Editorial

JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES REVUE D'ETUDES CANADIENNES Editorial Editor Associate Editor Editorial Assistant Editorial Board Advisory Board DENIS SMITH BERNARD R. BLISHEN ANITA NEVILLE MAURICE J. BOOTE ROBERT D. CHAMBERS LEON DION KENNETH E. KlDD W. L. MORTON T. H. B. SYMONS ANTHONY ADAMSON CLAUDE T. BISSELL DONALD G. CREIGHTON KATHLEEN FENWICK DAVID M. HAYNE JOHN HIRSCH JEAN PALARDY CLAUDE RYAN B. D. SANDWELL RONALD J. THOM Redacteur Redacteur adjoint Assistante comite de redaction Comite consultatif Despite the vigorous proliferation of committees at the conclusion of February's constitutional conference, and despite the optimistic reports of progress from participants, Canada's constitutional debate has descended from its hopeful beginnings at the Conference of Tomorrow Conference into depressing muddle. There are many reasons for this, not all of them by any means the responsibility of Prime Minister Trudeau; yet Mr. Trudeau's mercurial temperament , and his continuing adherence to a peculiarly rigid interpretation of the federal system, are still the key factors in the situation. the Prime Minister's warning that the ball game would be over, and he would prefer to take a job in Washington or Europe, if official bilingualism is not established by law across the nation. The hints of threat and of dilettantism in these unsettling statements were papered over in a series of qualifying remarks made rapidly by the Prime Minister over the weekend before the Premiers and Prime Ministers assembled in Ottawa. But the memory remains to puzzle and disconcert us. One wonders, as on some previous occasions, just what effect Mr. Trudeau intends, or does not intend, to create. Can it be that, after almost a year of political leadership, he remains very frequently a bad judge of the reactions of his Canadian audience? Or is there some carefully calculated purpose in such utterances which remains obscure yet desirable? The veil is difficult to penetrate. On the eve of the conference, we were treated twice, in a news conference and in an interview with Anthony Westell of the Toronto Star, to ]ournal of Canadian Studies 1 There is no doubt that the Prime Minister has given hostages to fortune by committing himself so single-mindedly to the achievement of tangible and major results from the program of official bilingualism. In this, he is partly the victim of the priorities of the Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission: the extension of French language rights was, after all, the matter of first emphasis in volumes one and two of the CommissiQn's Report. If the Commission had seized upon the central issue of Quebec's constitutional powers in these volumes, the Prime Minister might have possessed some leverage for manoeuvre which he does not now possess. Yet the evidence suggests that the Commission's priorities are genuinely those of the Prime Minister too, and that he prefers to set out first on the path the Commission has initially charted. The danger is not that the path is the wrong one, but that too great expectations may be raised by this particular journey; and that the journey in other directions cannot await the outcome . Having set out this way, the federal government cannot allow itself-nor should it-to falter; yet at the same time there is an urgent need to play down the expectations of great achievement, and to take up with despatch the other central problems of constitutional change. The attitude of the prairie provinces and of Quebec to the Official Languages Bill does not offer great hope, and it is the dictate of political realism to recognize that the Bill:s results will be modest ones at best. The Prime Minister has moved from his position of great caution about general discussion of the constitution in 1966 to a willingness to see all subjects openly debated. Yet he hedges this willingness with a new caution which seems misplaced in 1969. Now, he suggests, we can talk about all the constitutional issues; but of course, we must not expect the resolution of these issues for three, or seven ... or ten ... or fifteen years. The disposition of discussion by the constitutional conference to a series of committees of ministers and officials institutionalizes this caterpillar 's progress. There...