The politician and the civil servant: Pierre Trudeau,Marcel Cadieux,and the Department of External Affairs,1968–1970

Early warning signs

The DEA’s foreign policy had served Canada well, but Trudeau felt it was time for a change. In his first press conference as Liberal leader, he stated that Canadian external relations were still based on “pre-war premises or immediate post-war premises.” By 1945 Europe lay in ruins. The Canada that joined NATO in 1949 and then sent both an infantry brigade and an air division overseas to defend a weak continent from the threat of Soviet invasion had been a major player on the international stage. By the 1960s, however, Europe had rebuilt, making Canada’s role, as Trudeau noted, less vital. To him a greater focus on North American defence, a position that was no longer isolationist in an age of intercontinental ballistic missiles, made more sense. As for peacekeeping, he believed that Canada could no longer serve as the world’s “policeman.” In short, Trudeau wanted a “completely new and fresh approach” to Canadian foreign policy. ⁷

This last statement no doubt sent a chill through the DEA. In August 1967 Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson and Secretary of State for External Affairs (SSEA) Paul Martin had commissioned Norman Robertson, Cadieux’s mentor and predecessor as under-secretary, to review Canadian foreign policy. His report, quietly submitted on the eve of the Liberal leadership vote, concluded, in the words of one observer, “that everything was all for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” ⁸ While that was hardly the case, the document recommended no bold changes. A vindicated Martin revealed its existence to the Globe and Mail’s Anthony Westell, who forthwith announced, with heavy sarcasm, “External Affairs reappraises itself, approves its policies.” ⁹ On 23 April 1968, however, just three days after being sworn in as prime minister, Trudeau called a snap election, in the first campaign statement of which he reiterated his interest in a “severe reassessment” of Canadian foreign policy. ¹⁰ Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield, for his part, upped the ante by insisting that this task not be left exclusively to the DEA, whose objectivity was now in doubt. ¹¹

Recognizing that a formal review was inevitable, Cadieux saw that his department had to act. He devised a set of initiatives for the government to announce, including the establishment of new missions in French-speaking Africa, the sending of a ministerial delegation to Latin America, and stronger bilateral relations with the countries of Europe. The goal was twofold: to buy time and to pre-empt more radical projects incompatible with a tight budget. Unless the DEA moved fast, he reasoned, the “Hippies” and executive assistants around Trudeau and Mitchell Sharp, the new SSEA, would take over. ¹² The DEA and Cadieux also worked out a plan that complied with Trudeau’s demand for a wholesale review of Canadian foreign policy. They ranked issues by urgency. Heading the list was a re-examination of the country’s defence commitments—to be completed by mid-July—and Canada’s relations with the PRC, to which Trudeau wished to extend diplomatic recognition. Less pressing matters, such as policies governing Canada’s involvement in the Commonwealth and the United Nations, could be dealt with later. The department also promised to involve outsiders in the policymaking process. In late May Sharp sent the plan to Trudeau. ¹³ To Cadieux, only one question remained: who would direct the review? While some members of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Privy Council Office (PCO), who were beginning to flex their muscles under the new regime, wanted to control the operation, he was convinced that only the DEA had the skill and experience to carry it out. ¹⁴

While the civil servants set to work, the politicians campaigned. Trudeau dove into swimming pools, bounced on trampolines, and kissed the adoring women who pursued him. Although he spoke earnestly about a “participatory democracy” and a “Just Society,” he avoided making promises or outlining policies—for good reason. His charisma and the resulting Trudeaumania made specifics unnecessary. ¹⁵ On election day the Liberals won the first majority government since 1958. What would they do with it?

The first hint came in early July when a young, 29-member cabinet was named. Pledging to put “more politics into politics,” Trudeau announced that he wanted ministers to think more for themselves and to depend less on the civil service. ¹⁶ Cadieux was offended. Having ensured the smooth functioning of government from the start of the Liberal leadership race to the end of the election, senior officials like himself were not pleased to hear they needed to be cut down to size. It did not escape Cadieux’s notice that these views reflected those of Michael Pitfield, the assistant secretary to the cabinet and Trudeau’s friend. Suspicious of those with large private incomes, Cadieux resented that Pitfield came from a wealthy Montreal family and that he had never had to pass a civil service entrance exam. ¹⁷ He also had a habit of unilaterally devising major policies and imposing them on departments. While Cadieux admitted that Pitfield was bright and hard working, he was less impressed by the 31-year-old’s lack of administrative experience and his eagerness to reform the establishment. ¹⁸

Try as Pitfield might to centralize power in the PCO and the PMO, Cadieux believed that departments would not simply bow down before him, especially when they remained responsible for obtaining money from the Treasury Board. The under-secretary knew well that the bureaucracy was expected to implement the prime minister’s ideas, but he argued that the working of a modern state was “infiniment complexe,” requiring both flexibility and a recognition that bureaucrats were perfectly capable of devising appropriate policies. ¹⁹ Cadieux’s thinking here was based on almost three decades of experience. The civil service as he had known it, however, was increasingly seen as hidebound, unwieldy, and power-hungry. Moreover, his notion of the “infinitely complex” state was seen as an argument for, not against, increased centralization. Having witnessed the Pearson government’s chaotic and often haphazard decision making, Trudeau wanted policymaking to be more reasoned, efficient, and responsive to general objectives. The revamped PCO would monitor this scheme. There would also be an intricate system of cabinet committees where ministers and officials alike would consider a host of policy options. Only then would an initiative be brought before the full cabinet. ²⁰

