The developers of maritime patrol planes of the time (RAF replacing Avro Shackletons, RCAF and RAAF replacing Lockheed Neptunes) wanted something with more size and a longer range than the Britannia could provide. In this world, the Nimrod was used by the RAF, but Canada built the Canadair CP-126 Argus based on the Vickers Super VC10 airframe with Orenda engines and the ability to fly on two of them instead of four to give additional range. Australia also bought the Argus, India the Nimrod.
Go North, Young Man: The Great Canada
- Thread starter TheMann
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The developers of maritime patrol planes of the time (RAF replacing Avro Shackletons, RCAF and RAAF replacing Lockheed Neptunes) wanted something with more size and a longer range than the Britannia could provide. In this world, the Nimrod was used by the RAF, but Canada built the Canadair CP-126 Argus based on the Vickers Super VC10 airframe with Orenda engines and the ability to fly on two of them instead of four to give additional range. Australia also bought the Argus, India the Nimrod.
Part 12 - Man And His World to Canada And Its Destiny
Part 12 - Man And His World to Canada And Its Destiny
Canada reached the end of its first century having accomplished so much of what had been set out by its founders a century ago that it was remarkable. From the North American outpost of the British Empire to a major power in its own right, having built a nation across one of the largest countries in the world, having built a society like no other on Earth, populated by many peoples living in rather-good harmony, for the most part avoiding the racial problems that so many other nations, and celebrating the entry into Canada of its new warm-weather islands, who despite their being poorer than the rest of Canada still made a note of funding the development of a 'Caribbean Pavilion' at Expo 67 in Montreal which went on to be one of the most beloved pavilions of the fair itself and one of those which stood the test of time.
While counter-culture was raging in the United States (and was crossing the border into Canada), Canadian society was much more peaceful, in large part because of the changing social norms of the time. Few younger Canadians remembered the sacrifices of World War II and the Great Depression before that, resulting in them being used to prosperity and as a result seeking more to integrate the world and advance their own futures. The 'Baby Boomer' generation in Canada all but eradicated the problems of racism of the past, and also sought to change many elements of the country's society, including forcing the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1968 and advancing individual rights far beyond the ones that had been enshrined in law by John Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights in 1960. Asian Canadians began to move far beyond the West Coast and Alberta where they had been for decades particularly into the cities of Toronto and Montreal, while the entry into Confederation of the Caribbean provinces resulted in a steady stream of job-seekers and entrepreneurs north into the major cities. It was a time of great advancements in technology and society, and nowhere was it more pronounced than in Montreal with Expo 67.
Expo 67 was the ultimate project of Canada's Centennial celebrations, and it was perhaps up to that point the greatest sign of what Canada was becoming. Quebec was changing dramatically in the 1960s, with the new generation of Quebecers - by percentage of population, Quebec had the biggest single baby boom of any of the provinces, namely through its sky-high 1940s and 1950s birth rate - asserting both modernism and their position in Canada, and Expo 67 was one of the first signs of their influence, the Expo combining French-Canadian flair for the grand with English-Canadian pragmatism, proving expensive but worth every nickel of the money spent, both because of the facilities and the cultural aspect. Moshe Safdie's Habitat 67 made him justifiably famous (Expo wasn't over before Safdie was commissioned by the Province of Ontario to design and build the monumental Harbour City project in Toronto, at the time the largest redevelopment project in Canadian history) and many of the Pavilions were designed with lasting in mind. Expo was a roaring success, hosting over 75 million visitors between April 28 and October 29 and resulting in Montreal getting quite a repute as a tourist destination, a situation helped by Montreal's new Mirabel Airport opening in March 1967, just in time for the event and which proved invaluable during that time period, as did CNR's gas-turbine powered UAC TurboTrains, which entered service in the fall of 1966 and proved invaluable in ferrying passengers from as far out as Detroit as well as throughout Ontario to Montreal. All of Canada saw visitors to Expo and to Montreal, and most liked what they saw.
1967 is seen in many minds as the summer where Canada finally began to assume its own identity. Despite being a bi-cultural nation at its formation (and one which many claimed would become tri-cultural starting with the Treaty of Orillia and the integration of Native Canadians into Canada's society), the Canada that had appeared in the 1960s was one where the worldly, multicultural modern Canada emerged in the hearts and minds of its people. With bilingualism common among younger Canadians (and nearly universal by the mid-1970s) and French by far being the most common second language, Quebec's social rebirth in the 1960s and 1970s rapidly found kindred souls in the rest of the country, and while Montreal by the 1960s was losing some of its former business prominence to Toronto, those English-speaking businessmen who left Montreal saw their old positions filled by an ever-larger group of both French-speaking businessmen and those of Native descent, and Montreal was only too happy to pose itself as a European city in North America, a more laid-back, youthful, culturally-minded rival to busy, workmanlike Toronto down the St. Lawrence. It was a sign of the rivalry that was to come between the two cities. As French proficiency grew across Canada, so did many elements of its culture, including the rich literary traditions, dance and music scenes, visual and performance arts (in this regard, the creation of Nuit Blanche in Montreal in 1977 was to be followed by Nuit Blanche Toronto in 1982 and similar events in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Seattle in 1985) and many culinary traditions, though in the latter case Toronto and its environs rather stole the spotlight from Montreal in the 1980s by combining fine dining with new flavours, tastes and cuisines, primarily brought there by Caribbean, Indian and Asian immigrants. Montreal's influence was also seen in the groundswell movements that stopped many monster-sized redevelopment projects in the rest of Canada, as Montreal had been among the first cities to truly pay attention to its heritage and pay respect to it. As French proficiency grew across Canada, so did English proficiency in Quebec, following the trends closely.
The 1960s also were defined by what became known as the "Great Canadian Flag Debate" as Canada sought to replace the Red Ensign, Canada's flag since its independence in 1867, with something that was more appropriate of Canada's place in the world. This had been kicking around since the 1950s, but Diefenbaker had refused to budge on the use of Red Ensign, and while Lester Pearson's government was in favour of the flag change, Diefenbaker wouldn't budge from the use of the Red Ensign, which resulted in rounds of debates that defined the Flag Debate until on the recommendations on the part of Progressive Party leader Tommy Douglas, Conservative MP Leon Balcer and Social Credit MP Real Caouette to invoke cloture and force a vote. That done, the vote was definitively in favour of the new flag, much to Diefenbaker's disdain. Indeed, the former Prime Minister was to suffer multiple drawbacks in the future - losing the leadership of the Conservative Party to Robert Stanfield in 1967 was the first of many, but Diefenbaker's own visions of a singular nation of Canada as opposed to multiple cultures under one flag by the time of his defeat in 1967 looked increasingly outdated. Pearson, however, having failed to win a majority government in no less than four separate elections, resigned his position on March 16, 1968, turning it over to his successor as leader of the Liberal Party, the charismatic Pierre Trudeau.
Trudeaumania was to make headlines in Canada for all kinds of reasons, namely due to Trudeau's abundant charisma - neither Robert Stanfield nor Tommy Douglas could hope to match Trudeau in that regard, though they were more than a match for him in policy debates, and the elections between the three men in 1968 and 1971 would go on to be among the high points in Canada's modern politics, as all three men tended to focus on policy proposals and each one was more than a match for the other two in terms of intellectual ability. Trudeau, however, opened his first campaign with several dramatic plans, most notably a re-write of Canada's Constitution to bring it to Canada instead of the existing document that came from Britain and loud and proud support for multiculturalism. For Trudeau, talking about this was a political benefit to him, and he figured - entirely correctly - that such actions would cause mayhem among the Conservatives, well aware that Robert Stanfield had not been the first choice among many Conservatives to succeed John Diefenbaker. Stanfield, for his part, was not annoyed by Trudeau's talk - and indeed, he would have the last laugh on Trudeau's games in 1968. Having a firm belief that a more forward-thinking Conservative Party would be a benefit to him and to Canada, Stanfield was proven entirely correct when three of his known political allies - William 'Bill' Davis in Ontario, Peter Lougheed in Alberta and Edward Seaga in Jamaica - all became premiers within a few months of each other in the spring and summer of 1970. Trudeau got his majority in the 1968 election, but he also got a lot more than he bargained for with his talk of a new constitution, even as Stanfield had to repeatedly deal with Diefenbaker and his loyalists' shots in his direction during the 1968-1972 time period.
Trudeau's calls for a constitution for Canada were heard rather louder than he had anticipated in the Caribbean, Quebec and the West, and so by 1970 work was underway to patriate the Constitution from Britain. The problems faced were considerable - the provinces wanted more control over amending formulas (Robert Bourassa in particular was very, very loud in this demand, and Dave Barrett in British Columbia supported his efforts) and several provinces wanted complete control over social policy which Ottawa would then fund, a demand Trudeau was not going to accede to no matter what. Stanfield's insistence of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms into the new Canadian Constitution was seen as an olive-branch (which was only moderately successful) to Diefenbaker and his loyalists but was also a very popular idea. The status of the Senate of Canada was another contentious manner - after initially favouring abolishing it (and finding that position highly unpopular), a compromise position was put forward that would reform the Senate to allow Ontario 24 Senators, Quebec 16, British Columbia and Alberta 12, Barbados and Prince Edward Island 4 and all of the other provinces 8, as well as 8 additional seats for First Nations. The issue of how to choose Senators was initially left open, but Edward Seaga in Jamaica and Errol Barrow in Barbados pushed for an amendment demanding a democratic process to elect Senators chosen by individual provinces and that Senator elections should be held at the same time as all House of Commons elections. The Constitution's First Nations' sections provided them greater self-government with only federal vetoes initially, something which several provinces (British Columbia most of all) hated until Bill Davis got that changed to provincial vetoes. Demands for several policy areas to become exclusively provincial jurisdiction (notably natural resources) were fought bitterly by Ottawa, eventually this being watered down to federal government approval being required for changes involving such policies and provincial government approval being required for federal changes - a compromise that was to prove Trudeau's downfall just a few years later. Bilingualism across all provinces was opposed by Alberta and the Caribbean as being too costly, but this time Bourassa had the compromise, making it a requirement that Ottawa fund programs for the advancement of bilingualism.
