Who is My Neighbour

High Commissioner for Canada, London, and former ambassador to Rome and to Moscow. Although he was not a member of Prime Minister Trudeau's inner circle, Jeremy Kinsman served him, as did many others, over the years in question. The views and recollections in this article, first presented as a paper at a colloquium on Pierre Elliott Trudeau at Southampton University in December 2001, are the author's. Who is my neighbour? Is she the woman rummaging for food in the back streets of an Asian shanty town? Is he the man in South America in prison for leading a trade union? The people dying in Africa for lack of medical care, or clean water, are they my neighbours? What about those who are dying in the spirit in the villages of India for lack of a job, or an education, or hope? Are my neighbours the children running from the sound of gunfire in the streets of Beirut? If we, the peoples of the North, say yes, then we will act; we will act together to keep hope alive. If we say no, then they are doomed and so are we. Pierre Trudeau, 15 June 1981(1)INTRODUCTIONPierre Elliott Trudeau's impact on Canada was enormous. His dual commitment to individual civil liberties and to building the Canadian nation resulted in a charter of rights enshrined inside a patriated constitution and a changed country. In foreign policy, where he dealt with a wider and changing world, not so amenable to shaping by any one middle power, his impact was less convincing. Moreover, a political leadership career spanning 16 years inevitably takes one down a long and winding road. Inconsistency-seekers can feast on a record that long - no matter what the vision.Trudeau's foreign policy was assembled from within a conceptual framework analogous to his view of Canada and Canadians that emphasized nation-building within a general vision on the great fault-lines of global relations: North-South and East-West.For all the twists in his foreign policies, Trudeau was remarkably consistent in his commitment to individual civil rights, and to the rights of individual states to be free from arbitrary interference in their affairs, which necessarily involved something of a contradiction. At the time, the doctrine of humanitarian intervention had not yet been developed. Though Trudeau the anti-racist abhorred apartheid, and the assumptions governing the conduct of racist Rhodesia, Trudeau the international jurist was less confrontational on the issue of individual political freedoms within the socialist states of eastern Europe. Whatever he thought of individual regimes, he endeavoured to work with them. For example, he promoted detente with the Soviet Union in the full knowledge that if he had been made to live there it would have been as a recidivist dissident in prison. Still, he was a real friend of Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, or of Cuba's Fidel Castro for that matter, when they were turning the screws on their own societies. Explanation? They were nation-builders, which he admired; he was one himself.Trudeau was an interventionist in favour of a better deal for poorer countries and peoples, and he was a great promoter of detente. As will be seen, his efforts in both areas frequently caused problems with the United States.By the time he left office in 1984, some already saw his internationalist vision as a voice from a less realistic and more dirigiste past. Sceptical international conservatism, identified with President Ronald Reagan in the United States and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Britain, held sway. But it is illuminating to look back at the Trudeau years from the viewpoint of the world today, to record not just how much international ground he broke on Canada's behalf, but also how much of his global vision has become more common twenty years on.The Present ContextIn the aftermath of 11 September 2001, discussions about the shape, order, and stresses of our world are rife

Charter · Civil liberties · Constitution · Democracy · Political science · Politics · Prime minister · Prison · Sociology · Canadian Identity and History · Canadian Policy and Governance · Law

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