New Directions in Foreign Policy

MR. POTTS:

Mesdames, messieurs, c’est avec plaisir que j’ai le grand privilege de souhaiter la bienvenue, de votre part, un grand Canadien, a great Canadian, Paul Henderson. Pardon. Je m’excuse, le tres honorable Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Premier Ministre du Canada.

Notwithstanding my Freudian slip in speaking of great Canadians, permit me at this time, on behalf of all of us, to recognize the tremendous achievement of every member of Team Canada who brought great honour to our country.

Sir, we are indeed honoured by your presence today, particularly in view of the fact that you have taken time out to do so in the midst of a busy election campaign.

Before proceeding further I feel that it is incumbent upon me to make a public confession to our guest of honour.

Sir, you may be with us today under false pretenses-that’s due to my failure to provide full, true and plain disclosure of all material facts relating to the history of The Empire Club.

Let me hasten to explain my default.

I knew that the members of our Club were most anxious that you should be our guest speaker at one of our regular luncheon meetings.

Accordingly, in extending our invitation to you, I stressed the fact that every Prime Minister of Canada since Sir Wilfrid Laurier had addressed The Empire Club.

This is a true statement of fact but you were entitled to infer from it that every Prime Minister of Canada since Sir Wilfrid Laurier had spoken to The Empire Club in his capacity as Prime Minister.

I must now confess that such was not the case as the following historical facts will demonstrate.

Mr. Meighen and Mr. Mackenzie King spoke to the Club before they became Prime Minister but not as Prime Minister.

Sir Robert Borden, Mr. St. Laurent and Mr. Pearson spoke to the Club before they became Prime Minister and subsequently as Prime Minister.

Viscount Bennett spoke to the Club only after he ceased to be Prime Minister.

Mr. Diefenbaker spoke before he was Prime Minister, as Prime Minister and after he ceased to be Prime Minister. Sir, we did not have the privilege of hearing from you before you became Prime Minister.

Having regard to the well recognized vagaries and vicisitudes of political life, we are particularly pleased that you are with us today.

Indeed, we hope that you will honour us again in the future as Prime Minister and also after you cease to hold the high office, even though the latter circumstance may well be in the far distant future.

Mr. Trudeau’s rise to political prominence was nothing short of spectacular. He captured the imagination of Canadians and became the leader of his party which then went on to win a majority of seats in the House of Commons for the first time for any Canadian political party in four successive general elections. As Prime Minister he has been most successful in enhancing the reputation of Canada amongst peoples of the world.

At the close of the Commonwealth Conference in Singapore in January 1971, at which 31 Heads of State were present, the Prime Minister of Singapore, as Chairman of that conference, singled out Prime Minister Trudeau as having made an outstanding contribution to its sessions.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau has been described as a new breed of politician practising a new kind of politics–a politics of issues, not partisanship. His attractiveness stems from his freshness of outlook, his audacity, his intellectual honesty, and his "capacity to communicate".

Mr. Trudeau’s words combine a thoughtfulness and directness unusual for a man in high office.

Mesdames, messieurs, The Prime Minister of Canada.

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU:

Mr. President, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen: I am particularly pleased to be here to address this distinguished audience today because, as Joe Potts just reminded us, something we all knew, it is the home of Paul Henderson. For this meeting of mine with yours comes at a point after the series of games but also at a point during an election campaign and also at a point of Canadian history about which I think we want to take stock.

Joe made a few phrases about so and so was here before being Prime Minister and after being Prime Minister and I wasn’t quite sure how we would end up but, as a staunch Liberal, I knew it would end up all right for me.

I was also told by Joe, during the meal, something I had not known before, that Mr. Pearson would be speaking to you (in January is it, Joe?), and I will make sure in the course of my remarks to say something nice about him as former Prime Minister and I hope he will also say something nice about me, period.

Some of you heard me mumble when Joe thanked me for taking time out during an election campaign to speak to you. I told him I really wasn’t taking time out, thank you very much.