But the biggest changes of all were the Societies Clause and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
On the Societies Clause, Bourassa's demand for recognition of Quebec as distinct society from the rest of Canada had been regarded as idiotic by many - Lougheed referred to it as 'self-righteous stupidity' - but what came out of that acrimonious debate was the Societies Clause, which defined as Canada as having "A land of distinct cultures and societies, born from many peoples and many ways of life, forged into a nation bound by geography and made one by desires for peace, prosperity, freedom and good government." This statement, which Bourassa had initially felt was much too weak for Quebec's public opinion, turned out to be just the ticket among younger Quebecers, many of whom openly felt the new constitution was an assurance of their culture's place within Canada. The Clause included defining Canada as a federal state and as a democratic nation and dealt with a number of elements, including aboriginal rights (which started with those granted under the Treaty of Orillia and in many cases expanded from there), official-language minorities and bilingualism, cultural and racial diversity, individual and collective rights, gender equality, non-discrimination on a large number of fields (including, famously, sexual orientation) and the equality of all of the provinces within Canada. The Premiers of all five Caribbean provinces - Edward Seaga of Jamaica, Errol Barrow of Barbados, Lynden Pindling of the Bahamas, Arthur Robinson of Trinidad and Tobago and Herbert Blaize of the Caribbean - were publicly happy that Canada would say in their constitution that the provinces that had joined Canada only a few years earlier and were so culturally different to the rest of Canada would consider them as equals, to which Bill Davis happily pointed out "We are a land whose people came from practically everywhere in the world. They chose to be Canadians, and so they have every right to be treated the same as any other Canadian." (One major effect of the Constitution was to all but end the lingering desires for independence in many of the Caribbean territories.) First Nations groups were equally proud to support the proposed constitution, saying that it would enshrine Native Canadians as an integral part of Canada, taking what had been established with the Treaty of Orillia to the greatest of outcomes. Quebec was also in favor, as Quebecers, by that point fully caught in the revival movements in Quebec's society in the 1970s, felt that Quebec's culture was now as safe as it could be from assimilation into English Canada. While there were some segments of Canada that didn't entirely support the proposed changes for a variety of reasons, the Societies Clause was a popular thing.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms was just as influential. The 36-section Charter, which enshrined a very broad section of rights and freedoms which were to be enjoyed by all Canadians, was a major deal as it would be the first time in a Commonwealth Nation (though it would not be the last time) there would be absolute governmental limits to where they could violate the rights of their citizens, and also enshrined the right of the Supreme Court of Canada to interpret the Charter with regards to laws and statutes passed by governmental bodies in Canada. This provision led to charges of judicial supremacy, but in practice the ability of the court to influence was limited to individual laws and statutes, thus avoiding the controversies the United States Supreme Court had gotten itself into on multiple occasions. It was a great compromise, the presence of the Notwithstanding Clause to the constitution allowed a government to violate the Charter, but only for a certain period of time and on limited matters, the clause being seen as the 'nuclear option' in the event of an event or scenario that required such actions.
Trudeau called an election for the fall of 1971, wanting to use the Constitution as a crowning glory that would allow him to extend his term at a time when his approval ratings were high, but the 1971 election was to show that Stanfield was more than capable of playing Trudeau's games - he was very much a supporter of the proposed Constitution, saying publicly "The document proposed is nothing less than a codification of the state of Canada today, a document that says to the generations that will follow us 'This is what Canada stands for, this is how Canada's laws and lawmakers work and this is what as Canadians you are entitled to from your government.' No ambiguity, no bias, nothing less than a true statement of what over a hundred years of progress has done for us and the people we love." Trudeau found out that Canada's slowing economy of the time - the Nixon Shock was felt in Canada just as it had been everywhere else - and he found out that Stanfield and Douglas had been able to blunt his personal popularity, with Stanfield running as a competent, honest man with whom you could trust anything and Douglas as a crusader for social and economic justice. Trudeau saw his majority eliminated, resulting in a Liberal-Progressive Cabinet being required to keep Trudeau in power. Despite the election, the Constitution was easily passed by Parliament in November 1971, and Trudeau (with Stanfield and Douglas' enthusiastic approval) asked Britain if Queen Elizabeth II would come to sign it in Ottawa herself. Her Majesty, who had long been a supporter of Canada's efforts, was enthusiastic in her response, and she and her husband Prince Philip came to Canada for a full Royal Tour in March and April 1972. It was a big event to say the least - Royal Yacht HMY Britannia sailed across the Atlantic with them, with the Yacht being enthusiastically received in St. John's and Halifax before sailing down the St. Lawrence Seaway, stopping at Quebec City, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto, Hamilton and Sault Ste. Marie before docking in Thunder Bay, where a special train conveyed her across Canada to Vancouver before flying back to Ottawa (on an RCAF VC-10, a fact noted by the British press with surprise) for the signing ceremony, patriating it in a very public ceremony in Ottawa on April 7, 1972, in the presence of all of Canada's political party leaders, provincial Premiers (including Bourassa, who Her Majesty reportedly rather liked), all living Prime Ministers (Diefenbaker, St. Laurent and Pearson all stood together in pictures at the ceremony, something the press had a field day with) and a vast number of dignitaries. That done, she flew to Halifax, where Britannia again conveyed her to the Caribbean provinces, where she spent another 16 days before returning to Britain on April 25. It was also notable that the Royal Navy dispensed with the guard ship during the tour of the Great Lakes, letting Canadian cruiser HMCS Vancouver handle the duty on the Great Lakes and brand-new destroyer HMCS Haida handle it on the Caribbean tour. Despite early concerns, Her Majesty had no difficulties anywhere on her tour and she was enthusiastically received everywhere she went.
The eurphoria about Canada's absolute independence from Britain was to be short-lived, however, owing to the 1973 energy crisis, which was in a very real way directly tied to the United States' withdrawal from the Bretton Woods system in 1971 which had caused the Nixon Shock. Canada's economy was not helped by this, as most of its raw materials exports were priced in either dollars or pounds, and both currencies took sizable hits in value in the early 1970s. The Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbours in October 1973, however, was to become the point where geopolitics caused mayhem. In response to the Americans' decision to resupply Israel after the Yom Kippur War (as the Soviets were doing for the Arabs), OPEC embargoed oil sales to the United States and all of the nations of the Central Commonwealth as well as immediately raising the price of oil by nearly 75 percent, this combining with the existing stagflation to cause substantial shortages of gasoline and diesel fuel all across the developed world and much of the less-developed world as well. The Arab nations made life particularly hard for Canada and the United States - Canada in particular had strived since WWII to be even-handed when it came to disputes, even in the depths of the Suez Crisis, but the Arab members of OPEC were quite persistent that Canada had to abandon Israel to get the embargo ended, and while Trudeau may have considered it, doing so would have almost certainly destroyed his government - both Stanfield and the Progressive Party leader, Stephen Lewis, were unapologetically pro-Israel - and he stuck to his previous positions, a situation that helped the situation Canadian diplomats managed to get the Israelis to withdraw from the west side of the Suez Canal in early December 1973. The crisis eased by the spring of 1974, but it had had the effect of massively increasing the price of oil, and resulted in a major growth in income for producers of it - and Canada was no exception, as Alberta's Wildrose Natural Resource Fund showed - its assets grew from $61 Billion in 1971 to $288 Billion in 1981 and $876 Billion in 1991. Despite this, the rest of Canada took something of a dim view of the energy crisis and stagflation.
Trudeau's response was the creation of the National Energy Resource Program, known more commonly as the NERP. The Progressives and several provinces wanted the NERP to force Alberta oil to be sold to the rest of Canada at below world price, which Trudeau was not going to even attempt - but the idea of this still got into the press in the winter of 1973, resulting in Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed to infamously say "Those who wish to make us pay for their prosperity, go freeze in the dark." Stanfield (and Diefenbaker, a rare case where both were in complete agreement) made all kinds of hay about the NERP's proposals, even though they were never taken seriously. What was created was the Canadian National Petroleum Corporation, better known as Petro-Canada. Petro-Canada initially took over the assets of PetroFina and Phillips (both were looking to leave Canada as a result of losses) and entered as competition into the business, as well as support new sources of petroleum. Initially highly controversial, the company would go on to be a Canadian institution, and Petro-Canada's ambition began early, when Petro-Canada joined with Hess Petroleum and Neste to develop a better variant of the Fischer-Tropsch Process using a coal base and iron as a catalyst, the first such facility in Canada beginning operation at Roberts Bank, British Columbia, in 1977. Petro-Canada also began developing new places for oil exploration, particularly in the Atlantic provinces, and the F-T Process netted Petro-Canada a way of making ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel, which initially was soon able to take over a large share of the market for diesel fuel in Canada (forcing competitors to catch up) and then resulting in a growth in the use of diesel cars and trucks in the mid-1980s.
The NERP was to be Trudeau's downfall, as his decision not to push for nationalization of oil assets would end up causing the Progressives to break with his government in June 1974, resulting in an election set for September 22, 1974. The NERP initially ruined the Liberals in the West and by the mid-1970s the Progressives were the largest party in the caribbean provinces, forcing the Liberals to dominate Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia to hold on to their positions - but Stanfield was able to break the Liberals' hold on Ontario (thanks in large part to Bill Davis), and the result was a victory for the Conservatives, giving them a majority government in the House of Commons (though with a Liberal minority in the Senate), and Stanfield was sworn in as Prime Minister on October 2, 1974. Trudeau was defeated but defiant, but he was about to face the collapse of the traditional Liberal-Progressive alliances that went back half a century - having lost an election many felt he could win, Stephen Lewis stepped down as Progressive Party leader on October 22, 1974, and the leadership campaign to replace him elected firebrand university professor Ed Broadbent, who as more than willing to work with both Stanfield and Trudeau. Broadbent would prove to be every bit the equal of Trudeau and Stanfield, and it made 1970s Canadian politics a rivalry between the honest-to-a-fault Red Tory Stanfield, the charismatic, intellectual and always-ready-with-a-soundbite Trudeau and the idea-slinging, dedicated, socially-minded Broadbent. All three men saw little advantage in fighting societal battles (by the end of the 1970s, few Canadian politicians did) but rather working on policy ideas, proposals and speaking eloquently about where they felt Canada should go as a nation, and all three men rapidly came to have immense respect for the other two. This ability to focus politics on the issues, when combined with innovative economic leadership and intelligent fiscal management and monetary policy, allowed Canada to dodge the worst of the 1970s recessions, making sure the country was well placed for the future....
Canada reached the end of its first century having accomplished so much of what had been set out by its founders a century ago that it was remarkable. From the North American outpost of the British Empire to a major power in its own right, having built a nation across one of the largest countries in the world, having built a society like no other on Earth, populated by many peoples living in rather-good harmony, for the most part avoiding the racial problems that so many other nations, and celebrating the entry into Canada of its new warm-weather islands, who despite their being poorer than the rest of Canada still made a note of funding the development of a 'Caribbean Pavilion' at Expo 67 in Montreal which went on to be one of the most beloved pavilions of the fair itself and one of those which stood the test of time.
While counter-culture was raging in the United States (and was crossing the border into Canada), Canadian society was much more peaceful, in large part because of the changing social norms of the time. Few younger Canadians remembered the sacrifices of World War II and the Great Depression before that, resulting in them being used to prosperity and as a result seeking more to integrate the world and advance their own futures. The 'Baby Boomer' generation in Canada all but eradicated the problems of racism of the past, and also sought to change many elements of the country's society, including forcing the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1968 and advancing individual rights far beyond the ones that had been enshrined in law by John Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights in 1960. Asian Canadians began to move far beyond the West Coast and Alberta where they had been for decades particularly into the cities of Toronto and Montreal, while the entry into Confederation of the Caribbean provinces resulted in a steady stream of job-seekers and entrepreneurs north into the major cities. It was a time of great advancements in technology and society, and nowhere was it more pronounced than in Montreal with Expo 67.
Expo 67 was the ultimate project of Canada's Centennial celebrations, and it was perhaps up to that point the greatest sign of what Canada was becoming. Quebec was changing dramatically in the 1960s, with the new generation of Quebecers - by percentage of population, Quebec had the biggest single baby boom of any of the provinces, namely through its sky-high 1940s and 1950s birth rate - asserting both modernism and their position in Canada, and Expo 67 was one of the first signs of their influence, the Expo combining French-Canadian flair for the grand with English-Canadian pragmatism, proving expensive but worth every nickel of the money spent, both because of the facilities and the cultural aspect. Moshe Safdie's Habitat 67 made him justifiably famous (Expo wasn't over before Safdie was commissioned by the Province of Ontario to design and build the monumental Harbour City project in Toronto, at the time the largest redevelopment project in Canadian history) and many of the Pavilions were designed with lasting in mind. Expo was a roaring success, hosting over 75 million visitors between April 28 and October 29 and resulting in Montreal getting quite a repute as a tourist destination, a situation helped by Montreal's new Mirabel Airport opening in March 1967, just in time for the event and which proved invaluable during that time period, as did CNR's gas-turbine powered UAC TurboTrains, which entered service in the fall of 1966 and proved invaluable in ferrying passengers from as far out as Detroit as well as throughout Ontario to Montreal. All of Canada saw visitors to Expo and to Montreal, and most liked what they saw.
