Some Day the Sun Will Shine and Have Not Will Be No More (33 page)

Here is the only university in the province (public and all) to highlight
arguably one of the most important economic, resource, and financial agreements
ever signed in the history of Newfoundland (and from which they benefited
handsomely and continue to benefit), and to do so without inviting those who
were the negotiators, signatories, and architects of the agreement.

IN A PROJECT OF
this sort there are many people to
thank. Two former members of the House of Assembly, Mr. Charlie Brett and Mr.
Fred Stagg, as well as Mr. Ira Bridger, former president of the Newfoundland and
Labrador Development Corporation, graciously agreed to provide written material
that is used in this book. The Legislative Library in St. John’s was exemplary
in its assistance to me, both in person and by email communication. Andy Fowler,
the manager, and Andrea Hyde were both enthusiastic in assisting me on various
research topics. Andrea was just superb at finding many items. David Vardy,
former clerk of the Executive Council, was of great assistance in tracking down
information concerning the Atlantic Accord and the Bowater divesture. Ron
Penney, former deputy minister of Justice, also assisted on this and provided
valuable advice. Hal Stanley and Herb Clarke, two highly competent clerks of the
Executive Council during my time as premier, were also very helpful. Leslie
Dean, former assistant deputy minister of the provincial Department of
Fisheries, assisted me on Fisheries matters; Sandy Roche, former deputy minister
of Development, assisted on linerboard mill matters; Peter Withers, former
deputy minister of Municipal Affairs, assisted on the municipal issues. Des
Sullivan, former executive assistant to me and to Frank Moores, has been very
helpful in remembering various important incidents and in general advice to me.
Frank Ryan, my leadership campaign manager and in all my provincial elections as
premier, was always there for valuable information and insight. My elder bother,
Bruce, was also of assistance when I went looking for various pieces of
information. Shirley Miller
of Cape Breton Island was very
helpful on family tree matters. Dr. John E. Fitzgerald provided information and
advice relating to the Confederation period. Bill Marshall, as the book clearly
indicates, was of immeasurable help and support. And, most particularly, my
wife, Carol, who had to put up with the books and papers loosely scattered about
for a couple years, not to mention the many mood swings of an aging former first
minister. I must make special mention of the public servants and their support
personnel who served on the Atlantic Accord and Hibernia Project negotiating
teams. The province can be very proud of this group of competent, dedicated
Newfoundlanders. The teams’ names are listed in Appendix III.

Thanks also to Flanker Press and Garry Cranford for agreeing to edit and
publish.

As mentioned in the main part of this book, the events of November 3–5, 1981,
that led to the Patriation Agreement have become distorted and in many cases are
inaccurate. In researching for this book, I was surprised at the extent of this
misrepresentation. Of course, I should not have been so surprised since only
days after the Agreement had been reached there were stories in the media that
described events leading up to the Agreement that were at variance with what I
had experienced at the conference. Disturbed by this, I called a local reporter,
Randy Joyce, since deceased, the week of November 8 and taped an interview with
him recalling the events of the previous week and how the Agreement came
together. I kept the tape; its full contents have not been released. Unknown to
me, my two deputy ministers (Cy Abery of Intergovernmental Affairs, since
deceased, and Ron Penney, living in St. John’s), who were involved with me at
the patriation meetings, were reading the same press reports and had decided
that it would be important, for the record, to get together and write down what
happened. This document is dated November 12, 1981. It has never been released
publicly, until now. Importantly, the two deputy ministers also kept three very
important documents of the patriation meetings, also being released now for the
first time. The first is a brief proposal that I prepared on the afternoon of
November 4 (which was meant to be presented to some of the provinces that day
but the
meeting never happened) in an attempt to seek common
ground on the issues. The second document is the amended version of this
proposal and enlarged by the Newfoundland delegation, which included Justice
minister Gerald Ottenheimer, my two deputy ministers (mentioned above), and a
special adviser, Cabot Martin. The third document is the Newfoundland amended
proposal, which became the provincial proposal presented to full conference on
November 5.

Here are the three most important misrepresentations.

