The Non-Victory

At the end of the long election night in Ottawa, a member of Liberal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson's entourage glanced disgustedly at a TV screen flashing the results. "It just seems incredible," he sighed. "All this effort, and nothing has changed." After 29 months of minority government, Mike Pearson had called the election--Canada's fifth in eight years--determined to win at least enough additional seats for no less than a 134-seat working majority. The voters gave him 131--only two seats more than he won in the last election. "The results," muttered Pearson, "are quite disappointing."

The Tired Cast. Even before all the votes were tallied, Pearson's friend, national campaign chairman and Finance Minister, Walter Gordon, resigned from the Cabinet, shouldering the blame for giving Pearson the bad advice to call an election. Yet Pearson was the man on the line, and the result was doubly shocking because his minority government had been relatively successful--pushing Canada's already booming economy to new peaks, improving federal-provincial relations, soothing the dangerous friction between French and English-speaking Canada, giving the country its own flag.

What Pearson and so many others failed to assess properly was Canada's weariness over so many elections, and its growing impatience with the two aging contenders--Pearson, 68, and Diefenbaker, 70--who have now faced each other four times in a row. As one observer put it: "Two dreary old men nobody wants--two character actors still making farewell tours in the sticks long after the public has retired them."

That might be a bit harsh. Yet in a campaign without any real issues, the most either man could promise was more, more, more to a prosperously contented nation that is already getting more every day--and expects it as a matter of course. Even the huge wheat sales to Russia and Red China (850 million bu. worth $1.7 billion in the past two years) were taken for granted; of 48 seats in the prairie provinces, Pearson's Liberals won exactly one. By the same token, last winter's series of influence-peddling scandals in Pearson's government seemed to have little carryover effect at the polls. Collectively, the voters opted for the status quo; having had a minority government that, for all its problems, gave them what they wanted, they saw no need for change--either to a majority for Pearson and his Liberals or a shift to the Conservatives and John Diefenbaker.

To Face the Fact. As it was, Diefenbaker won five more seats than last time around. He treated it as a major victory, thundered that if Pearson finds it impossible to carry on, "there is another large party which must be given the chance to form a government." The Conservative leader, of course, hardly intends to drag the country into still another election. He hopes instead to produce a situation in which it will be impossible for Pearson to govern when the new Parliament convenes in mid-January. He then hopes to force Pearson's resignation and lead the Governor General to call on the Conservatives to organize a new government. Few people take Diefenbaker seriously. For one thing, the Conservatives are deeply split over his own irascible, haphazard leadership, and many shudder at the thought of Diefenbaker's becoming Prime Minister again. For another, the small parties on which he must depend are strongly opposed to such a change.

If Pearson is now willing to face the fact that he cannot be more than a minority Prime Minister, he has an opportunity to pursue his program of economic growth and social legislation for the next two or three years. He is, however, a leader whose prestige has been seriously eroded.

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