1967 is seen in many minds as the summer where Canada finally began to assume its own identity. Despite being a bi-cultural nation at its formation (and one which many claimed would become tri-cultural starting with the Treaty of Orillia and the integration of Native Canadians into Canada's society), the Canada that had appeared in the 1960s was one where the worldly, multicultural modern Canada emerged in the hearts and minds of its people. With bilingualism common among younger Canadians (and nearly universal by the mid-1970s) and French by far being the most common second language, Quebec's social rebirth in the 1960s and 1970s rapidly found kindred souls in the rest of the country, and while Montreal by the 1960s was losing some of its former business prominence to Toronto, those English-speaking businessmen who left Montreal saw their old positions filled by an ever-larger group of both French-speaking businessmen and those of Native descent, and Montreal was only too happy to pose itself as a European city in North America, a more laid-back, youthful, culturally-minded rival to busy, workmanlike Toronto down the St. Lawrence. It was a sign of the rivalry that was to come between the two cities. As French proficiency grew across Canada, so did many elements of its culture, including the rich literary traditions, dance and music scenes, visual and performance arts (in this regard, the creation of Nuit Blanche in Montreal in 1977 was to be followed by Nuit Blanche Toronto in 1982 and similar events in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Seattle in 1985) and many culinary traditions, though in the latter case Toronto and its environs rather stole the spotlight from Montreal in the 1980s by combining fine dining with new flavours, tastes and cuisines, primarily brought there by Caribbean, Indian and Asian immigrants. Montreal's influence was also seen in the groundswell movements that stopped many monster-sized redevelopment projects in the rest of Canada, as Montreal had been among the first cities to truly pay attention to its heritage and pay respect to it. As French proficiency grew across Canada, so did English proficiency in Quebec, following the trends closely.
The 1960s also were defined by what became known as the "Great Canadian Flag Debate" as Canada sought to replace the Red Ensign, Canada's flag since its independence in 1867, with something that was more appropriate of Canada's place in the world. This had been kicking around since the 1950s, but Diefenbaker had refused to budge on the use of Red Ensign, and while Lester Pearson's government was in favour of the flag change, Diefenbaker wouldn't budge from the use of the Red Ensign, which resulted in rounds of debates that defined the Flag Debate until on the recommendations on the part of Progressive Party leader Tommy Douglas, Conservative MP Leon Balcer and Social Credit MP Real Caouette to invoke cloture and force a vote. That done, the vote was definitively in favour of the new flag, much to Diefenbaker's disdain. Indeed, the former Prime Minister was to suffer multiple drawbacks in the future - losing the leadership of the Conservative Party to Robert Stanfield in 1967 was the first of many, but Diefenbaker's own visions of a singular nation of Canada as opposed to multiple cultures under one flag by the time of his defeat in 1967 looked increasingly outdated. Pearson, however, having failed to win a majority government in no less than four separate elections, resigned his position on March 16, 1968, turning it over to his successor as leader of the Liberal Party, the charismatic Pierre Trudeau.
Trudeaumania was to make headlines in Canada for all kinds of reasons, namely due to Trudeau's abundant charisma - neither Robert Stanfield nor Tommy Douglas could hope to match Trudeau in that regard, though they were more than a match for him in policy debates, and the elections between the three men in 1968 and 1971 would go on to be among the high points in Canada's modern politics, as all three men tended to focus on policy proposals and each one was more than a match for the other two in terms of intellectual ability. Trudeau, however, opened his first campaign with several dramatic plans, most notably a re-write of Canada's Constitution to bring it to Canada instead of the existing document that came from Britain and loud and proud support for multiculturalism. For Trudeau, talking about this was a political benefit to him, and he figured - entirely correctly - that such actions would cause mayhem among the Conservatives, well aware that Robert Stanfield had not been the first choice among many Conservatives to succeed John Diefenbaker. Stanfield, for his part, was not annoyed by Trudeau's talk - and indeed, he would have the last laugh on Trudeau's games in 1968. Having a firm belief that a more forward-thinking Conservative Party would be a benefit to him and to Canada, Stanfield was proven entirely correct when three of his known political allies - William 'Bill' Davis in Ontario, Peter Lougheed in Alberta and Edward Seaga in Jamaica - all became premiers within a few months of each other in the spring and summer of 1970. Trudeau got his majority in the 1968 election, but he also got a lot more than he bargained for with his talk of a new constitution, even as Stanfield had to repeatedly deal with Diefenbaker and his loyalists' shots in his direction during the 1968-1972 time period.
Trudeau's calls for a constitution for Canada were heard rather louder than he had anticipated in the Caribbean, Quebec and the West, and so by 1970 work was underway to patriate the Constitution from Britain. The problems faced were considerable - the provinces wanted more control over amending formulas (Robert Bourassa in particular was very, very loud in this demand, and Dave Barrett in British Columbia supported his efforts) and several provinces wanted complete control over social policy which Ottawa would then fund, a demand Trudeau was not going to accede to no matter what. Stanfield's insistence of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms into the new Canadian Constitution was seen as an olive-branch (which was only moderately successful) to Diefenbaker and his loyalists but was also a very popular idea. The status of the Senate of Canada was another contentious manner - after initially favouring abolishing it (and finding that position highly unpopular), a compromise position was put forward that would reform the Senate to allow Ontario 24 Senators, Quebec 16, British Columbia and Alberta 12, Barbados and Prince Edward Island 4 and all of the other provinces 8, as well as 8 additional seats for First Nations. The issue of how to choose Senators was initially left open, but Edward Seaga in Jamaica and Errol Barrow in Barbados pushed for an amendment demanding a democratic process to elect Senators chosen by individual provinces and that Senator elections should be held at the same time as all House of Commons elections. The Constitution's First Nations' sections provided them greater self-government with only federal vetoes initially, something which several provinces (British Columbia most of all) hated until Bill Davis got that changed to provincial vetoes. Demands for several policy areas to become exclusively provincial jurisdiction (notably natural resources) were fought bitterly by Ottawa, eventually this being watered down to federal government approval being required for changes involving such policies and provincial government approval being required for federal changes - a compromise that was to prove Trudeau's downfall just a few years later. Bilingualism across all provinces was opposed by Alberta and the Caribbean as being too costly, but this time Bourassa had the compromise, making it a requirement that Ottawa fund programs for the advancement of bilingualism.
But the biggest changes of all were the Societies Clause and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
On the Societies Clause, Bourassa's demand for recognition of Quebec as distinct society from the rest of Canada had been regarded as idiotic by many - Lougheed referred to it as 'self-righteous stupidity' - but what came out of that acrimonious debate was the Societies Clause, which defined as Canada as having "A land of distinct cultures and societies, born from many peoples and many ways of life, forged into a nation bound by geography and made one by desires for peace, prosperity, freedom and good government." This statement, which Bourassa had initially felt was much too weak for Quebec's public opinion, turned out to be just the ticket among younger Quebecers, many of whom openly felt the new constitution was an assurance of their culture's place within Canada. The Clause included defining Canada as a federal state and as a democratic nation and dealt with a number of elements, including aboriginal rights (which started with those granted under the Treaty of Orillia and in many cases expanded from there), official-language minorities and bilingualism, cultural and racial diversity, individual and collective rights, gender equality, non-discrimination on a large number of fields (including, famously, sexual orientation) and the equality of all of the provinces within Canada. The Premiers of all five Caribbean provinces - Edward Seaga of Jamaica, Errol Barrow of Barbados, Lynden Pindling of the Bahamas, Arthur Robinson of Trinidad and Tobago and Herbert Blaize of the Caribbean - were publicly happy that Canada would say in their constitution that the provinces that had joined Canada only a few years earlier and were so culturally different to the rest of Canada would consider them as equals, to which Bill Davis happily pointed out "We are a land whose people came from practically everywhere in the world. They chose to be Canadians, and so they have every right to be treated the same as any other Canadian." (One major effect of the Constitution was to all but end the lingering desires for independence in many of the Caribbean territories.) First Nations groups were equally proud to support the proposed constitution, saying that it would enshrine Native Canadians as an integral part of Canada, taking what had been established with the Treaty of Orillia to the greatest of outcomes. Quebec was also in favor, as Quebecers, by that point fully caught in the revival movements in Quebec's society in the 1970s, felt that Quebec's culture was now as safe as it could be from assimilation into English Canada. While there were some segments of Canada that didn't entirely support the proposed changes for a variety of reasons, the Societies Clause was a popular thing.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms was just as influential. The 36-section Charter, which enshrined a very broad section of rights and freedoms which were to be enjoyed by all Canadians, was a major deal as it would be the first time in a Commonwealth Nation (though it would not be the last time) there would be absolute governmental limits to where they could violate the rights of their citizens, and also enshrined the right of the Supreme Court of Canada to interpret the Charter with regards to laws and statutes passed by governmental bodies in Canada. This provision led to charges of judicial supremacy, but in practice the ability of the court to influence was limited to individual laws and statutes, thus avoiding the controversies the United States Supreme Court had gotten itself into on multiple occasions. It was a great compromise, the presence of the Notwithstanding Clause to the constitution allowed a government to violate the Charter, but only for a certain period of time and on limited matters, the clause being seen as the 'nuclear option' in the event of an event or scenario that required such actions.
Trudeau called an election for the fall of 1971, wanting to use the Constitution as a crowning glory that would allow him to extend his term at a time when his approval ratings were high, but the 1971 election was to show that Stanfield was more than capable of playing Trudeau's games - he was very much a supporter of the proposed Constitution, saying publicly "The document proposed is nothing less than a codification of the state of Canada today, a document that says to the generations that will follow us 'This is what Canada stands for, this is how Canada's laws and lawmakers work and this is what as Canadians you are entitled to from your government.' No ambiguity, no bias, nothing less than a true statement of what over a hundred years of progress has done for us and the people we love." Trudeau found out that Canada's slowing economy of the time - the Nixon Shock was felt in Canada just as it had been everywhere else - and he found out that Stanfield and Douglas had been able to blunt his personal popularity, with Stanfield running as a competent, honest man with whom you could trust anything and Douglas as a crusader for social and economic justice. Trudeau saw his majority eliminated, resulting in a Liberal-Progressive Cabinet being required to keep Trudeau in power. Despite the election, the Constitution was easily passed by Parliament in November 1971, and Trudeau (with Stanfield and Douglas' enthusiastic approval) asked Britain if Queen Elizabeth II would come to sign it in Ottawa herself. Her Majesty, who had long been a supporter of Canada's efforts, was enthusiastic in her response, and she and her husband Prince Philip came to Canada for a full Royal Tour in March and April 1972. It was a big event to say the least - Royal Yacht HMY Britannia sailed across the Atlantic with them, with the Yacht being enthusiastically received in St. John's and Halifax before sailing down the St. Lawrence Seaway, stopping at Quebec City, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto, Hamilton and Sault Ste. Marie before docking in Thunder Bay, where a special train conveyed her across Canada to Vancouver before flying back to Ottawa (on an RCAF VC-10, a fact noted by the British press with surprise) for the signing ceremony, patriating it in a very public ceremony in Ottawa on April 7, 1972, in the presence of all of Canada's political party leaders, provincial Premiers (including Bourassa, who Her Majesty reportedly rather liked), all living Prime Ministers (Diefenbaker, St. Laurent and Pearson all stood together in pictures at the ceremony, something the press had a field day with) and a vast number of dignitaries. That done, she flew to Halifax, where Britannia again conveyed her to the Caribbean provinces, where she spent another 16 days before returning to Britain on April 25. It was also notable that the Royal Navy dispensed with the guard ship during the tour of the Great Lakes, letting Canadian cruiser HMCS Vancouver handle the duty on the Great Lakes and brand-new destroyer HMCS Haida handle it on the Caribbean tour. Despite early concerns, Her Majesty had no difficulties anywhere on her tour and she was enthusiastically received everywhere she went.
