Swinging Prime Minister

He is an attractive, wealthy intellectual and bon vivant who zips around in a Mercedes 300 SL sports car and goes in for strenuous sports (skin diving, skiing, brown belt in judo). He favors a far-out wardrobe that includes pastel shirts, trilby hats and green leather overcoats. He is a bachelor, and his fondness for pretty women is no secret. Considering these attributes, the last thing one would expect him to be is a politician, especially in Canada. Yet that is Pierre Elliott Trudeau's most recent profession. At 46, after only three years in Parliament and one year as Minister of Justice, Trudeau is about to become Canada's new Prime Minister.

Impatient & Restless. In February, when the Liberals' Lester Pearson, 70, announced his plans to retire after five years in office, no fewer than 20 candidates went after his job, including eight Cabinet ministers. Trudeau was only one of several strong contenders (TIME, Feb. 16), but he quickly drew ahead of the field. After waging a tireless cross-country campaign, he came to last week's Liberal Party convention in Ottawa as a front runner. At week's end Trudeau was elected party leader on the fourth ballot by a vote of 1,203 to 954 over the nearer of his two main opponents. Thus he will formally succeed Pearson as Prime Minister some time later this month.

Trudeau's program will not depart dramatically from Pearson's policies. His toughest problem is Canada's constitutional crisis. Though Trudeau is a French Canadian and personally popular in Quebec, he is ideologically at odds with Quebec Premier Daniel Johnson and other Quebecois who want a quasi-independent status for the French-speaking province. Trudeau strongly opposes French separatism and argues persuasively for a genuinely federal system. As he sees it, Quebec should surrender its demands for special status, and English Canada should give up its vision of Canada as an essentially English-dominated country. Trudeau also opposes economic nationalism and any strict limits on U.S. investment in Can ada, believes only that there should be guidelines to prevent U.S. and other foreign investment from undermining Canada's political independence.

The big difference between Trudeau and Pearson is style. While Pearson is a largely unadventurous politician, Trudeau is an intellectual man on the go, impatient with old ideas and restless for results. Zoologist Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape, says that Trudeau has "animal qualities" that "bring him to the top of the heap." The son of a millionaire land and oil investor, he studied law at the University of Montreal and political economics at Harvard, went on to the London School of Economics and Paris' Ecole des Sciences Politiques. In 1948-49, he strapped on a knapsack and took off on a round-the-world trip. To avoid postwar red tape and to have a bit of a lark, he forged his visas and slipped illegally into Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia, where he was caught, locked up and then expelled. In Arab-held Jerusalem, after asking too many questions, he was arrested as an Israeli spy.

When he arrived back in Canada, Trudeau drifted from job to job, editing a political science magazine, teaching constitutional law at the University of Montreal and acting as a labor lawyer. Then, three years ago, he entered politics and won a parliamentary seat from an English-speaking constituency in Montreal. "After 15 years in the role of critic," he explained, "I think it's time to go out and try to do the job myself."

Devotion to Work. As Pearson's choice in the Justice Ministry, Trudeau distinguished himself as a brilliant administrator who--despite his playboy reputation--maintained an ascetic devotion to work. He drafted massive criminal code reforms, liberalizing divorce and abortion laws and legalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults. He also drew up most of the agenda for last February's constitutional conference in Ottawa, aimed at resolving French-English differences.

Trudeau could technically delay elections until the parliamentary term expires in 1970, but he is eager to challenge the opposition Tories, who also have a new leader in Nova Scotia's dour Robert Stanfield, 53. Thus, Trudeau is expected to dissolve Parliament by September and go to the country in an effort to win his own majority and a full five-year term for himself.

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