Mulroney Wins in Canada, Saving U.S. Trade Pact

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, a smooth-talking, 49-year-old Irish Canadian from the province of Quebec, led his Progressive Conservative Party to victory Monday in one of the most rancorous elections in Canadian history with enough of a parliamentary majority to guarantee ratification of the U.S.-Canada free trade agreement.

The victory, decisive as it seemed on the surface, left a deeply divided nation in its wake. Although Mulroney had taken a majority of seats in the House of Commons, it was clear that he had failed to persuade a majority of voters that the free trade agreement did not threaten Canadian sovereignty and the Canadian way of life.

Most Canadians voted for the Liberal and New Democratic parties, which made Canadian identity and their opposition to the free trade agreement the main issue of the bitter campaign. But the split of their vote enabled Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives to win more than half of the 295 seats in the House of Commons with less than half of the popular vote.

Under the Canadian electoral parliamentary system, it is parliamentary seats, not popular votes, that count, and Mulroney has pledged to call the House of Commons into session swiftly to ratify the free trade agreement, which has already been passed by the U.S. Congress.

Conservatives Take 170 Seats

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at midnight EST, with almost all votes counted, Mulroney and his Progressive Conservatives won 170 seats, 22 more than a majority; former Prime Minister John N. Turner and the Liberals won 82 seats, and Ed Broadbent and his socialist New Democrats won 43 seats.

In the popular vote, according to CBC, the Progressive Conservatives won 44%, the Liberals 35% and the New Democrats 18%. The results represented huge gains for the Liberals in both seats and popular votes from the 1984 election--but the Mulroney landslide that year was the largest in Canadian history.

In 1984, Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives won 211 of the 282 seats then in the House of Commons. The Liberals won 40 seats and the New Democrats 30. There was one independent.

In a televised speech from Baie-Comeau, the Quebec papermill town where he was born, Mulroney said his victory amounts to a mandate to proceed with the the free trade act which, during the next 10 years, would eliminate all tariffs between the two greatest trading partners in the world. But he also promised to promote unity as well at a time “for healing in the land.”

Speaking alternately in English and French, Mulroney said, “We will now proceed with free trade. . . . We will proceed with bringing unity, prosperity and harmony to Canada.”

‘Confident of Identity’

Mulroney, who insisted during the campaign that the free trade agreement would not hurt Canadian nationalism, told cheering friends and supporters that his victory was powered by “people who are confident of their identity as Canadians--confident to compete with the best of the world. . . . We are proud Canadians.”

Speaking from Vancouver, Turner made it clear that he would continue to fight the free trade agreement, although he recognized that Mulroney now has the parliamentary majority to ratify it.

Turner, throughout the campaign, had branded the agreement as an assault on the sovereignty of Canada. Although the Conservatives won a plurality of the vote, Turner said that “a majority of Canadians have expressed their wish to keep this country strong and independent.” “Throughout the campaign I have promoted my vision of a strong, independent and sovereign Canada, a Canada in charge of its own destiny,” Turner said. “I have no regrets at all.”

For Mulroney, the victory was a special triumph. Only four weeks ago, he seemed close to defeat. During a nationally televised debate, Turner surprised him with a devastating attack on the free trade agreement, accusing the prime minister of selling out the country. All analysts concluded that Turner had won the debate, and a Gallup poll even put the Liberals far ahead in the election.

Mulroney, who had ignored criticism of the free trade agreement, switched tactics and started to extol the agreement as a symbol of Canadian nationalism. Only the most timorous of Canadians, he insisted, were afraid to compete with the Americans in the North American market. On top of this, he accused Turner of distorting the truth about the agreement.

Credibility Problem

Mulroney, a bilingual Canadian who grew up in a small town in Quebec, also had a credibility problem of his own to deal with. After his landslide victory in 1984, Mulroney lost popularity, partly because of a succession of scandals involving his ministers and because of a personal manner that disturbed many Canadians. Mulroney has a penchant for glibness and for mellowing his vocal tones that make many Canadians believe he is hiding something from them. That did not help him in trying to explain an issue as complex as the free trade agreement.

The prime minister put together his victory this year by increasing his support in his native province of Quebec and holding on to enough seats throughout the country to absorb losses in the Atlantic provinces, Ontario and British Columbia.

The French speakers of Quebec, who have never fretted about American cultural influence the way English-speaking Canadians have, voted both for free trade and for their native son. The Conservative sweep of 62 out of 75 seats in Quebec meant that the old days of Liberal dominance in Quebec during the days of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau are long gone.

For Turner, a 59-year-old patrician and corporation lawyer who called the battle against free trade “the fight of my life,” the results were very mixed. A disorganized, passive leader with a staccato speaking style, Turner had such a low standing within his own party that some leading Liberals tried to remove him in the middle of the campaign.

Turner Seized Trade Issue

Turner, however, seized the issue of free trade and Canadian nationalism in the television debate and, though he failed to prevent a Conservative majority, he did manage to double the number of Liberal seats in the House of Commons. Nevertheless, most analysts on television Monday night predicted that he would have to resign the leadership of the party in the near future.

Few elections have engaged the interest and enthusiasm of Canadians the way this one did, and the turnout was reportedly heavy throughout the country. There were 17.5 million eligible voters, and analysts had expected at least 75% to cast ballots.

The campaign was regarded as one of the most negative in 20th-Century Canadian politics, with Progressive Conservative television commercials accusing Turner of lying and Liberal commercials showing a cartoon caricature of Mulroney saluting the American flag.

Turner denounced the flurry of negative ads as “the Americanization of our campaign,” and many Canadian journalists, in their accounts of the advertising, seemed to agree with him. The Liberals obviously hoped for a backlash--that the negative nature of the television spots would reinforce the feeling that Canada needed protection against American ways.

Complex Document

The free trade agreement, which was signed by Mulroney and President Reagan and approved by the U.S. Congress earlier this year, is a complex and lengthy document understood by few Canadians. Under the pact, all tariffs would be eliminated between the two countries over a 10-year-period beginning Jan. 1.

During the campaign, Mulroney called the agreement “a vision for Canada” that would create 250,000 jobs through increased Canadian exports. He acknowledged that some people might lose work at first because their industries would lose the protection of Canadian tariffs. But he argued that they would be re-trained for new jobs in the general prosperity created by lower consumer prices and increased trade.

On top of this, Mulroney insisted that failure to ratify the agreement would provoke the U.S. government into imposing trade sanctions on Canada.

Turner argued that, while he supports the principle of free trade, the agreement would be a bad deal for Canada. He said Mulroney had failed to gain guarantees that Canadians could sell all their goods to the American market without restriction. The Liberal leader also deplored the creation of a binational panel to settle trade disputes because, he said, the guidelines of the panel were weighted in favor of American law.

Danger to Sovereignty

All in all, Turner contended, the trade agreement would endanger Canadian sovereignty. This view was supported by the New Democrats’ Broadbent, who said: “This deal is forcing us to conform to the concept of an American continent whose strength lies in the almighty dollar . . . where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”

Many Liberals and New Democrats said the free trade agreement would also endanger Canadian government social programs because American corporations might demand their elimination, branding them as subsidies since they relieve Canadian corporations of the costs of such American employee benefits as health insurance. Conservatives denounced this charge as a product of distortion and lies.

Although the main battleground of the election, as always, was in the large eastern provinces of Ontario and Quebec, which have 174 of the 295 seats at stake, voters on the Pacific coast did not hear the results in the east on Canadian television until their own polls closed. Under Canadian law, television stations may not report any results from anywhere else in the country until the polls in their own province have closed.