The eurphoria about Canada's absolute independence from Britain was to be short-lived, however, owing to the 1973 energy crisis, which was in a very real way directly tied to the United States' withdrawal from the Bretton Woods system in 1971 which had caused the Nixon Shock. Canada's economy was not helped by this, as most of its raw materials exports were priced in either dollars or pounds, and both currencies took sizable hits in value in the early 1970s. The Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbours in October 1973, however, was to become the point where geopolitics caused mayhem. In response to the Americans' decision to resupply Israel after the Yom Kippur War (as the Soviets were doing for the Arabs), OPEC embargoed oil sales to the United States and all of the nations of the Central Commonwealth as well as immediately raising the price of oil by nearly 75 percent, this combining with the existing stagflation to cause substantial shortages of gasoline and diesel fuel all across the developed world and much of the less-developed world as well. The Arab nations made life particularly hard for Canada and the United States - Canada in particular had strived since WWII to be even-handed when it came to disputes, even in the depths of the Suez Crisis, but the Arab members of OPEC were quite persistent that Canada had to abandon Israel to get the embargo ended, and while Trudeau may have considered it, doing so would have almost certainly destroyed his government - both Stanfield and the Progressive Party leader, Stephen Lewis, were unapologetically pro-Israel - and he stuck to his previous positions, a situation that helped the situation Canadian diplomats managed to get the Israelis to withdraw from the west side of the Suez Canal in early December 1973. The crisis eased by the spring of 1974, but it had had the effect of massively increasing the price of oil, and resulted in a major growth in income for producers of it - and Canada was no exception, as Alberta's Wildrose Natural Resource Fund showed - its assets grew from $61 Billion in 1971 to $288 Billion in 1981 and $876 Billion in 1991. Despite this, the rest of Canada took something of a dim view of the energy crisis and stagflation.
Trudeau's response was the creation of the National Energy Resource Program, known more commonly as the NERP. The Progressives and several provinces wanted the NERP to force Alberta oil to be sold to the rest of Canada at below world price, which Trudeau was not going to even attempt - but the idea of this still got into the press in the winter of 1973, resulting in Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed to infamously say "Those who wish to make us pay for their prosperity, go freeze in the dark." Stanfield (and Diefenbaker, a rare case where both were in complete agreement) made all kinds of hay about the NERP's proposals, even though they were never taken seriously. What was created was the Canadian National Petroleum Corporation, better known as Petro-Canada. Petro-Canada initially took over the assets of PetroFina and Phillips (both were looking to leave Canada as a result of losses) and entered as competition into the business, as well as support new sources of petroleum. Initially highly controversial, the company would go on to be a Canadian institution, and Petro-Canada's ambition began early, when Petro-Canada joined with Hess Petroleum and Neste to develop a better variant of the Fischer-Tropsch Process using a coal base and iron as a catalyst, the first such facility in Canada beginning operation at Roberts Bank, British Columbia, in 1977. Petro-Canada also began developing new places for oil exploration, particularly in the Atlantic provinces, and the F-T Process netted Petro-Canada a way of making ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel, which initially was soon able to take over a large share of the market for diesel fuel in Canada (forcing competitors to catch up) and then resulting in a growth in the use of diesel cars and trucks in the mid-1980s.
The NERP was to be Trudeau's downfall, as his decision not to push for nationalization of oil assets would end up causing the Progressives to break with his government in June 1974, resulting in an election set for September 22, 1974. The NERP initially ruined the Liberals in the West and by the mid-1970s the Progressives were the largest party in the caribbean provinces, forcing the Liberals to dominate Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia to hold on to their positions - but Stanfield was able to break the Liberals' hold on Ontario (thanks in large part to Bill Davis), and the result was a victory for the Conservatives, giving them a majority government in the House of Commons (though with a Liberal minority in the Senate), and Stanfield was sworn in as Prime Minister on October 2, 1974. Trudeau was defeated but defiant, but he was about to face the collapse of the traditional Liberal-Progressive alliances that went back half a century - having lost an election many felt he could win, Stephen Lewis stepped down as Progressive Party leader on October 22, 1974, and the leadership campaign to replace him elected firebrand university professor Ed Broadbent, who as more than willing to work with both Stanfield and Trudeau. Broadbent would prove to be every bit the equal of Trudeau and Stanfield, and it made 1970s Canadian politics a rivalry between the honest-to-a-fault Red Tory Stanfield, the charismatic, intellectual and always-ready-with-a-soundbite Trudeau and the idea-slinging, dedicated, socially-minded Broadbent. All three men saw little advantage in fighting societal battles (by the end of the 1970s, few Canadian politicians did) but rather working on policy ideas, proposals and speaking eloquently about where they felt Canada should go as a nation, and all three men rapidly came to have immense respect for the other two. This ability to focus politics on the issues, when combined with innovative economic leadership and intelligent fiscal management and monetary policy, allowed Canada to dodge the worst of the 1970s recessions, making sure the country was well placed for the future....
Ming777
Monthly Donor
Various questions and comments:
-I assume Paul Hellyer was never appointed as Defence Minister ITTL?
-HMCS Haida is one of TTL's Iroquois-class? Was her Tribal-class namesake still preserved in Hamilton as in OTL?
-I presume we will see what happened during the Six-Day War and more details on the Yom Kippur War? IIRC, Israel was one of the buyers of the Avro Arrow in this timeline.
-Given France kinda owes Canada, might this butterfly Charles De Gaulle's infamous speech at the Expo? Perhaps TGV might also see some use in Canada, especially along the big urban corridors.
-I assume Paul Hellyer was never appointed as Defence Minister ITTL?
-HMCS Haida is one of TTL's Iroquois-class? Was her Tribal-class namesake still preserved in Hamilton as in OTL?
-I presume we will see what happened during the Six-Day War and more details on the Yom Kippur War? IIRC, Israel was one of the buyers of the Avro Arrow in this timeline.
-Given France kinda owes Canada, might this butterfly Charles De Gaulle's infamous speech at the Expo? Perhaps TGV might also see some use in Canada, especially along the big urban corridors.
Could an elected senate lead to dead lock in parliament due to it being seen as more legitimate?
- Hellyer is never the MND here, he's instead a minister of public works (which with his education, he'd be competent at) and the forces are never unified or ever lose their Royal prefixes. He gets his wish to set up a major public housing program in the 1960s (and thus never resigns from Trudeau's cabinet) and serves in Parliament until 1982, when he and Paul Tellier get the job of running Canadian National Railways. Hellyer has a much better reputation than OTL.
- HMCS Haida is a modern Tribal-class destroyer, yes, and you are correct that Haida is docked harbourside in Hamilton.
- De Gaulle did make that idiotic comment, but he got him into a heap of political crap - French media and politicians gave him much more shit than Canadian ones did, and Quebec largely didn't care all that much - and apologized for it ten days later. Canada kinda shrugged it's shoulders about it all, really, knowing De Gaulle was a bit of a blowhard.
- TGVs will eventually come to Canada, but that's still some time to come. For now, however, the UAC TurboTrains (and the Bombardier LRCs that will join and eventually replace them) are the speed machines of Canadian trains, though CCF-built Budd Metroliners will soon be in service on Seattle-Vancouver and Toronto to Kitchener, London and Niagara Falls routes, as these routes are electrified.
- The Six-Day War is going to go largely as OTL, but the Yom Kippur War is going to be rather uglier in the north of Israel. Israel still wins but the cost is rather uglier to both sides, which results in Israel being more territorial but also more wanting to fix the fight between them and the Arabs. This will manifest itself in the Ottawa Treaty. An Arrow is going to intercept a MiG-25 over Israel during that war, sending a message to the Soviets, but the IAF is going to take serious losses in that war, though it will (like the Six-Day War) show what the Avro CF-105 Arrow is made of.
In the event of deadlock between the two houses (which will happen a few times in the 1970s and 1980s) where they can't negotiate out the deadlock, the legislation goes to a joint sitting of the two Houses where the majority wins. The Senate has a few responsibilities the House doesn't too, namely approving Cabinet members and their positions and approving if Supreme Court justices, ideas put forth by the new provinces contingent that the Senate backers liked which were indeed taken from Washington. A Senator can be PM and can hold any cabinet position a MP can, and each party does have a Senate whip to get votes arranged as the House does. It's a more powerful position, but not that much more for obvious reasons.
How exactly does this system even work in a constitutional monarchy? Technically the government is chosen by the monarch through the governor general. Can the GG only pick the prime minister now? What about the supreme court? Does the senate make a "suggestion" to the Governor General instead of the Prime Minster in OTL or does it actually pick the justice itself?
Easy. Pass a law that requires the PM to only put forward names approved by a Senate committee. Works for both the Supreme Court and cabinet. It's already been batted around in OTL.
In any event the idea that the GG will do anything other than what the PM requires is simply a polite fiction. The GG is there as the "face" of Canada, to do good works, pass out honours, be the focus of ceremonial duties. He is not there to do anything politically substantive.
Makes speeches, opens things and spares us the bother of having to elect some godawful president.
I know that. What I'm saying is that obviously this system is a bit different than what we have now so I'm wondering what are the technicalities of it.
Already asked about Montreal and yes they do get the Games. Don't know about Calgary.
Being a Calgarian, I would be a bit disappointed if Calgary did not get them. Part of me hopes that butterflies would push it back to 1984 or forward to 1992/94.
Sorry I might have misread your comment. I would image the technicalities are pretty much as per my first paragraph above. There are currently rules regarding who can be appointed to the court and this would be just one more rule. Currently one must be a superior court judge or a member of a provincial law society for 10 years. Just add "plus approval by a Senate Judicial Committee". Any individual selected by the PM that satisfies the rules can then be presented to the GG by the PM.
Personally I'm ambivalent about this idea to be honest. Yes it allows for a judge to be examined for any major flaws and theoretically circumscribes the PM's ability to pack the court but it also opens up the process to political interference as we have seen to the south. Would we wind up with the best judge or the most politically correct judge?
Wet Coast has it pretty much spot on. There is already people known to each and every prime minister's staff able to fill such a position, in this case the PM picks the one he wants, presents it to the Senate, and they go yay or nay. Yay means he get presented to the Governor General. Nay means negotiations or potentially a withdraw. Likewise, the PM nominates a cabinet member and gets the yes or no and acts accordingly. It's not that much different, but it is there primarily to give the Senate additional teeth and allow for additional public consultation with regards to the court judges.
