Scott W. See. The History of Canada. Second Edition

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Korea, China, France, and Taiwan. In the mid-1980s it became a

member of the G7, a seven-country organization of the world’s

wealthiest nations that met regularly to promote its interests in

expanding global markets and investments (there are now twenty

members of the G20). According to rankings provided by the UN and

the World Bank, at the close of the century Canada was one of the

leading countries in wealth, per capita income, industrial production,

and rate of annual growth. These kinds of statistics, while important,

tended to mask class, ethnic, and cultural issues that deeply affected

Canadians. Although the number of wealthy Canadians had grown

in the recent past, the gap between rich and poor remained.

Canada and the United States: Defense

and Sovereignty Issues

Canada’s relationship with the United States by 2000 was perhaps as

close as it had ever been. The NORAD agreement was still in force,

but “Aerospace” had replaced “Air” in its title to reflect Ronald

Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Nicknamed “Star Wars”

by its critics, SDI sought to develop and deploy laser technology to

provide an impenetrable defensive shield over North America. In the

mid-1980s, plans were underway to supplant an antiquated Distant

Early Warning system by a North Warning System. Thus, even

without the intense pressures of the Cold War, and with questions

about the nature of defense and deterrence on the cusp of the twenty-

first century begging answers, the military linkages between Canada

and the United States remained tightly interlocked.

Nonetheless, sources of tensions persisted in the relationship.

Environmental issues, for example, continued to cause concern

among Canadians and Americans. Acid rain was perhaps the most

publicized of these irritants. Formed by poisonous emissions from

massive fossil fuel-burning plants and the exhaust from trucks and

automobiles, acid rain profoundly affected the environment of

eastern Canada and the United States. Canadians were tenacious

about identifying the problem and seeking solutions in the 1970s and

1980s, while the American governments of Reagan and George Bush

neglected to enforce existing laws such as the Clean Air Act of 1971.

220 Canada and the United States: Defense and Sovereignty Issues

Well into the 1990s the issue remained unresolved, although the

Canadian Environmental Act of 1988 created stringent guidelines to

protect the country’s environment. Similar environmental concerns

festered as the century turned. The most publicized involved the

pollution of joint waterways, dwindling fishing stocks in the Atlantic

and Pacific oceans, and the potential for oil spills by supertankers.

Territorial claims also proved to be troublesome. Canada was

instrumental in moving its sea boundaries to 200 miles in 1977. The

United States and Mexico followed suit, making vast areas of North

America’s coastal waters contested zones. One dispute, the Gulf of

Maine case, was resolved in 1984. It involved fishing and oil and gas

development rights in the rich fishing grounds of the Atlantic Ocean’s

Georges Bank. The sea passage through the Arctic islands presented

another thorny issue. While the Americans did not dispute Canada’s

claim to the islands in the Arctic archipelago, which Britain

transferred to the dominion in 1880, they considered the waters

surrounding the islands an international space. In 1969 an American

oil tanker, the Manhattan, made the Northwest passage. The

icebreaker Polar Sea made a similar voyage in 1985. The first

received Canada’s reluctant permission; the second departed unan-

nounced. In 1988 the U.S. government agreed to request surface ship

passage through the Arctic islands, but it still does not formally

recognize Canadian sovereignty in the waterways. This remains a

source of irritation for Canadians.

More recently the longest international border in the world

became a focus of some dispute. Concerns about illegal aliens passing

from Canada to the United States, as well as older issues such as the

smuggling of drugs and other illicit items, led American politicians to

consider legislation in the late 1990s that would make crossing the

border a more rigorous process. A collective cry of protest from

Canadians forced the Americans to reconsider the changes. The

failure to exclude Canadians from the Helms-Burton law of 1996

provided another irritant. The law permitted the prosecution of

individuals who supposedly benefited from the “confiscated prop-

erty” of people who fled Castro’s Cuba. When a few Canadians were

prevented from entering the United States because of this law, it

inflamed popular passions. Nonetheless, these disputes between the

two countries paled when compared with the explosive events of the

past. Despite the fact that the image has its sharp critics, millions of

Canada and the United States: Defense and Sovereignty Issues 221

Canadians and Americans alike believed that their countries shared a

special relationship on the eve of the twenty-first century.

