New Power from Quebec

For 16 years, the French-speaking province of Quebec was a quaint backwater off the Canadian mainstream, slow to develop but full of lively tales about the grafting ways of Provincial Premier Maurice Duplessis and his Union Nationale party. Soon after the mighty Duplessis died in 1959, the Liberals came to power under a new Premier, Jean Lesage, 48, pledged to clean up and modernize Quebec. Last week Lesage took himself and his reform program to the polls in a snap election. The results were decisive: Lesage's Liberals gained nine seats to win a solid majority of 63 seats in the 95-member legislature, and established their leader as a major force in Canadian politics.

TV Hints. Like every other Canadian politician these days, French-speaking Lesage, a Quebec City lawyer, is a student of The Making of a President, 1960. During the campaign, he traveled 15,000 miles across the province in six weeks, and at the end he eagerly accepted a challenge to meet his opponent. Union Nationale Leader Daniel Johnson, in a Kennedy-Nixon style TV debate. Just to be on the safe side, three Lesage aides flew to Washington to find out if there were any tricks left out of the Kennedy manual. They returned with four helpful Kennedy-staff TV hints: Do not shave before 5 p.m., eat only a light supper, bask six minutes under a sun lamp, wear no makeup. In his no-minute pre-election debate, Lesage gave the urbane, polished performance of a man who knew precisely where he was going, and left Johnson appearing as if he did not.

But it was not all TV. On the stump, Lesage alternately roused crowds with shafts aimed at the Union Nationale's aromatic past ("Purgatory has not lasted long; hellfire is needed to purge them!"), and lectured to them on his nationalist theme that French Canada must come of age economically. His key issue was nationalization of Quebec's eleven private power companies. The opposition cried socialism, but drew little response in a nation where six of the ten provinces have 100% public power. Quebec's private companies operate mostly in rural areas, and, cried Lesage. do not have the resources to provide first-class service. Besides, their stockholders like Lesage's price: $350 million, with the province assuming $250 million in corporate debts. Nationalization, promised Lesage, would provide the power potential needed to attract modern industry to the remote reaches of the province. It would free French-speaking Canadians from long-established domination by English-speaking shareholders. It would bring new light to the far northern regions that now get flickery 25-cycle power.

Mistaken Maxim. Lesage's smashing victory made him a hot national property for the Liberals in Ottawa, particularly since the party historically alternates its leadership between French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians. Current Liberal Leader Lester Pearson, who took over from French Canadian Louis St. Laurent, is working hard to topple the five-month-old minority government of Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and to force new elections. One of the reasons Pearson did not win power in last June's elections was his failure to get Lesage's full support in Quebec. Following the provincial idea that it is politically foolish for a French Canadian leader to mix in a federal fight. Lesage sat the election out; 26 Quebec seats that might have tipped the national balance to the Liberals went to the funny-money Social Credit party of a demagogic auto dealer named Real Caouette. On the strength of his present popularity. Quebec's Lesage is expected to broaden his sights to include all of Canada.

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