If government were to be rationalized, the size and clout of the PMO had to increase. As early as June 1968, Cadieux had remarked that the team of bright young people who had brought Trudeau to power wanted both to change the country’s political structures and to control the government. Not surprisingly, the newspapers were full of rumours about sweeping changes. “Certaines allusions font croire,” wrote Cadieux, “qu’on songerait à établir au Canada l’équivalent du personnel de la Maison Blanche à Washington.” Not only was this contrary to the spirit of the constitution, he noted, but it also could lead to serious confrontations between the cautious but seasoned civil servants and the inexperienced members of the PMO. ²¹

What is striking about these comments is just how early Cadieux discerned what would become two of the most controversial aspects of Trudeau’s 16 years as prime minister: the concentration of power in both the PCO and his own office. ²² A more centralized style of government was taking shape in Ottawa that unsettled Cadieux and no doubt other deputy ministers. That said, he took solace from the fact that Mitchell Sharp, a former bureaucrat, had warned Trudeau about his remarks touching senior civil servants. If he pushed them aside, Sharp noted, they would leave Ottawa and no one would come to replace them. ²³

While Cadieux was nettled by Trudeau’s early remarks about the civil service, the defence review in July 1968 deeply troubled him. In the spring the Department of National Defence (DND) had announced that, unless it were given an additional $125 million that year, it would be forced to withdraw its troops from Europe. The Trudeau government had granted the funds but demanded a comprehensive review of Canada’s defence policy. “J’ai l’impression que la procédure est mal engagée,” Cadieux wrote. ²⁴ To the DEA, the country’s military presence in Europe was justified. While the world was safer than in the early 1960s, the Soviet Union was still dangerous. Canada’s withdrawal from Europe would set a bad example, weaken its bilateral relations with NATO countries, and isolate it in North America. The country faced budgetary pressures, but so did its partners. Once near the top of NATO in the percentage of its gross national product spent on defence, Canada had sunk close to the bottom. Finally, NATO was both military and, since its 1967 Report of the Council on the Future Tasks of the Alliance (also known as the Harmel Report, after its author, Belgian foreign minister Pierre Harmel), dedicated to peace with the East bloc. Was it wise, just as NATO seemed on the verge of serious negotiations with the Soviet Union, to withdraw or significantly to reduce Canada’s military contribution in Europe? ²⁵

These were logical, if orthodox, arguments. But the DEA could not decide the Trudeau government’s priorities, thereby complicating any defence review. While the new regime had inherited the old one’s ambitious social programs, Cadieux noted that civil servants could not tell politicians whether national security came before social security or whether, to keep soldiers in Europe, they should consider scrapping the fledgling universal health care plan. ²⁶ Thus, when the Cabinet Committee on External Affairs and Defence assembled in July, Cadieux was unsure what was expected from his department.

The committee met three times that month and, while most of its members took a favourable view of Canada’s presence in Europe, President of the Privy Council Donald Macdonald and Secretary of State Gérard Pelletier did not. Despite their opposition, Cadieux wrote after the third meeting that the DEA was about to achieve a great triumph. Indeed, Trudeau told Sharp that, upon reading its memos, he now understood why Canada had to contribute militarily to NATO and that he had been appalled by Macdonald and Pelletier’s comments. ²⁷ As a result, Cadieux was perplexed the following day when cabinet, while deciding to maintain defence spending at current levels for the 1969–1970 fiscal year, ordered yet another review of existing policy, one that would consider every alternative to it. What had happened? Having promised the public a thorough review, Cadieux surmised, it was hard for the government to endorse the status quo. There was also the budget. While ministers might accept the rationale for defence commitments, he assumed that when they sat on spending committees they realized the state could not pay for them. This was yet another problem that the civil servants, who could neither raise taxes nor make deep budget cuts, were unable to solve for the politicians. ²⁸ Cadieux’s point here was valid. Yet, for the second time in just over two months, the DEA was forced to restart the defence review.

The foreign policy review and the Trudeau factor

The problem was that Cadieux simply did not know what the politicians wanted from the foreign policy review, hence, from his department. Earlier, he had remarked that the government seemed to be stalling: “J’ai l’impression que quand le Gouvernement ne sait pas quoi dire, il se rabat sur un ré-examen, une étude, une revue, une ré-adaptation, une révision de notre politique étrangère.” ²⁹ In August he observed that when the government said “review” it meant change, but he feared the DEA would not be able to comply. Although it was constantly reviewing its policies, the possibilities, in Cadieux’s opinion, were limited. ³⁰ His comments here seem almost smug, as if Canada’s foreign policy was in the nation’s interest because its diplomats had deemed it so, yet supplying the party in power with the best possible advice was their job. Also, in the absence of instructions from the government more specific than its order for a general review, the DEA could hardly recommend drastic changes, especially when not convinced they were necessary.

By contrast, radical departures were being prescribed by the academics, a vocal minority that assailed Canadian foreign policy from their ivory tower. Most of them criticized Canada’s military role in NATO, supported increased aid to the Third World, and were suspicious of the United States. ³¹ Committed to “participatory democracy,” the Trudeau government invited these thinkers to take part in the foreign policy review. Cadieux saw their inclusion as a slight against his department, at worst a displacement of professional advisers by amateurs who would simply tell the government what it wanted to hear. He was also wary of intellectuals who played at politics. Seedbeds of unrest, universities in the 1960s were in a state of crisis. Cadieux had no doubt that when former diplomat Escott Reid, the principal of York University’s Glendon College, called for diplomatic recognition of mainland China, he had Canada’s interests at heart, but Cadieux also believed that Reid was scoring points with his students and colleagues by swimming with the tide. ³² He would heartily have concurred with the American art critic Harold Rosenberg's tongue-in-cheek definition of intellectual elites as “the herd of independent minds.” ³³ To Cadieux, the advice of the civil service was impartial and thus more trustworthy.

