Triumph for Trudeau

Through the long months of winter and spring it seemed that 1974 might be remembered as the year of minority governments. Nearly every Western nation, from Britain to Italy to Denmark, was being run by minority or coalition governments narrowly holding on to power. Canada, which had been without a majority party since 1972, seemed only one more among their number. But this week Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau will lead into office a Liberal government with a margin that should be large enough to assure a full five-year term.

Contrary to most predictions that he would barely retain power, Trudeau, 54, emerged from last week's elections with a solid victory. "What Trudeau had going for him was precisely the malaise--roaring inflation and instability--of the industrialized world," reports TIME Correspondent William Mader. "The populace craved stability. It sensed that at this juncture there must be greater governmental strength."

Last Hurrah. The surprising strength of Trudeau's Liberal Party gave his government a comfortable 141 seats of 264 in the House of Commons. Trudeau's majority can now govern without relying on the support of one of Canada's splinter parties. The Conservatives lost twelve seats, ending up with 95, and the tiny, right-wing Social Credit Party dropped from 15 to eleven.

No party, however, suffered so badly as the New Democratic Party, which had held the balance of power in the House of Commons. Canadian voters blamed the N.D.P. pitilessly for having brought down the government two months ago by failing to support the Trudeau budget, thus provoking the election. For its blunder, the party lost nearly half its parliamentary seats, falling from 31 to 16, while David Lewis, its leader, was given an ignominious last hurrah by Toronto Freelance Writer Ursula Appolloni, making her first race. Good humoredly, Lewis bade farewell: "One of the basic democratic rights is the right for the people to be wrong."

Trudeau will need all his new parliamentary strength to deal with the immense problems that now face Canada. Chief among them, as in all industrial nations, is the soaring rate of inflation, which reached an annual rate of 11.4% last month--the highest in Canada since the Korean War.

Provoked largely by the fear of even more inflation to come, labor unrest is spreading. There have already been strikes and demands for wage increases by airline employees, policemen and lumbermill workers. Other chronic troubles are the country's economic dependence on imports (50% of its manufactured goods) and the smoldering but deeply felt antagonisms between French-and English-speaking Canadians and between Canada's regions, East and West.

Trudeau picked up many of these themes during the campaign, but unlike his two major opponents--Conservative Robert Stanfield, 60, and the N.D.P.'s Lewis, 65, he talked about them in more optimistic terms. Lewis concentrated his attacks on multinational corporations, which he described as the root of all economic evil. Stanfield, who in two earlier elections was defeated by Trudeau, claimed that the country's economy was in such grave trouble that immediate wage and price freezes should be imposed. That hardly endeared him to his more conservative supporters, and since the poor showing of such controls in both the U.S. and Britain, the proposal struck many voters as being unrealistic. But Trudeau chose to emphasize the country's existing strengths.

As he campaigned across the 4,500-mile breadth of the nation, the Prime Minister pointed out that Canada's inflation rate was still below the average of most of the industrialized world, now running at 15-16%. "Inflation is a problem, but let's not get obsessed by it," he told a rally at Edmonton. Arguing that a harsh control policy had already been discredited in Britain and the U.S. as a "proven disaster looking for a place to happen," Trudeau proposed instead tax benefits and consumer subsidies as protection against rising prices. Besides, he told audiences, the Canadian economy is still expected to advance by more than 5% this year, very close to its real growth potential.

Equally appealing to voters was Trudeau's ability to skillfully exploit a public mood ranging between apathy and antipathy, distrust of establishments, and politics in general, which has been plaguing Western governments all year. Though he has been the country's Prime Minister since 1968, Trudeau was convincingly able to appear as the candidate who hated holding a summer election as much as the voters did. Wherever he went, Trudeau's opening lines pointed out what a waste of everyone's time the campaign was. The message left the impression of a leader who wanted only to be back at work and not out bothering the public.

Political Handouts. Trudeau campaigned harder than he ever had in his political life. Abruptly changing style from his leisurely, lofty (and losing) "Conversations with Canadians" of 1972, he toured with his wife Margaret, 25, in grueling 16-hour days, traveling by plane and even whistle-stopping aboard a private nine-car train. While Pierre orated, Margaret used her fresh good looks to help soften Trudeau's abrasive and sometimes arrogant image. "He's a beautiful guy, a very loving human being who has taught me a lot about loving," she told their audiences. "He's shy, modest and very, very kind." Between their Canadian yin-and-yang act, there were a few political handouts: Trudeau pledged that he would enact a low-income housing program with small down-payment mortgages; $500 in cash, tax free, from the government toward the purchase of a first house; guaranteed incomes for the disabled.

Whether or not Trudeau lives up to his campaign promises, the interest of other Western leaders will be focused on his performance in handling the basic problems of the economy. Because Canada now has one of the few stable governments in the West with a dominant national leader, Canada's example in the coming months will not go unnoticed. But Trudeau seems, as usual, unshaken by the challenge. "We have the people, we have the resources, we have the vitality and the confidence to do a very great job," he said last week. "I am very anxious to get on with the job."

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