Once More with Feeling

At a shopping center near Toronto last week, a young girl burst through the security guard around Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 53, and planted a kiss on his cheek. Another woman on the fringe of the crowd gushed: "He still has the aura." It was hard to believe that Trudeaumania--as Canadians called their particular political fervor four years ago--was again sweeping the land. But at the weary end of a seven-week campaign leading up to next week's national election, it was evident that Canadians were still fascinated with their Prime Minister.

Whether they were sufficiently entranced to re-elect him was in fact the major issue of the campaign, since he had acquired as many opponents as supporters during his four years in power. As TIME'S Ottawa Bureau Chief Lansing Lamont reported last week, Canadians "remember the sense of expectancy that Trudeau generated in 1968, but have come to realize that he has generally governed Canada with more cautious pragmatism than panache." The Prime Minister was also suffering from television overexposure and a perilously short temper. Once he had demanded of Western farmers: "Why should I sell your wheat?" On another occasion, he rebuffed a group of demonstrators with the sarcastic comment "Where's Bia-fra?" Still another time, he told a group of striking mail-truck drivers to "mangez de la merde."

Such gaffes might have been politically disastrous for Trudeau if he were not pitted against the Canadian whom many would vote most difficult to elect. Robert Stanfield, 58, an able former Premier of Nova Scotia, is eminently qualified for the job of Prime Minister, in every particular except political flair. He seems to be everybody's fumbling, bumbling "Uncle Bob," a gray personality whose speeches seldom arouse the electorate. A traveling rock band and miniskirted "Stanfield Girls" have been recruited to add color to his campaign --but they are not enough.

Stanfield nonetheless has a convincing issue in unemployment. Some 7.1% of Canadians are out of work. Everywhere, too, Canadians complain that the Unemployment Insurance Commission (which pays those out of work up to $100 a week) is being abused by "welfare loafers"--an unoriginal theme that Stanfield has incorporated into his campaign with his call that "it is time to end unemployment as a way of life across Canada and get Canadians back to work."

Quebec Nationalism. Trudeau proclaims that the major issue is "the integrity of Canada"--meaning a continued place in the Confederation for Quebec, where the separatist Parti Quebecois won 23.06% of the vote in provincial elections two years ago (but decisively lost two by-elections earlier this month). Trudeau has responded to Quebec nationalism by trying to assure French-Canadians of a larger role in Canada and particularly in government --which has cost him votes among English-Canadians. They have complained about French signs on post offices, and the use of their taxes to alleviate unemployment in Quebec, which is one of Canada's poorer provinces.

On the other hand, the past four years have seen energetic strides toward a new and more independent foreign policy. Trudeau beat Richard Nixon to Moscow by twelve months, and Canada established diplomatic relations with China two years ago. Canada under Trudeau has also shown considerable toughness in resisting U.S. demands to revalue the Canadian dollar and rewrite a pact on auto trade that has worked more in Canada's favor than the U.S. expected when the agreement was negotiated in 1965. But Canadian nationalists were disappointed by government proposals merely to review takeovers of Canadian companies by U.S. corporations--which already dominate the economy--and not to set up some machinery to keep more businesses in Canadian hands.

Still, a third party has generated the most heat in the campaign--the New Democratic Party, which is socialist-oriented and is already in power in the Western provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. N.D.P. Leader David Lewis has stumped the country accusing "corporate welfare bums" of paying less than their share of taxes and in some cases no taxes at all. The latest Gallup poll gives the New Democrats 21% of the vote, the Conservatives 31% and the Liberals 44%, only 1% less than in 1968 when they won 155 seats in the 264-seat House of Commons.

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