Defence remained the most controversial aspect of the Trudeau government’s re-examination. While Cadieux had hoped that the Soviet Union’s crushing of the Prague Spring in August 1968 would reawaken the politicians to a sense of NATO’s importance, they remained non-committal. In Ottawa later that month, Charles Ritchie, the Canadian high commissioner to the United Kingdom, observed that the mood was very anti-NATO and that the idea of a neutral role for Canada in the Cold War along Swedish lines was being floated. ³⁴ When Secretary General of NATO Manlio Brosio visited Ottawa in September, he attended a meeting of the cabinet committee on defence. Also present, Cadieux observed that the ministers had not been keen on the defence of Europe and that Trudeau in particular had spent most of his time asking if Canada could do something else. For the prime minister and his colleagues, Cadieux noted, the international situation was not to be more threatening than the country’s budgetary needs. He was alarmed by the government’s tendency to act as if the world were not a dangerous place, to pretend that NATO did not matter, and to assume that the country could merely provide development assistance and occasional peacekeeping. ³⁵ A month later Cadieux remarked that the interest of such ministers as Macdonald, Pelletier, and Eric Kierans, the maverick postmaster general, in slashing military spending and in all but withdrawing from the alliance evoked the mid-1930s:

Pendant que nous désarmons, nos ennemis, les Russes, augmentent leur budget militaire et poursuivent une politique d’expansion et d’impérialisme. Nous allons encore une fois nous réveiller devant une situation extrêmement menaçante et nous n’aurons pas les moyens de la politique que nous voudrions alors avoir.

Cadieux also discerned a contradiction in the Trudeau government’s approach. One of its objectives was to assert the country’s independence vis-à-vis the United States. As a diplomat, he knew that the natural counterweight to the US was Europe. Yet Canada was considering removing its forces from European soil, forces that were of significant symbolic and practical value to NATO’s members there. His view was that ministers were too busy to study the DEA’s memos carefully. “Si c’est ainsi que doit se comporter l’administration de M. Trudeau, si ces démarches ne sont pas plus efficacement branchées sur le réel, les échéances promettent d’être douloureuses,” predicted Cadieux. ³⁷ It was ironic that he should criticize the government for becoming detached from reality since it was precisely a “realistic” foreign policy that its leader wanted. ³⁸

The enigmatic Pierre Trudeau remained the most important factor in the debate. That fall Cadieux was annoyed to learn that the prime minister was asking himself “des questions philosophiques” about the foreign policy review. ³⁹ As Trudeau once admitted, “The only constant factor to be found in my thinking over the years has been opposition to accepted opinions.” ⁴⁰ While his intellectual rigour was admirable, it was more suited to the seminar room at the Université de Montréal, where he had taught law between 1961 and 1965, than it was to government. As Cadieux noted, the reviews were complicated enough, requiring considerable resources and close interdepartmental consultation, without Trudeau sending the bureaucracy running off in all directions every time he had a new idea. ⁴¹ Meeting Marshall McLuhan, the prominent communications theorist from Toronto’s St. Michael’s College, some months later, Cadieux noted that, like Trudeau, McLuhan generated more questions than answers. ⁴² It was a perceptive comment, for Trudeau sometimes appeared more interested in the process than the result.

This approach frustrated senior officials. “Ce qui est extraordinaire avec ce premier ministre jeune, vigoureux, professeur d’université supposément très articulé,” Cadieux lamented, “c’est que nous n’arrivons jamais à savoir ce qu’il veut.” While Trudeau had successfully established a direct rapport with Canadians through the power of television—McLuhan’s “cool” medium—he had trouble communicating with the bureaucracy, his wishes conveyed through intermediaries instead. ⁴³ As Cadieux complained to Trudeau in a rare meeting alone with him, he felt like a domestic chef receiving conflicting reports about what the boss wanted for supper. In a comment revealing of his mindset in 1968, Trudeau replied that he had altered his views often because he did not know what he wanted. He was also overwhelmed with work. When Cadieux recommended direct meetings, Trudeau seemed open to the idea. This was welcome news to Cadieux, who felt that he had waited long enough for the PMO and the PCO to sort themselves out: “C’est toujours la pagaille dans ce secteur. Nous leur disons tout ce que nous faisons. Ces messieurs ne nous tiennent jamais au courant. Ils se permettent de donner des avis dans les domaines qui nous sont impartis sans nous consulter…” While Cadieux vowed to deal directly with Trudeau, keeping in touch with him would not be easy. Other aspects of their meeting were noteworthy. For instance, Trudeau wondered how Cadieux and his colleagues could review, let alone overhaul, the foreign policy they themselves had crafted over the years. He also wanted the DEA and the academics to work closely together. Finally, he told Cadieux that he was not interested in distinguishing himself in foreign policy as Pearson had, and that he trusted Cadieux and Mitchell Sharp to do their jobs. ⁴⁴

