Canada's Chronic Instability

...Rouleau was subsequently found guilty by the Commission of a "reprehensible act" in trying to get the narcotics peddler out of jail...

...It is doubtful whether the Pearson government could round up sufficient support from the opposition to push through such unpopular legislation...

...He failed miserably in both objectives, and has been meeting with his vote-shocked Cabinet to examine the ruins of a contest which nobody won...

...THE ELECTION NOBODY WON Canada's Chronic Instability By Rolf Spencer-Brummel Ottawa Canada's elections of November 8 left the country with the prospect of another Liberal minority regime, and the memory of an unprecedented exercise in political ineptitude and futility...

...Blame for the inability of the Liberal party machine to free itself from the clutches of a discredited "old Guard" also rests primarily on Pearson...

...Contrary to all expectations, it retained a rerespectab1e foothold in predominantly Liberal Quebec...

...and a total disequilibrium in regional representation in Parliament...

...Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, his image already badly tarnished by sordid scandals reaching into the highest echelons of his government, went to the voters with a plea for a majority Liberal government elected on a broad national basis...

...Shut out completely from Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and held to single seats in Manitoba and Nova Scotia, the ruling party emerged without a political base in the vast geographic expanses of the maritime provices to the east of the Quebec-Ontario industrial heartland of Canada (except for Liberal Newfoundland), and in the "prairie provinces" to the west...

...The same applies to what has commonly been referred to as "L'Affaire des Six"-a charge by an independent MP in the last Parliament linking the principal accused in the gigantic bankruptcy and fraud case, as well as a wealthy Canadian industrialist recently sentenced in the U.S., to an attempt to swing six Social Credit MPS to Pearson to give him a much needed majority after the 1963 elections...

...Thus, as the dust begins to settle after the elections which nobody won, and from which, in one way or another, nobody emerged without cuts and bruises, the Liberals -by some kind of political justice and because of their leader's gross ineptitude-emerged as the most severely mauled party...

...For while it is true that on paper it could count on no more than 129 votes in the last Commons, and the opposition parties controlled a total of 136 votes (94 of these belonging to Diefenbaker's Conservatives, the rest to splinter parties), these figures had become virtually meaningless...

...As a result of opposition disclosures in Parliament, Pearson was compelled to institute a Royal Commission inquiry into the sordid affair under Chief Justice Frederic Dorion of the Quebec Superior Court...

...Most prominent are measures to head off inflation and extend government control of the economy...

...Then there are recent reports, as yet unsubstantiated, that a number of MPS have been interviewed by police in connection with a notorious multi-million dollar bankruptcy- arson syndicate in Quebec...

...He asked for a majority without, by and large, troubling to tell the voters precisely what he intended to do with that enlarged mandate-other than that the efficient handling of government business demanded it...

...Half-way through the Commission hearings, under still not fully explained bizarre circumstances, simply "walked out" of the top security prison in Montreal where he was being held pending extradition proceedings...

...A lawyer acting on behalf of U.S...

...The Conservatives thus come nearest to being a national Canadian party...

...Thus the Canadian political scene is more clouded than ever after an election which has added to the ethnic split between English and French Canada, a heightened split between the urban and rural areas...

...Given the recent resignation of Finance Minister Walter Gordon-blundering author of the disastrous first Liberal budget, and of the government's anti-American legislation, who has been made the scapegoat for the decision to call the election-Pearson is faced with the difficult task of finding a new man to handle the problems...

...For good measure he added that his finding had been "based upon evidence" during the hearings...

...Significantly, though, there was one issue on which the opposition members of the recessed Parliament (originally scheduled to reassemble in September) probably would have joined forces to bring the government down with a motion of no confidence: if Pearson failed to clean house as a result of the shocking revelations of the so-called "Dorion Enquiry...

...Amid growing reports that the ill-fated Prime Minister plans to quit before Christmas-though a massive Cabinet shake-up seems more likely at the present juncture -the conservative Liberals are now seeking ways to continue their minority rule...

...He was recaptured several months later, however, and the criminal whose name has become a by-word in Canada has finally been sentenced to a long prison term in Laredo, Texas...

...Even more incredibly, as soon as the judicial report came out, Pearson took the unprecedented step of writing to the Chief Justice that "if such an error [of dates] has crept into the report, I assume that you will wish to make a statement to correct it"-to which Dorion, in defiance of all pressures, replied acidly, " I haven't an iota of change to make in my report...

...The principal one was his argument that it is difficult to administer a country with a minority in Parliament...

