The 'Night of the Long Knives' of November 4-5, 1981, and the Canadian Federal Constitutional 'coup de force' of 1981-1982 Against Quebec*
By Rodrigue Tremblay, professor emeritus of the University of Montreal and former minister
"One of the saddest constancies in the conduct of those in power is the utter inability that they all seem to acquire to admit the slightest mistake. They prefer to stumble of "run away" rather than simply admitting that they were wrong, that is to say that they are human. René Lévesque, Le Journal de Montréal, Dec. 1970.
"There were indications and polls that the government had for several months, and in most cases, they raised fears of a defeat of the sovereignist option. Nevertheless, the Parti Québécois had decided without possibility of repeal, and whatever the circumstances, that the consultation would take place during its first term. Wanting to give itself an obligation of result, the party created a calendar obligation!" Claude Morin, Les prophètes désarmés, Boréal, 2001, p. 209-210.
"In the assault on Québec by Ottawa in early November 1981, the aggressor was Pierre Elliott Trudeau... The gravedigger of Quebec's veto power was ultimately the current Prime Minister of Canada. — The justifications that Mr. Trudeau multiplies on this subject are pure intellectual boasting, a lying demagoguery." Claude Ryan, Le Devoir, Dec. 1982.
November 4-5 marks the 40th anniversary of events that have profoundly impacted the history of Quebec and its place in the Canadian Confederation.
It was, indeed, during the night of November 4-5, 1981, that secret negotiations—which took place at the Château Laurier in Ottawa, between the Canadian federal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1919-2000) and the premiers of the nine English-speaking provinces, but in the absence and without the knowledge of the government of Quebec—led to the acceptance by the former of the constitutional project of the sitting Canadian Prime Minister.
The entire constitutional process was a failure of democracy. The Canadian government did not hold any pan-Canadian referendum, or even a special election, to obtain the approval of the sovereign people for its 1981 constitutional project, which was subsequently incorporated into the Constitution Act of 1982, and which was never signed by the Quebec government.
In addition, Mr. Trudeau's project did not include, as had been promised during the 1980 Quebec referendum campaign, that the insertion of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Canadian Constitution would take into account the "distinct French character of the Quebec society" and that the government of Quebec had the responsibility to protect and promote this distinctiveness, while respecting fundamental freedoms.
• The thread of events that led to the exclusion of Quebec from the 1981 constitutional agreement and the Constitution Act of 1982
What triggered the Canadian constitutional negotiations process was the decision of the Government of Quebec to hold a constitutional referendum on May 20, 1980, in the hope of obtaining a 'mandate to negotiate, on an equal footing, a new constitutional agreement between Quebec and the rest of Canada', according to the principle of the right of peoples to self-determination.
However, a number of important political events occurred in Quebec in the winter and spring of 1980, after the referendum question was adopted, on December 20, 1979.
First, federal elections were held on February 18, 1980. The results gave strong electoral support to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who regained the post of Prime Minister. The Liberal Party of Canada (PLC) obtained 68.2% of the votes in Quebec and elected members in 74 of the 75 Quebec ridings.
Second, the federal government decided to get directly and massively involved in the Quebec referendum campaign by holding debates in the House of Commons on the Quebec government's proposals, beginning on April 15, 1980.
The debates in Ottawa spanned two weeks, and they allowed Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau to partially eclipse Claude Ryan, the leader of the "No" campaign. Trudeau personally intervened also on April 25, 1980, when he wrote an 'open letter to Quebecers', in which he promised that he would do everything in his power "to reform the Canadian Constitution" in the event of a victory of the "No", but without specifying the content and direction of such a reform.
Indeed, Mr. Trudeau did not explicitly state whether such a reform would go in the direction of the nine autonomist recommendations for a 'renewed federalism' proposed by Claude Ryan, even if many Quebecers believed that this was going to be the case. The proposals of the "No" camp had been made explicit in a constitutional policy document called the Beige Book, which the PLQ published on January 9, 1980. These proposals were presented as an alternative to the manifesto of the "Yes" campaign entitled 'Equal to Equal'.
Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was not registered with the "No" committee, as made mandatory by the provisions of the Quebec Referendum Act that tightly restricted all campaigning to the designated "Yes" and "No" committees with set budgets. Nevertheless, Trudeau intervened during an important rally for the "No" camp on May 14, just days before the vote, and made commitments that strongly contributed to the defeat of the "Yes" option.
Trudeau announced:
"If the answer to the referendum question is NO, we have all said that this NO will be interpreted as a mandate to change the Constitution, to renew federalism. I make a most solemn commitment that following a NO vote, we will immediately take action to renew the Constitution and we will not stop until we have done it. I make a solemn declaration to all Canadians in the other provinces. We, the Québec MPs, are laying ourselves on the line, because we are telling Quebecers to vote NO; [...] and we will not agree to your interpreting a NO vote as an indication that everything is fine and can remain as it was before."