The evidence points to the Agreement being developed at a suite in the Château
Laurier Hotel from a written proposal presented by the Government of
Newfoundland—first to British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, and later
that evening to an enlarged meeting including Nova Scotia and Prince Edward
Island. Four premiers were present (Newfoundland, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, and
Prince Edward Island), as well as a number of ministers and officials.
Amendments were made to the Newfoundland proposal and late in the night/early
the next morning, this amended proposal was retyped and became the provincial
proposal. It was agreed that night that the premier of Newfoundland would
present this amended proposal to the Gang of Eight provinces (all except Ontario
and New Brunswick) at an already-scheduled breakfast meeting the next morning,
and if agreed, to be presented to full conference later that morning. Seven
provinces agreed to the proposal at breakfast, with no amendments, and agreed
that the premier of Newfoundland should present it to full conference that
morning. Quebec disagreed with the proposal. It was presented to full
conference, as agreed, and after a number of amendments the Patriation Agreement
was born.

The evidence indicates that the Patriation Agreement was the culmination of
seventeen months of formal deliberation by the eleven provincial governments of
Canada. It began with an agenda of twelve items. It was sidelined when the
federal government took a unilateral action to try to patriate the constitution
with a charter of rights and freedoms without reference to the provinces.
Several provinces challenged this federal action in the courts and the Supreme
Court of Canada ruled this federal action unconstitutional. Further meetings
were then held between the provincial governments and the federal government
resulting in the Patriation Agreement.

The evidence suggests that the provinces were eager to forge a new agreement
regarding patriation and a charter of rights and freedoms. There were obvious
concerns regarding provincial jurisdiction and the charter and other matters,
but the provinces presented four proposals: the April Accord proposal (1981),
the proposal prepared by British Columbia (presented privately to the prime
minister on November 3), a proposal by Saskatchewan to full conference on
November 4, and finally the amended Newfoundland proposal (now a provincial
proposal) of November 5, which led to the Agreement.

These inaccuracies show up in different forms in many publications and
websites, including a book written soon after the Agreement was reached entitled
The National Deal: The Fight for a Canadian Constitution
by Robert
Sheppard and Michael Valpy, and in the past year in a book written by Ron Graham
entitled
The Last Act: Pierre Trudeau, the Gang of Eight and the Fight for
Canada
. There were even fanciful theories circulating that Pierre
Trudeau was the “behind the scenes puppeteer” manipulating all the proceedings,
and another even more incredible suggestion that Jean Chrétien was the father of
it all.

Chronologically, after I did my taped interview and filed
the tape away, and the deputy ministers did their record of events and filed
them away (including the proposal documents), the next significant event (at
least from our viewpoint) was an article published in the
National Post
in 1999 entitled, “Night of the Long Knives: Who Dunnit?” by professors Barry
Cooper and Ted Morton of the University of Calgary. Here, again, the now
established misrepresentations of events were described for all to see. It even
had Newfoundland being really “a messenger” in the patriation meetings and
proceedings. And some unfortunate slights were directed at us. Obviously, my two
deputy ministers and I were not amused when we read the article. Presented here
are the responses sent to the professors by my deputy ministers. These are also
being released publicly for the first time. Perhaps the most significant is Cy
Abery’s letter, which deals with the misrepresentations in the article.

My first comment on all of this was to be in this book, but I was preempted by
events of last year when the University of Alberta, through their law faculty,
Constitutional Affairs division, held a conference on the patriation issue, it
being the thirtieth anniversary of the event, and invited me to attend. Not
wanting to pre-empt my book’s publication and the documents I was to release, I
simply made a written summary of my taped interview of November, 1981, and hence
highlighted my disagreement with the accepted version of events. That same
weekend two books were released: one, already referenced, was Mr. Ron Graham’s
book (an article promoting it was carried in the
Globe and Mail
) and the
other was the book
The Patriation Minutes
by Howard Leeson, former
Saskatchewan deputy minister, and involved the night of November 4, 1981. His
book goes some way to correct the record. This conference was followed by
another one on the subject of patriation hosted by the University of Quebec at
Montreal, at which time I made a more detailed written presentation. Both the
summary of the taped interview and the Montreal presentation are provided
here.

