Gough Barry M. Historical Dictionary of Canada

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30 • INTRODUCTION

by the end of the period under consideration the largest immigration

segment was Chinese from Hong Kong. In addition, Jamaicans and

West Indians, East Indians, Africans, Vietnamese, and others have im-

migrated to Canada in large numbers. From southern Europe and the

Mediterranean, Italians, Greeks, and Portuguese are the most conspicu-

ous in terms of numbers. Balkan wars, Palestinian difficulties, Iranian

and Somalia conflicts—and many other disturbances besides—have

had a direct result in Canadian immigration history and strengthened its

multicultural dimensions. Québec insisted, and obtained, unique powers

to manage immigration. The concept of multiculturalism was born in

this period and with it the gradual acceptance of ethnic diversity. There

was a growing appreciation of the fact that all Canadians shared in the

experience of migration. The immigration past had begun before the

dawn of recorded history and had endured to this present. The concept

was attractive, but naturally resented in some quarters.

In 1945, upon the return of peace, Canadians expected a return to

normalcy. The Cold War, however, and the Gouzenko revelations of

Soviet spying in Canada, jolted public consciousness. No radical views

dominated the political stage, and two-party politics were prominent

on the federal scene, though the Cooperative Commonwealth Federa-

tion (CCF) and Social Credit did send vocal members of parliament to

Ottawa. No new federal parties were created during this period. In the

federal election of June 1945, the Liberals under Mackenzie King were

returned with a diminished but working majority. The sectional nature

of Canadian national politics continued: all 65 seats in the Province

of Québec were Liberal; the Progressive Conservatives in the House

of Commons were largely from Ontario. The situation was much like

1921, when sectionalism was quite apparent.

From 1949, through three elections fought under Louis St. Laurent,

the Liberals held power. In 1957, the Progressive Conservatives under

John George Diefenbaker were elected, first by a minority, then in 1958

by a stunning majority, and then again in 1962 by a reduced majority.

Diefenbaker saw a new road to the north as a road to resources, a new

destiny. Lester Pearson formed minority governments under the Liberal

banner in 1963 and 1965. One of his more memorable initiatives was

to establish a Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism,

largely to appease Québec. New divorce legislation was introduced at

this time.

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INTRODUCTION • 31

Among the most important events of this era was the addition of

Newfoundland and Labrador as a province. A colony since 1583,

Newfoundland had rejected confederation twice, in 1867 and 1894, and

was granted dominion status during World War I. Financial difficulties

(amounting to near bankruptcy) during the Depression meant that the

United Kingdom was forced to rescue Newfoundland from these, at

the price of suspending self-government and placing Newfoundland in

a form of control known as Commission. National independence for

Newfoundland was an illusion, quite out of the question. World War

II gave Newfoundland enhanced strategic and economic value, and as

part of the postwar decolonization movement, Great Britain worked for

a way to liquidate obligations overseas. In 1945, future options were

considered. After an election and two referenda, Newfoundland and

Labrador voted for confederation with Canada. On 31 March 1949,

Newfoundland and Labrador became the 10th province of the Domin-

ion of Canada. Canada assumed Newfoundland’s public debt, paid an-

nual subsidies and transitional grants, gave better welfare services (e.g.,

Old Age Pensions), and introduced Canadian tariffs, which were higher

than before. In 1962, the new province was given enhanced assistance,

on the basis of a 1957 royal commission that found Newfoundland’s

needs even greater than envisaged.

Constitutional changes for the nation were noteworthy in this period.

In 1947, all appeals direct to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council

in London, hitherto the highest court of review, were terminated. The

Supreme Court of Canada became in all judicial matters the final court.

In 1946, the Canadian Citizenship Act said that a Canadian was a British

subject as well as a Canadian citizen, with the latter put first. In 1952, the

first Canadian to become governor general of Canada, Vincent Massey,

was installed, thus setting a precedent for Australia, New Zealand, and

other dominions. To that point, all governors general had been British

born and invariably soldiers, aristocrats, or other place holders.

Provincial politics in this era was marked by an emerging local and

regional consciousness—strongly felt in Québec, where Jean Lesage

and the Liberals ushered in the Quiet Revolution. Like many other

premiers of that province, Lesage argued for an enhanced role for

his province in decision making and financial management. When

René Levesque and the Parti Québécois were elected in 1976, a pro-

sovereigntist government was firmly, and for the first time, in place.

