Correspondents' Correspondence
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Skirmish in Canada Montreal—Canadians seem to...
...Liberal strategists apparently felt they could hold on to power if a vote were held now...
...That the leaders of national parties are Quebecers has become almost axiomatic in Canada—Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Chrétien, and Charest, to cite a few...
...For him to have any success in June, however, he must not only win voters back from Reform but make headway in his home province of Quebec...
...Martin's main achievement has been to reduce the budget deficit sharply (from $42 billion to $9 billion) through substantial expenditure cuts that are forcing Canadians to rethink their assumptions about the role of government...
...Yet despite that accomplishment, plus some fine trade and interest rate numbers, there is still a sense of unease in the country owing to high unemployment and the fallout from the economic restructuring of the past 10 years...
...Moreover, balloting is not mandatory until mid1998, and Canadian prime ministers with majority governments rarely go to the people before they have served four years of their five-year terms (Chrétien is at three and a half...
...Actually, Canada has done reasonably well since the Liberals regained power in the fall of 1993...
...Since the Charlottetown agreement (recognizing Quebec as "a distinct society") was rejected in a nation-wide 1992 referendum, there has been a Federal election (1993), parliamentary balloting in Quebec (1994), and an Ontario provincial election, not to mention Quebec's emotionally draining referendum on separation (1995...
...Then, in late April, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and his governing Liberal Party called another national election for June 2. Some here see the campaign as unnecessarily early...
...The Liberals have been looking a lot like their Progressive Conservative (PC) predecessors...
...Still, they stand high in the opinion polls (over 40 per cent in a multiparty system) mainly because of the lack of a coherent opposition...
...The reason, in part, has been the belief that having a native of the 80 per cent Francophone province at the top of a party's ticket might mute separatist tendencies there...
...Skirmish in Canada Montreal—Canadians seem to be trekking to the polls with unusual frequency of late...
...Under the stewardship of Minister of Finance Paul Martin, the economy has been solid if not spectacular...
...They have reneged on their promise to scrap the widely despised Goods and Services Tax, reassessed their opposition to NAFTA, and re-evaluated their longtime commitment to Big Government...
...The party has no mechanism for reviewing, much less replacing its leader...
...by a majority against a minority," adding that, "in no democracy in the world was anything ever done that was so iniquitous, so unacceptable...
...Whatever its outcome, the election will have been but a skirmish in an ongoing political war.—Harold M. Waller...
...A conservative grouping with the bulk of its support in the Western provinces, Reform has been trying to break through in other parts of the country, but it has yet to emerge as a truly national alternative to the Liberals...
...Still, were he to lose his own seat, or face the prospect of forming a minority government, he might well decide to retire...
...However, this doesn't seem to have worked for the Liberals, whose leader is very unpopular among Frenchspeaking voters in Quebec and may even lose his own seat in Shawinigan...
...Indeed, Chrétien was a lightning rod for separatist anger at the time of the 1995 Quebec referendum...
...Nationalists in Quebec don't see Chrétien as a strong representative of their interests, and they blame him for helping to push through the 1982 Constitution, which was implemented without the consent of Quebec's ruling Parti Québécois...
...Quebec's Premier, Lucien Bouchard, recently assailed that Constitution as an "imposition...
...Next comes the venerable PC...
...The country is weary of the divisive politics of national unity that inevitably are being revisited...
...And his continued presence in Ottawa has raised concerns among Liberals of an anti-Federalist backlash...
...Although it won a pitiful two seats in 1993 after much of its constituency defected to the more conservative Reform Party, it remains the Liberals' most plausible rival...
...The Official Opposition, quaintly (and now inaccurately) styled Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, is led by secessionists who field candidates only in Quebec...
...Just behind this Bloc Québécois (BQ) in the House of Commons is Preston Manning's Reform Party...
...The party is being gamely rebuilt by its young, charismatic leader, Jean Charest...
...This would enable the Liberals to rethink the party leader's role in opposing Quebec's thrust for what its present rulers call sovereignty...
Vol. 80 • May 1997 • No. 8
