The politician and the civil servant: Pierre Trudeau, Marcel Cadieux, and the Department of External Affairs, 1968–1970
| Author | Brendan Kelly |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702017694212 |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
Scholarly Essay
International Journal
2017, Vol. 72(1) 5–27
! The Author(s) 2017
The politician and the
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civil servant: Pierre
DOI: 10.1177/0020702017694212
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Trudeau, Marcel
Cadieux, and the
Department of External
Affairs, 1968–1970
Brendan Kelly
PhD, University of Toronto
Abstract
This article uses the experience of Marcel Cadieux, the Canadian under-secretary of
state for external affairs at the time, as a lens through which to understand the adap-
tation of the Department of External Affairs to the government of Pierre Trudeau
during its first year-and-a-half in power. Drawing on Cadieux’s private papers, especially
his diary, and other archival sources, it explores the prime minister’s attitude toward
senior civil servants, his personality, and the review of national defence policy under-
taken by the bureaucracy at his request. It concludes that the difference between Pierre
Trudeau and Marcel Cadieux was essentially that between the brilliant politician who
sought to redefine government and the consummately professional civil servant who
believed in his department’s traditional role.
Keywords
Pierre Trudeau, Marcel Cadieux, Department of External Affairs, Canada, foreign policy,
government, Canadian international relations
Between Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Under-Secretary of State for External
Affairs Marcel Cadieux there was a history. In 1949, after backpacking around the
world and sporting a raffish beard, Trudeau came to Ottawa. When he considered
joining the Department of External Affairs (DEA), however, Cadieux vowed to bar
Corresponding author:
Brendan Kelly, Apt. 3203, 88 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario M4W 3G9 Canada.
Email: brendan.kelly@mail.utoronto.ca
6
International Journal 72(1)
his way.1 Curiously, a different story became part of the Cadieux family lore.
In this account, Cadieux went to great lengths to obtain an interview for
Trudeau before a DEA oral-examination board, but was put off when he came
to it wearing sandals.2 Both versions make one thing clear: for Cadieux, there was
no place in his department for the likes of Trudeau.3
Nevertheless, in the years to come, each followed the other’s career with interest.
Cadieux was among the first subscribers to Cite´ libre, the polemical journal
founded by Trudeau in 1950 to fight the government of Quebec premier Maurice
Duplessis.4 In 1960, on the eve of his trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC),
Trudeau met with Cadieux to discuss passports, then sent him this note: ‘‘J’ai e´te´
ravi de te rencontrer avec ton e´pouse hier, et de vous voir en si bonne forme. Ce qui
prouve que les Canadiens franc¸ais peuvent survivre, meˆme en dehors de La
Laurentie.’’5 As Trudeau discovered after 1965, he too could thrive in Ottawa.
His meteoric rise to the top of the Liberal Party greatly pleased Cadieux, who
was strongly committed to Canadian federalism. He and Trudeau agreed on this
issue but little else. Both came from Montreal but Trudeau hailed from the wealthy
suburb of Outremont, Cadieux from the working-class district of Ahuntsic;
Trudeau’s father was a millionaire businessman, Cadieux’s a postman; Trudeau
had been educated by the Jesuits at the prestigious Colle`ge Jean-de-Bre´beuf,
Cadieux by the Sulpicians at the middling Colle`ge Andre´ Grasset; Trudeau had
travelled the globe, whereas Cadieux had seen only what his career had allowed;
Trudeau spoke French with an international accent, Cadieux as unmistakably
Que´be´cois.
They also saw the world differently. Trudeau, for instance, had doubts about the
Cold War. He believed that the Soviet Union was less menacing than portrayed,
that large military forces to contain it were no longer needed, and that Canadian
resources were better directed elsewhere, such as the Third World. This was heresy
to a cold warrior like Cadieux. He saw Russia as a continuing threat against which
a strong North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a Canadian military
presence in Europe were crucial deterrents. While not as ‘‘soft’’ on communism as
his critics alleged, Trudeau had visited Mao Zedong’s China and Fidel Castro’s
Cuba and found good things to say about them. Having spent time behind the Iron
Curtain and in North Vietnam, Cadieux found nothing admirable about such
1.
John English, Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1919–1968 (Toronto: Alfred
A. Knopf, Canada 2006), 1: 209.
2.
Franc¸ois and Rene´ Cadieux, interview with the author, Montreal, 22 May 2012.
3.
