Was Mordecai Richler A Paid Operative Of The CIA? Part One

Was Mordecai Richler a paid “operative” of the CIA? [Part One]

As the years move away from ‘the Cold War’, Mordecai Richler’s role in Canada’s life becomes clearer and clearer.  He “worked” – we may say - for CIA values, whether he did so by accident, out of ‘love’ for the U.S., or as a paid operative. More and more, the possibility opens that he was paid – but that has to be, so far, (in history) largely a matter of guesswork … a fitting of hard-to-find jigsaw puzzle pieces together.

We are already at such a distance from ‘the Cold War’ that it needs characterizing to separate it from the desperate series of ‘small hot wars’ engaged in presently as the U.S. works to maintain a global dominance that only days ago almost everyone – it seems - took for granted as a permanent condition.

The Cold War arose out of the conditions at the end of the Second World War in which the Communist bloc and the liberal Capitalist bloc faced each other in enmity.  That situation was announced by Winston Churchill in Fulton Missouri in 1946 when he told the world that (because of alleged Russian ambitions) an “iron curtain has descended over the continent” (of Europe) creating a “peril to Christian civilization”.

The U.S., he said, was, just then, “at the pinnacle of world power”, and – perhaps as evidence of that, the little town (12,000 souls) of Fulton, Missouri, created the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library.  It includes a church dismantled in England and rebuilt in Fulton and a monument constructed from a section of the famous Berlin Wall. The Church, (originally 12th century and rebuilt by Christopher Wren) was bombed out in the Second World War. And then in the 1960s it was dismantled and its 7000 stones shipped to Fulton, Missouri, where it has been reassembled and restored.

People in Fulton, Missouri, know – if others don’t – the huge historical importance of the speech Winston Churchill gave at little Westminster College in their town in 1946.

‘At the pinnacle of world power’ the threat to U.S. dominance came not only, by any means, from the Soviet Union.  All over the world (and, perhaps, most visibly in Africa) countries were “de-colonizing”, throwing off the incubus of “imperial” masters (who used the ‘colonial’ countries to enrich themselves. 

Real competition for power and influence existed between the Soviet and the Western blocs – with thick ideological implications for the kinds of society that would be supported.

But that was only a part of the story.  The other part was made up of the genuine attempts – all over the world – by ‘subject’ states, by colonial countries, by ‘economic dependencies’, by satellite powers to get free of their overlords and to assert independence.

Independence meant, for them, the right to develop their own natural riches on behalf of their own people. It meant the right to develop their own cultures and histories and to find in them  sources for national unity and aspiration. It meant the right to form independent or “non-aligned” foreign policy. To be “non-aligned” meant to be free of domination in foreign policy by either one or other of the major powers: the U.S.A. or the Soviet Union.

Both Soviet Russia and the U.S.A. knew they required the natural resources of other countries to maintain their own power.  And they knew, as well, that huge propaganda campaigns had to be on-going to convince the satellite countries that their condition of dependency was best for them. As early as 1952, for instance, the U.S. president received the Report of the Paley Commission concerning Resources for the Future. 

The Report determined that self-sufficiency was not possible for the United States and it would have to depend on foreign resources that would best be acquired by Free Trade.  Of the resources it needed to maintain its dominance in the world, many were recorded to be located in Canada.

Churchill’s Fulton Missouri, 1946 speech was the first propaganda cannonade fired off to convince countries aspiring to independence that only by being under the U.S. umbrella could they hope to guarantee the survival of Western Civilization. Otherwise, the huge gift of time – centuries of ‘civilization’ - would be buried under an avalanche of godless, brutal, soulless, repressive Communism.

Canada was peculiarly situated to move to greater independence at the end of the War.  A Middle Power, it was unscathed on its surface by the conflict, hugely wealthy in natural resources, a buoyant democracy with the third largest merchant marine in the world, an increasingly educated population, a rich history within the Commonwealth - and a thick culture and history of its own.

To put the matter very briefly: from (at least) 1945 until today the “independence battle” has gone on in Canada - a battle for the wealth of Canada, for its culture and the interpretation of its history, for control of its geopolitical position, for the power to shape its foreign policy, for the ‘hearts and minds’ of Canadians. 

So far, the victory has been carried off (with minor, small exceptions) by the U.S.A. and interests serving the policies and aspirations of the U.S.A.

