Trudeau has given Canada hope

Trudeaumania or Trudolatory in Canada is only partly explained by the new Prime Minister's swinging personality.

This is the view of Professor R. L. Watts, of Queen's University, in Ontario, Canada, who gave the W. E. Collins Lecture recently.

"In the federal general election in Canada both a majority of English-speaking and a majority of French-speaking Canadians opted for Trudeau's policy with the result that Canada has elected its first majority central government since 1958.

The balance in Canada is still precarious but the prospects for Canadian federalism have taken a promising turn.

He has argued that if the Canadian federation is restructured to guarantee more effectively French Canadian language and educational rights and full participation in economic power throughout the federation, then French Canadians would have a greater fulfilment than in an exclusive Quebec, and would have a greater stake in the continued unity of Canada.

"Trudeau has explicitly opposed as inward-looking and suffocating to the French Canadian culture, the views of those who have argued that the French Canadian culture can best be preserved by separating Quebec into an independent country, or by giving Quebec as a province of Canada a special status with control over its own economy and some of its external affairs.

"In this situation the solution which Trudeau has advocated has been to restore a counterbalancing emphasis on those tasks of the central government which would unite Canadians: those of nation-building and the provision of equality of opportunity, both cultural and economic opportunity, across Canada.

"During this period the failure of the major political parlies to bridge the two linguistic groups and to on-compass the different provincial communities resulted in a series of minority governments in Ottawa.

"These minority governments have (ended to be weak and timid in the face of insistent pressure for greater provincial autonomy, with the result that the provinces have had the federal government on the run.''

So serious had the situation become, especially with the growth of demands for separatism or special status for Quebec, that by the end of 1967 many Canadians were seriously concerned whether Canada would survive as a single united federation for another five years.

"The electoral success of Pierre Trudeau is best understood in terms of the extent to which the Canadian electorate has seen in him and the policy he advocates the panacea for the crisis which Canadian federalism has been undergoing during the 1960s."