Final Round

The heat wave caught Canadian politicians in the final round of the general election campaign that ends June 27, but the weather did not stop them. They just peeled off their coats and went on with the job. In the past eight weeks Liberal Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent and Tory Leader George Drew had crisscrossed the Dominion in an appeal for votes. Despite all their oratory, the country's political temperature had stayed close to normal. It apparently would remain that way until election day.

For the Liberal party, in power since 1935, an unruffled electorate was all to the good. Under Canada's British-style parliamentary system, the Liberals could call the election any time before their five-year term ended in 1950. They had picked the June date as the best one. It was too early for farmers to be upset by any threat of a crop failure, too soon for most voters to be deeply worried about Canada's darkening business outlook. Most important of all, the June election gave the fighting Opposition Leader, George Drew, the shortest possible time to organize his ranks and drum up vote-getting issues.

The Record. The Liberals went to the country on their record. They promised nothing new, but they pointed with pride to their welfare-state program, baby bonuses, unemployment insurance, etc. The Tories accepted these measures and, in the fashion of U.S. Republicans, promised to administer them better.

With no outstanding differences between his own and the Liberals' platform, Tory Leader Drew never found any major issue. But he rapped the government's aircraft policy, charging that the Canadian-built Canadair planes were unsafe. He attacked the government-controlled Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and the Liberals' monetary policy. George Drew's main theme was that the Liberals were stifling free enterprise and that Canada's third party, the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), would choke it off completely.

The Only Worry. How effective Drew's attacks had been against the Liberals would not be known until election night. There were signs, however, that his campaign had hurt the socialist CCF. In last week's provincial election in British Columbia, the CCF had its worst setback since entering B.C. politics.

If the Liberals had any fears that Drew's campaigning would have a similar effect on them, they failed to show it. The only thrust that seemed to worry them was the argument being used against St. Laurent in his home province of Quebec. Tory campaigners charged that St. Laurent was centralizing power in Ottawa, and thus undermining the autonomy of the predominantly French and Roman Catholic province. In driving home this point, the Tories got help from Liberal-hating independent candidates like Montreal's elephantine Mayor Camillien Houde. Said Houde: "Better for us to have in Ottawa a Protestant prime minister who will defend our rights than a French-speaking Roman Catholic who will betray us."

Such an inflammatory issue, if it caught on at the last minute, could reduce the Liberals' share of Quebec's important bloc of 73 seats in the 262-member parliament.

Elsewhere across the politically calm Dominion the Liberals were confident that their careful election timing had left their opponents with no effective argument for a change in government.

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