Elections, as I have been telling the people I have been talking to, are a time when politicians must have conversations with Canadians and it is a time when we are all stimulated to think about the history of our country, about its place in the world, about our place in the whole of Canada. To think about it, not only as businessmen or stockbrokers or members of one community or one profession, but as Canadians who have to make a choice while they are holding in mind not their particular interest, but while they are taking the national view in mind. And this isn’t always the easiest thing because a great deal of self-discipline and even self-abnegation is called for. I have found in these meetings I have had in the past couple of weeks that probably in Canada we do this more objectively than any other country I know of. Men and women from every geographic, every economic and cultural segment of this society are taking the overall view.

Well, I will try and do this today in some remarks I want to make about our foreign policy. I will do this trying to place myself a little bit not only above the local or the provincial interests but even at the national level and place myself also, somehow, as people might do if they are looking at Canada from the outside. I think it was Mike Pearson’s ability to do this which endeared him so much to Canadians and to people around the world. The fact that he was a man of international stature, that he was first and foremost a Canadian and that he ensured in the councils of the world that Canada’s name would continue to be respected. Because of this strength and the wisdom he had, he provided a very firm foundation for a Canada which has to meet the changing times in a turbulent world.

Well what we have done in the past four years has been to try to build these foreign relations upon that foundation for the benefit of Canadians. We have not looked at the world as a safe resting place from which Canadians could react in relative security to world events as they occurred. We did not want it to be a reactive policy, one that responded to initiatives from other governments no matter how powerful or important they might be. In many cases we have to react and that is the essence of being able to meet a crisis-that you can react very quickly-but a foreign policy taken as a continuing theme must not be built on reaction. It must be built on action. It must take foreign policy and this foundation that I was talking about as a launching pad from which we could take initiatives, not react, but initiate actions which are designed to meet our goals and to satisfy our needs and if other countries want to react, as I think many of them have been doing, they will be reacting to trailblazing by Canada.

This is what I see has been happening in Canada since 1968 and Canada’s voice in the world which was long respected, because of its tone of moderation and wise counsel, I hope is now listened to with additional interest. There is no loss of respect, this I know, and there is no departure from moderation. I hope there is also no departure from wisdom. But there is a new ingredient of confidence in the form of Canadian undertakings and of Canadian policies. Our background in this past that I was describing has prepared us to act with self-assurance and to act with the courage of a fully mature actor in the world scene. •’

Now these initiatives have taken several forms. I will talk about them and they have been made in several directions but the philosophical base from which they emerge is found in the foreign policy which was published early in our term of office, initiated right after Mitchell Sharp became Foreign Minister, Minister for External Affairs, and that review, which some of you know, it varied fundamentally, I believe, from previous foreign policy statements made by Canada or, indeed, by most other countries.

It proceeded from a conceptual basis and the concept, I don’t want to go into it in detail, but it consisted of six objectives or goals towards which we all said that our activities would be aimed. It was then not a matter of empirically adjusting to situations-reacting as I just said. It would be designing wherever possible our policies in a fashion which was consistent with these goals and this we have done again and again and I hope to show in the few examples of our foreign policy that I will talk about today, I hope to show that there has been this design in our foreign policy, one which proceeded from certain goals, and one which did more than that, it insured that at home and abroad our policies were harmonious and coherent. Not only harmonious in our actions in the world, as I hoped they were, but harmonious in view of the goals we were pursuing in Canada as Canadians. And this has not been done just for the sake of mere consistency, though I hope we have been consistent. It has been designed this way in order to achieve maximum effectiveness. For instance, when Canada took steps to insure the supremacy of Canadian interests in the Arctic, we did not move in a unilateral fashion and through that much maligned technique which some countries do use by issuing just unilaterally bold territorial claims. We acted in defence of our environment but as we are already acting and we would continue to act in other regions of the country. In other words, we built up our claim as a nation, which, lent to the quality of life, went to the desire to protect the environment for the use of Canadians for their enjoyment. Having built up this strong policy in Canada for Canadians, we could apply it to the Arctic in a way which couldn’t be interpreted as just a mere territorial grab.