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32 • INTRODUCTION

The excitement was tense. The 1980 referendum followed, and with

it, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s promise that there would be

constitutional renewal for Canada. In other words, Québec’s initiatives

(which did not owe their uniqueness to one party or another) pushed Ot-

tawa into a renewed attempt at resolving what was becoming a constitu-

tional impasse. Other provinces were obliged to sit up and take note, for

a shake-up in the federal structure could soon be in order.

British Columbia and Alberta were likewise demonstrative of their

political aspirations. In British Columbia, W.A.C. Bennett’s Social

Credit Party held power for virtually a generation (until defeated by the

New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1972). This right-of-center coalition

of Conservatives and Liberals was dedicated to commercial prosperity

and keeping the socialists out of power. In Alberta, Social Credit and

then the Progressive Conservatives, the latter under Peter Lougheed,

had unrestricted parliamentary power based on several election victo-

ries. In both these provinces, great industrial development occurred:

mining and forestry plus hydroelectric power in British Columbia;

oil and natural gas extraction in Alberta. Thus, during the oil crisis of

1973, when the federal government introduced the National Energy

Policy, with stringent controls over the pricing and export regulations

of oil and natural gas, Alberta—and the western provinces generally—

were outraged at Ottawa’s “interference.” Whereas the provinces had

enjoyed explicit control over natural resources since the 1920s, the

federal government used constituted powers under trade and commerce

provisions of marketing beyond provincial borders to implement the

National Energy Policy.

Meanwhile, in 1967, Canada celebrated the centenary of Canadian

confederation. A world’s fair known as Expo 67 was held in Montréal.

It highlighted many architectural wonders, including Habitat. That cel-

ebratory year lit a flame in the hearts of Canadians, particularly those

sympathetic to the causes of federalism, bridging the gaps between

languages, ethnicities, races, and regions. It was hugely important to

Canadian self-identification and pride of place and purpose, and it actu-

ally foreshadowed what was to come in the next federal election.

Lester Pearson, who had succeeded Louis St. Laurent as leader of the

Liberal Party but had never won a majority parliament, supported Pierre

Trudeau, then minister of justice, to be the next head of the party and

thus the next prime minister. In 1968, under concepts of “Trudeauma-

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INTRODUCTION • 33

nia” and the party’s slogan “A Just Society,” the Liberals were returned

at the polls with a commanding majority. Thus began Trudeau’s 16

years as premier. But Trudeaumania was short lived. In the October

1972 election, Trudeau and the Liberals suffered a stunning setback

that had the pundits and journalists shaking their heads and pondering

the causes. What had happened was an expression of the particularly

complex nature of Canadian federal politics. A number of commenta-

tors supported the French backlash thesis by pointing to the fact that

the Liberals under Trudeau won fully half their total of 108 seats in

the French-speaking Province of Québec while losing heavily in most

other areas. These commentators also pointed out that in many areas

outside of Québec where Trudeau was successful, there existed a large

French-speaking population (New Brunswick’s Acadian districts were

cited as examples).

The Trudeau epoch was interrupted briefly by the victory of Joe

Clark and the Progressive Conservatives in 1979. When Clark was

defeated by a vote of no confidence on a budgetary matter, an election

was called, as it had to be by parliamentary convention. This resulted in

Clark’s defeat and Trudeau’s stunning return to the premiership. “Wel-

come to the 1980s” was his memorable announcement.

Throughout these years of growing national self-consciousness and

of recurring difficulties, Canadian-American relations proceeded on an

unsteady course in the postwar era, and the state of affairs depended

on a number of characteristics or facts: the personalities of respective

prime ministers and presidents; the state of international relations be-

yond North American soil, and the respective responses of Canada and

the United States to them; the received or perceived appreciations of

communism as an ideology or political system; and a number of do-

mestic issues in Canadian politics, including soft CCF-NDP positions

on communism, United Church missionary connections in communist

China, diminishing but still vocal, journalistic positions taken against

U.S. foreign policy as a matter of fact or right or principle or all of

these. Canada and the United States were allies in World War II, had

close business connections including interrelated military infrastruc-

tures including SACLANT and NORAD, were founding partners in

NATO, had largely integrated communications, highway, railway, and

airline services (direct or connecting), but Canadian national policies

(and discussion about the same) hinged on the ancient position on

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34 • INTRODUCTION

Canadian autonomy. Canadian governments fought to preserve a Cana-

dian choice, or right, of independent action. This is a given, or constant,

in Canadian foreign policy making. It bears directly on national, domes-

tic politics, and press and party position.