...Pearson wanted a broadly based mandate-but he won 106 of his 131 seats in only two out of Canada's 10 provinces...

...This discrepancy resulted in opposition charges that he had misled and lied to the House about his knowledge of the Rouleau scandal...

...This apparent contradiction leaves many questions unanswered...

...The details of the scandals themselves, which inextricably linked the Pearson regime with some of the most unsavory Mafia-style international crime syndicates, perhaps deserve some brief recapitulation: Lucien Rivard of Montreal, together with other notorious underworld figures, had been indicted in absentia in Houston, Texas, on charges of conspiring to smuggle heroin with an estimated "retail value" of $200 million into the United States by way of Canada and Mexico...

...Favreau himself was found remiss in failing promptly to inform Pearson that his own Parliamentary secretary, Guy Rouleau, had been linked to the bribery attempt...

...Already there is talk in some quarters of Quebec that because the Pearson government appears to have been weakened, the provinces may be able to press French-Canadian demands (especially the "associate state" idea) with even greater vigor...

...The opposition has charged that Pearson's fiscal policies have served to speed up the pace of inflation...

...Yet the significance of the election lies not in the almost unchanged number of Liberal members of the new House of Commons, but in the geographic distribution of their supporters...

...Favreau, not exactly famed for a keen intellect, decided in his own wisdom that there were insufficient grounds for prosecution...

...In referring to his own knowledge of the affair, Pearson had given a much later date, November 24, 1964...

...1963, and three short of the Prime Minister's dreamed-of majority...

...It points out that prices have risen 5.4 per cent since Pearson took office-far in excess of the normal increment-and contends that the government, although parroting American declarations of war on poverty, is in fact employing economic policies that amount to a war on the poor...

...The Liberals retained the lion's share of seats in the central provinces of Quebec (they did not, however, win an expected landslide there), and Ontario (where, especially in the Toronto area, an "English backlash" against Liberal solicitousness of French Canada failed to materialize...

...Eight weeks of campaigning before a determinedly apathetic electorate gave Pearson's party 131 seats, only two more than it won in Rolf Spencer-Brummel, a previous contributor, is a Canadian political scientist and CBC commentator...

...which in turn is reportedly connected with a series of gangland slayings recently revealed in the press...

...he could not claim suddenly that his program had been desperately frustrated by an unreasonable and difficult Parliament in Ottawa...

...It was this failure which almost certainly prevented the Liberal sweep of Quebec which he confidently expected...

...Pearson himself led his party in those three elections, twice losing, and in 1963 failing to gain an over-all majority in the House of Commons...

...After all, attempts at house cleaning that were reluctantly made-such as the dismissal of several severely compromised top government aides, and the "removal" of the Justice Minister to another portfolio-were due only to relentless pressure from an opposition bent on preventing a "cover-up" job...

...He could not have it both ways...

...Refusing a $20,000 bribe and fearing for his life after apparent threats, he lodged a complaint with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who in turn informed Justice Minister Guy Favreau, also Pearson's trusted chief lieutenant in Quebec...

...Even many of Pearson's own supporters feel he displayed the worst kind of judgement in allowing himself to be persuaded to call an election at this time...

...So it may well be that the real reason for the election was the Prime Minister's determination to escape further injury to his reputation by heading off Parliamentry defeat over embarrassing subject matter (particularly in the light of rumors about more scandals...

...But the Liberals were left for the first time in recent history virtually without representation in five out of Canada's ten provinces-a mockery of that party's hopes of becoming nationally based...

...Even in Montreal-French-Canadian and Liberal territory-Diefenbaker attracted a large and enthusiastic crowd at an orderly meeting, while at a sparsely attended rally there Pearson was howled down despite the strong-arm techniques of Liberal party stalwarts...

...But what reasons did the Prime Minister give...

...The MPS concerned subsequently reneged on any pledge of support...

...But as Pearson himself declared again and again in the weeks before the campaign, he personally was very proud of his record in introducing legislation...

...The very fact that the country had had three previous elections since 1958, two of them resulting in minority governments, foreshadowed the continued splitting of political power that has induced a chronic state of instability here, with Quebec and other provinces increasingly exerting centrifugal influence...

...Similarly, on the subject of the "Rivard affair" and other scandals, Pearson high-handedly contrived to wave aside the whole sordid business as if those who talked about it were utterly contemptible...

...Defying pundits and pollsters, he increased his party's representation in most provinces...