Canada’s Complex Face

The contest for power transpired on many fronts outside the realm

of political party divisions and the historic struggle between franco-

phones and anglophones. Late in the twentieth century, interest groups

based on class, gender, and ethnicity sought to bring about changes

and improve the lives of their members through political and social

action. In 1867 the new dominion’s leaders were overwhelmingly male

anglophones of British heritage and elite francophones. After repeated

struggles the country’s power base had dramatically shifted to include

women, Native peoples, and immigrants. As the Charlottetown Accord

illustrated, these groups now need ed to be included in all important

national and provincial dialogues.

Women’s Issues

After World War II, Canadian women accomplished considerable

achievements. A rising tide of feminism, which was part of an

international phenomenon, provided cohesion for women seeking to

expand their rights and improve their positions in the workplace,

home, and political arena. Many women were forced to leave their

jobs in the postwar era. Those who remained earned lower wages

than their male counterparts, who performed virtually the same task.

The National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC),

formed in 1972, lobbied extensively to enhance women’s rights. Over

600 organizations under the NAC umbrella, representing over five

million women, existed in the late 1990s. Central issues for these

groups were equality in the workplace, political equity, domestic and

public violence against women, day care, maternity leaves, family

law, and educational rights. As the result of the efforts of some

of these organizations, abortion was legalized in a 1987 Supreme

Court decision. While the Charter of Rights and Freedoms suggested

unambiguous gender equity, many women believed that the Con-

stitution would not adequately protect them against discrimination

if provinces elected to invoke the notwithstanding clause.

222 Canada’s Complex Face

The growth of the number of women in politics was frustratingly

slow during the twentieth century. From the first female in a

provincial legislature in 1917, Alberta’s Louise McKinney, to Kim

Campbell, who became the country’s first female prime minister for a

brief period in 1993, women undeniably made significant gains

in politics. Still, given the fact that women outnumbered men in

Canada, their numbers remain disproportionately small in elected

and appointed positions. In 2000’s Parliament, for example, sixty

women (twenty percent) sat in the House of Commons and thirty-two

(thirty percent) served as Senators. As more than one feminist

politician bitterly observed, at the contemporary pace it would take

quite some time for women to gain parity with men in Canada’s

political sphere. As they entered the twenty-first century, Canadian

women pointed with pride to their impressive gains in politics,

society, and the workplace, but great imbalances and injustices

remained to be addressed.

Native Peoples

Canada’s Native peoples also made great strides in the late twentieth

century. A revised Indian Act in 1951 extended more power to Native

women and band councils; it also implied that assimilation would

be a positive solution for bringing an end to centuries of injustices.

A government study in 1969, reflecting Trudeau’s “just society”

principles, proposed that Native peoples should enjoy equal rights

with other Canadians. This effectively meant that over time, they

would lose their special rights. Reserves would be phased out, for

example. The reaction among Native peoples was negative and swift,

forcing Minister of Indian Affairs Jean Chrétien to shelve the

recommendations.

Native peoples in the modern era became more politically and

socially active then at any other point in the twentieth century. The

Assembly of First Nations, formed in 1982, became one of the major

political and lobbying groups for Native rights. Led by Ovide

Mercredi, First Nations participated in the discussions leading to

the Charlottetown Accord. While Canada’s Native peoples were

tremendously varied and articulated different perspectives, three

issues illustrated their concerns in the closing years of the twentieth

Canada’s Complex Face 223

century: land claims, social issues, and self-rule (see “First Nations

Charter” in the Documents section).