I am also releasing for the first time an exchange of letters between myself
and Judge Binnie, then a member of the Supreme Court of Canada. This is
important because it highlights most clearly the extent
of
the misunderstanding that existed as it relates to Newfoundland’s constitutional
position and, therefore, how easily things could get garbled on the patriation
issue and hence gain such public credibility.

What is very perplexing, however, is that on the day of the actual patriation
event, Prime Minister Trudeau (well-known to be at variance with many of my
views on other matters), in a public comment recognized the role Newfoundland
played in the proceedings. Yet a different version took root and the prime
minister’s comments were ignored.

Then there is the book written by David G. Wood and published by Key Porter
Books in 1985 entitled
The Lougheed Legacy
in which, on page 229, Mr.
Lougheed is quoted as saying:

This book was followed in 1999 by another publication,
Constitutional
Patriation: The Lougheed-Lévesque Correspondence
, with an introduction
by Peter Meekison and published by the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations,
Queen’s University, and the Canada West Foundation. In the introduction Mr.
Meekison says, “The fact that a draft compromise proposal emerged should not
have come as any surprise to anyone given the various comments during the day,
particularly after Premier Peckford had indicated his intention to put forward a
proposal” (p. 9).

Also in this publication is Mr. Lougheed’s letter to Mr. Lévesque dated
March 8, 1981, which includes numerous references to the
Newfoundland proposal, including the one referenced above in the book
The Lougheed Legacy
. Let me quote another from that letter. This is
point number 27 on page 26 where Lougheed is addressing Lévesque and now
referencing the November 5 breakfast meeting: “When you arrived at the meeting
you were given a copy of the Newfoundland proposal and you had an opportunity to
discuss it before the Group of Eight adjourned.”

Further research that I have conducted has uncovered the correspondence of Mr.
Mel Smith, deputy minister of Constitutional Affairs for the province of British
Columbia and a key player at the patriation meetings. Mr. Smith was involved
with Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, and has left his
correspondence at the archives of that institution’s library. I have found a
letter/memo dated November 10, 1981, that Mr. Smith wrote to his minister
summarizing the events of the patriation the week before. On page 5 of that
memo, Mr. Smith says the following:

The following is a summary of a taped interview I did (the whole interview
is twenty-four pages) with the late Randy Joyce of the St. John’s
Daily News
, conducted on November 8, 1981, at the
premier’s office, St. John’s, Newfoundland.

When the conference got started, the eight provinces’ position was that of the
Accord of earlier that year (April), to which they had agreed. The prime
minister’s position, and thus that of the federal government, was the Federal
Resolution before the House of Commons. As the conference proceeded, the prime
minister seemed to show flexibility on the Amending Formula and the provinces
showed some flexibility on the introduction of a Charter of Rights and
Freedoms.

On November 3, the eight provinces assembled and assisted British Columbia in a
proposal that they were crafting. It included the Accord plus a small charter
involving democratic rights and fundamental freedoms. That afternoon, there
being no closed meeting with the prime minister, we let it be known that we
wanted a meeting with him to present a proposal. Premier Davis was contacted and
asked whether he would support such a proposal. He said he would study it and
indicated that he was willing to act as an intermediary with the prime minister.
We had already appointed Premiers Buchanan, Lougheed, and Bennett to represent
us but agreed that Davis could be part of the delegation. The meeting was held
with the prime minister, but he rejected the proposal.

At breakfast the next morning (Wednesday, November 4), the eight premiers there
showed unanimous support for British Columbia to present the rejected proposal
at the meeting of premiers and the prime minister later that morning. This was
important to the premiers then, since if the conference failed later they wanted
it on the record that they had made such a proposal and that it would show that
the provinces were being flexible and really wanted the conference to succeed.
This was agreed to at breakfast. At the last minute before the meeting was to
begin, British Columbia reneged on presenting the proposal. Premier Bennett had
contacted Premier Lougheed at the last minute and indicated he had changed his
mind. We were all
shocked, but what could we do? Premier
Blakeney also had a proposal to present, and we had persuaded him to allow
Premier Bennett to go first. Now that British Columbia was no longer going to
present their proposal, when the meeting began Premier Blakeney proceeded to
present his province’s proposal. It was discussed at great length, covering all
the key issues that were in play at the time. In the end, though, the prime
minister would not accept it.