Man or superman?

ELECTIONS-2: CANADA JOHN GRAHAM

Toronto—Tuesday's election, were a hinge in Canada's history. No- one had ever seen a campaign like the one that led up to them, and no one had ever seen a candidate like Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Everything he touched, the techniques he used and the ques- tions he raised, the devotion he aroused in his 'supporters and the fear and distrust he inspired :a his enemies, had the stamp of modernity. It was as if Canada had come of age, as if he himself; single-handed, would catapult the Cduntry into the brilliant sunshine of the late tWentieth century from the stagnant swamp of traditionalism and mediocrity in which Cana- dian politics had been bogged down for years.

He dominated the election from the word go, aittd his personality became at once the main Weapon of the Liberal party and the main issue of the campaign. No longer was the struggle between the Liberals and the Conservatives; it was between Mr Trudeau and Mr Stanfield. For the first time, the Canadian people found themselves in the middle of a presidential, not a parliamentary, contest.

Mr Trudeau ran so far ahead of the Liberal party that in many cases individual Liberal candidates decided to ride on his merits rather than on their own. Weak Liberals were able to defeat strong Conservatives.

Early in the campaign there was another development more to be expected in the United States, a really nasty undercover smear cam- paign of hate literature. It started in the Mari- time Provinces and in Alberta, but was soon appearing in almost every riding from one coast to the other. It accused Mr Trudeau of com- munism, of extremism, of homosexuality . . . in short, it threw the book at him. The Liberal party ignored it at first, but had to take action as it spread like poison ivy across the continent. Some of the men actually operating the print- ing presses were named, the charges were re-. futeclyor ridiculed, the leaders of the other Parties also denounced the campaign. There is good evidence, however, that some Conserva- tive sandidates took advantage of the literature in their own campaigns.

There was also more threatened violence than ever before in a Canadian election. Mr Trudeau got an unprecedented number of threatening letters, and was given official protection to an unprecedented degree. Mr Stanfield got his share, too. There is no history of political assassination in Canada, and politicians go freely about in a way that would have, and has, proved fatal in America. But Canada is so close to America, and so influenced by America, that Monday's near-riot in Montreal recalled ominous parallels from south of the border.

Mr Trudeau campaigned in a particularly American %Nay. This election saw the demise of the old-style political meeting, at least in the Liberal camp, and the arrival of the electronic media. And whenever Mr Trudeau was to make an appearance in a big-city there were advance men making sure that there would be a big crowd. In Toronto, an outdoor rally attracted something like 40.000 people, and was reckoned to have been the biggest in Canada's history. The same happened in Place Ville Marie in Montreal last weekend, and the crowd spon- taneously sang the Canadian national anthem. Mr Stanfield was more furtive about his appear- ances, and his biggest gathering in Toronto. in- doors, of course, was not more than 4,000.

Then there were the young people, who cam- paigned in their thousands for Mr Trudeau, working in the local Liberal headquarters, knocking on doors etc, ti la McCarthy or Kennedy. People spoke of the Kennedy Kiddie Corps while Robert Kennedy was alive—the men in their middle and late twenties who were running things. Youth was even more pro- nounced for Mr Trudeau: the man directing the canvassing in Ontario and the western pro- vinces, advising on election material and tactics, was a twenty-one year old from the University of Toronto: Michael Ignatieff, son of the Canadian Ambassador to the UN.

Mr Trudeau is indeed part Eugene McCarthy, part Robert Kennedy. He has the intellectualism and detachment of McCarthy, the popular appeal that Kennedy had. Like McCarthy he appeals to older as well as to younger people; but the glamour that surrounds him, from the unusual haircut to the Mercedes sports car more or less permanently furnished with a delicious blonde, is more in the Kennedy style. The con- duct of his campaign had the same unpredict- able mixture of seriousness and demagoguery.

If he had learned a political lesson from the United States, he had also learned that if Canada is to mature, she must avoid the mis- takes of the United States. America's problems are paraded before the world: an impossible and potentially disastrous racial situation, air you can't breathe, water you can't drink, cities that deserve a place in Dante's Malebolge. These problems are starting ta come to Canada, and this is the ugly side to the country's growing up.

