All Those Rusty Wires

During an audience in London last week with Prime Minister Lester Pearson, Queen Elizabeth II signed a formal proclamation giving Canada its own national flag after 252 years under British colors. It should have been a moment of pride for Pearson. In 21 months of difficult minority rule, his accomplishments, besides the new maple-leaf flag, include armed forces integration, improved federal-provincial relations, the Columbia River Treaty with the U.S. --while the economy has continued strong and growing. But Mike Pearson is doing very little pointing with pride these days. A series of embarrassing scandals cloud and threaten his Liber al government.

Pearson's personal integrity and international reputation as a statesman have never been at issue. But as a politician he has stumbled over one rusty little wire after another, nearly always involving the old-guard politicians in his government.

$20,000 for a Racketeer? The first scandal broke about a year ago when Postmaster General Azellus Denis resigned from the Cabinet after a storm in Parliament over his hiring a slew of defeated Liberal candidates as post office "consultants." That was tame com0pared with what followed. Five months ago, a young Montreal lawyer went to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with a story that the executive assistant to the Minister of Immigration, two aides to Justice Minister Guy Favreau, and Pearson's own parliamentary secretary had approached him in an extradition case. The man under extradition proceedings was a Montreal racketeer wanted in the U.S. for trial on charges of Mafia-linked narcotics smuggling. The lawyer, who was working for the U.S. Justice Department, accused the immigration aide of offering a $20,000 bribe and the others of pressuring him to agree to let the racketeer get out of jail on bail.

The Mounties, of course, notified Justice Minister Favreau, and Favreau told Pearson, but as Pearson later admitted, he had "completely forgotten" about the warnings of trouble in his official family until two days before the Opposition Conservatives broke the story last November. When the storm hit Parliament, Pearson had no choice but to collect resignations and to appoint a commission of public inquiry. For the past six weeks, Canadians have been treated to the spectacle of the accused aides protesting their innocence and minor-league hoodlum types testifying about their "connections" in the Liberal government.

$10,000 for a Race Track? The latest scandal was the forced resignation two weeks ago of Pearson's Minister Without Portfolio Yvon Dupuis. The youngest (38) man in the Cabinet, Dupuis was also one of the best campaigners and was extremely well connected to Quebec party bosses. Now Le Devoir and La Presse, two Montreal dailies, were full of stories that Dupuis had taken a $10,000 payoff to help some Quebec race-track promoters get a franchise in his home district. All Pearson will say publicly is that he asked Dupuis, who loudly proclaims his innocence, "to relinquish his position." Pearson is unwilling to say anything more, despite opposition demands for a full and immediate explanation. The two splinter parties that have voted with Pearson up to now are even threatening to withdraw their support.

In Ottawa last week the talk was of a new election this spring--Canada's third in as many years. All this could have been expected to bring joy to the Conservative Party, which Pearson defeated in 1963. What it brought was a twanging in another set of rusty wires. Many Conservatives feel that former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, 69, is too unpopular to lead them to election victory. They are pressing for a party caucus before Parliament convenes Feb. 16 to pick a new leader. Diefenbaker, after eight years of leadership, shows no inclination to fade quietly away. "I am not a reed," he says. "I do not bend." But he might be broken.

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