A Duel of Images

By John Kohan

With his campaign gaffes, a new Prime Minister puts his job in jeopardy

Standing hunched over a plastic lectern at the right side of the stage in Toronto's Royal York Hotel was Canada's silver-haired new Prime Minister, John Turner, 55. Across from him was Brian Mulroney, 45, a jut-jawed businessman from Quebec who heads the opposition Conservative Party. In the final of three televised debates last week, the leaders of Canada's two largest political groups were sharing the spotlight with the New Democratic Party's Edward Broadbent, who has placed a distant third in the polls. With little to lose, Broadbent was the most relaxed of the contenders. But for the two photogenic front runners, it was the start of a sprint to the finish for the national elections that will be held on Sept. 4.

Turner began the parliamentary race three weeks ago with a seven-point lead over Mulroney. But the Conservative pushed ahead as Turner fumbled his way through a series of gaffes. As of late last week polls showed Mulroney with a comfortable edge of 14 points.

Thus the Prime Minister was eager to use the vital third debate to recover lost ground for his Liberal Party, and he pressed Mulroney hard on the issue of women's rights. With his head slightly lowered and his steely blue eyes fixed on his opponent, Turner declared, "Mr. Mulroney sat in the House of Commons for ten months, and he asked only 39 questions. Not one of those questions dealt with women's issues." Finally, after a lackluster showing in the earlier debates, Turner was proving that he could be a tough adversary.

Canadians are likely to see a good deal of heated sparring in the campaign's final days. For the first time in nearly 16 years, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the urbane and often acerbic former Prime Minister, is not at center stage. Although his policies and personality had commanded world attention for a country so often hidden in the shadow of its powerful neighbor to the south, Trudeau has scarcely been heard from since announcing last March that he would not seek a fifth term. Says Douglas McNaughton, chairman of Ottawa's Public Affairs Institute: "We are at the end of the Trudeau era. The public is in the mood for a change."

No matter who wins the election, Canada is certain to make a move toward the center. On the campaign trail, Turner has, at times, sounded more like Mulroney than like Trudeau. The new Prime Minister has called for greater flexibility in guidelines that control foreign investment in Canada and talked of easing federal government controls over energy prices. Mulroney, on the other hand, has promised not to make drastic cuts in Canada's generous social-welfare system and has said that he agrees with the Liberals on the need to develop job-training programs for young people, who have been hardest hit by the shrunken job market. In a notable break with Trudeau, both Turner and Mulroney have avoided gratuitous complaints about U.S. dominance of the Canadian economy.

Neither of the two front runners has held public office during most of the past decade. Turner, once a rising star of the Liberals, resigned abruptly as Finance Minister in 1975 in a dispute with Trudeau. In the intervening years he built a lucrative career as a corporate lawyer on Toronto's Bay Street, the Wall Street of Canada, which he left in June to become the ruling Liberal Party's standard bearer (and thus, automatically, Prime Minister). Mulroney was president of the Iron Ore Co. of Canada and had never run for political office until he was named leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in June 1983 and ten weeks later picked up a parliamentary seat in a Nova Scotia by-election. This political inexperience actually proved an asset in the campaign. Mulroney sounded his dominant, if repetitive, theme when he called for a "new beginning," "new leadership," a "new philosophy of government" and a "new spirit."

Issues that preoccupied Canadians in the '70s like economic nationalism and regional separatism have largely given way to the economic anxieties of the '80s. Canada is suffering the aftereffects of a 21-month recession, the worst since World War II. After dropping 6% in 1981-82, real G.N.P. finally climbed by 3.3% last year, but the unemployment rate has stubbornly remained above 11%. The Canadian dollar was worth a mere 76 U.S. cents last week.

Whether Canadians choose Turner or

Mulroney may ultimately depend more on image than substance, and Mulroney has gained a decided edge in this contest.

Indeed, Turner's campaign got off to such a shaky start that many Canadians wonder if he did not lose his political touch during almost nine years as the Liberals' "prince in exile."