Native land claims rest on the fact that approximately half of

Canada’s landmass has never been formally signed over to govern-

ments in treaties. Some of the most dramatic land claim cases of the

1990s unfolded in British Columbia. At stake were vast timber

reserves, coastal rights, and traditional tribal cultures. A contentious

1975 compromise involved Quebec’s James Bay region. In the James

Bay Agreement, Cree and Inuit gave up their historic land titles in

return for territorial, hunting, fishing, and trapping rights, as well as

financial payments. The Quebec government’s massive hydroelec-

tricity project in James Bay and its plans for further developments in

the area still spark heated confrontations among Native peoples, the

Quebec government, and environmentalists. Environmentalists argue

that the ecosystem of northern Quebec has been damaged by the

construction of massive dams and altered waterways.

Although large-scale conflict between Native peoples and whites

had not broken out since the N orth-West Rebellion of 1885,

several confrontations in the late twentieth century produced some

violence. A 1990 clash involving the Akwasasne reserve in Quebec,

Ontario, and New York State over land claims and gambling led to a

protracted standoff between armed Mohawk and Quebec’s police.

One police officer died in the incident. In another episode at

Kahnewake, a community on the outskirts of Montreal, Mohawk

blockaded a popular commuter bridge. After seventy-eight days

of deadlock between federal troops and Mohawk, the resistance

collapsed. A subsequent government study determined that granting

Native peoples more rights to self-rule would ease the tensions. Yet

no obvious resolution materialized for these emotional issues.

Native peoples across Canada generally supported the Mohawk,

but many whites deemed armed resistance an inappropriate way to

solve problems.

In a more positive vein, on April 1, 1999, the new self-governing

territory of Nunavut, meaning “our land,” came into being. This vast

domain, about one-fifth of Canada’s landmass, was carved off of the

Northwest Territories. The Inuit, about eighty-five percent of the

territory’s 25,000 inhabitants, gained self-rule over their ancestral

homelands. The new territory was designed with the administrative

machinery to exercise a great deal of control over its domestic

224 Canada’s Complex Face

matters, social programs, and economic development, but it would

receive most of its operating budget from the federal government.

Nunavut remains a unique model of self-government in Canada and

is testimony that land claims between indigenous peoples and

governments can be resolved peacefully and equitably.

The New Immigrants

Canada’s immigration patterns in the wake of World War II changed

substantially; they literally altered the country’s ethnic and cultural

complexion. A point system introduced in the late 1960s shifted

immigration policy away from making decisions based on national

origin and race to considering the applicant’s education, occupation,

age, and language abilities. By the 1980s substantial numbers of

immigrants came from the Caribbean, India, Indochina, and the

Philippines. British and Americans, reflecting traditional migration

patterns, also arrived. As the 1990s progressed, political and social

tensions in Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, which reverted to

Chinese control in 1997, became significant sources of immigrants to

Canada. During that decade, the country averaged over 200,000

immigrants a year. By the turn of the century almost five million

residents, sixteen percent of the country’s population, were born

abroad.

Canada’s vibrant medley of ethnic and cultural groups both

strengthened the country and exposed unsavory attitudes. Immi-

grants flocked to urban areas. By 1991 Toronto’s population was

almost forty percent foreign born; Vancouver’s was thirty percent.

The cities and large towns of southern Ontario also became magnets

for the new migrants. On the other hand, the Atlantic region and

Saskatchewan received few immigrants. The introduction of distinct

ethnic and cultural groups unsettled some Canadians who were

accustomed to thinking of their society as an especially tolerant one.

Harsh sentiments were aired in public, and occasional violence flared

involving immigrants from Hong Kong, India, Haiti, and Southeast

Asia. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms played a critical role as

various ethnic groups defended their culture and language. In a highly

publicized case, for example, a Sikh Mountie won the right to wear

his turban on the job. Native-born Canadians expressed alarm that

Canada’s Complex Face 225

growing numbers of residents spoke neither official language.

