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Part of Gordon's trouble is that decisions vitally affecting Canadian jobs are often made in Detroit, New York or Dallas. Absentee capital (80% from the U.S.) owns 73% of mining, 61% of manufacturing, 80% of Canada's oil industry—more than in any other industrialized nation in the world. Gordon hopes gradually to shift the emphasis from direct investment to bond capital, such as developed a U.S. industry largely free from overseas control. Pearson made a campaign pledge to establish a national development corporation that would draw capital from pension and insurance funds and individuals, and have as its eventual goal "buying back Canadian resources and Canadian companies." Gordon quickly adds: "We must deal fairly with people who have invested their money in Canada in all good faith and with full encouragement."
Defense. When they turned to defense, the Liberal Party planners decided that the issue involved was Canada's international word, a basic consideration to old Diplomat Pearson. "Nuclear virginity" is a favorite Canadian political stance, and Pearson was no more warmly disposed toward nuclear weapons than Diefenbaker was. But Diefenbaker agreed to play Canada's part in continental defense by acquiring Bomarc antiaircraft missiles and Voodoo interceptors, only to refuse the nuclear warheads for which they were designed. The Honest John artillery missiles with the Canadian Army Brigade on NATO duty in Germany were, to keep them balanced, filled with sand.
When General Lauris Norstad, retiring from SHAPE, dropped in at Ottawa last winter and allowed that Canada was not living up to its NATO commitments. Pearson, after a thoughtful week off, announced a switch in Liberal policy: since Canada had made a nuclear commitment to NATO and NORAD. it should live up to its obligations, and at a future time re-examine the rights and wrongs of the commitment.
Restless Quebec. Both for the narrowest of political reasons and the widest conception of national interest, the Liberals must do something to satisfy restless French Canada. They are in a better position to do so than the Tories. Under the new provincial leadership of Liberal Premier Jean Lesage. Quebec is at last emerging from a corrupt political history, a backward church-dominated educational system, and an unadventuresome economic structure.
The French dissatisfaction that Demagogue Caouette exploited was the feeling that French Canadians had been cheated out of their birthright. They thought, said Mike Pearson, that Confederation "meant partnership, not domination." but the result has been "an English-speaking Canada with a bilingual Quebec." In Ottawa, French-speaking civil servants are even required to write to each other in English—for ease of filing. Young French intellectuals bitterly call themselves the "white Negroes" of Canada. French Canadians outside Quebec, crusading for schooling in their own language, were recently told by a school trustee of one large Ontario city: "We have no good reason to spend vast sums of money to accommodate those who should have learned English 300 years ago."