Canada

THE Conservative landslide in the Canadian election on March 31 made history. Never before has a political party been smitten so grievously as was the Liberal Party under its brand-new leader, Lester B. Pearson. The Conservative Party not only won 209 seats of a house of 265, it wiped out Liberal representation in six of the country’s ten provinces, including all of western Canada. It got 53 per cent of the popular vote, to the Liberals’ 36 per cent. Indeed, the only parallel in modern history was the Landon debacle in 1936.

Followers of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker cracked the historic Liberal citadel of Quebec wide open. The Liberal majority of 10,000 to 15,000 a year ago was transformed into Conservative gains. The Conservatives obliterated the Social Creditors in Alberta and British Columbia. The Liberal Party, which had a 163 to 57 margin over the Conservatives before the June, 1957, election, was reduced to only 47 members. The once cocky Socialist party, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, saw all its top leaders beaten in what were regarded as the safest seats in the country and its strength cut from 25 to 8.

The bitterest taste for the so-called reform parties was the way in which the Conservatives won 16 out of 17 seats in Saskatchewan —where since 1944 the CCF has been in complete control — and took all 17 seats in Alberta, where the Social Credit monetary reformers have owned the provincial government since 1935. All this happened with whopping majorities in scats in which Conservative candidates usually ran last. And it happened quietly in an issue-free election in which the public seemed completely unconcerned.

For Pearson, who came fresh to the Liberal leadership from a distinguished career at the United Nations as Canada’s top spokesman, it was a bitter blow. Yet the gathering disaster for the Liberals was apparent from the first days of the Liberal convention in Ottawa last January, at which Pearson was elected to succeed the Rt. Hon. Louis S. St. Laurent, Liberal leader and Prime Minister from 1948 to 1957.

Under Liberal administration, from 1935 to 1957, the country prospered mightily. Its population grew from 11 million to 16.5 million. Its trade expanded with the forced-draft development of Canadian industry. Liberal fiscal policies encouraged foreign investment, and American investment in Canada rose from a pre-war S3 billion to M3 billion. As a direct result of this flow of capital northward, Canadian heavy industry, manufacturing, and natural resources development came substantially under U.S. ownership and control.

The tide of nationalism

Public reaction to the boom was reflected in easy Liberal victories at the polls. But the longer it lasted, the more convinced did the Liberals become that they had found the secret of eternal power. They became arrogant in office. They let political fences decay. The Liberal administration did what was “good for the country” and not what was politically beneficial. It antagonized old-age pensioners with picayune pension increases, it distributed tax reductions with bad grace, it w7as timid in protesting to Washington against trade policies that hurt Canadian farmers. Its engineers, not party politicians, dictated policy on public works.

Above all, the Liberals ignored the tide of nationalism that was slowly but surely rising in Canada. They seemed to be more concerned with the United Nations than with pressing Canadian problems.

During their twenty-two years in the wilderness, the Conservatives saw many seemingly potent issues collapse in their hands. They tried leader after leader with little success. Through a process of elimination they ran through an imposing list and came to John Diefenbaker, an able 62-year-old lawyer from Saskatchewan, who captured the leadership of the party in 1957.

When the election was called in June, 1957, the Liberals had an overall majority of about 70 seats, and were convinced they would win easily.

So indeed were most Conservatives. Diefenbaker himself, however, took ofT across the country in a “Give ‘em hell” Harry Truman type campaign. His main target was the way in which the Liberals through the years had knuckled under to the United States. He blasted American control of Canadian industry, hit Canadian dependence upon American capital, denounced the billion-dollar annual trade deficit with the United States. These, coupled with biting criticism of a dozen domestic issues, cut so deeply into Liberal strength as to defeat the government.

For eight months, however, Diefenbaker had to rule with a minority government. St. Laurent retired, and Pearson was elected leader of the Liberals in January. In his first major speech in the House of Commons as leader, he presented Diefenbaker with a perfect excuse to hold an election.

The Conservative arsenal

Instead of challenging the Conservatives to go to the country on the unemployment problem, Pearson almost was laughed out of business when he demanded that the government resign and give the reins back to the Liberals without having an election. Get out, he said, in effect, and give the Liberals a chance to solve the unemployment crisis.

Pearson blamed the Conservatives for antagonizing the United States and destroying Canadian-U.S. trade. He blamed them for unemployment, which has reached 500,000, the highest point since before the war. He blamed them for destroying confidence in the Canadian economy.

Diefenbaker’s answer was to reach, dramatically, into his desk and extract a hitherto secret 1957 report by government economists. It warned the Liberals, early last year, that a recession was imminent and that anti-inflation controls should be eased. As he quoted chapter and verse from this report, which he said had been deliberately suppressed by the Liberals, Diefenbaker rose to heights of effective oratory seldom seen in the House of Commons.

In the campaign that followed, there were no real issues. There was only a quiet but growing Canadian nationalism, which has become apparent since the American ownership of so large a share of Canadian industry was brought out into the open. In the June, 1957, election campaign, this was closely akin to anti-Americanism. All the best issues which the Conservatives seized upon had strong American coloration. It was from this fact, and Diefenbaker’s expressed aim of diverting 15 per cent of Canada’s imports from the United States to Britain, that the Liberals drew their main texts at their January convention.