Roughly seventeen percent of the country’s population in 1991 fell

into this allophone category. Canadians faced an essential contra-

diction in 2000. The mosaic or multicultural ideal, so carefully

constructed since the 1960s, had become a target of criticism by

Canadians who feared the erosion of a unifying Canadian culture in

the twenty-first century. (see “A Voice of New Canadians ” in the

Documents section).

Chrétien and the Return of the Liberals

After the Charlottetown Accord failed to be approved in the 1992

referendum, the fate of Mulroney’s Conservatives seemed to be

sealed. Westerners believed that the federal government was spending

too much time and energy trying to appease Quebec. Québécois

complained that it had not done enough. Free trade and NAFTA

received severe criticism from Canadians who were concerned about

the health of the country’s economy and culture as a recession hit in

1990. The following year an immensely unpopular Goods and

Services Tax of seven percent, to be levied on virtually every

commodity except food and rent, pushed the prime minister’s

popularity ratings into the cellar. With Conservatives clambering

for his removal because he was so obviously a political handicap,

Mulroney retired in June 1993. He was replaced by an untested and

largely unknown westerner named Kim Campbell, the country’s first

female prime minister. She inherited a $40 billion deficit and

struggled to handle the baggage of Mulroney’s administration,

which was tainted by excessive patronage. Within months Campbell

and the Conservatives were crushed by a resurgent Liberal party.

The election of 1993 brought Jean Chrétien into office as Liberal

prime minister. Unkindly called “yesterday’s man” by his opponents,

he had indeed served in various capacities during Trudeau’s

administration. With promises to improve the economy and create

jobs, Chrétien’s Liberals took virtually every seat in Ontario and did

well in the West and Atlantic region. The upstart Reform party

captured many western votes. After the election, many Canadians no

doubt had trouble identifying the greater of two shocks. Lucien

226 Chrétien and the Return of the Liberals

Bouchard’s Bloc Québécois party (BQ) received enough seats to

become the official opposition party in Parliament. Strikingly, the

BQ’s mandate was to work in conjunction with the Parti Québécois

to seek Quebec’s separation from Canada. Perhaps equally astound-

ing was the almost total decimation of the Progressive Conservatives.

Only two Tory members of Parliament survived the election. Voters

had passed brutal judgment on Mulroney’s policies, and the politics

of regionalism had triumphed.

Despite a lack of enthusiastic popular support, the Liberals

retained power for the remainder of the 1990s. While Chrétien had

strongly criticized them during the election campaign, he did not

dismantle the trade agreements with the United States and Mexico.

Sweeping cuts in funding to provinces for welfare, health, and

educational programs helped to bring the deficit under control.

Thanks to an improved economy in the 1990s and a continued high

tax burden, by 1998 the government was in the enviable position of

declaring that it had a surplus. A spirited politician with working-

class roots, Chrétien managed to navigate tricky party and regional

divisions to remain firmly in control. In 1997 the Liberals won

reelection. The most significant changes in that election were the

modest recuperation of the Conservatives (humorists pointed out that

they had nowhere to go but up) and the slippage of the Bloc

Québécois into third-party status. The Reform party, still an

overwhelmingly western organization, now assumed the role as the

official opposition in Parliament. In the late 1990s, few Canadians

displayed any evidence of liking or admiring their feisty prime

minister. Yet with a roaring economy and surprising ease, Chrétien

and his Liberals won a third majority government in the elections of

November 2000.

Quebec and the Question of Sovereignty

The nagging issue of Quebec’s reluctance to sign the Constitution

continued to influence Canadian politics. Robert Bourassa’s remark-

able political comeback kept the Quebec Liberals in power from 1985

to 1994. The Liberals negotiated both the Meech Lake Accord and

the Charlottetown Accord, passed Bill 178 in 1988 to protect the

Quebec and the Question of Sovereignty 227

French language, and agitated for more provincial control over

programs. Bourassa stepped down in 1994. Later that year his

successor, Daniel Johnson, lost the provincial election after taking a

staunch federalist position. The return of the Parti Québécois in 1994

signaled a resurgence of separatist spirit. The new premier, Jacques

Parizeau, a fluently bilingual and prickly academic, suggested another

referendum in the near future. This time, he promised, the vote would

be for a clear separation from Canada.