In our previous overtures, for instance, with the Soviet Union for a warmer relationship and our support for the then distant environmental conference which was going to be held in Stockholm, support which I discussed with U Thant the very first time I met him as Prime Minister at the United Nations, I explained to him then what our concern was for the environment and I explained to him then how this had implications for our foreign policy as it would in Stockholm but also as it would in our desire to protect the integrity of the Canadian territory. But this attitude assured us of influential allies in any legal contest that might come up in the Arctic and that isn’t the total story. If you look at our concern for, for instance, off-shore oil pollution and the fact that we have legislated to protect ourselves in this area, well that is also consistent with the policy and the arguments that we use in discussing with the provinces the question of the administration of the off-shore minerals. It is because of Canada’s understanding of these issues, because of our intimacy with these problems, that we can continue to have a policy which operates to our total benefit as Canadians.

Another example of that is the fact that a number of the principles that are well on the way to acceptance at the 1973 Law of the Sea Conference. They are of Canadian origin. We thought them through for the benefit of Canadians and we showed that we would put our actions where our mouth was and because of these principles, which are of Canadian origin and therefore of Canadian interest, we are confident that they will form the basis of a lot of the decisions at the International Law of the Sea Conference.

Now this same coherence of policies applies again and again. In 1968 and 1969 you will remember that the government came under intense criticism for our refusal to involve ourself in the Nigerian civil war. Our reasons for that were not fanciful. We stated them then, I think with clarity, but years were to pass before the emotion of that issue died down sufficiently to allow critics to examine them objectively. We would not intervene in Nigeria in spite of the urgings which you will recall came from all sectors of the Canadian population, not only the Opposition Parties in the House of Commons, but the media, letters, pressures upon Mitchell Sharp, upon myself. We did not intervene inspite of all that because we were opposed to tribalism, particularly when it spoke with the language of violence. We were opposed to it wherever it occurred and in whatever name it manifested itself. In Africa, or in Asia, or, indeed, in Canada. And we would not intervene in the domestic affairs of another country because the United Nations’ Charter forbade it but also because the overwhelming majority of African leaders, including, incidentally, one who had already recognized the independence of Biafra, because they told us to stay out of African affairs and we did so. But we did not turn our backs on the obvious need for humanitarian assistance and humanitarian laws to protect the interest of innocent civilian populations and that is why we played a leading role in the Istanbul Red Cross Conference in an attempt to fill that void. We acted continuously in the role of persuasion to alleviate the suffering and I think in the process we gained the respect of Africa.

Now that, too, is consistent with other things and it is because we have this respect that we were permitted to play a key role later in the Commonwealth crisis about which I will talk in a moment. And also, that respect of African nations lent added weight to our voice in the United Nations day after day because we, too, will all be at the United Nations and we, too, like to have certain principles, say of non-proliferating of nuclear arms or other. We do like to promote ideas which we think are of importance to Canadians and to the world. And it is good to have allies who realize that we respected their principles and values in their time of crisis.

Now in all of these inter-related policies, and there are many more, I suggest that Canadians have benefited and they have benefited because we have been willing to take a long view and because we have been willing to take fresh perspectives.

I would like to give, but it would make a much longer speech, would like to give some examples also in the area of monetary and international monetary relations-the fact that we were alone of the group of ten, indeed, of countries concerned we were alone to get people to understand that we should float our dollar and that we were able to withstand the United States’ pressure after President Nixon’s August seventy-one economic measures. These are all examples which just don’t happen in a vacuum because we decided that that is good for Canada. We can do this if the total approach of Canadian people is consistent and I think that’s the reason why Canada is respected. Not now, not under my government alone, but it has been in the world because we have followed through internationally with principles which we try to apply nationally. Principles of helping each other. Principles of equalizing opportunity between the regions of Canada and the people of Canada as we try to do through our International Development Agency.