The Conservatives, they said, had created unemployment by destroying American confidence in Canada. If Canada was the best U.S. customer, the United States was Canada’s best customer, too. Each was important to the other, and ill will was a luxury neither could afford. “We put it very simply,” Pearson said after his leadership victory in January. “We think we know how to get along with the Americans, and the Conservatives do not.”

The Liberals sought to use an American “slap down” at Canada, in Commerce Secretary Weeks’s phrase, as a club with which to belabor the Tories. They tried to sell the obviously preposterous notion that the U.S. imposition of a 15 per cent import reduction on Canadian oil was in retaliation for Diefenbaker’s proposal that 15 per cent of Canada’s imports be diverted to the Commonwealth from the United States. The strategy backfired.

A dreamer of great dreams

The Conservatives, in this campaign, successfully converted the anti-American overtones of the 1957 campaign into the 1958 pro-Canadianism which swept the entire nation. Diefenbaker said out loud what many Canadians have felt. He not only preached the building of a Canadian New Jerusalem, he launched a great public works program to get it started. In the Maritime Provinces he poured money into the financing of steam power plants to breathe some life into a dying coal industry. In Ontario he dwelt upon the necessity of using Canadian raw materials in Canada to manufacture goods for Canadian use and raise Canada’s standard of living. In the west he gave the goahead to the long controversial $250 million Saskatchewan river dam for power and irrigation. He outlined plans for pushing back frontiers and opening up the north. He appointed a Royal Energy Commission to develop a national energy use policy.

All this was done with what Pearson scoffed at as “the histrionic approach" to public speaking. Diefenbaker is the last of the old-time spellbinders. To the cynics, his style resembles that of a high school Mark Antony declaiming over Caesar’s body. Yet even those who know the gestures can still be moved by the eloquence of the man. He can project his personality, get across to listeners better than any Canadian politico in two generations.

Pearson, on the other hand, is at his best being quietly studious in a sincere search for a formula that will postpone a problem which it will not solve. It was the high skill he developed as a formula fashioner that won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957. The ingrained habit of mind acquired in thirty years immersion in international affairs made such an achievement possible, but it ruined him in the general election.

Election promises

The Liberal campaign became a futile search for a glamorous formula that would catch the attention of the Canadian electorate. The attempt to capitalize on Canadian friendship with the United States blew up when it put the Liberals in the position of being allied with Americans against Canadian Conservatives.

Pearson proposed a multimillion dollar program of scholarships for university students. That was a dud. He came out for income tax exemptions for young people during their first two years of marriage. He proposed various cuts in taxation which were complicated enough to alienate even the chartered accountant vote. He proposed an equally complicated agricultural policy that impressed farmers only with its impracticably. Yet even proposals which attracted attention were rendered harmless by a single Tory question: “They promise it now, but they voted against it last year. Why didn’t they do it when they were in power?”

The Conservatives, in eight months, could point to a long list of election promises fulfilled. They had raised the old-age pensions; they got a study going of the United States Social Security Act, pumped money into the Maritimes, enacted floor price legislation, extended unemployment insurance. These token payments, as it were, convinced thousands of uncommitted Canadians that Diefenbaker’s party was entitled to “see what it can do with a working majority.”This, coupled with Diefenbakcr’s basic appeal to Canadian nationalism, gave the Conservatives the greatest parliamentary strength in Canadian history. How will that strength be used?

Second thoughts

After the election, Canadian second thoughts were that the victory had been too one-sided, that a better result would have been a Conservative win by a narrow margin. On the other hand, it is gradually dawning on people that there is more to this election result than mere numbers. Almost since Confederation in 1867, Canada has been ruled by the bloc which has been able to attract the most outside support. The Liberals had the solid French-Canadian bloc from Quebec. The Conservatives had a solid English-Canadian bloc from Ontario. Under Canada’s system a responsible government power resides in the caucus of the government party, not on the floor of Parliament. The cabinet must always obtain the support of its members in caucus before it takes its measures before Parliament.

Despite the debate in the House of Commons, enactment of government measures is certain. When the caucus was dominated by either of the blocs, the influence of less populous areas diminished. That was accentuated when regional discontent sent minority parties to Parliament from Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. These provinces went largely unrepresented in government caucus for many years.

This year, Ontario elected 68 Conservatives, the four western provinces and the northern territories 66, Quebec elected 50, and the Maritimes 25. Thus no one region, no one interest, and no one racial group can dominate the others. Greater protection will be extended to Canadian industry, as Ontario demands, but it will have to be done in such a way that it does not raise a storm in western Canada and in the Maritimes.

Canadian recession

The Canadian recession was more severe than that of the United States this winter. Yet because its roots are buried in American head offices of Canadian branch plants, fiscal cures will be difficult for the new government. Canadian recovery will depend on the recovery of the American economy, because American industry in its thinking and planning treats its Canadian subsidiaries as an integral part of its domestic operation. The companies which overexpanded their American plant capacity did the same in Canada. The same results followed — a glut of the market. Now pressures to reduce capital expenditures which operate in the United States also operate in Canada.

Nevertheless, the Canadian government is bound to take vigorous action, both by way of tax cuts and by public works to cut unemployment to manageable proportions. There will be, naturally, greater stress put upon creating jobs in Canada by using Canadian materials and energy. Greater emphasis will be placed upon investment by Canadians in Canadian enterprise. The way in which Canadian nationalism develops from here will depend on the success of the first measures taken. But of this there is no doubt: for the next five years Canada will tend to look inward for solutions to its problems as they arise. The consequence may be a new environment in which American business must live in Canada.