HE has prepared himself for this Job for more than 30 years. Nine years ago he almost won it. Now finally, at the age of 59. Jean Chretien is Canada s Prime Minister.
He led the Liberal Party back to power on October 25, after a genera! election is which two regional parties — the Bloc Quebecois and the right-wing Reform'Party based in western Canada — made astonishing gains.
The Liberals won a comfortable majority with 1,78 of the 295 seats. In Quebec, however, the Bloc Quebecois Wok 54 of the province's 75 seats while the Reform Party won 52 seats. 51 of them in western Canada. The conservatives who had 157 MPs In the last parliament now, almost unbelievably, have Just two seats. Included in the seats lost was that of the outspoken former Prime Minister Kim Campbell.
This is a completely new political scene, and one' that could lead swiftly to a fractured Canada. Is Jean Chretien the man to hold the country together in such a drastically changed situation?
Certainly, he is an experienced politician. He held nine different cabinet posts during 17 years of Liberal government, until Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives took power in 1984. In tt^se tough economic times, his two years as Finance Minister from 1977 (following other jobs in charge of revenue, trade and the cost-cutting Treasury Board) will be good background.
Like Mulroney, he was born
'in a small Quebec town. His lather was a machinist at the town's paper mill. His mother had 19 children, of whom 10 died as infants. He was the eighteenth child.
He1 studied law at Laval University, a few years ahead of Mulroney. He married his high school sweetheart Aline, and at the age of 29 came to Ottawa as an MP who spoke hardly any - English. He liked the hometown
image of "the little guy from Shawinigan." His strong French accent is still one of his most distinguishing characteristics.
He gained respect in English Canada as a sincere and straight speaking Indian Affairs Minister. Even when pushing unpopular federal oil policies In western Canada as Energy Minister, he was personally welcomed In Alberta. Indeed, he can claim much of the credit in this election for the strong Liberal gains in western Canada.
He is also a familiar name abroad, after being Finance Minister and. more briefly. Minister of External Affairs. Queen Elizabeth is said to have spotted him at a Buckingham Palace reception and remarked. "What, you again!"'
One friendly critic, Robert Mason Lee, has written of-Chretien that he "has long made strength of reducing the complex to the simple, and of bringing extremes into the comfortable middle ground where his instincts reside." Some take this as shallow thinking. His supporters say, however, while not an intellec-
tual. Chretien is quick to learn and to make decisions.
With most Canadians he has high marks for integrity. When he came second to John Turner in thb race to succeed Pierre Trudeau as prime minister in 1984, the party president Iona Campagnolo remarked consolingly that he was ""first in our hear". Soon afterwards his autobiography called Straight from the Heart became a best-seller.
‘ He left politics in 1986 for a lucrative Job in a Toronto law firm, and returned four years laster to win the Liberal leadership when John Turner resigned. Journalists asked him why he had come back to politics in 1990 from the easier life of a law practice. He replied simply: "I want this country to survive."
Apart from economic problems and threats to Canada's well-established social welfare system by Its deepening national debt, the biggest challenge for Canada comes from Quebec sovereigntists who want to separate their province of seven million people from the other 20 million Canadians. They have shown their strength
in the number of seats won by the Bloc Quebecois, ironically making them the official opposition.
They remember that, as federal Justice Minister, he campaigned vigorously in 1980 to defeat the Quebec referendum on sovereignty-association, and then was central to the negotiations under Trudeau that produced a new constitution without the approval of the Quebec premier Rene Levesque.
He is also reviled In the French-speaking province of Quebec for not having fully supported in 1990 the Meech Lake Accord which would have given the province special status within Canada.
After winning party leadership in 1990 he could not find in Quebec a safe seat by which Jie could re-enter Parliament, and had to turn to voters in neighbouring New Brunswick. In this election he returned to contest his constituency of Saint Maurice and easily won back his home-town seat back.
Now, as Prime Minister, Jean Chretien will have to struggle to contain the newly-formed
Reform Party whleh won 52 seats In Its first election as a federal party While Reformers believe overspending Is Canada's most serious problem. Chretien argues that the task of creating Jobs with state help Is Just as Important as reducing budget deficits.
The battle over Quebec separatism Is a more complex and subtle battle.
The separatists seern to have the advantage, and the initiative. A provincial election is due In Quebec In 1994. and the Parti Quebecois (PQ) (allied to the Bloc Quebecois) may well defeat the provincial Liberals who are about the choose a new leader. The PQ is committed to holding within a year a referendum on moving to political sovereignty, and reversing the 1980 referendum's decision to stay with Canada.
Should he-let these events unroll, trusting that Quebeckers will again vote to stay under Canadian umbrella is those years of economic storms? Or should he try to think up some compromise solution that might satisfy most people in Quebec and In the rest of Canada? Brian Mulroney twice failed In this search.
He will have a stronger team of ministers than Mulroney's cabinet. But Chretien will need all their sophistication, as well as all his own charm and toughness.'to'find a way ahead.
CLYDE SANGER Is director of communications at the North South Institute, an Independent economic research group In Ottawa.