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Canadian Leader: Pierre Elliot Trudeau Essay

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Pierre Elliot Trudeau was arguably one of the most vivacious and charismatic Prime Ministers Canada has ever seen. He wore capes, dated celebrities and always wore a red rose boutonniere. He looked like a superhero, and often acted like one too. Some of the landmark occurrences in Canadian history all happened during the Trudeau era, such as patriating the constitution, creating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the 1980 Quebec Referendum. However, it is Trudeau’s 1969 “white paper” and the Calder legal challenge which many consider to be one of his most influential contributions to Canadian history.
Trudeau himself was a liberal. One of the core beliefs of liberal ideology is that of individual rights, meaning that …show more content…

The main reason why the white paper was brought in was because the federal government could no longer deny that Canada’s Aboriginal peoples were facing serious socio-economic troubles that the rest of Canadians were not. These issues included higher poverty and infant mortality rates, lower life expectancy and poorer education levels. Also at this time, the civil rights movement happening in the United States brought an increased level of public awareness to issues of social justice, and made many Canadians questioning the inequality and discrimination in Canada and how it pertained to First Nations people. In addition to the 1969 White Paper proposals, other landmark occurrences with Trudeau’s relationship to Canadian Aboriginals included the 1973 Calder case.
With the rise of awareness about social justice issues, the federal government commissioned anthropologist Harry Hawthorn in 1963 from the University of British Columbia to look into the social injustices faced by Aboriginal people across the country. In his report, Hawthorn discovered that Aboriginal peoples were incredibly marginalized due to their isolation from the rest of society caused by years of failed federal policies, which included the residential school system. Due to the abuse and neglect many Aboriginals faced at these residential schools, they were left with emotional trauma which made them unable to want to contribute to a society which had done nothing but

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