Well, to go on to another example, I begin by saying that it required no original thought to accept the proposition that Canada’s interests would be served well if our relations with the Soviet Union, this joint neighbour to the north, could be improved, if they could be placed upon an open and businesslike basis which would provide an opportunity for friendship, to replace the distrust, the suspicion and the fear of the past. That proposition has been well accepted for many years. We don’t claim credit for that proposition but we do claim credit for the courage to test it out and for the resolve to put it into effect. And what’s been the result? We haven’t been forced to surrender any of our principles or values. We haven’t found ourselves conceding any strongly held beliefs, except perhaps the belief that we could take on the Russians very easily and lick them at any game we wanted to play.

But we have gained a great deal. We have gained pride in the realization that we have contributed considerably to the reduction of east-west tensions. We have gained from far-reaching and still extending exchanges of information and experience. We have gained the possibility of having this communication between experts and scientists in fields which are as divergent as gas pipelines and Arctic icebreakers. We have gained assurance that Canada, because we have seized the initiative for friendship, will enjoy a favoured position as a supplier of wheat to the vast Soviet market. We have gained, perhaps even more important still, in hundreds of individual cases-the joy and the relief of seeing families reunited, this reunion of families and relatives which had been denied for years. The opportunity of leaving the Soviet Union and of taking up residence in Canada. And we gain interest because they, too, at the other end, the other government, the Soviet Government, wanted to respond to the overtures for friendship and when we were asking them such a humanitarian thing as to make progress in the reunification of families, they obviously couldn’t say "no".

If it was generally believed, and I think it was, that a friendly Soviet Union is to be preferred to a defiant one, it was also, a few years ago, commonplace to believe that one-quarter of the world’s population should not be denied membership in the international community. The argument had been made for years. The People’s Republic of China should be recognized as the legitimate government, it was said. A few countries objected absolutely to the principle of this position but fewer still were prepared to overcome the inertia which had settled upon this issue for a period of two and a half decades. Somehow, the argument went, by standing still, by keeping the same position, Canada could somehow still reap benefits from a policy which once had been proper but which had now become sterile. And somehow, we were told, we could still expect to continue selling wheat to the Chinese while denying them at the same time the respect which they claimed as an independent state.

Well one of our first steps, when we assumed office in 1968, was to sweep aside these somehows and to set out to negotiate terms of recognition which were both honourable and realistic. We achieved that goal and in achieving it we set in motion a train of events which has taken the Chinese Government to the United Nations and taken President Nixon to Peking.

Now, the total range of benefits to Canada are yet far from identified but the benefits, this is certain, which accrue to us as initiators of new world policies, are certainly far different from those which would accrue to us if we were just imitators rather than initiators. Not only have we gained in self-respect but we have gained a further measure of independence from the ‘policies, the foreign policies, of other countries. We have gained from the knowledge that we enjoy a head start of immense value in developing relations of all kinds with China, not only trade about which I will say a word, but relations which we hope will permit to a further lessening of tensions between the peoples of the world and through peace lead to other exchanges, whether they be of a cultural, of a scientific or of an economic nature. But referring to the latter aspect of it, we should remind ourselves that it is not by coincidence that the first Canadian Minister to visit China was Jean Luc Pepin, who was the Minister of Trade. And it is no coincidence either that he took with him not just a few officials but he took with him businessmen, airplane loads full of Canadian businessmen, and a year later when Mitchell Sharp went to Peking it was with a whole trade fair, the biggest foreign trade exhibition which had ever been mounted in The People’s Republic of China. And it wasn’t a coincidence that the Chinese responded in a way which many of you have been witnesses of here at the C.N.E. by a superb exhibit.

These things have just begun. As I say, there are many areas in which we can benefit but it isn’t as likely that we would have had if we just followed upon initiatives of others. I think it is natural for everyone involved to realize that because we moved many other people did move and in these various exchanges of benefits to the two nations I hope that the fact that we were initiators will always be remembered.

