Trudeau vs. the Premiers

Confrontations on energy and amending the constitution

Government budgets frequently stir up political battles. But the one that Pierre Elliott Trudeau put before Ottawa's House of Commons last week amounted to what one of the Prime Minister's political enemies called "a declaration of war." The budget included a $9.9 billion national energy program that caused wails of anguish in the U.S., as well as out west in Canada's energy-rich prairie provinces.

Trudeau recommended that there be 50% Canadian ownership of the country's oil and gas industry by 1990. At present, 17 of the 25 largest oil and gas companies, which account for 72% of sales, are foreign-owned multinationals. The Prime Minister also moved to increase the federal government's share of oil revenues, partly to contain a projected 25% deficit in this year's $45 billion budget. Under the present formula, established in 1974, Ottawa gets 10% of all gas and oil revenues, while the producing province and the energy companies take 45% each. Under the Trudeau budget, the federal government would take 24% of all energy revenues, compared with 43% for the provinces and 33% for industry. As a sop to the provinces and the companies, Trudeau proposed that domestic oil and gas prices, which are currently below world levels, be allowed to double by 1984. Even that did not still complaints from the west. Peter Lougheed, the Tory premier of oil-rich Alberta, warned that his province would introduce a phased 15% cutback in production, which could eventually force Ottawa to go shopping on the world market to make up the shortfall. "We strove as hard as we could to avoid this confrontation," the premier told his fellow Albertans.

As it happens, Trudeau is already embroiled with Lougheed and most of the other provincial premiers on another thorny issue: how to "patriate," or bring home, Canada's constitution. It is an embarrassing anomaly to many Canadians that theirs is the world's only sovereign state that must petition the Parliament of another country to change its own constitution. Legally, the House of Commons at Westminster alone has the power to amend the British North America Act of 1867. All previous efforts to change this situation have foundered, largely because of a 1929 agreement with the ten provinces that requires their unanimous approval before Ottawa can propose any constitutional amendments.

In September, Trudeau presided over a weeklong conference with the premiers that explored various amendments to the British North America Act. When the discussions ended in deadlock, the Prime Minister presented to Ottawa's House a resolution authorizing the government to petition Westminster to surrender its right of amendment to Canada. Because of Trudeau's solid Liberal majority, the resolution is certain of passage; he hopes to have it enacted by Britain's Parliament before July 1, 1981, the 114th anniversary of Canada's birth as a nation.

The most nettlesome amendment that Trudeau has in mind for the constitution is a U.S.-style "Charter of Rights" that would take precedence over any bills of rights enacted by the individual provinces. Among other freedoms, the charter would guarantee minority-language education. In Canada, education is almost entirely a provincial responsibility. The significance of Trudeau's charter is that it would guarantee French-speaking children the right to be educated in their own language in any province where "numbers warrant," a determination that would be made by the courts. Trudeau regards this language-rights provision as a way of fulfilling his promise of change to Quebeckers who voted non to separatism in last May's provincial referendum.

Trudeau has considerable popular support for his plans to bring home the constitution, thanks in part to a $6 million national advertising campaign in the early fall. But so far, only the premiers of Ontario and New Brunswick have promised their backing. Other premiers, including Alberta's Lougheed, are planning court challenges of the Trudeau patriation bill, arguing that it illegally infringes on provincial rights. Quebec Premier Rene Levesque is bitterly opposed to the language-rights provision of the charter because it might restrict his province's legislative powers over education. In his view, Trudeau is "erecting a monument to himself on the tombs of our aspirations and rights."

Levesque is at least partly right. Bringing the constitution home would be a fitting capstone to Trudeau's long and tempestuous political career, almost twelve years of which he has spent as Prime Minister. As much a philosopher as a statesman, Trudeau sometimes sees himself as the only man who can hold his linguistically divided nation together. Defending both his budgetary and constitutional proposals, he told a rally in Saskatchewan last week: "Let us put reason before passion. Let's talk a little bit more with our intelligence. Then our gut feeling will be more for Canada than for any particular province or division of this country."

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