Stays in Montreal. There is an MLB team in Vancouver here, as well, and NBA franchises in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and Ottawa. The CFL in this world merges with the NFL and USFL in a massive merger in 1985, using a unified rulebook that includes elements of both sides' rulebook (American field length, clock setup and downs rules, Canadian field width, number of players on the field, scrimmage distances and player movement rules), though NFL teams initially dominate the league until the titanic battles between the Toronto Argonauts and Dallas Cowboys in their dynasty years in the 1990s. I already mentioned the 14 NHL teams in this Canada.
Part 13 - Energies Dedicated To Results
Part 13 - Energies Dedicated To Results
Robert Stanfield's election in 1974 was a sign that politics had shifted in Canada, but what Stanfield also represented was that the Progressive Conservative Party was very much seeking to combine those two elements, aiming to make life better for as many Canadians as possible while sticking to their principles, using whatever solutions worked. This process began almost immediately upon Stanfield's election, as he pledged that he would not do anything to dismantle Petro-Canada, which at least two Western Premiers were howling loudly for. Stanfield was also more than willing and able to use crown corporations for national purposes (something which drove men like Diefenbaker nuts) and to negotiate with his political opponents on important issues. Stanfield called this "intelligent, pragmatic, conservative decision-making". Stanfield's first government created two new crown corporations in Via Rail Canada (which took over Canadian passenger rail operations from Canadian National Railways and the Canadian Pacific Railways) and the National Infrastructure Bank of Canada (which was meant to government projectsat provincial and municipal levels). Canada saw certain provinces benefit enormously from the raised energy prices, but the rest of Canada was more than able to adapt to the realities of the time, and the vast sums in the bank from several provincial natural resource funds (and two in Ottawa) helped to make sure the Canadian dollar didn't fall to any particular degree. Stanfield was also willing to push for continued advancement of Canada's energy realities, with the Trans-Canada pipeline rebuilt in stages between 1974 and 1980, the Canadian National Research Council conducted experiments and developments into new energy sources (one result of this was the first ocean-thermal-energy-conversion power station in the world, built at Pedro St. James on Grand Cayman and entering service in 1982) and the building of the Sir Alexander Bustamante Nuclear Generating Station at Hopewell, Jamaica, which began producing electricity in 1985. Stanfield also pushed for improvements in the operations of crown corporations that had private sector rivals in order to create efficiencies, and in the particular case of Petro-Canada, Air Canada and Canadian National Railways they had more than a little bit of success.
Canada was similar to the United States in its social transformations in the 1960s leading to economic ones in the 1970s. Canada avoided the worst of stagflation but still saw very sluggish economic growth, testing the Welfare Capitalism idea to the limit, but by the later 1970s new generations of workers were entering positions of greater authority and leadership in many companies, a situation mirrored in the United States and supercharged in Canada by the country's vast electronics industries and laboratories and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which introduced ever-better technologies into the television and radio worlds in the 1960s and 1970s. Solid-state electronics began to be made in Canada in large amounts for public usage during this time period, and the presences of the famed computer science laboratories at the Queens and Carleton Universities in eastern Ontario and McGill University in Montreal led to eastern Ontario and southwestern Quebec becoming a hotbed for electronics development, even as the by-now famous Bell Canada Laboratories developed Quadraphonic stereo sound and ever-better color television systems in the late 1960s, creating the 'Hi-Vision' system of television transmission that all of Canada rapidly adopted, while Canadian firm Avaria Technics worked with Phillips to develop the first modern cassette players and then some of the first commercially-available VCRs, the Avaria V100 becoming available in Canada in 1969, and Avaria and Phillips both sided with the VHS system during the VHS vs. Betamax conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s as well as making their own V2000 players, which due to the ability to play much longer movies and all models offering Quadraphonic sound carved themselves out a substantial niche, which got bigger after Sony gave up on Betamax in the early 1990s and began making V2000-format players and movies themselves. Bell Canada Laboratories also were among the first to setup fiber-optic communications networks (which proved to be a major improvement over the older copper wires) and develop satellite phones and microwave telephone networks, the latter a major benefit to rural regions of Canada which struggled to get good communications services.
Mergers and consolidations also happened, as did foreign investments, in Canadian industries. The largest ones by some margin was the alliance between Renault and American Motors in 1978. This was a merger between a French and American company, but which was negotiated out by Canadians, and one of the results was two of the largest auto assembly plants ever built by the companies, the mammoth Brampton Assembly and Brantford Engine Manufacturing facilities, which opened in 1982. This was followed by an alliance between Subaru and Westland-Reynard in 1986, and that merged company became allied with PSA Peugeot Citroen and Chrysler in 1991. (Chrysler had for decades been entirely reliant on exports to supply Canadian markets, a situation which changed dramatically after their alliance with Westland-Reynard.) GM of Canada by this point was the second-largest division of the firm after its American counterparts (and by the mid-1980s the Trillium Natural Resource Fund and Wildrose Resource Fund were two of GM's biggest shareholders, and this did make a big difference in GM's decisions with regards to Canada), and Ford Motor Company's expansive operations in Canada only grew larger in the 1970s and 1980s after the signing of the Auto Pact in 1969. Dominion Steel and Falconer Metals were merged into Dofasco in 1976, the former after having been suffering through bankruptcy problems for a decade. Dofasco's takeover of Dominion Steel was classic welfare capitalism - Dofasco spent over $75 million modernizing the massive Sydney steel mill and reworked several coal mines in the area, and while demand for the coal suffered from recessions, its demand was subsequently assured for good when Petro-Canada built its first East Coast F-T refinery in Brownsville, Nova Scotia, the plant beginning operations in 1982. Canadian Pacific took over the almost-bankrupt Milwaukee Road railroad in 1972, a move that looked curious considering CPR's long-standing ownership interest in the newly-formed Burlington Northern, but it was soon clear that the purchase was done because CPR saw it as a passage to Chicago and serving the rich agricultural lands of the American northern plains as well as Welfare Capitalism move, proving that even very large companies could do good for those who work for them.
Indeed, Welfare Capitalism's passing of its 1970s tests came to be beneficial to many others besides Canada, as the 1980s would see a long string of American corporations taking the Welfare Capitalism ideas to heart, and the passing of changes to union laws in the 1970s (most famously the Employee Free Choice Act, passed by the United States in June 1977) also resulted in greater employee involvement in their workplaces, a situation that was growing on both sides of the border. This also resulted in the 1980s in a wave of employee-owned businesses, both ones created by employees and those spun off of major corporations, with the workers at such businesses seeking to improve the viability of the businesses and thus preserve their livelihoods. This saved North Bay-based Ontario Metals, a former steel industry giant which had suffered badly through economic issues in the 1960s and 1970s before the company filed for bankruptcy in 1972, only for the employees of Ontario Metals to work with the United Steelworkers of Canada union to organize an employee takeover of the firm. Ontario Metals became an employee-owned firm on May 22, 1975, and subsequently rebuilt the company in Northern Ontario, including preserving the company's famed North Bay Integrated Mill - it was closed for rebuilding in 1978, re-opening with more than a little fanfare in August 1981 able to produce many metals it couldn't before.
As the Baby Boomers' authority grew, in Canada so did its desire to change the world, and having built sizable diplomatic influence, huge economic clout, social influence and a powerful military to back it all up, Canada by the 1970s was able to swing the Commonwealth on issues even when Australia and Britain weren't always in total agreement (this was most pronounced with regards to South Africa, whose policy of apartheid was something Canada absolutely loathed) and was acting as a middle player in the world. Canadian diplomats began to grow a reputation first with negotiating out the terms of the final treaty between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh with the Treaty of Colombo after the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, the treaty's signing in January 1973 ensuring Bangladesh's independence, even as Washington (a major ally of Pakistan) wasn't particularly happy with the end result - however, the brutality of the Pakistanis in defeat (as opposed to the Indians, who were rather more restrained, though by no means perfect) caused a rift between the Commonwealth and Pakistan that subsequently made life difficult for Washington. Regardless, the successful Treaty of Colombo was a sign of what was to come, as Ottawa got in 1975 the call of a lifetime, one which many had had a hard time believing.
The Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab Neighbours in 1973 had ended with an Israeli victory, though at truly awful costs to both sides, and with Israel's losses from multiple wars having by then affected every family in the nation and done atrocious harm to the Arabs, calls on both sides for peace were being heard on both sides. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made the fateful first move, making agreements with Israel over the disengagement of their forces in 1974 and 1975, allowing the Suez Canal to re-open in June 1975, and setting the groundwork for Sadat to continue to work on improvements in relations between the two nations. Recognizing Canada's involvement in the peace treaty in India, peacekeeping, the ability to influence the Commonwealth and a reputation for being even-handed, Sadat in September 1975 asked Ottawa to help him negotiate out a full peace deal with the Israelis, and had Ottawa pass to the Israelis a message that Egypt would accept losing the Sinai if the Palestinians were able to have a sizable part of it as part of their homeland. Israel initially responded with shock, but Sadat's visit to the Vatican in April 1976 was a very loud sign that he was intent on bringing Egypt into the world, that the bluster and excesses of the Nasser era was going into history. Sadat was something of a visionary in this regard - he could see the Soviet Union's stagnation was not being matched in the West, and Sadat saw the Commonwealth as the best potential ally, and saw Egypt as an ally of the Commonwealth to allow it to not have to live with the problems that could come from Washington and Moscow. Diplomatic contact between Canada and Egypt made clear that the Egyptians, in return for recognizing Palestinian independence and a land of their own, were willing to establish full diplomatic relations with the Israelis and would push the rest of the Arab world to do the same. Canada quickly passed this on to Israel, and the Israelis sent back that they wanted to negotiate with the Egyptians face to face.
Sadat proved true to his word, leading a delegation to Israel in March 1977 and speaking in the Israeli Knesset of a desire to put a generation of bloodshed behind them. Even Israel's more hawkish government officials could see the interest was genuine, and Sadat convinced Israel's new Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, to be a part of an international conference on the future of the Holy Land, and said categorically that Egypt would not have any issue with a Canadian proposal for Jerusalem being an international city, so long as Arabs could live and work there along with the Israelis. That news didn't take long to get to Ottawa, London, Washington and Moscow, and all parties were supportive, with US President Jimmy Carter calling an international conference in New York City for April 1978.
The New York Conference and the Berkshire Conference that followed it the following year between delegations from Israel, Egypt, Jordan, the PLO, United States, Canada, Britain and the Soviet Union laid out what the parties desired for the Holy Land. Sadat's willingness to give up a large chunk of the Sinai to a Palestinian state was a genuine shock to much of the Arab world but Sadat made it stick, and the Jordanians got the PLO to agree that an independent Palestinian state would be the home of the Palestinians alone, thus reducing the problems Palestinian refugees had caused for Jordan in the previous decade. Everyone agreed that Jerusalem would be an international city open to all Israelis and Palestinians, and Sadat proposed that both governments be able to locate all of their departments and ministries there save their armed forces and security services. The Canadians proposed that Israel's security concerns be settled by the deployment of Western armed forces to Israel with a clause in the treaty that in the event of an emergency that the forces would be put under Israeli control, and both Britain and America offered the Israelis access to pretty much anything they desired out of the NATO arsenal as a way of ensuring Israel's security. King Hussein openly called for commerce links after peace, and he made an offer to Canada to have Canadian National Railways contracted to build rail lines from Tel Aviv and Haifa to Amman and throughout the Palestinian territories as a way of improving commerce, and the Soviet Union offered to restrict arms sales to the region in an attempt to help with the peace process.
