Canada moving to political Right?

Press, 25 June 1983, Page 16

Canada moving to political Right?

From “The Economist,” London

Canadians are beginning to realise that their country may be entering a new political era. The selection on June 11 of Mr Brian Mulroney to lead the Progressive Conservative Party — the main opposition party, which the opinion polls show running far ahead of the ruling Liberals — is a break in the Canadian pattern. The Prime Minister, Mr Pierre Trudeau, has repeatedly said that he will not stay on to lead the Liberals into the next General Election, which must be held before February, 1985. Mr Trudeau is 63, and he has been Prime Minister for all but a few months of the last 15 years. He has outlasted two Opposition leaders, Mr Robert Stanfield, a Nova Scotian, who hung on glumly for eight years, and Mr Joe Clark, an Albertan, who struggled through seven (and led a shortlived minority Government in 1979-80). Now Mr Trudeau will face a more formidable opponent — who, like him, comes from Quebec — and he may decide to bow out discreetly before the year is out. At first sight Mr Mulroney may not seem very formidable. He is undeniably handsome, and nearly 20 years younger than the Prime Minister. But, although he has worked hard and long for the Conservatives “in the trenches,” as he puts it, as a fund-raiser and campaign committee-man, he has not until now sought a seat in Parliament. During the contest for his party’s leadership he displayed only slight knowledge of some important questions. A common criticism of his television interviews was that he

seemed slick and superficial. His usual response to questions about Central America was that Canada ought to join the Organisation of American States — a respectable contention but not a very relevant one. What he seemed to enjoy was making rather vague denunciations of the Federal officials in Ottawa. He said that, once in office, he would be giving “pink slips and running shoes” to any of them who failed to carry out Conservative policies with proper enthusiasm. Nevertheless, he has some clear advantages over his predecessor. Mr Clark often seemed to be trying too hard; Mr Mulroney exudes confidence and achievement along with his Irish charm. Both of them came from small towns; but Mr Clark still tends to show it, whereas Mr Mulroney has successfully established himself as an elegant Montreal lawyer — although he is still making political capital out of his humble origins as an electrician’s son from Baie-Comeau, on the northern shore of the St Lawrence, well downstream from Quebec City. Mr Clark, like Mr Stanfield before him, was never in full control of his party. Its Right wing, if it used Mrs Thatcher’s language, would have said that it found him wet; its experienced tacticians blamed him for losing his hold on power so quickly, after the party’s only taste of it in 20 years. Mr Mulroney may have no track record in parliamentary politics, but he has built up a high reputation as a conciliator, based on his success in restoring good labour relations at the Iron Ore Company

of Canada, which he headed tor six years. One of his greatest assets is his fluency in French. For more than 60 years, the Conservatives have never done well in Quebec except on the rare occasions when they have successfully made temporary alliances with the province’s own “blue” Right-wing forces. They now hold only one of the 75 Quebec seats in the 282-seat Canadian House of Commons. The French-speaking majority in Quebec has traditionally regarded the Tories as an essentially Eng-lish-speaking bunch, and has remained loyal to the Liberals in Federal elections even while putting their deadly enemy, Mr Rene Levesque’s separatist party, into office as Quebec’s provincial government.

Now the Conservatives are bent on cracking the solid Quebec rock on which Liberal power in Canada has so long been founded. Mr Mulroney — unlike many members of Quebec’s Englishspeaking minority — speaks a comfortable French learnt in childhood. Mr Clark can boast only a competent French laboriously acquired for political purposes. Mr John Crosbie, the Newfoundlander who was placed third in the contest for the Tory leadership, has no French and is on record as asserting that he cannot spare the time to learn it. This tipped the scales against him. With Mr Crosbie as their leader, the Tories could not have hoped to win the 20 or so Quebec seats which, under Mr Mulroney, they will aim for in the next election.

True, there is one thing Mr Mulroney lacks — a Quebec seat, for himself, now. Mr Trudeau may tease him by opening up a byelection in a fairly safe Liberalheld constituency in Quebec. Mr Mulroney would then have to decide whether to accept this challenge and risk being defeated, or take over a safe Tory seat in some other province (thereby denting his image as an authentic representative of Quebec) or wait until he could fight for a Quebec seat of his own choice in the General Election. But that General Election will offer Mr Mulroney the splendid prospect of perhaps a decade of Conservative majority Government. For all the criticism of Mr Clark’s leadership, he has bequeathed to his successor a party which, in the opinion polls, shows a score of 50 per cent against the Liberals’ 33 per cent. The Tories have also built up in opposition a record of effective parliamentary work in the revision of the constitution and in securing changes in energy and freight-rate policies. The Liberals do not control a single provincial government. At the Federal level they have shrunk to a visibly regional party based on Quebec and parts of Ontario. If Mr Trudeau retires, a Liberal champion to match Mr Mulroney may be hard to find. Mr John Turner, who is still often mentioned as Mr Trudeau’s possible successor, may prefer to stay in the comfortable towers of corporate law to which he retreated when he left the Liberal Cabinet in 1975. Mr Mulroney could have a clear run to the very top, and Canada would then have tilted to the Right.