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Starting Out Slowly. While not a landslide, Trudeau's victory was conclusive. The Liberals captured 155 out of 264 seats in the Canadian Parliament —27 more than they had held before. The Conservatives, on the other hand, went down from 94 to 72 seats, lost some of their best parliamentary leaders and emerged as a party whose influence is now almost solely in rural areas. For the moment, the man who likes at times to stand on his head does not plan to stand Canada on its head. "The first months, perhaps even the first Parliament," he told Time Correspondents Marsh Clark and Courtney Tower last week, "will be devoted to bringing everything up to date, getting the laws updated, the mechanisms in place. There will probably be a lot of criticism in the early months and early years that I am not doing enough. But I'd rather have that than try to start out fast and peter out."
Trudeau will have problems enough to deal with. Canada is beset by linguistic, cultural and economic differences that are exacerbated by the vast distances within the country. Its small population does not provide a large enough domestic market for a sustained economic boom. The income gap between the wealthy and the deprived, between the poorer and richer provinces, is still large and not shrinking fast enough.
In the area of foreign policy, Trudeau's Cabinet is already searching for new ideas. Generally, Trudeau believes that Canada ought to adjust to a role as a small power, should be more selective in its peace-keeping missions for the U.N., should seek better relations with both Latin America and, because of its bicultural policy at home, with the French-speaking states. As for U.S. investment, a perennial bugbear, Trudeau approves of it but favors keeping laws that prevent foreign subsidiaries from dominating key industries.
Prickliest Issue. While Trudeau's victory was largely one of personality rather than party, it was also an endorsement of his stand on Quebec—which is the bitterest and prickliest issue in Canada today. Trudeau advocates a strong Canadian federation. Though he is French-Canadian, he is more firmly opposed to a separate status for Quebec than a number of English-speaking politicians. The new Prime Minister is committed to a policy of spreading the use of French throughout the country and making the French Canadians feel at home outside Quebec. Already, Trudeau is appealing to young Quebecois to go out and "see how beautiful it is in British Columbia, see how the Atlantic breaks on the granite shores of Newfoundland, see the tremendous adventure that is in store for us all."