Trudeau's Second Coming
WALLER, HAROLD M.
THANK YOU JOE CLARK Trudeau's Second Coming by harold m. waller PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU Montreal Aided by record-breaking good weather, Canada's politicians logged tens of thousands of miles...
...His vigorous finish and magnanimous concession may have saved his job as leader of a party noted for its harsh treatment of defeated leaders...
...His seeming ineptitude, combined with his backtracking on key election promises, such as the reduction of taxes and interest rates, hurt him sorely in crucial Ontario districts...
...Trudeau's subsequent retirement announcement in November surprised few, but the rest of the scenario is the stuff of good political novels...
...In general, he is expected to be marginally less close to the United States than his predecessor...
...that could not have been more brilliantly executed had they been planned in advance...
...And this, plus previous evidence of arrogance and stubbornness, gives pause at the outset of the second Trudeau era...
...THANK YOU JOE CLARK Trudeau's Second Coming by harold m. waller PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU Montreal Aided by record-breaking good weather, Canada's politicians logged tens of thousands of miles during the two-month campaign preceding this country's first winter election of the century, only to find after the February 18 balloting that they had changed few minds...
...Though aware of public opinion polls that showed the Liberals far ahead, despite their leadership vacuum, the Tories displayed singular parliamentary ineptitude in allowing themselves to be defeated on a vote of no confidence...
...It made a number of serious errors, welshed on key election promises, and totally miscalculated the effects of the controversial budget introduced by then Finance Minister John Crosbie in December...
...With Quebec a solidly Liberal bastion and the West equally solid for the Conservatives, elections actually are won or lost in Ontario, the largest and most competitive province...
...His return to power will add life to a political process that has already emerged from the dullness of the past...
...A key indicator of his foreign policy intentions will be his position on the boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games...
...Canada's is currently plagued by a budget deficit in excess of $10 billion??comparable to over a $100 billion deficit in the U.S...
...After a brief interlude at the center of power, Westerners again see the large central provinces dominating the political system...
...As for Quebec, it is ironic that in this critical period leading to the sovereignty-association referendum, expected to be held in May or June, the arch-foe of the secessionists is again unexpectedly in command...
...Thus in dealing with Alberta??as with Quebec and its separatist inclinations??Trudeau must demonstrate that Canada can and does work...
...There is a widespread feeling that Canada's future is more secure with Trudeau making the decisions on this issue, the seeming success of Clark's low-key approach to it notwithstanding...
...Clark was also the victim of various Trudeau moves??his retirement in the wake of personal rejection, the decision nevertheless to bring down the government, and his acceptance of a draft...
...The negative image was not dispelled by the successful handling of the Teheran caper, in which the Canadian ambassador, with the connivance of his government, spirited six American diplomats and dependents out of Iran...
...Clark was committed to the boycott, but Trudeau has equivocated...
...Lougheed has stated that he will make no price concessions...
...Trudeau conducted a carefully paced, rather listless campaign...
...For years regional disparities have been officially recognized by transferring equalization payments from the richer provinces to the poorer ones, and this implied concept of shared responsibility has obtained with respect to fuel as well...
...Once again the focus of attention was Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, an object of obloquy and scorn in the May 1979 election that resulted in his being forced out of office by the minority government of Joe Clark...
...Clark, in contrast, acquitted himself well...
...He avoided antagonistic extemporaneous remarks, ignored the national unity and constitutional issues, refused to debate the other leaders, and made almost no commitments or promises with regard to policy...
...The decisive contest was Ontario...
...Tru-deau promised not to impose the tax and throughout the campaign used the issue successfully as a club to hammer the Tories...
...The second factor was the incredibly intense aversion to Crosbie's 18 cents per gallon gasoline excise tax...
...This is characteristic of a system that uses single-member districts with plurality elections, and is exacerbated when more than two parties compete...
...Third, only a small shift in the popular vote was needed to bring about a major alteration in the relative strength of the parties in the Commons...
...The energy question also constitutes a challenge to the validity of the Federal system...
...In fact, he was more impressive on the hustings than he had been in the House of Commons as he argued the case for his economic and energy policies...
...The outcome was consistent with polls taken last November and December, and was a rebuff to analysts who doubted the possibility of a majority government...
...In the past Trudeau's actions often seemed to backfire in his home province...
...Canadians depend on gas??farmers, fishermen, and rural residents especially are big consumers??and were unwilling to accept Crosbie's prescription of "short term pain for long term gain...
...The majority government outcome ??with Trudeau's Liberals expected to hold 147 of the 282 seats in the Commons (one is yet to be decided), against 103 for the Progressive Conservatives and 32 for the New Democrats??is probably attributable to three main factors...
...After 16 years in opposition, Clark's Progressive Conservative Administration was unable to adjust quickly enough to the demands of power...
...A party platform was hastily patched together, but hardly used...
...From 1974-79, Trudeau's Liberal government allowed prescribed moderate increases that did not really satisfy the Albertans...
...Now Trudeau, who owes his majority to voters in the big consuming provinces of Ontario and Quebec and the disadvantaged Atlantic provinces, will be under pressure to confront Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed and achieve a better deal for central Canada...
...He has very few constraints, especially if he is indeed determined not to lead his party in another election...
...Still, he is one of the most interesting, entertaining and unpredictable statesmen among the Western leaders...
...But the Alberta situation is complicated by the fact that the Liberals hold only two seats out of 80 west of Ontario, both in Manitoba...
...Whether the economy will benefit is another matter...
...Trudeau's workable majority, however, does not signal an end to Canada's political problems...
...Any attempt to anticipate what the next number of years of Trudeau's stewardship will be like must take into account the context in which he agreed to resume the Liberal leadership, plus his majority government...
...In the area of foreign policy, the Prime Minister's statements betray a certain skepticism about President Car-ter's new-found anti-Soviet stance...
...Yet the Liberals picked up 32 seats in Ontario, the Atlantic provinces and Quebec...
...Some of these, such as energy, economics and federalism, are interrelated...
...Supporters of national unity understandably concluded that if Levesque wanted Trudeau out that badly, national unity would benefit from his return...
...The episode did stir up a brief flurry of prideful excitement, but the same actions would have been expected of any Canadian government...
...The first was the apparently sharp shift from antipathy toward TruHarold M. Waller is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill...
...Yet Quebec Premier Rene Levesque was so anxious to see Trudeau defeated in 1979 that he embarrassed his movement by supporting the Right-wing Social Credit Party in the hope that votes for it might help deny the Liberals a plurality in the Commons...
...Talk of a Liberal leadership change has certainly been suppressed for a while...
...Trudeau had few solutions to the problems of budget deficits, unemployment and inflation during his first 11 years in office and there is no indication that he has found significant new ideas during his nine months out of power...
...The cynical ploy failed for both Levesque, who ended up looking foolish, and Social Credit, which found itself seatless last month...
...deau last spring to disillusionment with Clark by the fall...
...Ever since opec began to raise the price of oil so dramatically in 1973-74, Alberta, which produces the bulk of the country's oil, has been anxious to see domestic prices rise toward world levels...
...The Liberals' popular vote only increased from 40 per cent in 1979 to nearly 44 per cent last month, while the Conservatives' drop was from 36 per cent to 33 per cent...
...Although talk of Western separatism is less consequential than the Quebec variety, the region's frustration is a reality and incorporating adequate Western representation into his government will be one of the Prime Minister's more nettlesome tasks...
...When Clark took office, he agreed to give his home province higher prices at about twice the previous rate...
Vol. 63 • March 1980 • No. 5