Visits by certain U.S. presidents to Ottawa show the variety of re-

sponses possible. When, in 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower flattered and

cajoled Diefenbaker and brought Canada on side for the Columbia River

Treaty, all was well. In May of the same year, President John F. Kennedy

arrived in Ottawa to press for tougher Canadian opinion and solidarity in

the Cold War struggle against communism, because, as he put it, “in the

long twilight era that is neither peace nor war we must stand together even

more firmly than before.” The next day, Kennedy was a guest of Diefen-

baker, spoke in the House of Commons, and urged a tough, courageous

position: “Our opponents are watching to see if we in the west are divided;

they take courage when we are, and we must not let them be deceived or

in doubt about our willingness to maintain our own freedom.” Kennedy

wanted Canadian armed forces to be equipped with nuclear weapons, and

he wanted Canada to join the war against communist encroachments in

Latin America. Diefenbaker dug in his heels, and a potential partnership

between these two was frosty if not dead. A foreign policy memo written

by Kennedy’s aide had called for a push to get Canada on side with U.S.

strategic aims. Diefenbaker kept a document on this that the president had

inadvertently left behind, a diplomatic breach of faith.

The 1960s on, a rebellious era, witnessed the emergence of the

“new left” in the form of the New Democratic Party, a revived if small

Marxist cluster, an upsurge of national radicalism in Québec, the begin-

ning of a new wave of feminism, and the emerging visibility of native

peoples commensurate with movements of resistance and demands for

recognition of aboriginal title to land. These were unsettling times to

many as old institutions were shaken by disbelievers and new ones were

created by insurgent interests. Churches of all denominations faced

hitherto unforeseen challenges. The essentially conservative social fab-

ric of the nation was shaken, though not irreparably and not for long.

Canada, 1982 to 1999

Throughout these years, Canada witnessed two recessions—in 1981

and 1990—and, in consequence, high unemployment rates. Major

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INTRODUCTION • 35

corporate restructuring took place, and in some cases large corpora-

tions shifted headquarters from Montréal to Toronto, some moving to

Calgary. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s government, elected in 1984

and in power nine years, brought in the Goods and Services Tax, and

brought Canada into the North American Free Trade Agreement with

the United States. Throughout all this time, the Canadian economy

restructured itself, and it became more technologically oriented and

more computer based. Educational institutions and school boards took

into account these new needs. Enrollments in Canadian colleges and

universities increased overall, and women came to higher education in

increasing numbers and proportions. Higher education adopted coop-

erative worker placement as a means of transition from colleges and

universities to the workplace. Women entered the workforce in larger

numbers; families with both partners working became commonplace.

The urbanization of Canada continued, and consolidation of agricultural

production through larger farms was characteristics of this age. Manu-

facturing decreased on a per capita basis but increased in overall value;

even so, it was recognized that the Peoples Republic of China was a

manufacturing, banking, and investment component of the Canadian

economy. This was an indication of what was to come in an increased

way early in 21st century.

In national affairs, this era was one of acute stress in constitutional

matters. Successive attempts to patriate the constitution (with an ap-

propriate, and for the very first time, amending formula) had been tried

until finally achieved by Prime Minister Trudeau on 17 April 1982.

This was a landmark date in Canadian historical evolution. Its impor-

tance is as yet insufficiently realized and appreciated. Opponents blame

Trudeau for it all; others see in him a powerful force for Canadian au-

tonomy and individual as well as collective rights. A Charter of Rights

and Freedoms was brought into effect at that time. The BNA Act was

patriated, and an amending formula for the constitution adopted. The

last vestiges of British legislative authority then disappeared, judicial

links already having been broken in 1949. The monarch of the United

Kingdom remains as the titular head of authority, represented by the

governor general of Canada.

