Running Start

With a sense of pride and no little awe at the crunching majority they had voted Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservative Party in the national elections fortnight ago (TIME, April 14), Canadians sat back last week to see what Diefenbaker would do with it.

He did not keep them waiting long. Even before he flew back from a brief holiday in Bermuda, the government's Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources was at work on a massive $250 million road-building program designed to open up the Far North, give substance to the Prime Minister's fervent, oft-voiced "vision of national destiny." The nation's farmers, hit by sagging income since 1952, were temporarily propped up by new federal price supports in six key commodities. The new Tory government was off to a running start--and taking an excited nation with it.

But where are they running? With an almost theatrical sense of timing, the final report of the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects--a special five-man board appointed three years ago by the Liberal government of Louis St. Laurent--came out last week with a thoughtful, well-documented prediction on what Canada may be in 1980. The commission's general conclusion: a largely urban, industrialized land of 27 million (v. 17 million today), a gross national product of $80 billion (v. $30 billion), a living standard higher by two-thirds.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.