THE SHADOW OF TRUDEAU PÈRE.

Fathers have to deal with sons, and sons with fathers. Such is life since a couple of globs in the primordial goop invented sexual reproduction. Justin Trudeau is into his second government and sixth year in power. We can now begin to compare father and son, each born to wealth, each seen as a dilettante until entering Parliament, at 46 in the case of the father, 37 for the son.

Pierre Trudeau became prime minister in April 1968 and lasted until June 1984, except for Joe Clark's ninemonth interregnum. In fiscal year 1968-69, Ottawa's Fiscal Reference Tables tell us, the federal government's debt was 24.7 per cent of GDP. In 1984-85, when Trudeau left, it was 42.1 per cent. In fact, it declined for the elder Trudeau's first seven years. But in the mid-1970s it started the 20-year climb that took it to 66.6 per cent in 199596.

Pierre Trudeau showed little angst about adding to it. He balanced the federal budget just once in his 15+ years in office, in 1969-70. His last full year, 1983-84, the deficit was 7.7 per cent of GDP. It peaked at 8.0 per cent the following year and then the Mulroney Tories began the long, hard slog of bringing it down.

In the 2015-16 fiscal year, when Justin Trudeau took over, the debt was back down to 31.9 per cent of GDP. After little ups and downs, by 2019-20 it was 31.3 per cent. Forecasting is perilous but no one will be surprised if it jumps 20 points this fiscal year. As for deficits, the younger Trudeau inherited a budget a half-billion dollars from balance and by 2019-20 had it in the red by 1.7 per cent of GDP, despite a good economy with low unemployment. That's not actually bad for a Trudeau. Over the final 10 years of his father's governments, only once was the federal deficit less than 1.7 per cent of GDP. In the current fiscal year, of course, all deficit bets are off, except for the good possibility this year's will exceed last year's total spending, breaking all-time records, peacetime and wartime.

The family credo is that deficits encourage growth. Pierre had an excuse, arriving as he did at the height of Keynesian orthodoxy. By his later years the recession-fighting powers of deficits were doubted, not least because they hadn't seemed to work in the 1970s. Though in his first years Justin has not deficit-spent on his father's scale, his true test comes once the pandemic recedes.

Pierre Trudeau's most brazen election lie was “Zap! You're frozen,” with which he ridiculed the Progressive Conservatives' 1974 election platform plank favouring wage-and-price controls to reel in the inflation then running at (yes, children!) 11 per cent per year. Though it helped him win a majority, within months he himself had introduced “voluntary” controls that not long after became obligatory.

Justin Trudeau has told two election whoppers, first his promise in 2015 to keep the federal deficit at $10 billion — it immediately went to $30 billion — and then, in 2019, the assurance, given on his behalf by then-environment minister Catherine McKenna, that the federal carbon tax would not rise after 2022.

Like father, like son, it seems.

Except that last week, on the issue that got Pierre Trudeau into politics and largely drove his prime ministry, his son said Ottawa would “modernize” the Official Languages Act, with the strong hint that meant accommodate Bill 101's “right to work in French” in Quebec. (Having dealt with Quebec telecoms and banks all my life I can attest that, however their back offices operate, they have a decidedly French face, and in fact are largely populated by francophones.) Justin Trudeau's hint was in response to former Quebec premiers worried about the supposed decline of French in Montreal and to preempt yet another shameful attempt by the federal Tories, the umpteenth since the days of John Diefenbaker, to curry favour with Quebec nationalists, who never, ever give in such deals but only take.

On matters of economics, Pierre Trudeau probably didn't give a fuddle-duddle (to use his coinage of 1971). But on matters of language rights, he wrote the book — Federalism and the French Canadians — as well as the law and the constitution. In practice, official federal bilingualism has caused innumerable irritations. In theory, in a country in which a third of people spoke French, its logic was unassailable: where numbers warranted, federal services should be available in either official language. Even now, with the proportion of French-speakers lower, the principle is still watertight.

If Trudeau fils gives up on that family creed, it will be because we anglo Quebecers “don't count,” as the Montreal Gazette's estimable Don Macpherson wrote in a valedictory column this week after 35 years reporting Quebec politics. “It's not personal, it's politics, and electoral mathematics.” Anglos control too few seats, in both Ottawa and Quebec City.

Pierre Trudeau's ghost must sleep uneasily this Christmas as his son toys with a reset of official bilingualism. And so do many living Canadians, anglophones in Quebec and francophones outside. 2020 was the year identity politics prevailed — just not for all identities.

THE FAMILY CREDO IS THAT DEFICITS ENCOURAGE GROWTH.