Major, dramatic shifts have occurred in federal politics in this mod-

ern age, beginning in 1982: the end of the Trudeau era and the short

premiership of John N. Turner (1984); the long PC dominance of Brian

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36 • INTRODUCTION

Mulroney (1984–93) and its brief succession by Kim Campbell, Can-

ada’s first woman premier (1993); the victory of Jean Chrétien (1993)

and his reelection (1997). Chrétien was to win many majorities but was

discredited by patronage scandals in later years. Also of note in this

period was the birth of the western-based Reform Party (Official Oppo-

sition status established by the election of 1997), the rise and influence

of the Bloc Québécois (in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s),

and the near destruction of the federal PC party in consequence of its

poor showing in the 1993 election. Regional representation remained a

marked characteristic of Canadian politics. From its many component

parts, today’s Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), headed by Prime

Minister Stephen Harper, was formed.

The great events of 1982 cast a long shadow in Canadian politics.

Québec governments since 1982 claim not to have been privy to the ar-

rangements, often by choice. This matter was for a time tested in courts,

without success. In 1976, the election of the Parti Québécois under

Lévesque resulted in a 1980 referendum for sovereignty (or some such

variant), which was defeated. Constitutional renewal under Trudeau

was brought about in 1982. But by the Meech Lake Accord and the

Charlottetown Agreement, these stillborn efforts to embrace Québec

served instead to alienate Québec from the rest of Canada, and vice

versa. Unresolved issues of inclusion within Canada continue; so do

certain claims and demands for independence by Québec. The future re-

mains uncertain, though past experience demonstrates Québec’s strong

association with Canada and the flexibility of the BNA or Canada Act.

Such problems as these may never go away; they are aspects of the Ca-

nadian internal dynamic. History shows that they were in existence in

1791 if not before. They will likely continue but with the co-association

intact, if a little raw at the edges from time to time.

Canada’s provinces, including Québec, have placed powerful de-

mands on the federal government, or the center, for devolution of

authority. While federal powers have increased in such areas as health

care, family allowance, old age security, pensions, and unemployment

insurance, provincial demands for greater autonomy have also grown.

These pulls and pushes are constant aspects of national fiscal and taxa-

tion life, and they account for the difference that can be seen in the way

Canada governs itself.

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INTRODUCTION • 37

In foreign affairs, Canada’s policies continued to back the United

Nations (UN), especially its agencies of world health and peacekeep-

ing; the Commonwealth of Nations (of which Canada is a senior part-

ner); La Francophonie (of which Canada is likewise a senior partner);

NORAD; NATO; and the Law of the Sea conferences. As a North

American nation with frontiers on the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific, and

as neighbor to the United States, Canada remains unavoidably caught

up in all the major episodes of world history and affairs. Having joined

the Organization of American States and concluded the North American

Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Mexico,

Canada will emerge more as a Western Hemisphere member of the

family of nation-states. The Pacific Rim remained, throughout these

years, a place of constant and increasing opportunity, though by the

late 1990s some Asian economies had proven to be not immune from

crisis and bankruptcy. When Hong Kong reverted to the control of the

Peoples Republic of China in 1997, Chinese immigration into Canada

was diminished, though only slightly, and Vancouver real estate prices

somewhat lowered.

The New Millennium: Canada since 2000

If the previous decade had been painful to Canada in the economic

sector, put many persons out of work, and forced educational institu-

tions to implement more technologically based curricula, the new

economy of the modern age, and of the 21st century, found the nation

and its peoples well positioned to benefit from the economic challenges

and opportunities of global trade. Canada lives by foreign trade. The

new flourishing trading relationship with the Peoples Republic of China

is but only an extension of Canada’s previous outward look on world

trade. Because Canada is an exporting country (of metals, potash, sul-

fur, forest products, foodstuffs, grains, coal and other energy resources,

technical and legal services, manufactured goods, and others), its well-

being remains at the whim and reality of world economic influences

and conditions.