In his first public appearances, the new Prime Minister seemed tongue-tied and ill at ease. During one campaign rally he tried to encourage a beauty queen, Miss Prince Edward Island, to vote Liberal by saying that he wanted her to "go all the way." Women were particularly upset when television cameras caught Turner patting the backside of Liberal Party President lona Campagnolo. The candidate was subjected to more razzing after a waiter in Trois-Rivieres, Que., accidentally spilled coffee in his lap.

Turner was forced to retreat to the men's room while his wife Geills washed out his pants.

Trudeau did little to help Turner's chances when he pressured his successor to promote 17 Liberal stalwarts in the House of Commons to sinecures in the Senate, the largely symbolic upper house of the Canadian Parliament, or to cozy judicial and diplomatic posts. Turner said that he "had no option" in making the appointments, and he would have risked losing a parliamentary vote of confidence by blocking them.

But Mulroney used the incident to advantage in the second televised debate. "You had an option, sir,"said a finger-wagging Mulroney to a nonplused Turner. "You could have said, 'I am not going to do it.

This is wrong for Canada.' " In contrast to Turner's earnestly wooden style, Mulroney appears poised and confident. The Conservative leader kicked off his campaign to exchange his parliamentary seat in Nova Scotia for a new one in the Manicouagan riding of Quebec by visiting his home town of Baie Comeau on the St. Lawrence River. As a pack of reporters tagged along, Mulroney enthusiastically greeted boyhood friends and even visited a nursing home to say hello to a woman who once looked after him as a child. "I've met half my home town," he quipped. "They'll vote twice, so that's everyone." Mulroney's easy manner and sonorous voice are so well suited to television campaigning, however, that he may suffer from what one Canadian commentator calls the "glib factor," a perception that he is too smooth and too vague on the issues.

Turner and Mulroney have mapped out complementary strategies to bridge the great East-West divide in Canadian politics. Turner launched his campaign in Vancouver, B.C., vowing to "lead Liberalism back to Western Canada"--a reference to the fact that in the 1980 general election the Liberals won only two seats west of Ontario. And it was because the Conservatives represent only one out of the 75 parliamentary constituencies in Quebec that Mulroney chose to run from his home town in that province. After the regional antagonism of the Trudeau years, with French-speaking Quebec at odds with the English-speaking sections of the country, Canadians have for the most part welcomed this attempt at national political unity. Indeed, it is now taken for granted that candidates of both major parties need to speak English and French fluently. Turner and Mulroney conducted their television debates in both languages.

Given the often prickly state of U.S.Canadian relations during the past decade, the Reagan Administration has been careful to appear evenhanded about the race. Mulroney may be somewhat closer to Reagan on defense and economic issues, but Turner has good friends in Washington, most notably U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, who was president of Bechtel Corp. when Turner was a director of Bechtel Canada Ltd. After Reagan's highly publicized squabbles with Trudeau, the prevailing feeling in the Administration seems to be that "whoever wins, we win." U.S. officials contend that despite disputes over trade barriers, U.S. investment in Canada and environmental issues such as acid rain, relations between the two neighbors have taken a turn for the better. But the American economic upsurge has only just started to spill across the border into Canada. Economists in Ottawa fear that as Canadian interest rates climb ever higher to keep Space with American lending rates, the fragile Canadian recovery of the past 15 months could be choked off.

From the way Canada's public opinion polls have seesawed for more than a year, it is apparent that voters are quite unsettled about the party, and leader, they support. When Mulroney was chosen to head the Conservative Party it enjoyed a comfortable lead of 55% to 27% over the Liberals in the polls. By the time the Liberals held their convention last June, the polls put the Liberals out in front of the Conservatives by 48% to 39%. The latest Gallup survey shows the Conservatives back in the lead with 46% to 32%. New Democrat Broadbent, who could serve as a powerbroker should either of the two major parties fail to win a decisive majority, did particularly well in the poll, improving his standing by seven points, to 18%.

In an attempt to revive his campaign, Turner has dismissed his manager and hired Keith Davey, who engineered Trudeau's last two re-election victories. Shedding blazer, tie and but-toned-down image, the Prime Minister was photographed dancing with his wife to the rock sound of Doug and the Slugs at a Vancouver youth rally last week. But it was too soon to tell whether the new image would be enough to help Turner catch Mulroney. --By John Kohan.

Reported by Marcia Gauger/Toronto

With reporting by Marcia Gauger