back to Canada from the United Kingdom and, in
the process, amended. The major amendment in-
volved the creation of a Canadian Charter of Rights
and Freedoms that guaranteed individual rights for
Canadians, a strong Trudeau principle. The reform
did not occur without opposition. Several provincial
governments, most notably that of Quebec, strongly
opposed the change. In the end, Trudeau won them
all over, with the exception of Quebec, which re-
mained opposed to the new constitution.
Other domestic issues bedeviled Trudeau. His
government appeared incapable of addressing a ma-
jor economic recession that saw high levels of unem-
ployment, inflation, and interest rates. Energy was
another major issue, and Trudeau’s government, in
an effort to assert federal control over the sector, in-
troduced the National Energy Program (NEP). The
program proved unpopular both in the province of
Alberta, Canada’s leading oil producer, and with the
U.S. presidential administration of Ronald Reagan.
A decline in the price of oil that followed the NEP
led some in Alberta to put the blame for the setback
on the NEP and the Trudeau government. Trudeau
became widely despised in parts of western Canada,
a region that he later admitted to never having fully
understood.
The Peace Mission and Retirement Suffering un-
popularity at home and facing the prospect of an-
other election or retirement, Trudeau turned to in-
ternational policy in the seeming pursuit of a legacy
for him. The first half of the 1980’s was a period of
heightened Cold War tensions between the Soviet
Union and the United States. Trudeau was person-
ally concerned by the apparent hard-line stance
taken by the Reagan administration toward the Sovi-
ets. At a G7 summit in March, 1983, he repeatedly
clashed with Reagan and British prime minister Mar-
garet Thatcher. Trudeau also found himself at odds
with Washington over the reaction to the Soviet
downing of a Korean Air Lines passenger plane in
September, 1983.
Seeking his own path, in October, 1983, Trudeau
initiated a peace mission to improve relations be-
tween the two superpowers. He began traveling the
globe and conducting a series of meetings with
world leaders, including Chinese leader Deng
Xiaoping. His effort was greeted with cynicism back
in Canada, and the Reagan administration was ada-
mantly opposed to his mission. In the end, nothing
came of his travels. By February, 1984, he had had
enough. After a long walk in the midst of a snow-
storm, he announced his retirement. Before leaving
office, however, he would reward several of his loyal
supporters with patronage appointments. These ar-
rangements, combined with a poor record at han-
dling the economy over the previous four years, left
his Liberal Party in a weak position when it sought re-
election under a new leader, John Turner, in Sep-
tember, 1984. The Progressive Conservatives, led by
Brian Mulroney, crushed the Liberals, and Trudeau
quickly disappeared from public life. Occasionally,
he would reemerge in subsequent years to make
public comments, most notably in 1990 when he suc-
cessfully opposed the Meech Lake Accord, an ulti-
mately failed effort by the Mulroney government to
amend the Canadian constitution and, in the pro-
cess, bring the province of Quebec back into the
constitutional fold.
Impact Always a colorful character, Trudeau in the
1980’s had a decidedly mixed record as Canadian
prime minister. The high point of his time in office
was the repatriation of the Canadian constitution
and the creation of the Charter of Rights and Free-
doms, Trudeau’s ultimate legacy. On the other hand,
his government presided over the increasing alien-
ation of Quebec and western Canada while appear-
ing to be unable to cope with and fully understand
the economic malaise that gripped Canada in these
years.
Further Reading
Bliss, Michael.Right Honourable Men: The Descent of
Canadian Politics from Macdonald to Chrétien.To-
ronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2004. A collection
of short biographies of Canadian prime minis-
ters, including Trudeau.
Clarkson, Stephen, and Christina McCall.Trudeau
and Our Times. Vol. 2. Toronto: McClelland & Stew-
art, 1997. A detailed study of the political career
of Trudeau, with particular attention to the 1980’s.
Martin, Lawrence.The Presidents and the Prime Minis-
ters: Washington and Ottawa Face to Face—The Myth
of Bilateral Bliss, 1867-1982. Toronto: Doubleday
Canada, 1982. A history of relations between prime
ministers and presidents, including a brief sec-
tion about Trudeau and Reagan.
Simpson, Jeffrey.Discipline of Power. Toronto: Univer-
sity of Toronto Press, 1976. An award-winning
study of the short-lived government of Clark andThe Eighties in America Trudeau, Pierre 987