With Bouchard’s Bloc Québécois as the official opposition party

in Ottawa and the PQ now back in power in Quebec City, the

atmosphere seemed favorable for the province’s separation. The

referendum question, scheduled for October 1995, asked for a

sovereign Quebec with a “new economic and political partnership”

with Canada. Canadians outside Quebec were profoundly discour-

aged. Most of Quebec’s anglophones, Native peoples, and other

ethnic groups deplored the repeat performance. The referendum

campaign faltered badly in the summer. Premier Parizeau was

roundly disliked and mistrusted, even by staunch separatists.

Chrétien largely ignored the issue, confident in the thought that the

PQ did not have enough support to approve the question. Then

Bouchard and his supporters decided to take over the campaign

directly. Almost overnight the immensely popular Bouchard, who

had remarkably survived a bacterial flesh-eating disease that led to

the amputation of one of his legs in 1994, reinvigorated the

sovereignty cause. In the eleventh hour, frightened by the turn of

events, federalists rallied. One massive and emotional gathering in

Montreal a few days before the vote proclaimed that Quebec’s

position in Canada was critical for the country’s survival. On

October 30, 1995, Quebec voters cast ballots that left a victory in the

hands of sovereignty opponents, but just barely. A shocking 49.6

percent supported the question. In the postreferendum haze,

Canadians grasped the fact that the country had narrowly survived

a dangerous moment.

Much like the aftermath of the 1980 referendum, the 1995

sovereignty vote led to conflicting feelings of utter exhaustion and

renewed anger. Allegations of spoiled ballots, claims from PQ

ministers that ethnic minorities had undermined sovereignty, and

blame directed at the federalists for their lackluster efforts combined

to leave Canadians in a sour mood. After 1995 the intensity of the

228 Quebec and the Question of Sovereignty

separatism movement diminished. Bouchard, intent on restoring

Quebec’s financial health, replaced Parizeau as premier in early 1996.

The PQ promised another referendum on sovereignty during its

successful 1998 reelection campaign, but by 2000 Bouchard was

maintaining that the party would not hold a vote until it had clear

winning conditions. On another front, the Canadian Supreme Court

unanimously determined in 1998 that provinces did not have the

constitutional right to separate unilaterally. Yet the Court also

indicated that if a substantial majority of Québécois ever supports a

clear question about reformulating Quebec’s relationship with

Canada, the federal government would be obliged to negotiate in

good faith. In 2000 Chrétien’s government passed a Clarity Act that

would require an unambiguous question in the event of another

referendum. Additionally, the definition of an acceptable majority

had yet to be resolved. Separatists argued that “50 percent plus one”

positive votes would suffice. Opponents asserted that an issue of this

magnitude should require an indisputable plurality, such as two-

thirds. At the turn of the century the separatist movement seemed to

be in a dormant phase, but, if recent history serves as a predictive

gauge, it can easily be reinvigorated in the right political and social

conditions.

Western Thunder: the Reform Movement

Offsetting the recent focus on Quebec was the growth of the Reform

party after 1987. Rooted to a sense of western alienation, the party

expanded rapidly under the leadership of Preston Manning. Several

themes provided cohesion for Reform supporters. They wanted to

protect the West from having its resources exploited by “central

Canada.” The Senate’s regional composition, which heavily favors

Ontario and Quebec and gives more senators to New Brunswick and

Nova Scotia than to Alberta and British Columbia, was another

common grievance among Reformers. The creation of a “Triple E”

Senate became a popular rallying cry. Reformers tended to support

cuts in social programs, more direct democracy, and less state

intervention. Most also opposed bilingualism and the extension of

special favors to Quebec. By the 1990s it had become the strongest

Western Thunder: the Reform Movement 229