorsed the Accord and the public seemed predisposed to support an agreement that would put an end to the long-running constitutional saga. As Bourassa was inclined to point out, all of Quebec\u2019s requirements had been offered up by Ottawa at one point or another over the previous 20 years, so there was little new to be concerned about. Only four of the premiers at Meech were not Conservatives, and one of those was BC Social Credit premier Bill Bennett (1932-2015) (an ideological conservative); another was Bourassa, a Liberal, who was\u00a0adamantly supportive of the Accord. That left Howard Pawley (1934-2015) (NDP), who was replaced within weeks by the Conservative government of Gary Filmon (b. 1942). All of this bode well.\r\n\r\nAnd then, a month after the Meech Lake meeting, Pierre Trudeau resurfaced. No longer an MP, his thoughts on the subject were nevertheless newsworthy. He called Mulroney a \u201cweakling\u201d for caving into Quebec\u2019s interests, drew attention to the dilution of federal powers to the detriment of the whole nation, took aim at the distinct society clause, and made salient points about the threat the Accord might pose to the Charter rights of less-privileged Canadians. Federalists within the national and Quebec arm of the Liberal Party began deserting Turner\u2019s supportive position.\r\n\r\nThis was not enough to completely derail the process. A signing ceremony in June 1987 in Ottawa turned into an all-nighter of negotiations on fine points but agreement was reached and the document inked. Now, as per the existing amendment process, the clock was running: Meech Lake required official Parliamentary and provincial approval within three years or it would die on the order paper.\r\n\r\nThree years is a long time in politics. First, Hatfield\u2019s Conservative government in New Brunswick was devastated at the polls by the Frank McKenna (b. 1948) -led Liberal Party which, remarkably, won every seat in the legislature. Then the Pawley government fell and a minority government took its place. In 1989, Newfoundland voters threw out the Conservative Tom Rideout (b. 1948) government and voted in the Liberals under Clyde Wells (b. 1937), who \u2014 along with McKenna\u2014 believed that the Accord talks should be reopened.\r\n\r\nPublic opinion, too, was beginning to abandon the Accord. A turning point in this regard was the response of the Quebec Liberals to a Supreme Court decision on the province\u2019s sign laws. The Court found the extensive ban on English-language signage violated Charter rights. Rather than concede the point, Bourassa drew up new legislation, [pb_glossary id=\"1883\"]Bill 178[\/pb_glossary], which used the notwithstanding clause to renew the commitment to French-only signs. One of the aspects of the Meech Lake Accord was that the clause was not to be used to get around Charter rights. English-Canadian politicians in Quebec and elsewhere were appalled; both New Brunswick and Manitoba now turned against the Accord.\r\n\r\nIn the absence of public hearings before Meech Lake, what followed was a public outpouring of criticism. There was some support, to be sure, but accusations of elitism and the creation \u2014 through the distinct society clause \u2014of what was called [pb_glossary id=\"1884\"]asymmetrical federalism[\/pb_glossary] raised concerns from coast to coast. New Brunswick\u2019s opposition prompted Mulroney to appoint Jean Charest (b. 1964), a young cabinet member from Quebec, to head up a Commission to find a way forward on some of these issues. The Charest Commission recommended that the distinct society clause be subject to the Charter, a change that appealed to English Canadian premiers but which did not play well in Quebec. Bourassa would have nothing to do with the amendments and Charest\u2019s suggestions prompted Mulroney\u2019s old friend and cabinet minister, Lucien Bouchard (b. 1938), to resign from the government (some accounts claim he was fired). Always an undisguised nationaliste,<\/em>\u00a0Bouchard now declared himself committed to the sovereigntist vision of independence. Just as Turner was dealing with division in the ranks of the Liberal Party, now Mulroney was facing down senior members in his own cabinet.\r\n\r\nMulroney was himself an important factor in the failure of Meech Lake. His management style worked well in executive boardrooms, but it lacked any consultative features. There were no public hearings, admittedly a rarity in the 1980s. The optics were bad as well: a roomful of white male politicians who were all \u2014 with the exception of PEI\u2019s Joe Ghiz (1945-1996), who was of Lebanese descent \u2014 drawn from northwestern European stock, ought to have noticed that they lacked credibility to speak for women, Indigenous people, new immigrant Canadians, and several other constituencies. No sooner was the Accord announced, some of these groups began to mobilize opposition to the process as much as to its product. Mulroney has been criticized as being too much in a rush to get an agreement and, thus, too ready to make concessions of federal authority where there were strong arguments against doing so. In the aftermath of a final round of revisions and amendments in June 1990, Mulroney claimed in an interview that his last strategy was to gather the premiers and force an agreement. It was in this interview that he used the phrase \u201croll the dice\u201d to describe the process. If the premiers had not felt manipulated or treated with contempt before, several certainly did at this point. The public, too, was outraged by Mulroney\u2019s gaff. It was this reaction that prompted Manitoba premier Filmon to call for public hearings. What support Mulroney had enjoyed from Liberal leadership hopeful Jean Chr\u00e9tien now evaporated.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_532\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\"Poster<\/a> Figure 9.54 David Neel's \"Just Say No.\" The catch-phrase of the war on drugs is repurposed here in a tribute to Elijah Harper. [Long Description]<\/a>[\/caption]The final scene of the Meech Lake Accord drama was held in the Manitoba legislature. The process involved in reaching the Accord consensus angered Indigenous political figures, and they were dissatisfied as well with the actual contents of the agreement. Indigenous people were never consulted, and their role or place in Canadian society was submerged beneath the rhetoric of two founding nations. Approval of the Accord by Manitoba required two votes in the legislature, the first being a vote permitting the second vote. It was during this debate that a northern Manitoba NDP member of the legislative assembly, Elijah Harper (1949-2013), holding a single eagle feather, used legitimate procedural delays to obstruct the assembly. This act, conducted by a First Nations man \u2014 the first Treaty Indian in provincial politics \u2014 was an important moment in drawing Canadians\u2019 attention to Indigenous peoples issues and the question of where they fit within the equation of constitutional discussions. Harper\u2019s refusal in the face of substantial pressure to accede was noted widely and regarded as courageous and, in the end, it was successful. The vote could not be taken, the deadline passed, and Meech died.\r\n
\r\n

Key Points<\/h2>\r\n