I think this is a little bit more complicated but probably a little more important than ping pong diplomacy. We are not just responding, we are following a plan which is not secret but which has been published in the White Paper that Mr. Sharp published some years ago.

En 1968, a l’etranger on considerait generalement le Canada comme un pays essentiellement de langue anglaise. L’attitude qu’avaient adopte certains gouvernements francophones nous apparaissait contraire aux interets de l’etat Canadien. Cette attitude aurait pu susciter chez nous des dissensions si deja nous n’avions pas reconnu notre dualite linguistique par la loi sur les langues officielles. Autrement dit, la egalement on ne batit pas une politique etrangere sur rien, mais sur une action deja soutenue au pays.

Cette loi des langues officielles assurait aux Canadiens le droit de communiquer avec leur gouvernement soit en francais, soit en anglais. Parallelement, nous prenions des dispositions pour que le fait francais affirme ses dimensions internationales. Il s’agissait la d’initiatives et non pas de simples reactions, comme je l’ai explique tout a l’heure.

Nous avons participe activement a la creation d’une communaute des etats francophones, l’Agence de Co-operation culturelle et technique. Nous avons contribue a la redaction de ses statuts, et l’an dernier, nous avons acceuilli l’ "agence," lorsqu’elle a tenu sa deuxieme assemblee generale a Ottawa. Notre travail au sein de cette association nous a permis d’accroitre notre influence aupres d’un important groupe de nations. Nous avons de la sorte ouvert une nouvelle fenetre sur le monde, aux Canadiens de langue francaise, leur donnant Poccasion, entre autre de contribuer au progres des pays d’Afrique. Ainsi, les Canadiens francophones peuvent desormais profiter d’experiences et d’avantages que connaissaient depuis longtemps les Canadiens anglophones. L’unite du pays s’en trouve d’autant renforcee.

So this way, too, you see that our policy, foreign and domestic, is consistent and in a strange way it is because we have taken certain constitutional positions on languages that we were able to follow through with certain constitutional positions when it came to that particular aspect of the Constitution which deals with foreign relations. And I suggest that we would have been in a much less strong position to say "no" to certain international initiatives which we felt were beyond the constitution, certain initiatives by provinces, if we had not at the same time, through our official Languages Act, insured that the Federal Government was the spokesman of both linguistic communities in Canada. And so on-you could give examples with our International Development Agency which applies to new regions in the world, this concept of respect of the human being which we try to apply in our laws in Canada and which puts Canada in its proper place in front of the international community. But this l’Agence Francophone that I was talking about is non-identical to its much older and much larger English-speaking counterpart, the Commonwealth. But in several instances, several ways, it is similar and Canada is thus respected as a charter member in these two exceedingly important associations. One which is rooted in a common heritage transmitted through the English language and the other rooted in the shared experience of communication in France.

We all know that the Commonwealth has long been one of the pillars of Canadian foreign policy. Well, I want to submit that in the past four years that pillar has been strengthened and has been ornamented. In the official travel which I have undertaken abroad, I visited twelve different countries, eight of those were members of the Commonwealth. Of the many initiatives that have been taken by this Government since 1968, I will say quite frankly that few give me more pride than those which were Commonwealth oriented. And I don’t say this because I am talking to a particular audience, one-half of which is certainly as long faced as could be at the suggestion that I would use this occasion to talk in a different way about the Commonwealth than 1 would anywhere else.