Even with the promising start in New York, the Arab street was unconvinced and Hafez al-Assad in Syria was livid, loudly trying to stir up trouble for Sadat, a situation mirrored in the Arab world. But within days of the New York Conference's breaking up, two big allies jumped into the game - the Shah of Iran and Pope Paul VI, the former getting involved in an attempt to improve his country's diplomatic position (though by this point Iran was in good stead economically and was a staunch ally of the United States, and was improving its relationship with the Commonwealth) and the latter saying that he had a duty to advance the cause of peace in the world. While 1978 was to be dramatic year for the Catholic Church, with three popes in a year as a result of John Paul I's untimely death from a heart attack, it did nothing to change the Church's viewpoints, and John Paul II in November 1978 proposed that "The City of God should be governed, at least in part, by Men of God, and if the good men of Israel and Palestine so desire, I will be quite happy to assist their efforts in any way possible." Shah Pahlavi, for his part, proposed the creation of a vast fund supported by both Iran and the Arab states for the Palestinians' economic rehabilitation, and made the first move for it, dropping some $26.5 Billion into the fund, and he publicly called on Saudi Arabia's King Fahd to contribute to the Palestinian cause as well. Fahd rose to the skillfully-delivered challenge and matched Pahlavi dollar-for-dollar, and privately Fahd spoke to Hafez al-Assad, asking that he back off his sabre-rattling. The result of this was a shifting sense on the Arab street, particularly after PLO members began to begin arriving back in Palestinian territories in the fall of 1978, allowed to do so by the Israelis. Israel made a sizable concession by releasing a number of convicted PLO terrorists in January 1979, and the good terms between the sides involved and the shifting sands in the region, particularly in both Egypt and Jordan, made sure that the Berkshire Conference that followed began with high hopes that the March 1979 would come to a complete agreement on the future of relations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at the incredible Windsor Castle and chaired by Canadian Prime Minister Robert Stanfield, the Berkshire Conference hammered out the complete agreements in principle, though with specific lines to be drawn. Jerusalem would become an international city with a third-party force protecting it, with any crimes involved in the city resulting in the perpetrators having their choice of being tried by Islamic law or Israeli civil law. The city would be governed by three religious clerics - one Jewish, one Muslim and one Christian, chosen by their respective sides. The city would also have two civil mayors - one Israeli, one Palestinian - and a complete civil service that answered to them, and they in turn would answer to the clerics. The city was to be open without restrictions to citizens of Israel and Palestine, and both governments could - and both indicated they would - claim it as their capital city, and Sadat's proposal that only armed forces and security services be excluded from Jerusalem was accepted at the Conference. Israelis living on Palestinian land would be moved back into Israel, but they would be allowed to stay where they were until their new homes were built. There would be a section of Israel where Palestinians were allowed to travel through, live in and do business in as they pleased, on the condition that they followed Israeli laws, connecting the two sections of the state of Palestine. About half of the Sinai would be returning to Egypt, with the israelis keeping a small section and the Palestinians having the rest of it, with the Palestinians having a long section of land that took the whole of the west coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, which also had the effect of separating the borders of Israel and Egypt, a situation Sadat was keen on pushing for. Both Israel and Palestine would get a sizable amount of economic aid to help to move their existences forward.
Israel's security would be taken care of by the United States and the Commonwealth of Nations, with the United States committing to building a naval base at Haifa and a huge army training facility at Mitzpe Ramon which also served as the base for the American army contingent, as well as massively expanding the Beersheba Air Force Base to also be used by the Americans. The Commonwealth was to build a major air base at Ashalim and a major army base, Camp Lightfield, between Eliakim and Bat Shlomo in northern Israel, and both countries agreed on contributions at the Berkshire Conference - the Americans sent two cavalry regiments, a Marine unit, six air force attack and strike squadrons and two air superiority squadrons to Israel, while Commonwealth would deploy three infantry regiments - one British, one Canadian and one Australian - and two armored regiments as well as units of the RAF, RCAF, RAAF and RNZAF. The knowledge of these new units being in Israel - and both the size of them and their relationship with Israeli command - tipped the scales in favor of the treaties in Israel, and rumors that the Americans would base an aircraft carrier in Haifa and the Commonwealth stationing heavy bombers at Ashalim made the point stronger still. (Indeed USS Kitty Hawk was assigned to the newly-built Naval Base Haifa in July 1982, and 480 Squadron RCAF, equipped with Handley-Page Victor B.4 bombers, was deployed to Ashalim in January 1983.) The Arabs weren't left out, as (with Israeli approval) the United States offered a vast fleet of American equipment to the Palestinians, including AH-1 SuperCobra attack helicopters and F-4E Phantom II fighter-bombers, in an attempt to help the Palestinians gain some repute, even if the Israelis would be far stronger. With the agreement in general signed on April 10, 1979, the negotiations shifted to Ottawa in June to make the final arrangements and draw the borders. In the middle of this, anti-Treaty elements in the Knesset made a point of dramatically expanding the size of Jerusalem's borders in an attempt to poison the negotiations, only for Arafat to brush that off and Begin to push the agreement through the Knesset anyways. Israel passed the treaty in the Knesset on May 23, 1979, thus clearing the way for the final negotiations.
The drawing of lines done and agreements made, the leaders of the nations involved - Israel, Palestine, Egypt and Jordan and their allies - the United States, Canada, Britain and the Soviet Union, along with the Vatican City and Iran - converged in Ottawa's famed Chateau Laurier on August 4, 1979 to sign what was now known as the Ottawa Treaty. Menachem Begin signed for Israel, Yasser Arafat for Palestine, Anwar Sadat for Egypt, King Hussein I of Jordan, President Jimmy Carter for the United States, Prime Minister Robert Stanfield for Canada, Queen Elizabeth II for Britain (Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was initially to do so, but Her Majesty was favored by the Middle Eastern participants and nobody in London objected to the action), Alexei Kosygin for the Soviet Union, Pope John Paul II for the Vatican and Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi for Iran. The speeches were impressive and the agreement was an incredible one, but a lot of work remained to be done, as the treaty mandated that the agreements be finalized by September 1, 1980. All involved took to the task with a will, however, and the job was done. The Israelis and Palestinians agreed that the first guardians of Jerusalem should be Canadians, as they had been key drivers of the operation from the beginning, and they sent that request to Ottawa in late August 1979. That led to the Canadian Army reviving one of its storied regiments, the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) for the duty, commanded by two of its most senior battalion commanders, Colonel Jean-Paul Gauthier and Major Romeo Dallaire. They deployed to Jerusalem in July 1980, raising their flag in Jerusalem on August 17, 1980. Canada's contribution was also joined by the famed Fort Garry Horse armored regiment and the 22nd Regiment of Canada, the famous VanDoos, who both deployed to the Commonwealth base at Camp Lightfield in August 1980. Just days after the signing of the treaty the first settlers moved back into Israel proper, and fast work meant the last to leave were only there until October 1981. The clerics selected by the Arabs (their choice was famed Sunni scholar Abdul Haadi Rahman), Israelis (who chose moderate scholar Eliezer Zahavi) and the Vatican (they chose Husaam al-Bagheri, the Archbishop of Beirut, who was elevated to Cardinal upon his selection), they issued their first orders to the two mayors (Teddy Kollek and Amin Majaj) and Colonel Gauthier on September 2, 1980, officially marking the beginning of Jerusalem's new world. The agreements done and in place, Palestine declared independence on September 8, 1980, and was recognized by Israel the next day, and Palestine formally recognized the state of Israel's existence alongside Jordan and Egypt on September 12. Iran followed on September 15, and Palestine's recognition came fast and furious from the West. Prime Minister Stanfield was the first signatory leader to visit Jerusalem and inspect his troops, doing so in November 1980 on a trip to the Holy Land.
The Ottawa Treaty was to be Canada's greatest diplomatic triumph for some time, and the new world between Israel and the Palestinians did indeed last. The booming 1980s saw the Palestinians, who had never been dumb and had a greater level of education than many places in the Arab world, took to trading with the Israelis and their neighbors with a will. Israel's situation was even better - hugely-reduced military spending and much-improved international standing contributed to give israel a tech and science boom in the 1980s, taking an already well-off nation and making quite wealthy indeed. Egypt and Jordan did well also, and the Treaty's success made both Sadat and King Hussein enormously popular people among their countries, indeed Sadat having little difficulty leading Egypt until his death from a heart attack in 1997 and his successor, Hosni Mubarak, ultimately being the last military leader of Egypt, leading it into democracy in the mid-2000s, peacefully handing power to Mohammed El Baradei in 2007. Aid from the West led to massive growth in all of the nations involved, and the success of the more liberal-minded politicians ultimately discredited many of the harder-line leaders in the Arab world. Hafez al-Assad's loud calls for the treaty to be rejected (and equally-loud shouts from Saddam Hussein in Iraq) led to Assad facing a monumental uprising in 1982 and an attempted coup by his brother in 1984.
Hussein also suffered, though in a way that was entirely his own making - Iran was in the middle of troublesome changes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the thuggish Hussein in August 1980 invaded Iran under the guise of reclaiming Aran territory from the Iranians and taking away foreign attention focused on Israel and Palestine. Hussein's action would prove a monumental mistake, as the Shah took personal command of his country's armed forces and went himself to the region to lead his armies from a strategic viewpoint, proving both competent at it and perfectly willing to trust both his military commanders and political allies in Tehran. The Iran-Iraq War of 1980-81 united Iran behind its leadership, in the process destroying much of the support for Islamists like Ayatollah Khomeini and communist groups. The Iranians were victorious, defeating the Iraqis for fair in March 1981, and in the process the Shah, who had insisted on doing whatever he could to assist his officers until cancer forced him out of a day-to-day position in February, was made into something of a war hero, helped by the fact that his son Reza Pahlavi, a fighter pilot for the IRIAF, also fought in the war and was wounded in it when his F-4 Phantom was hit by an Iraqi SAM on a mission in January 1981 (Reza got his badly-damaged fighter back to base and got treated for his wounds before returning to the fight) and the Shah's wife, Farah Pahlavi, proved a very, very good political negotiator and diplomat. Shah Pahlavi died of cancer in a hospital in Tel Aviv on July 24, 1981, but such was his actions during the war and Farah and Reza's popularity that Reza was able to claim his father's throne, being coronated in Tehran on February 20, 1982. The price of the crises of the 1980s, however, was a turn towards demoracy by Iran, something Reza and his mother both publicly and privately supported. After over two years of negotiations, Iran's first completely free elections were held in April 1985, electing long-time pro-democracy activist Mehdi Bazargani as Prime Minister, with a wide 'unity cabinet' selected by him, though Islamists continued to oppose it. Their efforts ultimately came to naught, and by the time Ruhollah Khomeini died in 1989, his movement was fading, even as the more conservative Mir-Hossein Mousavi replaced Bazargani in the 1990 elections. Iran had been a staunchly pro-Western country during Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's time, but while his son kept that alliance with the West, he was a loud supporter of Iran's place in the world and fought hard to have Iran be seen as the country that the west looked to when working with the Islamic faith, something that drove the Saudis absolutely insane. By the 1990s, however, he was becoming successful, as iran's decades of social progress was proving to the world that Islam and a modern, tolerant society was possible, even if Iran socially was way more conservative than most western countries. Iran did, however, support the efforts of Muslim nations (and not just Shia ones, but all Muslims) to forge bonds with the West, and Iran's relationship with Egypt and Israel proved a major sign of what was to come, as the Middle East was soon divided between those societies which sought to merge Islam with modernity, and those who fought such actions.