The Massey Royal Commission on the Arts, Letters and Sciences was published almost at the same time as the Paley Commission Report.  In a sense the issue was joined. The Massey Commission put forward ideals of cultural independence that were resisted by the U.S.A. (and ridiculed by Mordecai Richler).  The Paley Commission advocated – in fact – a system whereby the U.S. would have, with increasing effectiveness, access to and power over the raw material wealth and (where possible) the expression of other countries.

After the date of the Paley Report – as I have written in my review of the 2010 biography of Mordecai Richler by Charles Foran - the Canadian people and their government made attempts to move towards independence. In 1963 the famous, repudiated Walter Gordon federal budget was presented - intended to begin repatriation of ownership of the Canadian economy. 

The response was so fierce by (mostly corporate) opponents that Lester Pearson, prime minister, rejected the budget and removed Walter Gordon as finance minister. But Gordon soldiered on, and he was the architect of what also became a famous report, the Watkins Report of 1968.  Watkins described the huge cost of foreign (largely U.S.) takeover and control of enterprise in Canada.  To suit U.S. interests, damaging economic costs and distortions were introduced, and the social and cultural costs could not be measured. 

So impressive was the Report that it was followed by two more related Reports– activated by Parliamentary interest – the [Herb] Gray Report and the [Ian] Wahn Report.

All that activity was pushed into the limelight at the same time as the effects of the Centennial Year were being felt – and became a part of them.  Canadians were awakened to the potential of the country and to the impediments in place to Canadian aspirations. They began to demand their own voice in national matters.  From Centennial Year to 1972 (the year that Mordecai Richler returned to Canada from a 22 year expatriation) Canadian-centred organizations flowered – from the creation of an all-Canadian Labour Union centre to a National Farmers Union to the Writers Union of Canada.

One of the new organizations was the Waffle Movement within the NDP.  It argued that there could be no independence in Canada without Socialism (strong actions taken by the State to preserve real Canadian sovereignty).  And it argued (as a Left group) that there could be no real Socialism in Canada without independence.

The decade of the 1970’s was a decade of strife. The Pierre Trudeau Liberal government was not enthusiastic about the new movements.  Indeed, at a bear-pit encounter at Carleton University early in his Prime Ministership Trudeau showed his coolness.  Asked what he thought of the burgeoning Canadianization Movement to assure excellent young Canadians full access to positions in universities and other cultural institutions, Trudeau remarked that he didn’t care who taught in Canadian universities.

A little later, confronted about foreign ownership of the Canadian economy, he is said to have remarked that he didn’t care who owned the economy as long as taxes were paid to support government of the country. Nonetheless, in 1975 the government created Petrocan, a Crown Corporation, in order to have a window on the growing fossil fuels industry in Canada – owned almost exclusively outside the country.

Defeated in 1979 Trudeau returned to power in 1980. He appeared to have turned a corner in his political consciousness – perhaps, partly, as a result of new, young, vigorous advisors around him. As well as embarking on large activities like the ‘repatriation’ of the Canadian Constitution, the Trudeau government took much more interest in the question of independence.

In 1981 Petrocan bought Petrofina, in 1983 it bought BP Canada, and in 1984 discovered the Terra Nova oilfield off the Eastern coast.  In his second time in power, Trudeau listened with greater attention to calls for what was named “an industrial strategy for Canada” – which meant some kind of move to greater planning of the economy, greater oversight of foreign ownership, and greater effort to keep ownership of enterprise in Canada.

None of that pleased the U.S.A.  Before Trudeau left office in 1984 (and was replaced by the election of Conservative Brian Mulroney)

U.S. interests were active. U.S. Ambassador in Ottawa from 1981 to 1985 was a man named Paul Robinson junior.  He began talks with the Liberal government to “ease trade restrictions” between the two countries.

In Ottawa, the underground telegraph reported he was also having semi-secret meetings with sympathetic others about events since 1967 – the surge of concern about independence in Canada.  The meetings apparently tried to address what was considered ‘the problem’.  The determination was to bring in some kind of regime that would prevent Canada, ever again, from pushing for any real economic independence.

The solution agreed upon was a Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States – what president Ronald Reagan was to call “a new constitution for North America”.  Working with the pliant and willing Brian Mulroney, the U.S. saw the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement signed in 1988, to be followed … by worse … and - in the minds of many – impediments to Canadian independence that will not be removed until Canada frees itself from the negative entanglements of Free Trade Agreements.

All that is background to the role Mordecai Richler played in Canadian life to denigrate and demean Canadian aspirations for self-respect as a country and for independence in policy making. He is on record, of course, as a supporter of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.

Part Two will address the ways in which Richler fit into the politics of his day … and the designs of the CIA in Canada.