Ernest Lapointe and Quebec's Influence on Canadian Foreign Policy

D.M.L. Farr is professor emeritus of history at Carleton University,
where he taught Canadian political history and the history of Canada’s
external relations.

Ernest Lapointe (1876–1941) is one of the least-known figures in the
front rank of Canadian political history. The undisputed leader of the
Quebec Liberal caucus during the long years of Mackenzie King’s
premiership, from 1919 to his death in 1941, and Mackenzie King’s
closest confidante on foreign policy questions during all those years,
little has been written about Lapointe, either in French or in English.
John MacFarlane, a historian teaching at Champlain College, has filled
this gap and placed all students of Canadian politics in his debt. His
work is not a biography of Lapointe but rather a close discussion of
Lapointe’s relationship with King, particularly when it came to making
decisions on Canadian foreign policy.

The close bond between King and Lapointe went back to the Liberal
convention of 1919, when Lapointe supported King for leadership of the
party. It was a tight race for King, who won by only a few votes over
the veteran W.S. Fielding. In power after 1921, King was dependent on
the Quebec caucus and its leader, the Quebec City lawyer Ernest
Lapointe. Lapointe served as minister of fisheries until 1924, then
moved to justice and stayed there while the Liberals were in office. He
knew Quebec and understood Quebec’s hesitation about being involved
too closely in world organizations, whether they were the British Empire
or the League of Nations. King saw Lapointe as the spokesman for Quebec
and in his search for policies that would maintain the fragile Canadian
unity, he listened closely to his colleague’s voice.

MacFarlane analyzes 17 foreign-policy decisions made by King between
1922 and 1941, and discovers that on most of them King and Lapointe came
to the same conclusions. In decision-making they were, to use his
phrase, “co-dominant.” On six of those decisions (one of which was
the position that Canada should extend pledges of support to Great
Britain at the time of Munich), Lapointe’s was the dominant voice.
Lapointe’s influence was at its height on the eve of World War II.
With the declaration of war, he made one of the most powerful speeches
in the history of this country’s Parliament when he explained to
French Canadians and to all Canadians why Canada could not remain
neutral in a war in which Britain was threatened.

MacFarlane’s book is solidly based. It draws heavily on that treasure
chest of private thoughts, Mackenzie King’s diary—as well as on the
papers of most of King’s colleagues and opponents. He shows how
Lapointe has been treated by historians (almost not at all by Quebec
writers, who dismissed him as subservient to King) and corrects the
English-language historians who have not given sufficient weight to
Lapointe’s influence on King.

If not exciting, the book’s exposition is clear and convincing. At
times it lapses into colloquial expressions that do not sit well with
the general tone of the text. This reviewer found it irritating that the
author calls anyone who favored the status quo in Canadian–British
relations an “imperialist.” Surely this word, applied to the 1920s
and 1930s, is a shorthand that does less than justice to the
multiplicity of attitudes held by English Canadians at the time. But
overall, this is an important book that fills a significant gap in the
literature on Canadian external relations between the wars.