Trudeau had a strange way of demonstrating that trust. In early November, while Cadieux and Sharp were abroad, he allowed cabinet to discuss and to reverse its decision, taken the week before, authorizing the Canadian delegation to the upcoming NATO ministerial meeting to announce that Canada would maintain its aircraft strength in Germany at 108 planes rather than reduce them to 88, the plan prior to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. If Sharp and Minister of National Defence Léo Cadieux wanted Trudeau to consider overturning the decision, they had to show that it would not merely embarrass Canada, but that it would seriously damage NATO. ⁴⁵ In other words, Marcel Cadieux remarked, the two ministers were being asked for impossible proof in requesting cabinet to change its mind a third time. Yet in Brussels it became clear that, in the aftermath of the Prague Spring, most NATO members planned to maintain or to increase their military contribution to the alliance. Fortunately, Léo Cadieux had a bright idea: since technically the planes did not have to be withdrawn from Germany until next July, the final decision to repatriate them could be deferred until April. ⁴⁶

Capping off an eventful ministerial meeting during which Ross Campbell, Canada’s permanent representative to the North Atlantic Council, had been quoted as saying that the Trudeau government’s policy toward NATO was “disgraceful,” Cadieux felt that the prime minister was once again showing his inexperience in international affairs. Having accepted the DEA’s suggestion that the country field a candidate to succeed Jim Roberts, the first Canadian deputy secretary general of NATO, Trudeau rejected three qualified individuals proposed by the department and instead contacted Yves Pratte, a lawyer from Quebec who had recently served on the Royal Commission on Security. As Pierre Harmel told Cadieux, NATO wanted someone with experience. “Encore une fois,” Cadieux noted,

le Premier Ministre a agi avec précipitation et les gens du Conseil Privé, comme d’habitude, n’ont pas eu le courage de lui dire que son idée n’était pas très bonne. C’est toujours à nous aux Affaires extérieures d’essayer de faire comprendre au Premier Ministre que le monde extérieur ne se plie pas toujours facilement aux impératifs de notre politique intérieure. ⁴⁷

By early December 1968 Cadieux had begun to doubt Trudeau’s objectivity. He had ordered an impartial review of foreign policy but seemed to be looking for a pretext to change, if not end, Canada’s role in NATO. Cadieux’s fears were rooted in his understanding of Trudeau’s psychology: “De plus en plus, je détecte chez le Premier Ministre un côté plutôt farfelu. Je l’ai toujours connu comme un exhibitionniste, un homme qui cherche à attirer l’attention et à épater le bourgeois.” While he conceded that Trudeau was certainly in the right profession, his desire to impress others and to be different drove a wedge between him and his traditional advisers in the bureaucracy. ⁴⁹

A DEA and DND briefing of Trudeau on NATO was a case in point. Upon hearing that Trudeau did not want to feel influenced by anyone, Cadieux was baffled: “Je me demande, bien, nom de Dieu, ce que nous faisons si notre fonction n’est pas précisément de lui exposer ce que nous savons et de chercher à l’orienter d’une façon plutôt que de l’autre.” It seemed incredible that the prime minister would summon him and the chief of the defence staff to his office just to hear them talk, as if their advice were on a par with that of amateurs. Cadieux detected a volatility and indecisiveness in Trudeau that worried him. But worst of all, in Cadieux’s view, was that he took advice from anyone and everyone and viewed civil servants, not as collaborators, but merely as “machines” for providing him with facts and options. ⁵⁰ Using the analogy of a patient with lung trouble, Cadieux later noted that the ministers, rather than ask if a certain individual had tuberculosis, simply wanted the medical experts to hand over the x-rays. ⁵¹ The intellectual and professional satisfaction of advising the government, one that Cadieux believed gave the civil service its worth and dignity, appeared to be vanishing.

The briefing itself was, in Cadieux’s memorable phrase, “quasi-catastrophique.” When told that the Russians would advance in the Mediterranean or might move on Germany or try to replace the British in the Indian Ocean, Trudeau reacted, according to Cadieux, as he might upon learning that Dominion Stores was opening a new location in Rockliffe to compete with IGA. Some of Trudeau’s rhetorical questions that day led Cadieux to conclude that he was out of touch with certain foreign realities. For example, he mused aloud on whether the Germans were friends or foes and on whether Canada could negotiate the withdrawal of its forces from Europe in exchange for the withdrawal of the Warsaw Pact’s forces from Czechoslovakia. The meeting strengthened Cadieux’s suspicion that Trudeau was hostile toward those who wanted to tell him the facts of global life. Since the prime minister was highly intelligent, he wondered if it were all a ploy by Trudeau to remain strategically aloof in order eventually to remove Canada from NATO. ⁵²

Nor was Cadieux impressed by Trudeau’s behaviour at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London in January 1969, the press coverage of which was dominated by his amorous escapades and by his sliding down a banister at Marlborough house. Watching the leader and his team at work, Cadieux concluded that Trudeau’s life was divided into three compartments. The first of these was his personal life. The somewhat puritanical Cadieux was shocked that, upon arriving in London (and before mastering his brief), Trudeau lunched with a woman who looked like a prostitute. He also felt that, on at least one occasion, Trudeau enjoyed London’s swinging night life a little too much, the morning after which officials were given a scant half hour to bring him up to date on Ottawa’s negotiations with Quebec over the Kinshasa conference of francophone education ministers. Trudeau made it clear that he neither wanted to read, nor to have someone read to him, the key messages. “En somme,” Cadieux wrote, “l’impression s’est dégagée très nettement que le Premier Ministre était crevé à la suite de ses aventures vespérales ou nocturnes et que les affaires officielles l’intéressaient médiocrement.” ⁵³

