Researching Pierre Trudeau

Trudeau rose to prominence as a lawyer, intellectual, and activist in Quebec politics. Although he aligned himself with the social democratic New Democratic Party, Trudeau felt that they could not achieve power and instead joined the Liberal Party. He was elected to the Canadian Parliament in 1965, quickly being appointed as Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson's parliamentary secretary. In 1967, he was appointed minister of justice and attorney general. Trudeau's outgoing personality and charismatic nature caused a media sensation, inspiring "Trudeaumania", and helped him to win the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1968, when he was appointed prime minister of Canada. From the late 1960s until the early 1980s, Trudeau's personality dominated the political scene to an extent never before seen in Canadian political life. After his appointment as prime minister, he won the 1968, 1972 and 1974 elections, before narrowly losing in 1979. He won a fourth election victory shortly afterwards, in 1980, and eventually retired from politics shortly before the 1984 election. Trudeau is the most recent prime minister to win four elections, having won three majority governments and one minority government, and to serve two non-consecutive terms as prime minister. His tenure of 15 years and 164 days makes him Canada's third longest-serving prime minister, behind William Lyon Mackenzie King and John A. Macdonald.

Despite his personal motto, "Reason before passion", his personality and policy decisions aroused polarizing reactions throughout Canada during his time in office. While critics accused him of arrogance, of economic mismanagement, and of unduly centralizing Canadian decision-making to the detriment of the culture of Quebec and the economy of the Prairies, admirers praised what they considered to be the force of Trudeau's intellect and his political acumen that maintained national unity over the Quebec sovereignty movement. Trudeau suppressed the 1970 Quebec terrorist crisis by controversially invoking the War Measures Act, the third and last time in Canadian history that the act was brought into force. In addition, Quebec's proposal to negotiate a sovereignty-association agreement with the federal government was overwhelmingly rejected in the 1980 Quebec referendum.

In a bid to move the Liberal Party towards economic nationalism, Trudeau's government oversaw the creation of Petro-Canada and launched the National Energy Program, a policy that was extremely unpopular in Western Canada and particularly in the oil-rich province of Alberta, leading to what many coined "Western alienation". In other domestic policy, Trudeau pioneered official bilingualism and multiculturalism, fostering a pan-Canadian identity. Trudeau's foreign policy included making Canada less dependent on the United States and the United Kingdom. He patriated the Constitution and established the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, actions that granted full Canadian sovereignty. He formed close ties with the Soviet Union, China, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, putting him at odds with other capitalist Western nations.

Trudeau is ranked highly among contemporary scholars in retrospective rankings of Canadian prime ministers. His eldest son, Justin Trudeau, became the 23rd and current prime minister, following the 2015 Canadian federal election, leading his party to re-election in 2019, and 2021, and is the first prime minister of Canada to be the child or other descendant of a former prime minister.