...The main opposition party, John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives, won in 99 constituencies, four more than in 1963...

...More important, his initial poor choice of Cabinet colleagues from that group, and his subsequent failure to sever old ties by ridding himself of its erring or inept members, was another reason that the majority mandate he sought eluded him...

...The pledge to restore honesty and integrity to government became the principal rallying call of the Conservative party, as Diefenbaker condemned the Pearson regime for bringing "national and international dishonor" on Canada...

...The same consideration applies to impending legislation, some of which has so far only been hinted at...

...If these results were disappointing to Liberal politicians, they were no less discouraging to top civil servants who negotiate on behalf of the Federal government in Ottawa on various problems threatening national unity...

...The 10 seats Diefenbaker retained in Quebec, and the 25,000 new votes he picked up in the province despite a lower over-all poll compared to 1963, were far in excess of what the Conservative, expected in this bastion of Liberalism...

...It is trouble of the spirit as well as of the body of Canada...

...Those involved in the affair, all French-Canadians, were by no means little people in the government...

...Moreover, his campaign revealed boundless arrogance...

...A Liberal Minister, Yvon Dupuis, has resigned and is currently before the courts for allegedly receiving a bribe in connection with a race track franchise...

...This matter is currently before the courts and cannot be discussed in detail...

...When it was all over, two of Pearson's Cabinet ministers had gone down to defeat, and Diefenbaker had succeeded in healing the rift in the Conservative party...

...authorities seeking Rivard's extradition was pressured by repeated telephone calls from government offices in Ottawa to drop his opposition to bail...

...The opposition parties were engaged in a conspiracy, as real as it was unofficial, to keep the minority Liberal government in power...

...It is so serious that, if Canada is to be saved, it somehow must be gathered up into a great new mood of confidence and dedication in which the issues threatening its very existence must be made clear...

...Periodic motions of "no confidence," which in theory can topple a government, became sham battles with the various opposition parties scrambling to avoid being found on the same side of the fence at the same time...

...That argument would have been valid if the Pearson government had not been able to bring its legislation th rough the House in the last two and a half years...

...He will have at his disposal an abundance of talent from Quebec and Ontario, but the rest of the country, having returned hardly any Liberal Mps-is likely to lose its traditional government representation From the time the election was first announced on September 7, it was widely held to be unnecessary...

...Two splinter parties saw their representation reduced...

...One would have thought, therefore, that the next election would only be called for reasons so compelling as to leave no room for doubt about its wisdom...

...Diefenbaker-Long and unjustly declared politically dead and buried -conducted an astute and strong campaign...

...Examining the principals involved- as well as an interminable procession of Montreal underworld witnesses with long criminal records including murder charges, and a Liberal party organizer and "fund raiser"-the Dorion Commission found that men close to the ministries of Pearson's government, and possibly only one step removed from Cabinet office, were implicated in underworld schemes to help Rivard win release from prison...

...They now see their hands tied even more than before the balloting...

...Lest it be thought that too gloomy a picture has been painted in this report, let me conclude with a comment from one of Canada's more reputable newspapers on the country's latest difficulties: "It is a deep and serious trouble which may prove to be fatal...

...The New Democratic party also moved slightly ahead from 17 to 21 seats, but it significantly increased its over-all popular vote...

...Two other Ministers, one of them State Secretary Maurice Lamontagne, have been linked to "shady deals" in which they were said to have obtained furniture from a bankrupt firm whose owners reportedly fled the country...

...In any case, Pearson will have to move with much more adroitness than he has so far been able to show to prevent the creeping disintegration of the country...

...Nor did the Prime Minister himself emerge unscathed from the judicial enquiry: The Dorion report, in a passage which appeared to cast doubt upon Pearson's word, said that the Prime Minister was informed as early as September 2, 1964 of Rouleau's involvement...

...He finally had to beat a hasty retreat without delivering his speech...

...He has also reinforced his Parliamentary ranks with men of recognized ability, who are likely to become formidable opposition spokesmen...

...Meanwhile, too, T. C. ("Tommy") Douglas, leader of the New Democratic party, cried that "the slimy fingers of the underworld reach into the councils of this nation...

...Indeed, the ill-fated Pearson regime was a minority government in name only...

...Not surprisingly, the scandals eclipsed the national unity theme as the opposition's major campaign issue...

...While the Justice Minister's executive secretary was forced to resign, and while another Member of Parliament and ministerial aide (who has since also resigned) faces two criminal charges in connection with the Rivard affair, that has not been the only recent scandal...