The second compartment of Trudeau’s life involved his public image. As Cadieux noted, the jury was still out on the question of whether his power over the media represented a renewal of democracy or mere exhibitionism. While Cadieux understood that all politicians cultivated a public persona, he observed that the crafting of such a profile seemed especially important to the new prime minister and no doubt explained why Roméo Leblanc, his press secretary, was always at his side. Yet Trudeau’s playboy image, which had been exploited to such great effect in the 1968 election campaign, in London caused friction with reporters, whose prurient interest in his love life annoyed him. His attempt to separate the private from the public left Cadieux cold. ⁵⁴ Lash out as he might at journalists, Trudeau seemed disinclined, at least for the time being, to separate his public and private lives, since they formed a useful part of his image as a politician.

The third compartment in Trudeau’s life according to Cadieux dealt with matters of state. It was occupied chiefly by the prime minister’s inner circle, including Michael Pitfield, Marc Lalonde of the PMO, and Ivan Head, a law professor and special assistant in that office (and former foreign service officer) who in the fall had personally visited Nigeria to discuss with its government its controversial civil war with the secessionist state of Biafra. While Cadieux acknowledged that these people were neither “sinistres” nor “méchants,” he felt they wanted to control the government through Trudeau, never missing a chance to supplant or to criticize the bureaucrats. In London, for example, Head had acted as Trudeau’s main foreign policy adviser. As Cadieux wrote, “Le Premier Ministre a peu de temps, semble-t-il, à consacrer aux affaires de l’État et ce qu’il nous consacre nous devons le partager avec la petite équipe des jeunes ambitieux qui l’entourent et qui veulent faire leur marque.” He predicted that Trudeau would have to embarrass himself a few times before seeing the difference between the advice he received from an institution like the DEA and that which came from people like Pitfield and Head. They might be intelligent, Cadieux wrote of such advisers, but in most cases they had not looked at the issues from every angle, their views being incomplete and self-serving. ⁵⁵

As the defence review neared its end, Cadieux became impatient. In a recent speech, Eric Kierans had called for Canada’s military withdrawal from NATO. If ministers continued to intervene in each other’s affairs, Cadieux noted, public faith in the government would be affected, and it would become harder for cabinet to work together. While Trudeau wanted an extensive debate about foreign policy, its limitations were clear. For instance, Cadieux observed that the government had wisely decided to pursue diplomatic ties with China and the Vatican without first having a nation-wide discussion. Its relations with the Commonwealth and la Francophonie were conducted with similar discretion. “Si le Gouvernement devait provoquer un débat public sur ces questions au lieu de consolider l’appui du peuple pour les politiques qu’il veut veut adopter, le Gouvernement pourrait finir par trouver qu’il a accentué la division au sein du pays et réduit sa marge de manœuvre,” remarked Cadieux in an oblique reference to the interminable defence review. Not only were the reviews as a whole a serious drain on the DEA’s time and resources but they also restricted its ability to comment on more pressing issues. But his most perceptive criticism of the process concerned the uncertainty it generated. With a solid majority in parliament the Trudeau government was in no hurry to make decisions, but the public and other countries could not be kept waiting forever. As he looked back on the road travelled, Cadieux questioned its value. He doubted, for instance, whether Canadians were any better informed about foreign policy. Moreover, he feared that the heavy burden these reviews had placed on the DEA had prevented it from pursuing more worthwhile initiatives. ⁵⁶ In fairness, he also recognized that the department was in part to blame, having failed to insist on explicit terms of reference that would have clarified the government’s expectations. ⁵⁷

As Cadieux saw it, the key decisions in the defence review had to be taken in two stages. First, officials like himself could offer advice on what Canada could do, what it would cost, and what the foreign policy implications were. Second, it was then up to the politicians to determine where defence ranked relative to other national objectives. He felt that it was unfair, if not foolish, for Trudeau’s people to blame the DEA for not telling the government what it could do if it were to leave NATO, as if the department could present the government not only with foreign policy alternatives but also with different ideas for Canada’s direction as a country, a job that belonged to the political parties vying for public support. Sharp, Lalonde, and Gordon Robertson, the clerk of the Privy Council, generally agreed with Cadieux that the number of foreign policy reviews needed to be limited and that they were just one element in a much larger process that related to the country’s priorities. “J’ai l’impression que si les conclusions que je viens d’énoncer sont généralement acceptées,” he wrote in his diary, “un chapitre dans l’histoire de notre Ministère aura été complété.” ⁵⁸

The defence review concluded

That chapter would indeed end, but not the way Cadieux had hoped. The main problem was defence. By late February 1969 both the review and the related departmental Special Task Force on Europe (STAFEUR) report were ready to be considered by the cabinet committee. Yet Trudeau’s views remained obscure, leading Cadieux to remark that neutrality continued to beguile the prime minister who would only abandon the idea if compelled to do so, and even then only at the last minute. “Le Premier Ministre n’a pas l’air de se rendre compte que ses jeux académiques, ses spéculations publiques au sujet de l’alignement de notre pays,” Cadieux noted, “se soldent par une diminution sérieuse de notre crédit diplomatique dans les capitales étrangères.” ⁵⁹ To him, the Trudeau regime’s failure to grasp the external dimensions of domestic problems was typical of new governments. ⁶⁰

