Ignoble Episode of U.S. Foreign Interference in Canadian Affairs at Crucial Period Post World War II
The
country called Canada came into being as part of the British
Empire. It
participated in the Boer War on behalf of the British as part of
empire-building and so too in World War I. It invaded Soviet
Russia in
1918 as one of 14 countries in support of the anti-Bolshevik
White Army
in a failed attempt to overthrow the Russian Revolution. After
World
War II it joined the Anglo-American imperialists in launching
the Cold
War and permitted the U.S. to establish NORAD and subsequently
NATO and take over Canadian sovereignty in lieu of the
British.
Furthermore, to this day Canada has a British monarch as
head
of
state and to this day it continues to be part of the British
Commonwealth headed by the same British monarch.
All of this has informed and tainted Canada's conception of
sovereignty
to mean swearing allegiance to a foreign lord and master in both
words
and deeds. It joined the U.S. contingent which intervened in the
Korean
War under the UN flag from 1950-1953 committing the most odious
crimes
against the Korean people and nation. It conciliated with
all
Anglo-American imperialist measures which converted the united
front of
the peoples of the entire world against Nazi-fascism and
Japanese
militarism, for peace, freedom and democracy, into a virulently
anti-communist crusade under whose auspices untold crimes
against
humanity have been committed in the past 75 years. All of this
history
records Canada's takeover lock, stock and barrel by the United
States
and the grave dangers this poses for the country and world
peace at this time.
A prime example of foreign U.S.
interference in Canadian political affairs is the sordid episode
which
took place in the early sixties when U.S. President Kennedy
intervened
directly in an electoral coup
d'état to get his choice of Prime Minister into
office. Much has been written about this but warranted
conclusions are
not drawn. On the contrary, it is reduced to bad chemistry
between John
F. Kennedy and John Diefenbaker, while the post war needs for
peace,
freedom and democracy were abandoned in favour of Cold War
anti-communist aims.
In fact, there was a lot of controversy over Canada's joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) when it was founded 75 years ago in April 1949. This was the case notwithstanding the declaration that it was a sovereign act. In the words of then-External Affairs Minister Lester B. Pearson in the House of Commons a week before the official signing of the North Atlantic Treaty: those who would "have the privilege of signing this treaty ... will, in fact as well as in theory, sign it as the representatives -- and indeed servants -- of the parliament of Canada and the whole people of Canada, except those of communist belief who clamour and scramble on the fringes of our national life."
Far from Pearson's Cold War rendition and the fact that Canadians were never privy to any discussions about NATO, there were many concerns, interests and opinions about Canada's entry into NATO within the ruling class itself. A focal point of the controversy centred around the crucial question of whether Canada could maintain its sovereignty and independence within a military alliance dominated by the U.S. and its hegemonic aims as "leader of the free world." This included matters related to the role of NATO as an incitement for renewed militarization and a threat to the hope that the United Nations should be the instrument of mediation and conflict resolution, not U.S. military might.
U.S. designs for Canada were expressed in a February 9, 1950 internal State Department memo to then-President Truman that advised, "Our commitments and risks are so extensive and important that Canada in a military sense must be considered as if it were an integral part of the United States." It stated that Canada was the "most logical avenue for a large-scale attack on the U.S. Even if it were not for the commitments in [NATO] and the extension of the Monroe Doctrine to Canada, it would be necessary to protect Canada instantly from any threat."
For most of the decade, Parliament's 17th Ministry, led by Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent, was in power (November 1948 to June 1957). Lester B. Pearson served as Minister of State for External Affairs under St-Laurent. He and the Liberal government had established a reputation of being at the beck and call of the U.S., especially through Pearson's work of bringing Canada into NATO. In October 1950, in response to criticism of Pearson's "blatant pro-American policies," as historian Arthur Lower put it, Pearson retorted that "[Canada is] constantly faced with the problem of trying to influence the United States policy which will protect both our interests and our conception of what is good for the world."
Within this climate, John Diefenbaker became leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1956 and of its minority government in 1957. He subsequently won a majority government in the 1958 general election.
Diefenbaker faced U.S. complaints about Canada's trade with China and Cuba. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he aroused Kennedy's disdain by calling for an independent inquiry about what was going on in Cuba when the U.S. released satellite pictures about the Soviet military there. Diefenbaker wanted to strengthen trade within the Commonwealth countries, while the U.S. was actively working to develop the European Union, including encouraging Britain to join the European Union, which Diefenbaker openly opposed as detrimental to the Commonwealth. The U.S. wanted Canada to join the Organization of American States (OAS) -- Diefenbaker didn't want to. The sharpest point of disagreement arose around Diefenbaker's reluctance to station nuclear weapons in Canada.
In April 1962, the Parliament was dissolved and an election was set for June 18, 1962. Kennedy decided to directly intervene in the election and he organized a blatant electoral coup d'état to get rid of Diefenbaker in one of the most sordid examples of foreign interference in Canadian political affairs. Despite this, until the present time, the electoral process is touted as the occasion when Canadians choose their own representatives and, when speaking about foreign interference in Canadian affairs, the interference of the U.S. is not even mentioned. In the 1963 election, in cahoots with the Liberal campaign team, Kennedy worked both openly and surreptitiously to install as Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson who had proven his usefulness to the U.S. many times over.
