Enter George Drew

Klieg lights threw a hot white glare over the green chamber in Canada's House of Commons last week. For the first time, newsreel cameramen were allowed into the crowded galleries to film the opening of a session of Parliament.

The cameras got action right away. Louis St. Laurent rose to make his first appearance in Parliament as Prime Minister and leader of the reigning Liberal Party. He was tense and nervous. Directly across the aisle from him sat George Alexander Drew, the new boss of the rival Progressive Conservative Party. St. Laurent started to read the traditional greeting. It turned out to be a backhanded slap at Conservative Party policy. "Politics . . . cheap politics," cried the Tory M.P.s.

Planning for Tomorrow. All over Parliament Hill, in the hotel lobbies and other downtown meeting places, the game of federal politics was under way. The Liberals could hold office legally until 1950. Nobody expected them to stay the limit. All parties were acting as though a general election might come tomorrow.

The Liberals used the House opening as an occasion for a nationwide party rally. Twenty delegates from each of the nine provinces crowded into Ottawa's Chateau Laurier for an executive meeting of the National Liberal Federation. Before them, Leader St. Laurent shook off some of his reserve. "Our opponents will huff and they will puff," he said, "but . . . they will not blow this country off the course which our party and its leaders have set."

Across town in the swank La Touraine cocktail lounge, Conservative Leader Drew also worked on political fences. Flanked by two pressagents and his politicking wife Fiorenza, Drew gave a party for the parliamentary press gallery.

Fighting All the Way. George Drew's plans had been worked out in secret presession caucuses with Conservative M.P.s. By week's end, he had made plain the strategy decided. His party was going to fight all the way; it planned to criticize every government measure as it had never done under former leader John Bracken. Drew lost no time in starting. On the first day, when Prime Minister St. Laurent introduced a motion, Drew found a technical flaw in it, forced St. Laurent to withdraw.

The next Tory target was the throne speech, the government's statement of policy. The speech hinted at tax cuts, promised bigger baby bonuses for large families and a royal commission to study national cultural development.

George Drew called the speech "inadequate." Taxes, he said, should have been cut long ago. The proposed commission on culture was a device for stalling on such problems as television and government-owned radio. For an hour and 45 minutes he lectured the Liberals on the faults of centralizing power in the federal government.

A Soft Answer. Soft-voiced Louis St. Laurent tried to get off an effective reply, but his first, dignified answers were no match for Drew's slashing style. Then St. Laurent unsheathed the Liberals' ultimate weapon: "The government is prepared to go to the people at any time on this issue." Only this week did he start cutting George Drew down to size.

In the government printing offices, the King's Printer had begun turning out an order for 400,000 copies of General Election Instructions, a guide for election officials. If events in the House of Commons kept going the way George Drew had started them, the books might be needed sooner than most expected.

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