I have said in the House of Commons and I have said it on many occasions, this institution which permits heads of government to talk together, not through interpreters and not through the very formal structured manner that has to be present, for instance, at the United Nations or at many international meetings. This possibility of talking face-to-face is something which is of immense value in a world today where intercommunication between people’s understanding of the other person’s point of view is basic to the maintenance of peace in the world. I might even say in that regard, without disrespect to l’Agence Francophone, that though that, too, is built upon the fact that we can communicate face-to-face. I think it is worth relating one of the remarks made, before the l’Agence Francophone was set up, by one of the French-speaking African leaders who expressed doubt about this action that we were trying to co-operate with and I was telling him-you know the Commonwealth is of immense benefit to us and not merely in economic or other terms that may have been but because of this understanding, this ability to talk face-to-face, and at that time I had already had the experience of talking face-to-face or seeing, I should say, a former African colony have their heads of state, or heads of government, talking face-to-face in very strong language to Harold Wilson as I was to see them do the same thing to Edward Heath a couple of years later in Singapore. This French African leader said "Well yah, but if we were to talk that way to General de Gaulle, the roof would blow off." This is because, I think, the Commonwealth has this deep root in the past in a series of institutions which are connected with the whole Anglo-Saxon approach to democracy and equality. And it will be a long time before these same benefits are shared, as I hope they will be, in the French-speaking community.

Well, you will recall, that at and before the last Prime Ministers’ Conference in Singapore, Canada had worked very hard to ensure that the particular conference would take place and that having taken place that it would not fail. You will remember the grave doubts. I remember the press conference I gave just before boarding the plane and most of the questions were to the effect "Well, what is Canada going to do when all these African states walk out after Britain refuses to stop selling arms to South Africa?", or "What will you do if you arrive in Singapore and half the members haven’t come because they won’t want to sit down with Edward Heath?". You know, there was a terrible amount of pessimism during those final weeks of 1970 and the early part of 1971. Well we worked very hard to ensure that those meetings would take place and that they would be a success. And we worked equally hard to ensure that the format of future Commonwealth meetings would avoid the crisis atmosphere and the general approach of the General Assembly, the climate which exists there and which had evolved in recent years with everyone making long set speeches generally on problems which cannot be resolved by that particular conference. And we put forward proposals which were designed to restore the intimacy of the meetings and which would permit these extraordinary gatherings of thirty-one heads of government. Not to make speeches at each other because you can do that in any language and the interpreter will make the speech but to talk to each other, to dialogue with each other. Well those initiatives we put forward were followed up and several months ago now the officials of the Commonwealth countries agreed to meet in Ottawa, the meeting will take place in mid-October, in order to deal with these Canadian suggestions and to make recommendations to all their governments with respect to them and I think that’s perhaps the most important thing that can happen to these meetings.

But another agenda item for the meeting, in addition to this change of format, will be the timing and the venue of the next Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference. Today I want to say that I have received a letter from the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Mr. Arnold Smith, telling me that a number of Commonwealth Prime Ministers have expressed to him the hope that the next heads of government conference might take place in Canada and I replied, after discussing it with Mitchell, I replied to Mr. Smith that I would be very pleased, and I know all Canadians would be very pleased, to invite this important conference to Canada in 1973. Now should this invitation of ours be accepted, and I am led to believe that it will, this will be the first Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ meeting ever held in Canada and I am particularly proud to add that it will be the first held under the new format of procedures first discussed and put forward by Canada at Singapore.

Well, I have given some examples but this active pursuit of Canadian interests in the world beyond our shores really forms too long a list for me to enumerate them all in this one speech or, indeed, at any single occasion. I want to say, however, that several Cabinet Ministers responsible for activities with international dimensions are actively engaged in discussing them during this campaign and I won’t say any more about that but I do hope that during this campaign you will have the occasion to hear something of what they are saying. For instance, Canada’s widely and, I believe, deservedly respected Secretary of State, Mitchell Sharp, Secretary of State for External Affairs, is directing the activities of one of the world’s finest foreign services, directing them in New York with the United Nations, in Geneva at the disarmament conferences, in the preparatory committee to the third Law of the Sea Conference to which I referred a moment ago. Mr. John Turner has just returned from very important meetings with the Commonwealth Finance Ministers in London and from the International Monetary Fund Meetings in Washington. Jack Davis, the Minister of the Environment, is engaged in the application and extension of important principles, many of them of Canadian origin, adopted at the Stockholm Conference on the Environment. The Minister of State for Science, Mr. Gillespie, is beginning the policies which will permit Canada to gain from the resources lying beneath the surface of our continental shelves, the largest continental shelv