The cabinet committee met seven times that March. While the debate was heated, Trudeau had no intention of making up his mind before his visit to Washington later that month. Nor was his inner circle helping matters:

Nous avons une situation qui ressemble beaucoup à celle de la Maison Blanche. Les aides du Premier Ministre se font les interprètes zélés de ce qu’ils croient être ses préférences personnelles à l’encontre des fonctionnaires permanents (qui se croient, à tort ou à raison, les interprètes des intérêts du pays). ⁶¹

Despite his misgivings, Cadieux was confident that cabinet would come down on the right side of the issue—his own. His optimism was based on several factors: the favourable report on defence policy submitted late that month by the House of Commons Committee on External Affairs and Defence; a decision by the fractious cabinet committee of the same name recommending that Canada remain a member of NATO and for the time being maintain a military presence in Europe; encouraging public opinions polls; and hints that the Liberal Party caucus favoured the current policy by a margin of five to one. ⁶³ Indeed, after the caucus meeting of 27 March, Sharp phoned Cadieux to say that it had been a triumph, the party being almost unanimous in its support of the status quo. The minister confided in his under-secretary that he was greatly relieved, especially after the trying last few weeks. ⁶⁴

Their optimism proved short-lived In a well-known episode, the next day, the eve of the two-day cabinet meeting, Sharp, Léo Cadieux, and their senior officials met in Sharp’s office to discuss the draft public statement regarding Canada’s contribution to NATO. They anticipated a positive response. As was the practice, the PCO had compiled briefing books with background documents that were made available close to the date of cabinet or cabinet committee meetings. Sharp and his colleagues began to leaf through the collection of briefing documents, which they had not seen before in their final form. Suddenly, Sharp noticed a strange, unsigned document. He and his associates circulated the piece among themselves and began reading it. They quickly realized that Cabinet Document 310/69, simply titled “Canadian Defence Policy—A Study,” proposed a stark alternative to the advice they had given the government. Among other things, it recommended cutting the armed forces by one-third, the navy by about one-half, and over the next three years withdrawing from Europe all forces save a token battalion and squadron. As Cadieux informed Sharp in a memo later that day, the study was “a naïve, amateurish sham” that failed to consider the consequences of a virtual pullout from NATO on Canada’s relations with Europe and the United States, that contained “highly questionable” declarations on military strategy, that was marked by “intellectual dishonesty,” and that was full of “high-sounding preachments.” ⁶⁵ When Sharp and Léo Cadieux discovered that the document had been prepared at Trudeau’s personal request, they threatened to resign unless he withdrew it. He did so.

As Cadieux soon learned, Cabinet Document 310/69 was the work of Ivan Head and a small, hand-picked team (aptly named the “Non-Group” to convey its secret nature) of three experts, including members of the PCO and the Treasury Board. The anger Cadieux expressed in his diary was palpable: “Il y a dans cette façon d’agir, quelque chose d’hypocrite, de dégueulasse, de secret, de malicieux et de méchant qui m’étonne et qui me choque profondément.” As he noted, Trudeau’s divisive methods were setting the PCO and the Treasury Board against other departments and showed his lack of confidence in senior bureaucrats, whom he could hardly retain by treating so badly. Claiming that he felt personally humiliated by what had occurred, Cadieux remarked:

Voici des mois que nous nous évertuons à trouver des réponses aux questions que nous a posées le Gouvernement et pendant tout ce temps, de la façon la plus malhonnête … le Premier Ministre, faisant appel à nos ‘adversaires,’ montait une grande machine contre nous, qu’il voulait nous faire éclater à la figure à la dernière minute.

Rather than engaging in a conspiracy of sorts, Cadieux felt, the PCO and the PMO could have said during the many meetings of STAFEUR that its emerging conclusions were unacceptable to Trudeau for budgetary reasons. The same view could have been advanced by the prime minister and his anti-NATO colleagues when the Cabinet Committee on Priorities and Planning discussed the $1.8 billion defence budget. Instead, a dubious new military strategy had been invented along with a policy that rejected the advice of the country’s professional diplomats on its relations with Europe. As Cadieux saw it, this style of governing, which seemed inspired by the presidential system in the United States, represented a usurping of the prerogative of departments and ministers who in the Westminster system answered, not to the prime minister, but to Parliament. In the American system, if “le Professeur Head,” as Cadieux sardonically referred to him, wanted to prepare documents on military strategy, he could be summoned before a committee to defend his work and his opponents could testify as to its flaws. The present way of operating—where Head, who had read the other reports before writing his own, had Trudeau’s ear and presented his memo to cabinet at the eleventh hour—was dangerously provocative:

L’entourage du Premier Ministre ne peut pas s’imaginer qu’il va simplement choisir quelques-uns des avantages dont jouit l’entourage du Président des États-Unis sans que le mécanisme de défense des autres éléments du système aux États-Unis ne finissent par être mis en place. Ce qui ne peut pas exister c’est que les gens de l’Establishment continuent d’opérer sous les règles du système parlementaire et de la responsabilité ministérielle, ce qui les condamne à l’anonymat, au silence et à jouer entre fonctionnaires cartes sur table tandis que les gens du bureau du Premier Ministre vont opérer selon des règles largement différentes et essentiellement à leur avantage. ⁶⁷