As in past years and centuries, the Canadian economy remains

based in export trade. Canadian resource extraction, manufacturing,

commodities, and energy sectors (oil, natural gas, coal, and hydro-

electricity) continue to lead the national statistical tables. Though a

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38 • INTRODUCTION

general tendency shows manufacturing and industry as significant on a

global scale, consumer spending indexes reveal a continual increase of

reliance on Asian manufacturers. The key component here is attention-

getting China, though India, Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, and espe-

cially Japan are prominent. Canadian banking and insurance continue

their penetration of U.S. and Asian markets, while holding their own

in Latin America and Britain. Computer software and digital means of

communication (notably the Blackberry) are a significant, select, and

high-value sector of growth.

In 2005, Canada imported $215 billion worth of goods and services

from the United States; it exported $365.7 billion in goods to the

United States, dwarfing all other trading partners. Canadian import

partners next in order are China ($29.5 billion), Japan ($14.7 billion),

Mexico ($14.5 billion), Great Britain ($10.4 billion), and Germany

($10.2 billion). Canadian export partners, after the United States, are

Japan ($9.1 billion), Great Britain ($8.2 billion), China ($7.1 billion),

Mexico ($3.3 billion), and Germany ($3.2 billion). Other top trading

partners are Norway, South Korea, France, Belgium, Netherlands,

Italy, and Algeria.

The new millennium also shows a remarkably different political

scene than that which began the 1980s—of Trudeau, Turner, and Mul-

roney followed by Campbell and Chrétien. By the late 1990s, the old

party rivalries were being revolutionized by the noted fragmentation of

the Progressive Conservative Party. In its stead came a new and at first

uncertain rival to the federal Liberals. This was the Reform Party, a

populist party based in the western provinces that had precursors on the

historical scene that date to the early 20th century. The Reform Party

espoused a mixture of populism and fiscal and social conservatism. It

acquired 50 members in the House of Commons in the 1993 federal

election—the same number as the Bloc Québécois, whose object was

Québec sovereignty and the dissolution of Canada. In the 1997 federal

election, the Reform Party enlarged its base and increased its national

profile. It elected enough members to overtake the Bloc and obtain sta-

tus as the Official Opposition. The leadership of the Reform Party was

its founder Preston Manning, who passed the leadership to Stockwell

Day, who was unable to defeat Chrétien in the 2000 election. Out of this

came Stephen Harper’s rise that same year. In the 2004 election, Paul

Martin’s Liberal Party came in with only a minority government, and

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INTRODUCTION • 39

on 23 January 2006, Harper, heading the newly formed Conservative

Party of Canada, formed a minority government. Thus, from Chrétien’s

time to the present, minority governments have ruled in Canada.

Of all the political shifts in the recent history of Canada, the rise to

prominence of the Conservative Party of Canada has been both pro-

tracted and remarkable. From a party of regional position, fiscal conser-

vatism, and neo-liberal ideology, it has morphed into a centralist party

of social responsibility. Its policies have obliged the Liberals and NDP

to rethink their own policy positions. Its nonideological positions have

alienated many in the foundation Reform Party and its successor the

Alliance who had hoped for more fiscal responsibility. The complicated

nature of Canada in its regions and its peoples has obliged the CPC, and

Prime Minister Harper, to address the needs of the larger body politic.

It remains to be seen if this shift will have permanence or give way to

another reformation in Canadian political behavior.

PRESENT DIRECTIONS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS

History provides an important retrospective and a prospective on the

future. Thus, this postscript. Canada’s collective sense of itself no lon-

ger reflects the old worlds of the French Empire and the British Empire.

Canada is master of its own house, though naturally maintains a sys-

tem of interdependence with the rest of the world, notably the United

States. Technology and patents are naturally subverting the idealists

who would like to think of Canada as unique and uniquely independent.

Globalization exists and is persuasive. Technology owns no national

boundaries. Oddly enough, while Canada has championed North Amer-

ican free trade and global commerce, trade structures at home hinder

the greater exchange of goods and labor. Certain commercial barriers

between and among Canadian provinces stand in the way of trade and

commercial opportunity. But management of the economy, foreign af-

fairs and defense, immigration, the environment, and so on are matters

of national as well as provincial and territorial concern. Canada has the

means of retaining control of social and cultural affairs. These are the

challenges of the immediate past and for the immediate future. Com-

munity initiatives to fight global warming and enhancing recycling are

as widespread as they are innovative.

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