Trudeau promised -- and this he did promise -- a way out,
a new politics, a Just Society. He promised "the creative use of
the law", "an attack on the problem of regional disparities",
"the pursuit of a prosperous economy as well as the fair distri-
bution of its proceeds", "reform of Parliament", a "politics of
participation" and "the maintenance of the integrity of Can-
ada". ¹

With a new election in the offing, the time has come to mea-
sure Trudeau's performance against those general promises. I
believe that when Canadians go to the polls, they will re-elect
him and his Liberals with nearly as strong a majority as was
bestowed in the 1968 election (155 Liberals were returned,
seventy-two Conservatives, twenty-two New Democrats, four-
teen Creditistes, and one Independent). That new victory will
not be won because Trudeau has done well in office, but be-
cause of other factors, including his own strong image in an age
that clamours for strong men, the lack of a viable alternative,
and a general and lamentable ignorance about exactly what
has happened to government in Canada since June 1968. I can
do nothing about either of the first two phenomena. The nation
as a whole is in the grip of personality politics, and the opposi-
tion parties are in the grip of internal convulsions that will not
quiet for some time to come. But I can try to assess the Trudeau
record by measuring it, not only against what was promised
when the Prime Minister asked for his first mandate, but
against the problems he faced and the opportunities he encoun-
tered in his first term of office.

I will argue that, under Trudeau, we are more than ever dis-
tant from anything that could be called a Just Society. The law
has certainly been used creatively -- to slam political mal-
contents into jail for actions that were not criminal when com-
mitted, and became so only retroactively. Regional disparities
persist, and continue to grow; the economy is neither pros-
perous nor fairly distributed; Parliament has not been so much
reformed as emasculated; the politics of participation has
turned out to be, not to put too fine a point on the matter, a
fraud; and Canada's unity has been maintained only at rifle
point, while our economy and national integrity are still on the
auction block to the United States.

Beyond these negative points is a positive evil. The Prime
Minister has torn most of the decision-making power out of its
normal resting places and lodged it with a small coterie of loy-
alists connected directly to himself -- the Supergroup. This is a

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