The well-documented cabinet debate that weekend was also out of his control. ⁶⁸ In early April the government released a public statement that ranked Canada’s defence priorities in the following order: national sovereignty, North American defence, NATO, and peacekeeping. The key passage in the announcement read that Ottawa would undertake “a planned and phased reduction” of Canadian forces in Europe. Cadieux was alarmed. Having read the Non-Group’s report, he thought he knew where Trudeau was headed. While he was wrong, early events pointed in that direction. In Washington for what would prove an unpleasant, two-day NATO ministerial meeting, for example, he and Sharp were sent a speech for Trudeau by Head that was pronounced “abominable.” ⁶⁹ The prime minister rejected it, but the speech he gave three days later in Calgary was not much better. He criticized the fact that defence policy flowing from NATO had always determined Canada’s foreign policy. (This was news to Lester Pearson, who later pointedly informed Trudeau, in Sharp’s presence, that the decision to join the alliance in 1949 had been a political one imposed on the military.) ⁷⁰ When a task force of DEA, DND, and central-agency officials met to discuss “Phase II” of the defence review, including the size of the country’s NATO contingent, the representatives of the PCO and the PMO (whom Cadieux began calling the “Mafia”) claimed that “a planned and phased reduction” really meant full withdrawal. So disturbed was Sharp by this turn of events that he refused to leave for Japan the next day unless the matter were clarified. He obtained confirmation from the prime minister that the cabinet decision meant a reduction, not a withdrawal. ⁷¹ Yet a week later the DEA received a statement written by Head for Trudeau’s use in the upcoming parliamentary debate on defence. The text, which its author had discussed with the prime minister over two lunches, consisted largely of “re-edited extracts” from the Non-Group paper but with this crucial difference: there was now no mention of leaving even a small military force in Europe. ⁷²

In the end, after bitter bureaucratic infighting, cabinet agreed in May to keep 3500 Canadian soldiers in Europe, leaving Léo Cadieux with the thankless task of informing Canada’s angry allies in Brussels. Nevertheless, Sharp and his under-secretary, who knew that this result could have been much worse, were relieved. (They were further mollified in August when, after consultation with these same allies, this figure was raised to 5000.) How much simpler it would have been, Cadieux reiterated, had the government said from the start that, for budgetary and domestic reasons, it had to reduce its military contribution to NATO: “Nos petits amis du Bureau du Premier Ministre et du Conseil Privé ont préféré inventer des thèses farfelues et surtout empoisonner à notre endroit l’esprit du Premier Ministre.” He felt that the DEA, its European missions, and STAFEUR had been unfairly portrayed as arguing that it was impossible to withdraw from Europe a single soldier, plane, or tank. ⁷³ In Cadieux and Sharp’s view, the prime minister and his advisers had acted maladroitly: certain ministers nearly resigned, Canada’s allies were made anxious, and discord had been sown at every level between the control agencies and important ministries like the DEA and the DND. ⁷⁴

The handling of the defence review was symptomatic of the Trudeau regime’s early style. When bureaucrats dared to query or object to the new approach, Cadieux told a colleague, their attitude was caricatured as “lèse-majesté and close to one of rebellion against the big white chief,” a response Cadieux called “childish and unnecessary.” ⁷⁵ As he saw it, the new government often ignored the distinction between politics and administration. To individuals such as Marc Lalonde and Michael Pitfield, the government would set the objectives and the officials would develop the programs to meet them. In other words, Cadieux noted, high policy would henceforth belong to the PCO and its implementation to the administration. There was the rub. He worried that if officials were not zealous enough in assisting the government they would suffer for it and the senior civil service would be politicized: “Et ce qui est plus grave c’est qu’avec l’équipe actuelle, les hauts fonctionnaires ne sont pas encouragés à faire preuve de l’indépendance d’esprit qui pourrait assurer le fonctionnement harmonieux du système.” ⁷⁶ In other words, a valuable counterweight had been neutralized, at least for the time being.

What Cadieux most resented about the new system was how it bypassed departments and their leaders. That same spring, for example, he informed Sharp that the Cabinet Committee on Priorities and Planning, the central organ in the Trudeau government’s decision-making apparatus, had commissioned a small group of senior officials to quickly submit money-saving proposals. It was all too reminiscent of the Non-Group’s approach, at least to Cadieux. Without consultation, a small group was determining what was expendable and what was not, a tactic hardly conducive to good relations between the control agencies and the departments concerned. ⁷⁷ The quasi-secretiveness of such proceedings genuinely upset him. A few months later he learned of the report prepared by the Task Force on Government Information headed by D’Iberville Fortier, a member of the DEA. While the study was critical of the department, what rankled was how it had been conducted, that is, without consultation: the affected parties, who were not allowed to defend themselves, were simply presented with a fait accompli. Cadieux had seen enough of this tactic in the last year to know that it was part of the new government’s modus operandi: “L’entourage du Premier Ministre veut imposer systématiquement sa volonté aux fonctionnaires permanents et il part de l’hypothèse que ceux-ci sont incapables de rien faire eux-mêmes, que s’ils sont consultés ils vont bloquer ce qui pourrait être proposé.” He feared for the morale, the prestige, and the future of the civil service, which he noted somewhat hyperbolically the new regime had sought to humiliate and to crush. As Cadieux pointed out, this attitude toward the civil service was all the more curious since by convention the civil service had been the government’s ally and servant. ⁷⁸ He told Gordon Robertson that the crisis between the government and the bureaucracy was worse than in the Diefenbaker years. At least the Tory prime minister, he argued, had not surrounded himself with a team that wanted to embed itself, supplanting officials. ⁷⁹ This stark warning was not the first that Cadieux had issued to Robertson, whom he repeatedly tried to galvanize in this period, to no avail.

