Canada: Another Election

We love you, Lester—Oh yes, we do. When you’re not near us, We feel so blue.

The numbing campaign ditties echoed and re-echoed across the countryside last week as 10 million voters prepared for yet another trip to the polls. Canada’s general election next week will be its fifth in eight years, the fourth straight in which Liberal Prime Minister Lester Pearson, 68, has gone up against Conservative Leader John Diefenbaker, 70 (score: Pearson 1, Dief 2). For many Canadians that old act is getting to be a drag.

Pearson called the election in hopes of converting his 127-seat minority government into at least a 133-seat majority. Why? quite a few Canadians ask, since in the 30 months he has been in power he has done just fine with the help of two splinter parties. The economy is humming; unemployment is down to a nine-year low; gross national product is climbing 9% a year. And last week—by no coincidence—Pearson’s government announced still another huge overseas wheat sale: a three-year deal with Red China for up to 186.7 million bushels worth $335 million.

Even so, Pearson has never been a good campaigner and has been unable to stir the voters with his quiet recital of accomplishments—just as Diefenbaker, a member of the old oratorical school, has failed to inflame the populace with a vitriolic attack on some ugly but fading scandals within Pearson’s government. Outside of that, Diefenbaker’s campaign pitch has been a promise to give almost everybody more and do it better. The latest Gallup poll gives the Liberals 47% of the vote, Diefenbaker’s Conservatives 30%, with the rest split among other parties or “undecided”—which indicates that Pearson will probably pick up at least enough seats for a majority. But there is such general apathy toward the election that few experts are willing to predict that Pearson will win the rousing vote of confidence he wants so badly.