Like many accounts of the historic federal-provincial conference that led to the patriation of our Constitution, the one by author Ron Graham that appeared in last weekend's Globe Focus contains inaccuracies.
This is not surprising, given that distorted reports of what actually happened in Ottawa's Chateau Laurier three decades ago this month began very soon after the event took place. National Deal, a book published the following year, described the night of Nov. 4, 1981, when the eventual deal was drafted, as though only four provincial officials produced the breakthrough.
Even now, Wikipedia still credits a “kitchen accord” that was supposedly put together by federal justice minister Jean Chrétien and the attorneys-general of Saskatchewan and Ontario, and then accepted by everyone else. The entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia, meanwhile, has four provinces producing a single-page compromise.
In reality, the group included four premiers and representatives of two others, all of them working from a typed, three-page (eventually reduced to two) proposal that the Newfoundland delegation had brought to the meeting. We knew of nothing being cooked up in the kitchen.
Now we have Mr. Graham trying to reconstruct events mainly from reports of people not in the room that night, not at the premiers' breakfast meeting the next morning or at the main table when they met the prime minister for the climactic session that followed.
As a result, he reports in The Last Act: Pierre Trudeau, the Gang of Eight, and the Fight for Canada that Quebec premier René Lévesque “rallies seven dissident premiers into forming the gang” to oppose the federal position. In fact, we came together because we all believed that Ottawa's move to act unilaterally was wrong. (For some reason, the educational website Historica.ca says the Supreme Court of Canada deemed it “preferable” that the feds strike a deal with the provinces when, in fact, the court declared the plan to act alone unconstitutional.)
So it was not any one province; if anything, we rallied one another. We were all very upset: This was not the way to improve a country constitutionally.
Then Mr. Graham contends that, on the night of Nov. 4, we gathered to “plot in secret (and probably in cahoots with Mr. Trudeau's sidekick, Jean Chrétien) to make a pact with the enemy behind Quebec's back.”
‘No conspiracy with the federal government'
This, too, is not what happened. Efforts were made to reach nine provinces that evening; the only exception, New Brunswick, was contacted the next morning. Those attempts included Ontario, even though it was not part of the Group of Eight, and Quebec, to no avail – apparently they weren't at their hotel. But there was no contact with Mr. Chrétien and, therefore, no conspiracy with the federal government.
The proposal agreed upon that night was to go to all the provinces for approval the next morning. This is important because, as well as Mr. Lévesque, the premiers of Alberta and British Columbia had not been present, although both had senior representatives in the room.
To say the proposal “had been patched together in the middle of the night” is not only erroneous but insulting. All 10 provinces and the federal government had been working on this for more than two years, and agreements attempted by B.C. and Saskatchewan were both rejected just before Newfoundland stepped forward. As a result, our proposal contained elements we knew had the best chance of success. It was the culmination of many “patches” over many months.
As for Mr. Graham's assertion that “the Gang of Eight was deeply divided and ... ready to fall apart” by the time the first ministers gathered in Ottawa, wrong again. We realized this was a historic moment and Canadians wanted us to succeed. We knew compromise would be needed and that, with federal flexibility on the constitutional amending formula and flexibility by the provinces on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a deal might be possible, although Quebec would be a big issue.
