Fear of U.S. May Weigh on Canadian Voters

HAMILTON, Canada — Only the very old can remember a national election that has so touched the soul of Canada and its fears of the United States as the Monday parliamentary balloting that will determine the fate of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the U.S.-Canada free trade agreement.

John Turner, the 59-year-old former prime minister who leads the Liberal Party, is battling furiously and perhaps desperately to tap into that anxiety. Turner again and again paints the free trade agreement as a threat to Canadian sovereignty and culture.

Shouting above enthusiastic chanting from several thousand of his supporters in this industrial town in the province of Ontario on Friday night, Turner, a gray-haired patrician and former corporate lawyer, tried to make the choice seem clear.

‘Something Special Here’

“Much as we like our American friends,” he said, “we don’t want to become Americans, because we have something special here. We are Canadians. . . .

“We are not going to let Mr. Mulroney destroy the Canadian dream,” he went on. “Canadians are not going to vote for Mr. Brian Mulroney, who wants to be governor of the 51st state of the American union. They are going to vote for John Turner, who wants to be prime minister of Canada.”

Mulroney, the 49-year-old Quebecker of Irish descent who, in a familiar image sometimes used against him in this campaign, once joined President Reagan in a jovial rendition of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” is trying just as furiously--perhaps just as desperately--to tap into the root of Canadian nationalism.

With the mellow tones and crinkling smile that have long been his trademark, Mulroney told several thousand of his cheering Progressive Conservative Party supporters in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough on Thursday night: “John Turner says the cause of his life is to tear up a free trade agreement. The cause of my life is to build a nation.”

Repeating one of his campaign’s most potent refrains, Mulroney insisted that Canadians are strong and resourceful enough to compete with anyone and thus take advantage of the market offered by the agreement. The opponents, Mulroney went on, “want a little Canada. They are timorous and fearful.

“The easiest part of life is to tear things up and throw them away,” said Mulroney. “Well, I’ll tell you right now, I’m a builder, and so are you. The nation must choose between John the Ripper and Brian the Builder.”

According to the latest Gallup poll released Saturday, Mulroney may manage to hold on to a slim majority in Parliament that would ensure ratification of the free trade agreement, but only because his opposition is split by two parties--Turner’s Liberals and the socialist New Democratic Party, led by 52-year-old former university professor Ed Broadbent.

The poll gave Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives 40%, Turner’s Liberals 35% and Broadbent’s New Democrats 22%. Since the Canadian system gives victory to the leading candidate in each district, regardless of the percentage of the vote, the Gallup breakdown would provide the Conservatives with 162 seats in the 295-seat House of Commons, 14 more than a majority. The Liberals would have 97 seats and the New Democrats 36.

The poll was taken, however, before both President Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher repeated their support last Thursday of the free trade agreement, comments that were seized upon by Turner as foreign interference in Canadian affairs. He swiftly denounced Reagan’s words as the act of “a lame duck trying to rescue a dead duck” and berated Thatcher for, in his view, still treating Canada as a colony.

Despite the polls, most Canadians believe that they will not know the outcome of the elections until the last parliamentary returns come in from British Columbia on the Pacific Coast. If Mulroney’s party wins a plurality of seats but falls short of a majority, he would surely continue as prime minister. But the free trade agreement would be doomed since both the Liberals and New Democrats are pledged to vote against it.

The intervention of Reagan was brief and barely noticed in the United States, but it had far more impact in Canada. Reagan devoted only 20 seconds of a half-hour speech to the issue--enough time, however, to hog the spotlight on most Canadian television news shows.

“As far as the United States is concerned,” Reagan told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, “the free trade agreement is an example of cooperation at its best. It is a testament to the commitment of our two governments to the principles of the open market and to economic cooperation.”

Thatcher went even further. In an interview, she told Washington Post and Newsweek reporters and editors that “it would be a blow if that agreement were not ratified--a great blow. . . . It would be very difficult for any prime minister of Canada to go and negotiate another agreement with another country.”

Both Reagan and Thatcher were only repeating their longstanding views on the pact, but, by doing so on the eve of the election, they seemed to be endorsing the reelection of Mulroney.