Mr Trudeau is a modern man, and these are peculiarly modern questions. In his campaign he tended to stress them rather than more tradi- tional Canadian grievances such as the price of wheat, old age pensions, or development of the backward maritime provinces. These were men- tioned, of course, but Mr Trudeau is an urban man, a product of Canada's biggest city, and a product of his times. He loves technology, is constantly talking about it and what it will do to the quality of life, and he sees the evils of the wrong sort of urbanisation as one of the greatest challenges his country will have to face. By 1980 four-fifths of Canada's population will live in urban areas, and if the challenge is not met when it is young, then Canada will go America's way.

There is one traditional crisis which Mr Trudeau cannot ignore: Quebec. The Quebec question has vitiated Canadian life for a long time now, and it will not just go away. Mr Trudeau has been called 'the federalist of federalists,' holding that there is only one gov- ernment which speaks, and should speak, for an Canadians, and that is the Federal government in Ottawa. He is, therefore, bitterly opposed by the extreme element in Quebec, and also by some who are not so extreme.

He does recognise, however, that constitu- tional revision is necessary to preserve Quebec's special nature as the chief homeland of one of Canada's founding peoples, but the reforms he favours are mainly concerned with the French language, with ensuring that it has equal status with English, not just legally, but in practice. As he admits, this is modest in comparison with the vast constitutional upheaval favoured by so many Quebeckers these days, but there is no royal road to even this essential minimum.

Can Mr Trudeau do it? He has the advantage of being a French Canadian himself, though he has a lot of enemies inside Quebec. He will presumably rely on his federal strength to out- manoeuvre the separatists in Quebec such as Daniel Johnson, the Premier. He has already out-manoeuvred him once, by calling the federal election before Mr Johnson called his provin- cial election. Mr Trudeau can be patient and diplomatic, and these qualities will certainly be needed. But there is also a streak of authori- tarianism in him, and if he were to bully the Quebeckers he would as likely as not pull down the creaky temple of Canadian unity.

This is what his Conservative opponents fear. Dalton Camp—the old-style political power- broker who forced Diefenbaker out of the Con- servative leadership—told me before the elec- tion that this would be the greatest danger, should Mr Trudeau be elected with a majority. Marcel Faribault, the leading Conservative in Quebec and a man who once taught Mr Trudeau, apparently fears it, too.

Mr Trudeau's supporters, naturally, think he can avoid the trap and, in his own words, 'add a new dimension to Confederation.' They go even further, and say that he is an original political thinker and that he has something to offer all those parts of the world where federal- ism may be the most effective form of government.

This is an exaggerated claim, but it illustrates the reverence in which the man is held in his own camp. He could be not only a great Prime Minister, they say, he could be the greatest of all Canadian Prime Ministers. He has the politi- cal skill, certainly, as the last three months have shown. His quiet campaign for the Liberal leadership at the convention, against six or seven serious contenders, was masterful. His timing of the call for a general election was nice, and caught the Conservatives right off balance: only four days before, Mr Stanfield had picked a committee to draw up a long-term manifesto on Conservative political philosophy. His cam- paign against Mr Stanfield would have earned the approval of Machiavelli—who is, incident- ally, one of Mr Trudeau's heroes. He has already shown himself the strongest master of his Cabinet since Mackenzie King, and this is according to Senator Paul Martin, who has been around for some time and ought to know.

Canada has now had six general elections in eleven years, and until this year they have aH been passing tedious. Mr Trudeau at least is not boring. He is an exciting man, possibly a dangerous man, and he has brought about an exciting and possibly dangerous situation. Ex- citement may be what much of Canada craves, but it is the last thing needed in Quebec, and it is in Quebec that Mr Trudeau will stand or fall. What Quebec needs is a miracle-worker. The country has elected a man whose supporters think of him as a miracle-worker. Let him now perform.