The campaign to subvert Diefenbaker was underway even before the election was called. It was an open campaign against Diefenbaker. In early 1962, a New York Republican Senator came to Canada and in an interview on CBC, said: "I have always regarded Canada as one of our most dependable allies ... I cannot understand, therefore the apparent unwillingness of the Canadian authorities to cooperate fully in imposing economic sanctions against Cuba -- and for that matter also against Red China ... every sale which bolsters the Cuban economy strengthens Castro's hold on the Cuban people and supports this dictatorship."
Diefenbaker made no secret of the fact that his reluctance to comply with U.S. demands, especially regarding the deployment of nuclear weapons in Canada, was because of public opinion in the country. When U.S. Ambassador to Canada and Under Secretary for Political Affairs Livingston Merchant met with Diefenbaker to propose a military deal, including deployment of nuclear weapons, Diefenbaker told Merchant that he had concerns about Canadian public opinion and that there were divided opinions within External Affairs. Speaking of the divisions among the public, he told Merchant that opponents were not all "communists and bums."
When Diefenbaker visited Washington in February 1961, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk prepared a briefing paper on Canada for Kennedy. Typically, crucial matters concerning war and peace were presented as personality conflicts, and Diefenbaker's stand on these matters was presented as dithering and indecisiveness which posed serious dangers of communist infiltration into North America. In his briefing paper, Rusk said that the United States faced "an evolving Canadian attitude of introspection and nationalism ... a Canadian inferiority complex which is reflected in a sensitivity to any real or fancied slight to Canadian sovereignty. Thus the essential element in problems involving Canada tends to be psychological." Rusk suggested that Canada would be reliable on crucial matters of international policy and reported that most Canadians were "favourably disposed toward the United States and believe that each country inescapably needs the other." Predicting what Diefenbaker might say during his meeting with Kennedy, Rusk wrote that Diefenbaker "will be strongly interested in anything which can add to his prestige. He may even suggest to you that anti-Americanism is so prevalent in Canada as to force him to employ nationalistic measures."
Rusk went on to analyze that Diefenbaker's cabinet was split, that its defence budget was "stagnant" and that it was possible that "a drift toward a kind of unconscious neutralism could develop with a loosening of defence ties with the United States." The United States would have to "promote among Canadians a better understanding and an acceptance of the concept of full military interdependence," Rusk advised.
Keep in mind that Diefenbaker was also a strong proponent of social justice and for a vision of Canada based on his understanding of equality and rights. But all of this was dismissed behind complaints about his being nationalistic and a populist. All of it betrays the deliberate attempt to make sure the people were kept out of any discussion on how to realize their striving for peace, freedom and democracy.
Following a meeting with Kennedy in May 1961, the Prime Minister discovered a paper left behind by an American advisor. The infamous "Rostow Memo" outlined several desired results that the United States hoped to "push" Canada toward during the meeting. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, reports reduce the serious issue of relations between Canada and the U.S. to saying that Diefenbaker "was livid," about the "Rostow Memo" "as this incident reaffirmed his nagging belief that the United States wished to dominate Canada. The Kennedy camp was equally enraged: Diefenbaker refused to return the memo even though proper diplomatic decorum required him to do so. Their relationship would never fully recover from this incident."
"Eventually Diefenbaker did agree to put Canadian troops on alert, as all other NATO members supported a proposed blockade and agreed to aid the United States if an attack occurred. However, due to his reluctance to respond to the situation, Diefenbaker acted only after the crisis' climax had passed. Also, under the guidance of the Department of Defence, the Canadian military had taken informal steps to put itself on alert. Ultimately, Diefenbaker believed that Kennedy's "arrogance" had endangered North America and could have resulted in nuclear war."[1]
In a November 1961 report from U.S. Ambassador Merchant, Kennedy was informed that "the Conservatives were losing public support and becoming more anti-American." His message to the President was that "only Pearson and the Liberals could be trusted to be friendly to the United States."
According to the story as told by various historians, when the election was called, Kennedy invited Pearson to attend a dinner in Washington along with other Nobel Prize winners. Pearson told Kennedy that he would be happy to attend, but it would not look good and Diefenbaker would certainly protest a visit to the White House by the leader of the Opposition.
Kennedy proposed that Pearson could go to the U.S. to receive an honorary degree. He proposed Harvard and MIT, but after Pearson informed that he already had honorary degrees from those institutions, Kennedy said he would arrange for Pearson to get one from Boston College on the same day as the Nobel Prize winner dinner on April 29, 1962. (Note how Canada arranged for outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to get a Louis St-Laurent Award for Excellence from the Canadian Bar Association on the eve of the NATO 75th anniversary Summit in Washington, DC at a meeting of the NATO Association of Canada, at a time Canada is being pressed to increase its military funding to two per cent of GDP according to NATO demands.)
