Published October 18, 2023

Peter Black

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Peterblack@qctonline.com

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith wants her province to have its own pension plan. To do that, she wants to separate out Alberta’s share of the Canada Pension Plan and create the province’s own plan, just like Quebec has.

Without going into the disputed details of Smith’s proposal, based on a study she commissioned, it’s clearly an explosive issue with serious national implications.

Whatever dangers the Alberta plan may pose for national unity, though, they pale next to the high stakes of Quebec’s bid 60 years ago to have its own independently managed plan, separate from the national scheme Ottawa was proposing.

The showdown was so risky and fraught with political tension that Liberal then-prime minister Lester Pearson said in retrospect, “That issue could have broken up our country. If Quebec had gone ahead with a pension plan of its own that bore no relation to the national plan, it would have been a disaster.”

How that deal was struck was a combination of James Bond-style cloak and dagger tactics, actuarial chess and desperate persistence, conducted with a backdrop of simmering nationalist sentiment in Quebec.

The key figures at the top were Pearson and Quebec premier Jean “Maîtres Chez Nous” Lesage, but the real grinding work of coming up with a win-win deal was left to brilliant civil servants – policy advisor Tom Kent and cabinet minister Maurice Sauvé for the feds, and Claude Morin, Quebec’s deputy minister for federal-provincial affairs.

The federal Liberals had promised an improved pension plan in the 1963 election, and finally having gained power – albeit a minority government – they now had to act. The proposal they came up with, basically a pay-as-you-go plan, clashed with Quebec’s vision of a compulsory contribution scheme.

Talks with the provinces broke down, with Ontario’s John Robarts, for one, liking the Quebec notion better than Ottawa’s. With a serious rift between Ottawa and Quebec brewing, Sauvé began getting calls from Morin; the two had been friends for years in political circles.

What ensued was a round of intense negotiations between Morin, Sauvé and Kent, with Quebec City actuary and future medicare creator Claude Castonguay joining the talks. Between April 7 and 18, 1964, the emissaries travelled in secret back and forth between Quebec City and Ottawa; Lesage had a budget speech scheduled, but postponed it with a possible deal – or a fatal breakdown – looming.

A crucial moment in the talks, as Peter C. Newman describes it in The Distemper of Our Times, is the stuff of theatre. With the negotiators gathered at 24 Sussex Drive for a final consultation, Morin was left alone with Pearson, lying on a sofa and bemoaning his situation: “I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want to be praised. But I don’t want to be criticized all the time either. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m really fit for the job.” (Take note, present and future prime ministers).

Morin replies, “You may be criticized now, but I’m sure that a few years from now they’ll say, ‘Well, Pearson was the man who had to be there at that particular time.’” (Morin, still active at 94, would go on to be a key minister in the René Lévesque government and an admitted informant for the RCMP, codename: French Minuet.)

They concluded the deal that day, which involved Ottawa making many concessions to Quebec on tax measures and the like. Thanks to Pearson’s wisdom and Quebec’s preparation, persistence and vision, working Canadians, whether living in Quebec or elsewhere in the country, have a well-funded, portable and relatively generous pension.

The bonus for Quebec was the creation of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, whose assets now total $424 billion.

Lesage, naturally, milked the moment in announcing the pension plan deal in the legislature on April 18, 1964: “During the past month, I have lived a terrible life. I have worked for my province as no man has ever worked before. I used all the means that Providence has given me so that Quebec, in the end, would be recognized as a province with special status in Confederation – and I have succeeded.”

Swap out “man” for “woman” and “Quebec” for “Alberta” in that speech, and imagine it coming from Danielle Smith’s mouth.

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