Canada's General Election
By Our Canadian Correspondent
ON March 31 the Canadian people will decide in their second general election within a year whether the Progressive-Conservative Ministry of Mr. John Diefenbaker deserves the mandate of a clear majority. The late House of Commons contained 113 Progressive-Conservatives, 106 Liberals, twenty-five Socialists (the CCF), nine- teen Social Crediters and two Independents, and the Prime Minister sought and obtained a dis- solution on the ground that the natural discom- fort of a ministry which lacks a majority had ' been made intolerable since the Liberal Party had elected as its leader Mr. Lester Pearson, who had abandoned the co-operative attitude of his pre- decessor, Mr. St. Laurent, and declared open war.
But there is little validity in the 'intolerable' claim. The late Parliament—a much more efficient body than any of its recent forerunnerS—had passed a substantial volume of legislation which had encountered no obstruction beyond the limits of legitimate criticism; the Government bad always commanded good majorities and was never on the verge of defeat; nor had Mr. Pear- son made an impressive start as leader of the official Opposition.
But Mr. Diefenbaker has very strong motives for making his appeal for a clear majority as soon as possible. Canada, after a decade of ab- normal prosperity, is now in the grip of quite a serious depression. The number of the unem- ployed has been rising rapidly; most of the accepted indices of economic activity are sliding downward; and the Government does not want to give the opposition time to accumulate more evidence to support its charge that a depression is an inevitable concomitant of Tory rule. The Prime Minister, too, is very loosely anchored to the principles and traditions of his party; and for the allurement of the voters he has been making many lavish promises of expenditure on a variety of projects which frighten the bankers and must be making bygone Tory leaders turn in their graves. The Minister of Finance has had to give warning that he may have to budget for a deficit, and it therefore suits the Government to get the election over before the state of the nation's balance sheet is revealed.
In the Budget, too, the Government would have to disclose its policy about trade and tariffs, about which it is in a quandary. The re- turn to power of a party which has been the traditional advocate of Protection has confronted the Canadian Tariff Board with a flood of appli- cations for higher tariffs, many of them aimed at imports from Britain—with Courtaulds Limited of Canada, controlled by British capital, setting a deplorable example. Any reduction of duties on British goods would infuriate many Canadian industrialists (and their workers) and produce a revolt among Tory members. As Liberal leaders have intimated that they propose to make trade and unemployment the chief issues of the elm - tion, it is in the Government's interest to defer a disclosure of its policy about trade until after March 31.
The Diefenbaker Ministry claims that its record of beneficent legislation since it took office entitles it to a further trial in a more comfortable position. But in reality there are such fine shades of difference between the ideologies and pro- grammes of the two senior parties that the out- come of the election will probably be determnined by the voters' appraisal of the sharply contrasted personalities of the Prime Minister and Mr. Pearson. Mr. Diefenbaker's endowment with some of the Messianic gifts of Billy Graham makes him a very powerful campaigner; he is also a more experienced political tactician and has a surer touch about domestic problems than Mr. Pear- son. But the latter has even greater general con- fidence in his political integrity and his prestige as a winner of a Nobel prize for services to the cause of peace.
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