Trudeau Goes It Alone

Rejected by the provinces, he turns to Parliament for his reforms

When the voters of French-speaking Quebec rejected Premier Rene Levesque's attempt to lead their province out of Canada in last May's referendum, the relief was palpable throughout the country. Yet few Canadians were under any delusion that the verdict would mean a return to business as usual. With support of the premiers of the nine other provinces, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau made what he called "a most solemn commitment" in return for the non to separatism: "We will immediately take action to renew the constitution and will not stop until we have done that."

By last week, however, a summer-long effort by the federal and provincial governments to reach accord on constitutional change had collapsed in acrimonious failure. At the end of a six-day summit around a horseshoe table in Ottawa--capped by a last-ditch private bargaining session in Trudeau's drawing room--the Prime Minister and the premiers reported that they had been unable to agree on a single point of Trudeau's agenda.

What had been attempted was a trade-off in the reapportionment of powers between the federal and provincial governments. The provinces want to increase their control over economic resources, while retaining control over the all-important matter of language instruction. Trudeau was willing to concede some economic autonomy to them, particularly in the area of mineral rights, in return for their support for a new constitutional "Charter of Rights" that would vest additional powers in the federal government.

Even if they had succeeded in striking a bargain, a further step would be required: putting an end to the anomaly by which Canada cannot amend its constitution--the British North America Act of 1867--without the approval of Britain's Parliament. However, by custom even that requires unanimity on the part of the provincial governments, and since the Ottawa conference made plain that this was impossible, the "patriation" of the constitution, as Canadians put it, was out of reach by traditional means.

Thus Trudeau last week decided to try to circumvent the balky premiers. He announced that he would recall Parliament early in October to do what the premiers refused to do. He plans to ask the legislators for unilateral action to "patriate" the British North America Act without provincial approval.

Most of the premiers had rejected Trudeau's proposed changes on the grounds that some of their considerable powers would be usurped. They argued that under British parliamentary tradition, human rights are more securely protected by legislatures than by the courts. Quebec's Levesque, for example, opposed the language-rights formula because he felt it would undermine his provincial government's control over Quebec's cultural identity. Indeed, the premiers were anxious to talk about expanding their powers and blamed Trudeau for insisting on a heavily centralized view of Canadian federalism.

Several provinces, notably Newfoundland and Alberta, have threatened to fight any parliamentary "patriation" moves. If those too should fail, the popular Trudeau may ultimately have little choice but to go over everybody's head and seek the approval of the 23 million Canadians in a national referendum. The Prime Minister does not sound like a man ready to give up the fight. "We have to find ways and means of getting out of the dead end," he said of the constitutional impasse. "At some point, let's ask the people."

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