New Challenge for Trudeau

In Ottawa's stately federal Parliament building, a hush fell over the crowded public galleries last Wednesday night as the House of Commons prepared to vote. The issue: an opposition motion expressing no confidence in the minority Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau because its proposed 1974 budget allegedly failed to deal effectively with Canada's roaring inflation. Minutes later, when House Speaker Lucien Lamoureux announced the tally--137 votes in favor of the motion to 123 against*-- opposition M.P.s exploded in a roar of delight and littered the green-carpeted chamber with a blizzard of tossed papers. Next day Governor General Jules Leger dissolved Parliament, as Canada's four political parties and 13 million voters geared up for a new national election on July 8.

The surprising fact was not that the government had fallen but that it had lasted as long as it did. Since the October 1972 election, which reduced the Liberal representation in Commons from 155 (an absolute majority) to 109, Trudeau has been able to stay in power only with the tacit support of the socialistic New Democratic Party. In return for N.D.P. backing, the Liberal government was forced to push through Parliament a series of N.D.P.-favored programs, including higher welfare payments, improved benefits for the aged and milk-and bread-price subsidies.

In recent weeks, however, the uneasy alliance of the Liberals and the New Democrats had shown signs of coming apart. Trudeau's legislative concessions were all but exhausted and many New Democrats were tired of being identified with the Liberals. Five weeks ago, the N.D.P. demanded an excess-profits tax on the windfalls of "corporate welfare bums" --New Democrat Leader David Lewis' favorite term for big corporations. When Trudeau and Finance Minister John Turner rejected the demands, Lewis flashed a bridge-burning signal: "We've concluded that there doesn't seem to be very much more that can come out of this government," he warned.

Angry Critics. Trudeau's budget, which called for higher levies on liquor and tobacco while abolishing taxes on other consumer goods, may have been the immediate catalyst for the end of his affair with the New Democrats and his subsequent defeat. But other developments in recent months helped make the Prime Minister's downfall seem predictable. One notable factor has been a strong political revival of the Conservative Party. A Gallup poll last month showed the Tories' popularity among voters to be up by 3% since February, while the Liberals' had dropped 3%.

Plodding, persistent Conservative Leader Robert Stanfield, 60, who is no match for Trudeau in charisma, has crisscrossed the country, building up support for his party. Stanfield has forcefully exploited Canadians' mounting impatience over the government's lackluster handling of inflation, which is currently running at about 10%. While Trudeau sought to blame external factors for Canada's mushrooming cost of living, Stanfield called for firm and prompt wage-price controls. The government's stand on inflation, he argued, was "cynical and incredible . . . a message of despair." A government report last month disclosed that prices in Canada rose more rapidly in 1973 than in the U.S., Britain, West Germany and France.

Adding to Trudeau's woes has been a series of crippling strikes by postal workers, river pilots and airport firemen. Angry critics suggested that the federal government, for whom all the strikers work, had met the crises with a minimum of negotiating skill.

Perhaps the biggest factor in Trudeau's decline has been his own political performance. Since he was first elected in 1968, the Prime Minister has managed to dissipate much of the popular enthusiasm--"Trudeaumania"--that for a time made him seem like a Canadian Kennedy. His coolness under pressure helped quench the fires of Quebec separatism that threatened Canadian unity at one time. But his unswerving determination to make Canada truly bilingual, his trendy ways and his flights of arrogance annoyed many English-speaking traditionalists. His seeming indifference to the problems of the Western provinces made him appear to some a spokesman for the hated Montreal-Toronto financial establishment that controls so much of Canada's economy. "He made the mistake of assuming the stance of Plato's philosopher-king," observes TIME'S Ottawa bureau chief William Mader. "He lectured Canadians on what was good for them, and, of course, he knew the answers. Rationality not politics, he thought, was the key to governing well."

New Image. Since the disastrous 1972 election, Trudeau has tried to create a more egalitarian and concerned image for himself. In July's election, the Liberals will be counting heavily on Trudeau's still formidable personal appeal, as well as on his argument that the opposition unfairly brought the government down before it had had a real chance to deal with inflation. The Tories and the New Democrats, for their part, will stress that the Liberals had their chance and mismanaged the economy. Most experts feel that the election will produce only another indecisive result, thereby giving Canadians their sixth minority government in the past 17 years.

* A11 106 Progressive Conservatives and 31 left-wing New Democrats voted for the motion. Opposing it were 108 of the 109 Liberals (one was absent because of illness), plus the 15 members of the right-wing Social Credit Party.

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