Reason over passion: Pierre Trudeau, human rights, and Canadian foreign policy

Abstract

Within the literature on human rights, the 1970s are often viewed as a period in which rights achieved a breakthrough globally. While rights regimes, activist networks, and the overall discourse of human rights certainly came into their own during this decade, the rights revolution had its limitations, particularly at the international level. In the Canadian context, the government of Pierre Trudeau advanced a domestic rights program, culminating in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In terms of foreign policy, however, Trudeau was far more cautious. Tracing Pierre Trudeau’s stance toward international human rights, this article points to the prime minister’s realist outlook as having delimited the place of rights in Canadian foreign policy during his time in office. Thus, there was little enthusiasm on the part of the Canadian government to support self-determination movements, to impose bilateral sanctions against abhorrent regimes, or to loudly condemn rights violators when doing so would seemingly accomplish little. The point of this paper is not to condemn Trudeau, but rather to understand why Canada’s rights revolution stopped at the water’s edge.