Thank You, Mr. Pierre Elliott Trudeau - Part One by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Two of Odds and Ends

       Thank You Mr. Pierre Elliott Trdeau by Dave Jaffe. Part One.
     


     Suppose the Quebec sovereignty movement hadn't ever some along. Then Pierre Elliott Trudeau would probably never have become Canada's Prime Minister. As far as I'm concerned that would have been too bad.
    "Trudeau in the early 1960's," Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall Newman point out, "was in danger of becoming a rebel without a purpose." A middle aged law professor at the Universite de Montreal, Trudeau suddenly came up against young students who were sovereigntists. They wanted Quebec to leave Canada and form a separate country. The provincial Liberals under Quebec's premier Jean Lesage, were also listening to this separatist tune. So was the opposition party the Union Nationale that would soon be extinct. Trudeau loathed this type of thinking. To combat this strain of thought he joined the federal Liberal party that in the past he had brutally put down. Soon Trudeau was in parliament. Then he became Minister of Justice and in 1968, three years after joining the Liberals, he became Prime Minister.
      "The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation," Trudeau said as Justice Minster. In this position he legalized homosexuality and for the first time birth control methods were openly allowed to be sold in pharmacies. Trudeau as Canada's prime minister promoted French Canadians and Jews to some of the highest offices in the civil service and the federal Liberals. He also guaranteed that all Canadians should be served in French or English at all federal offices in Canada. These acts and laws were one big step forward for French Canadians in Canada.
     Once chastened by the election results of the 1972 federal election, Trudeau formed a temporary alliance with the small left leaning New Democratic Party. After this, Trudeau  did many progressive things. He abolished the death penalty. He brought in the Guaranteed Annual Income Supplement that rescued many senior citizens from dire poverty.
      At the end of the 1968 election campaign, Trudeau insisted that Canada would have to change. "I have insisted" he said, "that we must reform and adapt in many ways - in parliament, in our constitution and in many of our laws." Trudeau kept many of his promises. He brought in a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that once amended with pressure from political activists expanded the freedoms of many Canadians. At the same time Trudeau repatriated the country's constitution from London. Canadian governments would no longer have to trek to the British  in London to get a judgement on whether any of their laws violated the Canadian constitution.
    Trudeau oversaw the building of over 600,000 units of social housing during his time of power. This was an unprecedented expansion of social housing. Never before or since had so many units of government housing been built. Trudeau also led the federal government in 1980 when he defeated the Parti Quebecois government of Rene Levesque in a referendum on Quebec sovereignty. When he stepped down as Prime Minister of Canada in the early 1980's, Quebec remained a part of Canada. Trudeau also amended the country's Unemployment Insurance act, making it more generous and accessible to the unemployed.
   Of course like any government, the Liberals made mistakes.