Out of the 175 guests at the dinner organized by Kennedy in 1961, Kennedy chose Pearson as the person with whom he walked into the room. The event was reported widely in the media in Canada despite Kennedy's suggestion at a certain point that the use of the Nobel Prize dinner should not be "so obvious."
This overt endorsement of Pearson, which is also not dissimilar to Obama's 2019 endorsement of Justin Trudeau for Prime Minister, is not the kind of foreign interference Canada's intelligence agencies currently refer to as "foreign interference in Canada's political affairs." Nonetheless, the interference went much further than an endorsement.
Kennedy's 1960 election had been spearheaded by pollster and campaign manager Lou Harris. Harris' innovation was the use of frequent and targeted internal party polling to direct election strategists how campaigning should be carried out. In cahoots with Liberal campaign directors backing Pearson in the 1963 election campaign in Canada, Kennedy deployed him to get Pearson elected. Ostensibly, Harris was called in to help Pearson by the Liberals' campaign chair, Walter Gordon and Keith Davey, who later became a senator. Kennedy arranged for Harris to secretly enter Canada and work without detection on Pearson's campaign.[2] Author John Boyko recounts in his book Cold Fear: "For the first time in electoral politics, random sampling was employed to correlate and analyze the massive amounts of data and then use it to help shape the candidate and message according to mathematically demonstrable fact rather than backroom intuition."
In a 2013 Canadian Press interview with Lou Harris at 92 years of age, by Alexander Panetta, Harris refers to his "clandestine involvement" in the election of 1962 as his "crowning glory."
In the interview Harris recounts that he "made multiple trips to Canada during the 1962 and '63 campaigns, hiring 500 women to make phone calls in the most elaborate public-opinion research project in Canada's political history. He kept his role as quiet as possible. Harris says he used a fake passport, produced with the help of some friends in the U.S. government. He went by the name Lou 'Smith' -- his mother's maiden name."
Pearson's biographer, John English, told Panetta: "An American president should not interfere in Canadian elections. And there's no doubt that Kennedy did, and he did not treat a Canadian prime minister appropriately."
Harris died in 2016. He told Panetta during the 2013 interview that he wanted to write a book, but he would keep to himself the "details of the polling techniques he introduced to Canada." What is known is that his techniques were part of the takeover of political parties by marketers and strategists to the extent that what policies would be adopted and promoted became their purview. The 1962 election resulted in a minority Conservative government; in another election in 1963, Lou Harris also assisted and the Liberals won their majority. Asa McKercher, a former archival assistant at Library and Archives Canada, wrote in an article published in International Journal in 2011:
"Analyzing the results of the 1963 Canadian federal election, which saw the Liberal party victorious after six years of Progressive Conservative rule, American Ambassador Walton Butterworth predicted that Canada would henceforth 'be more stable, responsible, sophisticated and generally cooperative than at any time since 1958.' That Butterworth would single out that year as being of such importance is interesting but not a surprise. Although Tory leader John Diefenbaker became Canadian prime minister as head of a minority government in 1957, it was not until a snap election in March 1958 that he won a resounding majority of seats in the house of commons, the most to that point in Canada's history. A former lawyer and long-serving member of parliament, Diefenbaker was a fiery populist who rose to power on a growing tide of nationalism -- some would call it anti-Americanism -- that was coming to prominence in Canada thanks to uneasiness among Canadians over the economic ties between their country and the behemoth to the south. That Diefenbaker was a populist and nationalist is no secret. His clashes with John Kennedy, the American president from 1961 to 1963, are well known and have been the subject of much academic and popular history. Less well known, and examined, is how Canada-U.S. relations played out during the years 1957 to 1961 when Dwight Eisenhower was the American president."[2]
Today, opposing NATO has become "taboo" and the cartel parties of all political stripes do not even raise an eyebrow when U.S. and NATO officials dictate what Canada should be doing. On the contrary, they view foreign interference that is pro-NATO as a good influence while they criminalize and cast aspersions on any opinion expressed by those who disagree with Canada's membership in NATO or its bellicose campaigns, treating them as "enemies of the state" or "enemy agents." All of this is coupled with dramatic increases in Canada's military spending not just on NATO but to install NATO institutions on Canadian soil, build military bases in the Arctic and much more.
These are the actions of a war government and should be taken very seriously by peace-loving Canadians who never cease to find the ways and means to make sure it is they who set the direction for the economy and the country, not those who have usurped the government of Canada in the service of NATO and war. Learning from history, a most important and decisive step in this direction is to oppose the disinforming Cold War outlook of the ruling class whereby everything is rendered as a matter of personal politics, foibles and conflicts while the substantive conversation on matters related to war and peace is silenced. The most urgent task is to smash this silence by making sure Canadians themselves establish their own vantage point in the discussion about current events. It is high time Canada declared its independence and took all necessary measures to be a zone for peace. It is up to the peoples of Canada, including Quebec, the Indigenous Peoples and Métis to make it so.
This article was published in
Volume 54
Number 6 - July 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/M540062.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca