Election Call

Canadian voters, who have long anticipated a general election this spring, finally got a date. The Liberal government headed by Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent last week wound up its business in the House of Commons, dissolved Parliament, called an election for June 10.

The Liberals, the New York Yankees of Canadian politics, controlled 167 of the House of Commons' 265 seats at dissolution, rank as odds-on favorite to stretch their 21-year rule by another four-or five-year term. They are presiding over an economy throbbing with prosperity and boasting a $282 million budget surplus, their ninth surplus in ten years. In the last session of Parliament, the government cut taxes, increased old-age pensions and "baby bonuses," i.e., mothers' allowances. It put through a national hospital insurance act. But for their political heavy artillery, the Liberals still rely mainly on the powerful personal appeal of Quebec-born Louis St. Laurent, who at 75 is leading his third national campaign.

Heading the Progressive Conservatives, the second-ranking party in the last Parliament, with 50 seats, is an eloquent prairie lawyer, John Diefenbaker, 62, of Prince Albert, Sask., who moved up to the Tory party leadership only four months ago. If Diefenbaker has trouble nicking the Liberals on straight parliamentary issues, he will face a powerful temptation to cash in on Canada's surging sense of national pride, campaign emotionally against foreign, i.e., U.S., influence in Canadian industry and culture.

Two minor parties will also batter the entrenched Liberals. The strength of the socialist Cooperative Commonwealth Federation has shrunk in an era of contentment and prosperity, seems unlikely to add many seats to the 22 it held in the last Parliament. The Social Credit party, a depression-born agrarian movement that turned right with prosperity, now controls the governments of Alberta and British Columbia, plans a major push in Eastern Canada this year to build up its Parliamentary bloc of 15. All of the opposition is encouraged by one Canadian political trend. Of the six provincial governments controlled by the Liberals as recently as 1944, four have been unseated.

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