Trudeau: 'What Are We Doing?'

There are more than 6.6 million French-speaking citizens in officially bilingual Canada (pop. 23 million), and last week most of them were bitterly unhappy. They felt themselves betrayed on that most sensitive of Canadian issues, language rights, by a fellow Francophone, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. To most French minds, Trudeau's government had utterly capitulated to 2,670 English-speaking airline pilots, who had choked off air transport in the country for nine days to oppose the use of French as well as English in the air-traffic control towers that govern the airspace over French-speaking Canada. It was yet another sign of the malaise that has gripped the ruling federal Liberal Party, and it could hardly have been more embarrassing personally to Trudeau; his very presence in Ottawa was supposed to show that French Canadians could prosper equally within Canada's loosely run confederation.

Strident Opinions. It is typical of Canadian sensitivity over language that such an arcane dispute could touch off a full-blown national crisis. The fight, sparked when the Ottawa government proposed extending bilingual air-traffic control to Montreal's busy international airports and later to Ottawa, did exactly that. The Canadian Air Traffic Control Association and the conservative Canadian Air Line Pilots Association (CALPA), both dominated by English Canadians, condemned the decision as unsafe. English, they claimed, is the international language of air communication. The assertion was a half-truth: in Europe, for example, air-traffic controllers at local airports work in their own language; international airports are bilingual, and English is the language of international flights. But the pilots' resistance brought into focus longstanding English-Canadian resentment over federal bilingual policies and the presence of "French power," meaning Trudeau and his colleagues from Quebec, in Ottawa. Says Canada's Commissioner of Official Languages, Keith Spicer: "A lot of strident opinions came out of the woodwork that have always been there but didn't have a hobby horse to ride on."

With the Montreal Olympics approaching (see SPORT), the federal government finally got the airline pilots to agree to arbitration of their grievance. The terms of the deal, though, drove French Canadians to despair. The government pledged not to go ahead with its plans for bilingual flight unless a three-person judicial inquiry unanimously found that bilingual traffic control was compatible with air safety. Their findings must also be ratified by an unusual free vote in the House of Commons. The pilots, on the other hand, pledged nothing. They did not even agree to honor the judges' decision if it went against them.

One of Trudeau's oldest and closest comrades-in-arms from Quebec, Environment Minister Jean Marchand, resigned from the Cabinet in protest. The Quebec National Assembly unanimously approved a resolution supporting the rights of French-speaking pilots. Said Rene Levesque, leader of Quebec's Separatist Parti Quebecois: "It's proof that the people who would have us believe in a bilingual Canada from sea to sea have failed." More than ever, Canada seemed destined to remain une maison divisee between factions representing the two contending languages. Says Spicer: "Even moderate French-speaking Canadians today believe that they have been shafted."

The dispute has measurably extended Canadian disenchantment with Trudeau. His government, rocked recently by major and minor scandals, has been behaving fitfully for more than a year. In that time, two other Cabinet ministers have resigned--one in disagreement over economic policy, the other after being convicted of contempt of court for criticizing a judge's verdict. Voters are chafing under wage and price controls rushed into existence nine months ago to combat a 10.6% inflation rate, which has since declined to 8.9%. Recovery of the sluggish Canadian economy still lags far behind that of the U.S. (first quarter G.N.P. in Canada rose at an annual rate of 2.7%; in the U.S. it rose 8.5%). The latest findings of the Canadian Gallup poll are that the government enjoys the confidence of only 31% of the electorate, v. 43% for its chief rival, the Progressive Conservatives.

Under the circumstances, it may not be surprising that many French Canadians are asking, as Trudeau himself demanded during the height of the latest language battle, "What the hell are we doing within this country?"

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