Reason over passion: Pierre Trudeau, human rights, and Canadian foreign policy
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702018765079 |
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Lessons of History |
Lessons of History
Reason over passion:
Pierre Trudeau, human
rights, and Canadian
foreign policy
Asa McKercher
Department of History, Royal Military College of Canada,
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Abstract
Within the literature on human rights, the 1970s are often viewed as a period in which
rights achieved a breakthrough globally. While rights regimes, activist networks, and the
overall discourse of human rights certainly came into their own during this decade, the
rights revolution had its limitations, particularly at the international level. In the
Canadian context, the government of Pierre Trudeau advanced a domestic rights pro-
gram, culminating in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In terms of foreign policy,
however, Trudeau was far more cautious. Tracing Pierre Trudeau’s stance toward inter-
national human rights, this article points to the prime minister’s realist outlook as having
delimited the place of rights in Canadian foreign policy during his time in office. Thus,
there was little enthusiasm on the part of the Canadian government to support self-
determination movements, to impose bilateral sanctions against abhorrent regimes, or
to loudly condemn rights violators when doing so would seemingly accomplish little.
The point of this paper is not to condemn Trudeau, but rather to understand why
Canada’s rights revolution stopped at the water’s edge.
Keywords
Pierre Trudeau, Canadian foreign policy, human rights, sovereignty, self-determination
Since becoming Canadian prime minister in November 2015, Justin Trudeau has
been the subject of considerable criticism for not doing enough to advance human
rights abroad. From expanding relations with China’s authoritarian government,
to allowing the sale of $15 billion in military vehicles to Saudi Arabia, to
International Journal
2018, Vol. 73(1) 129–145
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702018765079
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Corresponding author:
Asa McKercher, Department of History, Royal Military College of Canada, PO Box 17000, Station Forces,
Kingston, Ontario, K7K 7B4.
Email: asa.mckercher@rmc-cmr.ca
whitewashing Fidel Castro’s record of repression, many of Trudeau’s actions are
seemingly at odds both with his own stirring rhetoric and with Canadian values.
One might question, though, whether any Canadian government has put the pur-
suit of human rights at the forefront of foreign policy, for this apparent failure has
been a source of constant criticism from activists, scholars, and political opponents.
Assuredly, Justin Trudeau is not the only prime minister to be hammered for either
cozying up to an odious regime or placing economic interests ahead of human
rights. Pierre Trudeau’s efforts to normalize relations with the Soviet Union,
Communist China, and revolutionary Cuba were denounced by opponents of the
prime minister and by skeptics of this shift in Canada’s Cold War stance. Right-
wing columnist Lubor Zink characterized Trudeau’s de
´tente with Moscow as
amounting to ‘‘not just acquiescence in but approval of the crimes perpetrated
by the Soviet regime against humanity.’’ Similarly, left-wing human rights activists
were ‘‘shocked and ashamed’’ over the Trudeau government’s recognition of
Chile’s right-wing military junta, as well as its refusal to cut Canadian–Chilean
economic ties.
1
That Pierre Trudeau could be attacked for overlooking the rights
abuses of authoritarian governments at both ends of the political spectrum is a
good indication of his general stance on international human rights.
The point is worth reflecting upon, given that Pierre Trudeau’s years as prime
minister (1968–1984) coincided with a sea change in the moral universe of human
rights, what many historians have characterized as a rights revolution. This trans-
formation had begun in the immediate postwar period, but its ‘‘breakthrough’’
came in the mid-1970s, with rights discourse becoming a lingua franca and with
governments—especially in the West—working to build rights regimes at home and
abroad in response to activists’ demands.
2
Within the Canadian context,
Dominique Cle
´ment has characterized the 1970s as a period in which human
rights were given an ‘‘enthusiastic embrace’’ by growing numbers of Canadians
as well as government. He has stressed a connection between initiatives abroad and
the advancement of rights within Canada: international agreements to which the
Canadian state acceded in turn forced changes domestically.
3
Certainly, the
Trudeau government took seriously the need to live up to various international
1. Lubor Zink, Trudeaucracy (Toronto: Toronto Sun Publishing, 1972), 91; Voice of Women telegram
to Trudeau, 1 October 1973, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Voice of Women fonds, MG 28,
I218, vol. 22, file 14.
2. Michael Cotey Morgan, ‘‘The seventies and the rebirth of human rights,’’ in Niall Ferguson,
Charles Maier, Erez Mandela, and Daniel Sargent, eds., The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in
Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010) pp. 237–50; Barbara J. Keys,
Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2014); Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William I. Hitchcock, The
Human Rights Revolution: An International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012);
Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).
3. Dominique Cle
´ment, ‘‘Human rights in Canadian domestic and foreign politics: From ‘niggardly
acceptance’ to enthusiastic embrace,’’ Human Rights Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2012): 751–778; Andrew
Lui, Why Canada Cares: Human Rights and Foreign Policy in Theory and Practice (Montreal and
Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012).
130 International Journal 73(1)
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