In the end, on May 20, 1980, the constitutional mandate sought by the Lévesque government was rejected with a "No" vote of 59.56% against a "Yes" vote of 40.44%.
• The consequences of the 1980 referendum defeat for the Lévesque government and for Quebec
After its defeat, the Lévesque government made a number of strategic mistakes vis-à-vis the Canadian federal government, which had emerged as the big winner in the referendum fight, and which wanted to go ahead with constitutional changes as soon as possible.
The Lévesque government did not offer its resignation. Indeed, a government that loses a plebiscite must normally resign, because a plebiscite defeat is, in some ways, more important than an electoral defeat. To everyone's surprise, the Lévesque government did nothing. It acted as if such a defeat was a minor setback and that it could remain—even without a mandate—Quebec's negotiator vis-à-vis the Canadian government.
Even after Pierre Elliott Trudeau published his "open letter to Quebecers", on July 15, 1980, in which he admitted, not without a certain arrogance, that the "constitutional changes" to come would go int the direction of a centralized and unitary Canadian federalism, the Lévesque government stayed pat. It made no protest against what appeared to be a clear betrayal of the promises made implicitly and explicitly during the referendum campaign.
When the Prime Minister of Quebec attended the first federal-provincial conference, held in Ottawa on September 15, 1980, to officially begin major negotiations on upcoming constitutional changes, he could not claim to have a mandate to propose constitutional changes in the name of the people of Quebec, since such a mandate had been refused.
Similarly, when the Supreme Court of Canada, chaired by Bora Laskin (1912-1984), a personal friend of the Canadian Prime Minister, ruled on September 28, 1981, that the Trudeau government only needed the support of a "sufficient number" of provincial governments to proceed with its constitutional reform—and not their unanimous acceptance, as had been the case before—the government of Quebec found itself quite helpless and in a position of great vulnerability.
Indeed, the Lévesque government's strategy to oppose the federal government's unilateral constitutional goals consisted in joining with seven other English provincial governments to form the so-called Group of Eight.
However, this interprovincial opposition front was very fragile and in serious danger of collapsing, as a result of the complacent interpretation by the Supreme Court of Canada. Indeed, it was obvious that the Trudeau government had only to agree to the few requests from the English-speaking provinces to secure their support.
This was made all the easier since, without having previously consulted his colleagues in the Group of Eight, Prime Minister Lévesque had openly accepted Pierre Elliott Trudeau's trap proposal to hold a double pan-Canadian referendum on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and on an amendment process, an idea that profoundly displeased the English-speaking premiers and which they would want to avoid at all costs.
The breakup of the Group of Eight occurred on the night of November 4-5, 1981... and we know the rest.
• The consequences of the federal constitutional coup de force of 1981-1982 for the people of Quebec and for the French-Canadian nation
Three major consequences for the people of Quebec and for the French-Canadian nation as a whole followed the federal constitutional coup of 1981-1982.
1- Quebec's elected Parliament has since been placed under the arbitrary tutelage of a "government of judges", unelected and appointed by the sole Canadian government. [N.B.: In the German federal system, for example, the members of the German Constitutional Court are appointed equally by the Bundestag (the German parliament) and by the Bundesrat (a council of ministers of the Länders, or provinces)].
In such a context, it has become problematic for the Quebec government to legislate in the areas of language, culture, secularism and education, all domains that in the past fell under its exclusive jurisdiction. The most obvious example is the Charter of the French language, better know as "Bill 101", which was amputated of large provisions at the hands of federal courts.
2- Insertion of the political ideology of multiculturalism in the constitutional Act of 1982, (N.B.: Canada is the only country in the world which has put such a political ideology in its constitution), coupled with the adoption of a federal policy of super massive immigration and of population replacement overwhelmingly biased towards English Canada. Ultimately, the latter policy poses a threat to the relative political power and the the very survival of the French-Canadian nation.
3- A move toward increased political centralization at the federal level tends to de facto make Quebec—the only state where francophones form a majority in North America—a domestic colony, subject to the political diktats of English Canada. The result is a major breach of history and democracy.
Conclusion
The constitutional changes leading to an agreement during the 'Night of the Long Knives' on November 4-5, 1981, in spite of the formal opposition of the Quebec government, and which were subsequently introduced into the constitutional Act of 1982, have considerably reduced the sovereignty of the Parliament of Quebec in its areas of its competence.
Because of the new Canadian constitutional context imposed upon Quebec in the post-1982 period, the Quebec government is facing many obstacles in its primary mission to preserve Quebec's future as the only majority French-speaking society in North America.
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* This text is partly drawn from the author's book in French: « La régression tranquille du Québec 1980-2018 », Montréal, Fides, 2018, 344 p.
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International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals "The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles" of the book about geopolitics "The New American Empire", and the recent book , in French, "La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018". He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.