CANADA: Pere de Famille

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New Ground. At External Affairs, St. Laurent quickly made it clear that despite his background and training in nationalist Quebec, he was international-minded. He was one of the first statesmen to promote the idea of the North Atlantic pact. When the idea became a diplomatic reality, he sold the pact almost singlehanded to the Canadian people. Wherever he went he explained the pact in his customary ABC style of public speaking. He never missed a bet. "If we [all the people in the world] loved one another," he said last Christmas Eve when distributing gifts among a group of Quebec orphans, "there would be no need of an Atlantic pact."

In his ten months as Prime Minister, Louis St. Laurent, no man to show his hand, has dropped a few hints of what Canada can expect from him during his five-year term as his country's leader. On Parliament Hill, top-level government men have already labeled him "the most efficient Prime Minister Canada ever had." He has speeded up the poky, 19th Century office routine of Mackenzie King. Decisions come down so fast that his aides often worry that St. Laurent is too hasty. Cracked one: "What Mr. King needed was an animator; what St. Laurent needs is a brake."

The inevitable comparisons between St. Laurent and King run to their political views and whether ex-Corporation Lawyer St. Laurent will go along with King's Liberal Party policy, which launched such welfare-state schemes as baby bonuses, government grain-marketing and producer subsidies. St. Laurent has already indicated he may not. He once said publicly that "no government of which I am a member will ever subsidize housing." During the election, when a group of Prince Edward Island fish canners came to ask for a subsidy, St. Laurent shocked his political advisers by turning them down flat. Said he: "I have no intention of using public funds to buy up fish. . . ."

Like every Canadian Prime Minister, St. Laurent faces the problem of bridging the gulf between English and French. His own French-Irish background, his perfect bilingualism, have already contributed a lot toward bringing French-and English-speaking Canada closer. He himself never uses the term "French Canadian"; his phrase is "French-speaking Canadians." But wise Politician St. Laurent knows that French-speaking Canada can not be brushed off with symbols and phrases. He has been methodically building up French Canadian representation in the civil service, where it had fallen well below the 2-to-1 ratio of Canada's English-French population.