Robert Stanfield's election in 1974 was a sign that politics had shifted in Canada, but what Stanfield also represented was that the Progressive Conservative Party was very much seeking to combine those two elements, aiming to make life better for as many Canadians as possible while sticking to their principles, using whatever solutions worked. This process began almost immediately upon Stanfield's election, as he pledged that he would not do anything to dismantle Petro-Canada, which at least two Western Premiers were howling loudly for. Stanfield was also more than willing and able to use crown corporations for national purposes (something which drove men like Diefenbaker nuts) and to negotiate with his political opponents on important issues. Stanfield called this "intelligent, pragmatic, conservative decision-making". Stanfield's first government created two new crown corporations in Via Rail Canada (which took over Canadian passenger rail operations from Canadian National Railways and the Canadian Pacific Railways) and the National Infrastructure Bank of Canada (which was meant to government projectsat provincial and municipal levels). Canada saw certain provinces benefit enormously from the raised energy prices, but the rest of Canada was more than able to adapt to the realities of the time, and the vast sums in the bank from several provincial natural resource funds (and two in Ottawa) helped to make sure the Canadian dollar didn't fall to any particular degree. Stanfield was also willing to push for continued advancement of Canada's energy realities, with the Trans-Canada pipeline rebuilt in stages between 1974 and 1980, the Canadian National Research Council conducted experiments and developments into new energy sources (one result of this was the first ocean-thermal-energy-conversion power station in the world, built at Pedro St. James on Grand Cayman and entering service in 1982) and the building of the Sir Alexander Bustamante Nuclear Generating Station at Hopewell, Jamaica, which began producing electricity in 1985. Stanfield also pushed for improvements in the operations of crown corporations that had private sector rivals in order to create efficiencies, and in the particular case of Petro-Canada, Air Canada and Canadian National Railways they had more than a little bit of success.
Canada was similar to the United States in its social transformations in the 1960s leading to economic ones in the 1970s. Canada avoided the worst of stagflation but still saw very sluggish economic growth, testing the Welfare Capitalism idea to the limit, but by the later 1970s new generations of workers were entering positions of greater authority and leadership in many companies, a situation mirrored in the United States and supercharged in Canada by the country's vast electronics industries and laboratories and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which introduced ever-better technologies into the television and radio worlds in the 1960s and 1970s. Solid-state electronics began to be made in Canada in large amounts for public usage during this time period, and the presences of the famed computer science laboratories at the Queens and Carleton Universities in eastern Ontario and McGill University in Montreal led to eastern Ontario and southwestern Quebec becoming a hotbed for electronics development, even as the by-now famous Bell Canada Laboratories developed Quadraphonic stereo sound and ever-better color television systems in the late 1960s, creating the 'Hi-Vision' system of television transmission that all of Canada rapidly adopted, while Canadian firm Avaria Technics worked with Phillips to develop the first modern cassette players and then some of the first commercially-available VCRs, the Avaria V100 becoming available in Canada in 1969, and Avaria and Phillips both sided with the VHS system during the VHS vs. Betamax conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s as well as making their own V2000 players, which due to the ability to play much longer movies and all models offering Quadraphonic sound carved themselves out a substantial niche, which got bigger after Sony gave up on Betamax in the early 1990s and began making V2000-format players and movies themselves. Bell Canada Laboratories also were among the first to setup fiber-optic communications networks (which proved to be a major improvement over the older copper wires) and develop satellite phones and microwave telephone networks, the latter a major benefit to rural regions of Canada which struggled to get good communications services.
Mergers and consolidations also happened, as did foreign investments, in Canadian industries. The largest ones by some margin was the alliance between Renault and American Motors in 1978. This was a merger between a French and American company, but which was negotiated out by Canadians, and one of the results was two of the largest auto assembly plants ever built by the companies, the mammoth Brampton Assembly and Brantford Engine Manufacturing facilities, which opened in 1982. This was followed by an alliance between Subaru and Westland-Reynard in 1986, and that merged company became allied with PSA Peugeot Citroen and Chrysler in 1991. (Chrysler had for decades been entirely reliant on exports to supply Canadian markets, a situation which changed dramatically after their alliance with Westland-Reynard.) GM of Canada by this point was the second-largest division of the firm after its American counterparts (and by the mid-1980s the Trillium Natural Resource Fund and Wildrose Resource Fund were two of GM's biggest shareholders, and this did make a big difference in GM's decisions with regards to Canada), and Ford Motor Company's expansive operations in Canada only grew larger in the 1970s and 1980s after the signing of the Auto Pact in 1969. Dominion Steel and Falconer Metals were merged into Dofasco in 1976, the former after having been suffering through bankruptcy problems for a decade. Dofasco's takeover of Dominion Steel was classic welfare capitalism - Dofasco spent over $75 million modernizing the massive Sydney steel mill and reworked several coal mines in the area, and while demand for the coal suffered from recessions, its demand was subsequently assured for good when Petro-Canada built its first East Coast F-T refinery in Brownsville, Nova Scotia, the plant beginning operations in 1982. Canadian Pacific took over the almost-bankrupt Milwaukee Road railroad in 1972, a move that looked curious considering CPR's long-standing ownership interest in the newly-formed Burlington Northern, but it was soon clear that the purchase was done because CPR saw it as a passage to Chicago and serving the rich agricultural lands of the American northern plains as well as Welfare Capitalism move, proving that even very large companies could do good for those who work for them.
Indeed, Welfare Capitalism's passing of its 1970s tests came to be beneficial to many others besides Canada, as the 1980s would see a long string of American corporations taking the Welfare Capitalism ideas to heart, and the passing of changes to union laws in the 1970s (most famously the Employee Free Choice Act, passed by the United States in June 1977) also resulted in greater employee involvement in their workplaces, a situation that was growing on both sides of the border. This also resulted in the 1980s in a wave of employee-owned businesses, both ones created by employees and those spun off of major corporations, with the workers at such businesses seeking to improve the viability of the businesses and thus preserve their livelihoods. This saved North Bay-based Ontario Metals, a former steel industry giant which had suffered badly through economic issues in the 1960s and 1970s before the company filed for bankruptcy in 1972, only for the employees of Ontario Metals to work with the United Steelworkers of Canada union to organize an employee takeover of the firm. Ontario Metals became an employee-owned firm on May 22, 1975, and subsequently rebuilt the company in Northern Ontario, including preserving the company's famed North Bay Integrated Mill - it was closed for rebuilding in 1978, re-opening with more than a little fanfare in August 1981 able to produce many metals it couldn't before.
As the Baby Boomers' authority grew, in Canada so did its desire to change the world, and having built sizable diplomatic influence, huge economic clout, social influence and a powerful military to back it all up, Canada by the 1970s was able to swing the Commonwealth on issues even when Australia and Britain weren't always in total agreement (this was most pronounced with regards to South Africa, whose policy of apartheid was something Canada absolutely loathed) and was acting as a middle player in the world. Canadian diplomats began to grow a reputation first with negotiating out the terms of the final treaty between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh with the Treaty of Colombo after the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, the treaty's signing in January 1973 ensuring Bangladesh's independence, even as Washington (a major ally of Pakistan) wasn't particularly happy with the end result - however, the brutality of the Pakistanis in defeat (as opposed to the Indians, who were rather more restrained, though by no means perfect) caused a rift between the Commonwealth and Pakistan that subsequently made life difficult for Washington. Regardless, the successful Treaty of Colombo was a sign of what was to come, as Ottawa got in 1975 the call of a lifetime, one which many had had a hard time believing.
The Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab Neighbours in 1973 had ended with an Israeli victory, though at truly awful costs to both sides, and with Israel's losses from multiple wars having by then affected every family in the nation and done atrocious harm to the Arabs, calls on both sides for peace were being heard on both sides. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made the fateful first move, making agreements with Israel over the disengagement of their forces in 1974 and 1975, allowing the Suez Canal to re-open in June 1975, and setting the groundwork for Sadat to continue to work on improvements in relations between the two nations. Recognizing Canada's involvement in the peace treaty in India, peacekeeping, the ability to influence the Commonwealth and a reputation for being even-handed, Sadat in September 1975 asked Ottawa to help him negotiate out a full peace deal with the Israelis, and had Ottawa pass to the Israelis a message that Egypt would accept losing the Sinai if the Palestinians were able to have a sizable part of it as part of their homeland. Israel initially responded with shock, but Sadat's visit to the Vatican in April 1976 was a very loud sign that he was intent on bringing Egypt into the world, that the bluster and excesses of the Nasser era was going into history. Sadat was something of a visionary in this regard - he could see the Soviet Union's stagnation was not being matched in the West, and Sadat saw the Commonwealth as the best potential ally, and saw Egypt as an ally of the Commonwealth to allow it to not have to live with the problems that could come from Washington and Moscow. Diplomatic contact between Canada and Egypt made clear that the Egyptians, in return for recognizing Palestinian independence and a land of their own, were willing to establish full diplomatic relations with the Israelis and would push the rest of the Arab world to do the same. Canada quickly passed this on to Israel, and the Israelis sent back that they wanted to negotiate with the Egyptians face to face.
Sadat proved true to his word, leading a delegation to Israel in March 1977 and speaking in the Israeli Knesset of a desire to put a generation of bloodshed behind them. Even Israel's more hawkish government officials could see the interest was genuine, and Sadat convinced Israel's new Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, to be a part of an international conference on the future of the Holy Land, and said categorically that Egypt would not have any issue with a Canadian proposal for Jerusalem being an international city, so long as Arabs could live and work there along with the Israelis. That news didn't take long to get to Ottawa, London, Washington and Moscow, and all parties were supportive, with US President Jimmy Carter calling an international conference in New York City for April 1978.
The New York Conference and the Berkshire Conference that followed it the following year between delegations from Israel, Egypt, Jordan, the PLO, United States, Canada, Britain and the Soviet Union laid out what the parties desired for the Holy Land. Sadat's willingness to give up a large chunk of the Sinai to a Palestinian state was a genuine shock to much of the Arab world but Sadat made it stick, and the Jordanians got the PLO to agree that an independent Palestinian state would be the home of the Palestinians alone, thus reducing the problems Palestinian refugees had caused for Jordan in the previous decade. Everyone agreed that Jerusalem would be an international city open to all Israelis and Palestinians, and Sadat proposed that both governments be able to locate all of their departments and ministries there save their armed forces and security services. The Canadians proposed that Israel's security concerns be settled by the deployment of Western armed forces to Israel with a clause in the treaty that in the event of an emergency that the forces would be put under Israeli control, and both Britain and America offered the Israelis access to pretty much anything they desired out of the NATO arsenal as a way of ensuring Israel's security. King Hussein openly called for commerce links after peace, and he made an offer to Canada to have Canadian National Railways contracted to build rail lines from Tel Aviv and Haifa to Amman and throughout the Palestinian territories as a way of improving commerce, and the Soviet Union offered to restrict arms sales to the region in an attempt to help with the peace process.