The trade agreement, signed by Reagan and Mulroney on Jan. 2 and already passed by Congress, will go into effect for five years beginning Jan. 1, 1989, if approved by the Canadian House of Commons. Worked out by negotiators over 16 months during 1986 and 1987, the agreement would remove the last tariffs between the two countries and thus, in theory, open the combined U.S.-Canadian market to businesses and investors of both countries.

Few Canadians have read the lengthy and complex document, but many feel uneasy about it. Their concerns are simple: that large American corporations would have an easier time sweeping into the Canadian market than Canadian corporations would have of battling for a share of the American market; that many protected Canadian industries would fail and lay off workers; that Canadian culture and identity would be submerged in the process of Americanization of commerce, and that American pressures would mount for Canada to cut back on government social programs that are viewed by some American corporations as a kind of subsidy to Canadian industry.

Mulroney and his aides dismiss all of these concerns and insist that the agreement would increase Canadian exports and thus create more Canadian jobs.

Until a three-hour television debate last Oct. 25, Mulroney appeared to be coasting to victory, without having to spend much time defending the agreement. But an exchange between Turner and the prime minister electrified the campaign and transformed it into a battle over free trade and Canadian nationalism.

Stabbing his finger at Mulroney, Turner said, “I happen to believe you’ve sold us out.”

Angry, flushed, Mulroney countered: “Just one second, Mr. Turner. You do not have a monopoly on patriotism, and I resent the fact that you imply that only you are a Canadian. I want to tell you that I come from a Canadian family, and I love Canada, and that is why I did it, to promote prosperity.”

Turner countered: “We have built a country, east and west and north, on an infrastructure that resisted the continental pressure of the United States. For 120 years we’ve done it, and with one stroke of the pen you’ve reversed that, thrown us into the north-south pull of the United States. And that will reduce us, I’m sure, to an economic colony of the United States, because when the economic levers go, the political independence is sure to follow.”

The prime minister was scathing in reply. “With a document that’s cancelable on six months’ notice?” he said. “Be serious. Be serious.”

By all accounts, Turner won the debate, and the first polls afterward showed a startling change in his fortunes. Turner had pulled even and, in the case of the Gallup poll, even ahead of Mulroney. But the prime minister, reversing campaign tactics and extolling the trade agreement as a kind of reflection of Canadian fortitude and determination, has regained ground in the last weeks of the campaign.

The issues of free trade and Canadian nationalism have been confused a good deal by the personalities of the two main antagonists. Many Canadians, according to the polls, appear to dislike both Mulroney and Turner and have trouble believing their sincerity.

Mulroney, the son of an Irish immigrant electrician who worked in a little French-speaking paper mill town in Quebec, has a gift for glibness and gregariousness that is beginning to charm fewer and fewer Canadians. A corporate lawyer and executive who took over the Progressive Conservative Party without ever serving in public office, Mulroney led it to the greatest electoral victory in Canadian history in 1984, winning 211 of the 282 seats then in the House of Commons.

But his administration has been besmirched with conflict-of-interest scandals, and his penchant for exaggeration in his constant flowing talk has irritated many Canadians. At a time when Canadians are intently searching for answers about the free trade agreement, Mulroney often seems evasive with his smooth and flowery words.

Turner, who was born in England but came to Canada at age 4, is a politician whose fortunes had fallen so low that some Liberals tried to replace him as leader of their party even after the present campaign began in early October. Turner became prime minister when Pierre Elliott Trudeau resigned in 1984 but went down to the crushing defeat by Mulroney a few weeks later.

Many Liberals blamed him for the defeat and derided his annoying, staccato speaking style and his reputation as a passive and disorganized leader. Until he became a champion of Canadian nationalism and a relentless critic of free trade, few took his chances seriously in the current election. Many political analysts, however, regard him as a very recent convert, for as a former corporate lawyer and minister of finance, he always seemed close to the big Canadian industrial interests that are now fighting for the free trade agreement.

Although anxiety about the United States has long been a factor in Canadian life, American relations have not been the main issue of a Canadian parliamentary campaign since 1911, when Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier lost the election after advocating a “reciprocity bill” that would have allowed a limited amount of free trade with the United States.