This judgment was no doubt reinforced some years later at a social gathering of the DEA’s young
francophones. Trudeau, who knew many of them personally, came from Montreal for the event
riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and wearing a Davy Crockett-style vest. This spectacle was
too much for Cadieux. Grinding his teeth, he said, ‘‘En voila` un a` qui il ne manque que des plumes
sur la teˆte!’’ See Michel Dupuy, Diplomate de pe`re en fils (Montreal: Carte Blanche, 2012), 354.
4.
English, Citizen of the World, 241.
5.
Pierre Trudeau to Marcel Cadieux, 11 September 1960, file 4, vol. 3, Fonds Marcel Cadieux (MC),
Library and Archives Canada (LAC).
Kelly
7
regimes. On nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War, the two most polarizing for-
eign policy issues of the 1960s, Trudeau was anti and Cadieux pro.
The greatest difference between the two men, however, was that Trudeau was a
politician and Cadieux a civil servant. Despite being almost 50, the dapper prime
minister, who liked fast cars, beautiful women, and fashionable attire, was a media
sensation. A clean break from the stodgy politicians of the day, he promised
change—though what kind he could not yet determine—and was prepared to
shake up the bureaucracy to achieve it. Cadieux the civil servant was of no interest
to the media. He came to work Monday through Friday wearing the same dark suit
and kept time with an old-fashioned pocket watch. For him the civil service embo-
died continuity and the permanent interests of the state. It was meant to function as
a partner to, not an antagonist of, the governing party. In the final analysis,
the essential difference between Pierre Trudeau and Marcel Cadieux was between
the brilliant politician who sought to redefine government and the consummately
professional civil servant who believed in his department’s traditional role. As I will
show, Cadieux’s little known and often-overlooked diary from this period sheds
new light on the DEA’s difficult adjustment to the Trudeau government. By
focusing explicitly on Cadieux and the department he led, this article offers a
new perspective on Trudeau’s foreign policy.6
Early warning signs
The DEA’s foreign policy had served Canada well, but Trudeau felt it was time for
a change. In his first press conference as Liberal leader, he stated that Canadian
external relations were still based on ‘‘pre-war premises or immediate post-war
premises.’’ By 1945 Europe lay in ruins. The Canada that joined NATO in 1949
and then sent both an infantry brigade and an air division overseas to defend a
weak continent from the threat of Soviet invasion had been a major player on the
international stage. By the 1960s, however, Europe had rebuilt, making Canada’s
role, as Trudeau noted, less vital. To him a greater focus on North American
defence, a position that was no longer isolationist in an age of intercontinental
6.
The most comprehensive account of Trudeau’s foreign policy, one that makes limited use of
Cadieux’s diary, is J.L. Granatstein and Robert Bothwell, Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and
Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990). For Trudeau’s own assess-
ment and that of Ivan Head, his main foreign policy adviser, see Ivan Head and Pierre Trudeau, The
Canadian Way: Shaping Canada’s Foreign Policy, 1968–1984 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart,
1995). Two early analyses are also useful: Peter C. Dobell, Canada’s Search for New Roles:
Foreign Policy in the Trudeau Era (London: Oxford University Press, 1972); Bruce Thordarson,
Trudeau and Foreign Policy: A Study in Decision-Making (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1972).
The problems between Cadieux and Trudeau are briefly touched upon in Robert Bothwell, ‘‘Marcel
Cadieux: The ultimate professional,’’ in Greg Donaghy and Kim Richard Nossal, eds., Architects
and Innovators: Building the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909–2009,
(Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009), 216–217. There is also a short
discussion of the same subject in J.F. Bosher, The Gaullist Attack on Canada, 1967–1997
(Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), 95–97. While Bosher makes exten-
sive use of Cadieux’s diary, his focus is on the Gaullist intervention in Canada.
8
International Journal 72(1)
ballistic missiles, made more sense. As for peacekeeping, he believed that Canada
could no longer serve as the world’s ‘‘policeman.’’ In short, Trudeau wanted a
‘‘completely new and fresh approach’’ to Canadian foreign policy.7
This last statement no doubt sent a chill through the DEA. In August 1967
Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson and Secretary of State for External Affairs
(SSEA) Paul Martin had commissioned Norman Robertson, Cadieux’s mentor
and predecessor as under-secretary, to review Canadian foreign policy. His
report, quietly submitted on the eve of the Liberal leadership vote, concluded, in
the words of one observer, ‘‘that everything was all for the best in the best of all
...
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