A stronger nation than Mulroney imagined

There are many reasons why Brian Mulroney left office as the most reviled Prime Minister in Canadian history. In part, it was a matter of his personality: the neediness, the blarney, the preening grandiloquence, the oily glad-handing. In part, as he would say, it was the price of leadership, having taken tough but necessary decisions in the national interest, notably with regard to free trade and the GST. In part it was simply the lingering effect of the recession of the early 1990s. Hard times turn even the most beloved leaders into bums. But much the biggest factor in turning the public so vchemently against him was the constitutional trauma, or traumas, that came to dominate the later years of his government. Neither the defects of his personality nor the unpopularity of his economic policies, after all, had prevented him from winning back to back majorities, the first Conservative leader to do so since Sir John A. Macdonald. It was his decision to plunge the country into not one but two rounds of constitutional brinksmanship, with the country’s very existence said to be on the line throughout, that permanently alienated the people, and ultimately led to the demise of the Conservative party...

But much the biggest factor in turning the public so vchemently against him was the constitutional trauma, or traumas, that came to dominate the later years of his government. Neither the defects of his personality nor the unpopularity of his economic policies, after all, had prevented him from winning back to back majorities, the first Conservative leader to do so since Sir John A. Macdonald. It was his decision to plunge the country into not one but two rounds of constitutional brinksmanship, with the country’s very existence said to be on the line throughout, that permanently alienated the people, and ultimately led to the demise of the Conservative party.

Quebec nationalists might have invented the “knife at the throat” strategy of extorting concessions from the rest of Canada. But it was Mr. Mulroney himself who held the knife through the long years of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown debacles. It was the Prime Minister of Canada who threatened his own country with death, publicly and repeatedly, if it did not acquiesce in his constitutional vision. That is the part the public could not forgive him for.

And it was all so unnecessary! It is revealing to read the words of Brian Mulroney, in 1983, before he became prime minister. The then candidate for Conservative leader had collected some of his speeches in a little book, Where I Stand. His positions on the great constitutional controversy of the day, patriation and the “exclusion” of Quebec, would not be out of place in Pierre Trudeau’s collected essays. “The federal government must be empowered at all times to preserve the security and integrity of the nation,” he wrote, “to guarantee the quality of services and opportunities; to ensure the enjoyment of our basic freedoms; and so on.”

“There is only so much authority,” he went on, “that can be diluted or transferred before the strength of a nation begins to ebb away.” Indeed, “I start from the premise of an indivisible Canada... I do not believe in a theory of two nations, five nations or ten nations... Nor do I believe in any concept that would give any one province an advantage over any other.”

So: strong federal government, equality of the provinces, one nation. Small wonder Rene Levesque referred to him, derisively, as a “mini-Trudeau.” But what of the great exclusion, the premier of Quebec betrayed by his allies in the other provinces, the Constitution patriated without the consent of the government of Quebec? Again, the candidate was unequivocal. “By accepting Mr. Trudeau’s referendum idea, Mr. Levesque himself abandoned, without notice, his colleagues of the common front.” 

“I understand the disappointment of Mr. Levesque,” he continued. “But politics are for big boys. If one is incapable of accepting the after-effects without unseemly bitterness, one should stay home.” And Quebec’s veto? “Did anyone steal Quebec’s historic veto in constitutional matters, or did Quebec not cede it wheh the Supreme Court decided, following a request from Quebec itself, that unanimity was no longer required?”

These were Mr. Mulroney’s views circa 1983. Yet by 1984, the new Conservative leader, in a speech written by his friend and adviser Lucien Bouchard, was vowing to launch another round of constitutional negotiations, that the government of Quebec might be persuaded to consent to the amended constitution with “honour and enthusiasm.” With the Conservative election victory, the die was cast. Yet the whole premise of the exercise, the basis for the next several years of torment -- that the rest of Canada was at fault for the Levesque government’s rejection of the 1982 Constitution, that the rest of Canada was obliged to make amends -- was one that he himself had rejected just the year before.

What prompted this extraordinary about-face? Certainly it was not for any rising tide of discontent in Quebec. On the contrary, patriation and the Charter of Rights, supported by a majority of Quebecers in the opinion polls and by 74 out of 75 Quebec Members of Parliament, had receded as an issue. Support for separation had fallen to historic lows. But Mr. Mulroney had promised the Conservatives he would “deliver” Quebec, the electoral prize that had eluded the party since Sir John’s day. And, it is not often remembered, the Liberals entered the 1984 campaign well ahead of the Conservatives in Quebec. Perhaps Quebec would have “flipped,” as in the Diefenbaker sweep, once it became clear the Conservatives were on a roll elsewhere. But if a little constitutional sweetener helped seal the deal, what harm was there in that?

As it turned out, a world of harm. The primary effect of Mr. Mulroney’s constitutional gambit was to spread the belief among Quebecers, until then the private grudge of the nationalists, that a great wrong had been done them in 1982. As the sense of grievance escalated, so did the remedies required. The Quebec Liberal party, as an example, had originally proposed that the recognition of Quebec’s “distinct society” be confined to the preamble of the constitution, where it would have no interpretive weight. Under pressure from the separatist opposition, that became insufficient. Now the clause would have to be in the body of the constitution. Anything less would be an insult.

The rest of the story is wearisomely familiar: the marathon meetings among the “First Ministers,” always behind closed doors, at Meech Lake, at the Langevin Block, the whole process later to be repeated in the Charlotteown round; the insistence that their handiwork be passed intact by their respective legislatures, without so much as a syllable capable of being amended; the obdedient lockstep of Canada’s elites in support, including every federal party, the entire business and labour establishment, large sections of academe and the media; the enormous pressure brought to bear on dissenters, notably Newfoundland’s Clyde Wells. And of course, the rejection of the whole lot in the Charlotteown referendum, a popular revolution unparalleled in the history of this country, or perpaps any other.

Mr. Mulroney’s objective, it became clear, was simply to get a deal, any deal, and the greater the resistance he encountered, the more desperate he became. The leader who had once warned against federal authority being diluted or transferred had to be prompted to defend the federal prerogative in negotiations with the premiers, by the premiers -- though not before he had given them control of the Senate, the Supreme Court, most constitutional amendments, the federal spending power, and so on. At the lowest point, campaigning for passage of the Meech Lake accord, Mr. Mulroney ripped up a sheaf of paper, mid-speech, as if to dramatize what would happen to the country if it did not pass.

In the end, Canada proved more durable than Mr. Mulroney believed. The country, it turned out, was held together by more than the heroic acts of statesmen. It was only the Conservative party that blew apart.