The specter returns, especially in Ontario and BC it seems, where Dion, Jean Chrétien (he dared to) and the other luminaries of the Liberal Party have ‘celebrated’ the legacy. It is amazing how many Canadians can still be fooled by an image. Here in Quebec, Trudeau is less popular than Stephen Harper, which is not to say much. Not because people love the Conservatives. But they still remember the snake who isolated René Lévesque in the constitutional debate by backroom deals with other provincial leaders including, what a shame, NDP Premiers. It’s actually much worse than that.

Trudeau did NOT participate, contrary to the image, in the battle that came to be known as the ‘quiet revolution’. His obsession against nationalism prevented him from joining Lévesque, Gérin-Lajoie and many others, not to forget social movements (especially trade unions) that really overthrew Duplessis and projected Quebec into modernity. Trudeau was also mooding because he could not be the chief, since they were ample quality people around.

He was enough intelligent to see the vacuum in Ottawa, so he got himself in as the guy who would humiliate Quebec. That was his principal mandate and because there was no alternative in Quebec at that time, he was accepted, although with lots of reluctance, basically since he was playing the image of the ‘young lion’. All of this came down in flames rapidly however. In 1970, he put hundreds of people in jail (including this writer) for a pseudo insurrection while in fact, he used the stupidity of our Mickey Mouse guerillas to hit at the social movements and the PQ. Later in 1975, Trudeau was the ‘tough guy’ who crushed trade union resistance through freezing salary increases, supposedly to fight inflation.

In English Canada, Trudeau is sometimes remembered as the person who ‘stood up’ to the US. I don’t know where people get that. During the Vietnam War, Canada was a reliable allied of Washington by providing political support as a US surrogate in the International Commission of Control, whose real mandate was to stop the insurrection in the south. The Canadian military industry in the meantime made huge profits selling guns to the Pentagon, despite many calls from civil society and the NPD. In the 1970s under Trudeau, the dictatorships of Marcos (Philippines) and Suharto (Indonesia) became our ‘best friends’ with Trudeau touring there like a third rate singer. During the military coup of Pinochet in Chile, Canada was not only acquiescent, but provided economic support to the dictatorship by approving international loans. In southern Africa, Trudeau was consistently opposed to impose any sanctions against the apartheid regime and was also hateful of liberation movements.

All of that led to his very prolonged defeat and decline, starting with the election of the PQ in 1976. Instead of recognizing the political fact, he put all his energy in destabilizing Quebec, starting with fraudulent maneuvers in the 1980 referendum. He had the guts to promise Québécois that he would change the constitution, but he really meant that he would centralize Canada further and avoid any serious discussions on the national aspirations of the Québécois. It went down and down like this until his last ‘political movement’ when he succeeded in derailing the deal that Brian Mulroney had cooked up (Meech Lake agreement) in 1991.

This man by himself has played a hugely negative role in aggravating the fractures between Quebec and Canada and not providing any serious leadership to build some defenses against the US domination. Why do people like him in Vancouver or Toronto? This is another mystery that escapes my small mind.

One could say, it’s gone and away. But it is not. The old guard of the Liberal party is trying to resurface using the son (a pale and mediocre copy of the father). The ‘new’ guard is very hesitant, again thinking that Quebec nationalism is the ‘worse menace». Progressive Canadians, including prominent activists who write in Rabble, still think that the Canadian federal state has to be ‘strong’ and submit the ‘lower levels’ to some sorts of ‘social protection’.

Until this is really confronted, forget about any possibility of building progressive politics in this land.

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Pierre Beaudet

Pierre was active in international solidarity and social movements in Quebec, and was the founder of Quebec NGO Alternatives, and Editor of the Nouveaux cahiers du socialisme. He blogged on rabble.ca in...