Friday, Mar. 15, 1963
Four-Way Split
Less than a year after one national election, Canadians are deep in another, involving the same national leaders, the same issues and slogans, and the melancholy prospect that the results on April 8 will be as inconclusive as the last time.
For although Prime Minister John Diefenbaker is given less chance to squeak through again, there seems to be no national consensus, or leadership, capable of effectively uniting the western farmers, Ontario factory workers, underemployed Nova Scotia coal miners, or Quebec's restless French Canadians, who seem more and more anxious to move into a separate world of their own. In Vancouver's Executive Club last week, a member complained: "Yesterday, for the first time in my life, my wife asked me how to vote in the election." He paused. "And you know something? For the first time in my life, I couldn't tell her."
"Vote Canadian." His Cabinet splintered, his campaign coffers badly depleted, his candidacy denounced by three of the country's four leading Conservative newspapers, Diefenbaker made what he could of his underdog role. Playing it all the way, he compared himself to Harry Truman, giving 'em hell in 1948. "Let 'em have it, John," sang out his loyal Conservative supporters. But Diefenbaker did not have much ammunition. Lacking real issues, he turned his prairie-evangelist oratory on Liberal Party "obstructionism," cried that the Liberals had sabotaged his parliamentary program--which, in fact, the dillydallying Diefenbaker government never actually presented in full to Parliament for debate. Though he promised not to run an anti-U.S. campaign, Diefenbaker found subtle ways to bring up U.S. meddling in Canadian affairs. In Winnipeg, Man., he appeared beneath a banner urging "Vote Canadian, Vote Conservative," a slogan thought up by a local Esso dealer and described by a Tory strategist "as the only way of being anti-American without letting your slip show."
If Diefenbaker played Truman, Liberal Party Leader Lester Pearson sounded discouragingly like Adlai Stevenson in his off moments. A onetime university professor, Canadian External Affairs Secretary, and 1957 Nobel Peace prizewinner for his work on the Korea and Suez crises at the U.N., Pearson is respected at home and abroad. But he is hardly the knock-'em-dead campaign politician. He seemed out of place before large rallies, despite a talent for the bright line and the quick quip. When Diefenbaker grandly announced that he would not debate against his competitors on TV because "I have no competitors," Pearson found it "a trifle egotistical of him. In the most kindly way, I would suggest to him that he must not let failure go to his head."
The Provinces & the Demagogue. The prairie provinces, from which Diefenbaker comes, are enjoying a farm prosperity, and will probably remain loyal to him--as they did last time. But Ontario and
Quebec, the two most populous provinces, where 160 of the Commons' 265 seats are concentrated, seem lost to Diefenbaker. Ontario is considered Liberal territory, and Pearson may well pick up enough seats there for a plurality in Parliament. The balance of power, as in the last Parliament, would then probably lie with two smaller splinter parties. In the unpredictable far west, T. C. ("Tommy") Douglas' laborite New Democratic Party is likely to gain a few seats. And in crucial Quebec, the swing seems to be to the Social Credit party of a back-country demagogue named Real Caouette.
Considered something of a clown in last year's election, Caouette, a smalltown Chrysler dealer who had built up a wide following for his Sunday TV tirades in French, startled everyone by building Social Credit's Quebec strength from zero to 26 seats. This time, touring the province in a gold-colored Chrysler. Caouette has the added advantage of confidence. His platform is stunningly simple: pacifism and prosperity--"Nuclear arms, no; bread and butter, yes!" With it goes an espousal of the old Social Credit "funny money" doctrine (each man should get a cash payment representing his share of the difference between money in circulation and the gross national product) that Caouette says no one need understand to vote for. On the status of French Canada, Caouette's slogan is "National unity, yes; assimilation, never!" For French Canadians, he says, "we did more in a few weeks in Ottawa than all the old-line parties since Confederation. We were the yeast of the last Parliament. Give us 60 seats or more this time and I can tell you that you have seen nothing yet." He has no hope of carrying more than his own province, but could deny Pearson a clear-cut victory and become a man to reckon with when it comes time to form a coalition.
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