Even with the promising start in New York, the Arab street was unconvinced and Hafez al-Assad in Syria was livid, loudly trying to stir up trouble for Sadat, a situation mirrored in the Arab world. But within days of the New York Conference's breaking up, two big allies jumped into the game - the Shah of Iran and Pope Paul VI, the former getting involved in an attempt to improve his country's diplomatic position (though by this point Iran was in good stead economically and was a staunch ally of the United States, and was improving its relationship with the Commonwealth) and the latter saying that he had a duty to advance the cause of peace in the world. While 1978 was to be dramatic year for the Catholic Church, with three popes in a year as a result of John Paul I's untimely death from a heart attack, it did nothing to change the Church's viewpoints, and John Paul II in November 1978 proposed that "The City of God should be governed, at least in part, by Men of God, and if the good men of Israel and Palestine so desire, I will be quite happy to assist their efforts in any way possible." Shah Pahlavi, for his part, proposed the creation of a vast fund supported by both Iran and the Arab states for the Palestinians' economic rehabilitation, and made the first move for it, dropping some $26.5 Billion into the fund, and he publicly called on Saudi Arabia's King Fahd to contribute to the Palestinian cause as well. Fahd rose to the skillfully-delivered challenge and matched Pahlavi dollar-for-dollar, and privately Fahd spoke to Hafez al-Assad, asking that he back off his sabre-rattling. The result of this was a shifting sense on the Arab street, particularly after PLO members began to begin arriving back in Palestinian territories in the fall of 1978, allowed to do so by the Israelis. Israel made a sizable concession by releasing a number of convicted PLO terrorists in January 1979, and the good terms between the sides involved and the shifting sands in the region, particularly in both Egypt and Jordan, made sure that the Berkshire Conference that followed began with high hopes that the March 1979 would come to a complete agreement on the future of relations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at the incredible Windsor Castle and chaired by Canadian Prime Minister Robert Stanfield, the Berkshire Conference hammered out the complete agreements in principle, though with specific lines to be drawn. Jerusalem would become an international city with a third-party force protecting it, with any crimes involved in the city resulting in the perpetrators having their choice of being tried by Islamic law or Israeli civil law. The city would be governed by three religious clerics - one Jewish, one Muslim and one Christian, chosen by their respective sides. The city would also have two civil mayors - one Israeli, one Palestinian - and a complete civil service that answered to them, and they in turn would answer to the clerics. The city was to be open without restrictions to citizens of Israel and Palestine, and both governments could - and both indicated they would - claim it as their capital city, and Sadat's proposal that only armed forces and security services be excluded from Jerusalem was accepted at the Conference. Israelis living on Palestinian land would be moved back into Israel, but they would be allowed to stay where they were until their new homes were built. There would be a section of Israel where Palestinians were allowed to travel through, live in and do business in as they pleased, on the condition that they followed Israeli laws, connecting the two sections of the state of Palestine. About half of the Sinai would be returning to Egypt, with the israelis keeping a small section and the Palestinians having the rest of it, with the Palestinians having a long section of land that took the whole of the west coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, which also had the effect of separating the borders of Israel and Egypt, a situation Sadat was keen on pushing for. Both Israel and Palestine would get a sizable amount of economic aid to help to move their existences forward.
Israel's security would be taken care of by the United States and the Commonwealth of Nations, with the United States committing to building a naval base at Haifa and a huge army training facility at Mitzpe Ramon which also served as the base for the American army contingent, as well as massively expanding the Beersheba Air Force Base to also be used by the Americans. The Commonwealth was to build a major air base at Ashalim and a major army base, Camp Lightfield, between Eliakim and Bat Shlomo in northern Israel, and both countries agreed on contributions at the Berkshire Conference - the Americans sent two cavalry regiments, a Marine unit, six air force attack and strike squadrons and two air superiority squadrons to Israel, while Commonwealth would deploy three infantry regiments - one British, one Canadian and one Australian - and two armored regiments as well as units of the RAF, RCAF, RAAF and RNZAF. The knowledge of these new units being in Israel - and both the size of them and their relationship with Israeli command - tipped the scales in favor of the treaties in Israel, and rumors that the Americans would base an aircraft carrier in Haifa and the Commonwealth stationing heavy bombers at Ashalim made the point stronger still. (Indeed USS Kitty Hawk was assigned to the newly-built Naval Base Haifa in July 1982, and 480 Squadron RCAF, equipped with Handley-Page Victor B.4 bombers, was deployed to Ashalim in January 1983.) The Arabs weren't left out, as (with Israeli approval) the United States offered a vast fleet of American equipment to the Palestinians, including AH-1 SuperCobra attack helicopters and F-4E Phantom II fighter-bombers, in an attempt to help the Palestinians gain some repute, even if the Israelis would be far stronger. With the agreement in general signed on April 10, 1979, the negotiations shifted to Ottawa in June to make the final arrangements and draw the borders. In the middle of this, anti-Treaty elements in the Knesset made a point of dramatically expanding the size of Jerusalem's borders in an attempt to poison the negotiations, only for Arafat to brush that off and Begin to push the agreement through the Knesset anyways. Israel passed the treaty in the Knesset on May 23, 1979, thus clearing the way for the final negotiations.
The drawing of lines done and agreements made, the leaders of the nations involved - Israel, Palestine, Egypt and Jordan and their allies - the United States, Canada, Britain and the Soviet Union, along with the Vatican City and Iran - converged in Ottawa's famed Chateau Laurier on August 4, 1979 to sign what was now known as the Ottawa Treaty. Menachem Begin signed for Israel, Yasser Arafat for Palestine, Anwar Sadat for Egypt, King Hussein I of Jordan, President Jimmy Carter for the United States, Prime Minister Robert Stanfield for Canada, Queen Elizabeth II for Britain (Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was initially to do so, but Her Majesty was favored by the Middle Eastern participants and nobody in London objected to the action), Alexei Kosygin for the Soviet Union, Pope John Paul II for the Vatican and Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi for Iran. The speeches were impressive and the agreement was an incredible one, but a lot of work remained to be done, as the treaty mandated that the agreements be finalized by September 1, 1980. All involved took to the task with a will, however, and the job was done. The Israelis and Palestinians agreed that the first guardians of Jerusalem should be Canadians, as they had been key drivers of the operation from the beginning, and they sent that request to Ottawa in late August 1979. That led to the Canadian Army reviving one of its storied regiments, the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) for the duty, commanded by two of its most senior battalion commanders, Colonel Jean-Paul Gauthier and Major Romeo Dallaire. They deployed to Jerusalem in July 1980, raising their flag in Jerusalem on August 17, 1980. Canada's contribution was also joined by the famed Fort Garry Horse armored regiment and the 22nd Regiment of Canada, the famous VanDoos, who both deployed to the Commonwealth base at Camp Lightfield in August 1980. Just days after the signing of the treaty the first settlers moved back into Israel proper, and fast work meant the last to leave were only there until October 1981. The clerics selected by the Arabs (their choice was famed Sunni scholar Abdul Haadi Rahman), Israelis (who chose moderate scholar Eliezer Zahavi) and the Vatican (they chose Husaam al-Bagheri, the Archbishop of Beirut, who was elevated to Cardinal upon his selection), they issued their first orders to the two mayors (Teddy Kollek and Amin Majaj) and Colonel Gauthier on September 2, 1980, officially marking the beginning of Jerusalem's new world. The agreements done and in place, Palestine declared independence on September 8, 1980, and was recognized by Israel the next day, and Palestine formally recognized the state of Israel's existence alongside Jordan and Egypt on September 12. Iran followed on September 15, and Palestine's recognition came fast and furious from the West. Prime Minister Stanfield was the first signatory leader to visit Jerusalem and inspect his troops, doing so in November 1980 on a trip to the Holy Land.
The Ottawa Treaty was to be Canada's greatest diplomatic triumph for some time, and the new world between Israel and the Palestinians did indeed last. The booming 1980s saw the Palestinians, who had never been dumb and had a greater level of education than many places in the Arab world, took to trading with the Israelis and their neighbors with a will. Israel's situation was even better - hugely-reduced military spending and much-improved international standing contributed to give israel a tech and science boom in the 1980s, taking an already well-off nation and making quite wealthy indeed. Egypt and Jordan did well also, and the Treaty's success made both Sadat and King Hussein enormously popular people among their countries, indeed Sadat having little difficulty leading Egypt until his death from a heart attack in 1997 and his successor, Hosni Mubarak, ultimately being the last military leader of Egypt, leading it into democracy in the mid-2000s, peacefully handing power to Mohammed El Baradei in 2007. Aid from the West led to massive growth in all of the nations involved, and the success of the more liberal-minded politicians ultimately discredited many of the harder-line leaders in the Arab world. Hafez al-Assad's loud calls for the treaty to be rejected (and equally-loud shouts from Saddam Hussein in Iraq) led to Assad facing a monumental uprising in 1982 and an attempted coup by his brother in 1984.
Hussein also suffered, though in a way that was entirely his own making - Iran was in the middle of troublesome changes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the thuggish Hussein in August 1980 invaded Iran under the guise of reclaiming Aran territory from the Iranians and taking away foreign attention focused on Israel and Palestine. Hussein's action would prove a monumental mistake, as the Shah took personal command of his country's armed forces and went himself to the region to lead his armies from a strategic viewpoint, proving both competent at it and perfectly willing to trust both his military commanders and political allies in Tehran. The Iran-Iraq War of 1980-81 united Iran behind its leadership, in the process destroying much of the support for Islamists like Ayatollah Khomeini and communist groups. The Iranians were victorious, defeating the Iraqis for fair in March 1981, and in the process the Shah, who had insisted on doing whatever he could to assist his officers until cancer forced him out of a day-to-day position in February, was made into something of a war hero, helped by the fact that his son Reza Pahlavi, a fighter pilot for the IRIAF, also fought in the war and was wounded in it when his F-4 Phantom was hit by an Iraqi SAM on a mission in January 1981 (Reza got his badly-damaged fighter back to base and got treated for his wounds before returning to the fight) and the Shah's wife, Farah Pahlavi, proved a very, very good political negotiator and diplomat. Shah Pahlavi died of cancer in a hospital in Tel Aviv on July 24, 1981, but such was his actions during the war and Farah and Reza's popularity that Reza was able to claim his father's throne, being coronated in Tehran on February 20, 1982. The price of the crises of the 1980s, however, was a turn towards demoracy by Iran, something Reza and his mother both publicly and privately supported. After over two years of negotiations, Iran's first completely free elections were held in April 1985, electing long-time pro-democracy activist Mehdi Bazargani as Prime Minister, with a wide 'unity cabinet' selected by him, though Islamists continued to oppose it. Their efforts ultimately came to naught, and by the time Ruhollah Khomeini died in 1989, his movement was fading, even as the more conservative Mir-Hossein Mousavi replaced Bazargani in the 1990 elections. Iran had been a staunchly pro-Western country during Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's time, but while his son kept that alliance with the West, he was a loud supporter of Iran's place in the world and fought hard to have Iran be seen as the country that the west looked to when working with the Islamic faith, something that drove the Saudis absolutely insane. By the 1990s, however, he was becoming successful, as iran's decades of social progress was proving to the world that Islam and a modern, tolerant society was possible, even if Iran socially was way more conservative than most western countries. Iran did, however, support the efforts of Muslim nations (and not just Shia ones, but all Muslims) to forge bonds with the West, and Iran's relationship with Egypt and Israel proved a major sign of what was to come, as the Middle East was soon divided between those societies which sought to merge Islam with modernity, and those who fought such actions.
How do these Welfare Capitalism effects change labour relations and the state of industry in Britain?
The 70s and 80s were pretty rough times on that score.
The 70s and 80s were pretty rough times on that score.
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