Minor party may gain Canadian power balance

Press, 29 March 1979, Page 7

Minor party may gain Canadian power balance

NZPA-Reuter Ottawa i The Canadian Opposition leader, Joe Clark, has entered Canada’s General Election campaign by attacking the record of the Prime Minister (Mr Pierre Trudeau) on the economy as shocking, and pledging more jobs and less inflation. By contrast, Mr Trudeau, who on Monday night called an election for May 22 based his campaign on the nation’s unity crisis and called on Canadians to choose decisively between | his Liberal Party and the, Progressive Conservatives. i “It would be' absurd fori the Federal Government to L be weak at a time like this,” i Mr Trudeau said, referring!' to Quebec separatism and 1 growing regionalism in re-1'

(source-rich Western Canada. A recent opinion poll showed both main parties closely tied in popularity, raising the prospect of neither party winning the election outright and giving the Centre-Left New Democratic Party the balance of power, probably in favour of the present Government. The Prime Minister, in power since 1968 and seeking a fourth term of office, said it was the rise of Quebec separatism that had persuaded him to stay in office. I At a later news confer'ence, Mr Clark, at 39 fighting his first election as [party leader, said living (costs in Canada had doubled land unemployment had (tripled in the past decade. I The Trudeau Government!

had a “pretty shocking record,” he said. He pledged to achieve economic growth of 5 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent last year, create 1.5 M jobs by 1985, and bring down inflation from the current 9 per cent.

Both liberals and conservatives are committed to Canadian unity, but voting is likely to split along linguistic lines with Englishspeaking provinces voting for Mr Clark and Frenchspeaking Quebec supporting Mr Trudeau.

Mr Clark, an English-Ca-nadian, has made a point of learning French in an effort to show himself as a truly national leader, and answered some questions fluently at his news conference.