Flag by Committee

Few Canadian parliamentary issues have generated more heat and less light than the fight over a national flag. In May, Liberal Prime Minister Lester Pearson unfurled his choice for a flag -- three red maple leaves on a white ground, bounded by two blue bars. And for the next six weeks, Canada's House of Commons argued about it in a nerve-frazzling filibuster led by Tory Opposition Leader John Diefenbaker. At last Diefenbaker wryly allowed as how the debate was going nowhere. So why not submit the issue to a 15-man committee whose "unanimous decision" would be binding? Since the Liberal minority government was not strong enough to do anything else, Pearson reluctantly agreed.

Last week, after 45 meetings spent studying some 1,200 designs, the com mittee submitted its choice to Parliament: a red maple leaf on a white field with heavy red bars on either side.

As expected, the vote was not unanimous -- therefore not binding. Yet it offered Pearson the first real hope in weeks that he might finally get a national flag to help give his fractious country a sense of nationhood and unity.

Pearson's new source of hope springs from a sudden weakening in Diefenbaker's Conservative leadership. Diefenbaker has long argued that Conservatives would never accept a flag that left out the Union Jack as a symbol of Canada's historic ties to Great Britain.

He expected that the five Conservatives on the flag committee would vote accordingly. Four did -- but not Quebec's Theogene Ricard, and the final committee vote was 10-4 (the chairman would vote only in case of a tie). Further more, all ten Quebec Conservatives in the House of Commons appear fed up with Diefenbaker's obstructionist tac tics at a time when pressing legislation is awaiting Parliamentary action. After hearing the committee report, they cau cused and announced that they will go their own way, supporting the com mittee flag.

If Pearson can marshal a few more Conservative votes and get around another Diefenbaker filibuster, he may yet have his national flag -- without calling for a vote of confidence and risking a general election.

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