In his last months as under-secretary, Cadieux was struck by the fact that, even as Trudeau publicly belittled diplomacy and diplomats (two of his favourite targets in this period), his government increasingly poached from the DEA gifted officials to serve in other departments. In fairness, Trudeau recognized that the East Block was a goldmine of civil-service talent. That being the case, Cadieux wondered, why could he not appreciate the value of the department’s work? ⁸⁰ Trudeau’s candour compounded the problem. In trying to persuade Fortier to leave the service, for instance, he told him that he could not see why an intelligent young man would waste his time in diplomacy. Similarly, shortly after becoming Liberal leader, he had asked Cadieux’s wife whether her husband could extend his stay in Ottawa or whether she had her heart set on their playing at being ambassadors abroad. ⁸¹ Despite their anecdotal character, these comments capture Trudeau’s low opinion of the diplomatic profession, at least in the late 1960s. His publically expressed views on the subject—for example, that the concept of diplomacy was outmoded and that he could learn more about a foreign country from a good newspaper than from a diplomatic dispatch—harmed the DEA’s morale. ⁸² In the late summer of 1969, for instance, Cadieux noted that junior officers about to be posted to Africa, where there was vital work to be done in parrying Quebec’s international thrusts in la Francophonie, had expressed serious doubts to him about the utility of their mission following Trudeau’s statements. ⁸³ The under-secretary was so distressed by these attacks on the profession that he had a circular prepared for DEA personnel at home and abroad affirming the importance of their work and the support of the government. Since Mitchell Sharp was willing to sign it, Cadieux asked Robertson to submit the letter to the prime minister to ensure that Trudeau also agreed with it. There was no response. ⁸⁴

As Cadieux neared the end of his tenure as under-secretary, he reflected on the factors that had contributed to Trudeau’s poor relationship with the DEA: his failure to grasp the connection between domestic and foreign affairs, his privileging of national problems over foreign ones, and his uneasy relationship with Sharp. Cadieux’s comments on the civil service are of special interest. For example, he suspected that the White House-like team around Trudeau was turning him against senior officials like himself. Whether it was the PCO, the PMO, parliamentary secretaries, or executive assistants, they all saw in the civil service a rival that needed to be put in its place, an attitude which no doubt explained why, after the election, Cadieux and his colleagues were not granted regular access to Trudeau. Related to this problem was the fact that the new breed of politician in Canada, in Cadieux’s view, was hostile to civil servants. Inspired by such theorists as Herbert Marcuse, Marshall McLuhan, and others who attacked the monolithic nature of modern, centralized bureaucracy, these politicians felt that officials had abused their power and needed to be kept in check. Where the DEA was concerned, this attempt to limit power was seen in the constant requests for reviews of, and revisions to, its foreign policy, and in the government’s unprecedented reliance on outside consultation. In the final analysis, Cadieux mused that it was hard to know which factors governed the prime minister’s attitude toward the DEA at any given moment. To him, the reason for this confusion stemmed from Trudeau himself: “Le malheur veut que cet homme dont le nom est associé à l’idée de communication est en réalité bien difficile à comprendre et qu’il ne se communique guère, du moins à ceux qui ont pour tâche de mettre en œuvre ces politiques.” ⁸⁵ To adapt a line from McLuhan, the message was being lost in the medium.

Cadieux also agreed with Jules Léger, a former diplomat and the under-secretary of state, that Trudeau, for reasons of class, had a psychological barrier where the DEA was concerned. As Léger argued, the prime minister had always had trouble finding his niche in society, being at ease neither with the spoiled moneyed class nor with his fellow intellectuals who had never quite accepted him because of his wealth. Seen from this perspective, Cadieux wrote, he became jealous of the DEA:

M. Léger pense comme moi que M. Trudeau a fini par envier les Canadiens français de notre Ministère qui ont trouvé chez nous une situation sociale, des cadres à l’intérieur du pays comme à l’étranger, une situation matérielle avantageuse que lui-même, à bien des égards, n’a jamais pu se procurer.” ⁸⁶

In conclusion, it is only fair to note at least three factors that offset Marcel Cadieux’s critical evaluation of the Trudeau government between 1968 and 1970. First, the new regime was finding its feet and so bound to make mistakes. Second, whatever Cadieux might think of Pierre Trudeau, his ministers, and even the “Mafia” in the PCO and the PMO, they too had the country’s best interests at heart. Third, there is no rule that the prime minister of Canada must get his advice on foreign policy from only one source—the DEA. While Cadieux’s protests against the Trudeau government’s method of handling his department could be construed in part as injured vanity, they also reflected his belief in the importance of diplomacy and the civil service. His anger was visceral and he made no effort to hide it. In his last days as under-secretary, for example, he was overhead exclaiming, “The politicians, the politicians, never trust any of them!” ⁸⁷ While these were the unhappiest years of Cadieux’s career, he found solace in being awarded not only the Vanier Medal of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada but also the Outstanding Achievement Award of the Public Service of Canada. In early 1970, Cadieux prepared to leave for Washington, where he would assume the post of Canadian ambassador to the United States. While the DEA had entered the long winter of its discontent, as he and others of like mind believed, he had fought hard for the principles that had guided his career as both a diplomat and a civil servant, and for the defence of a vital arm of government.