Canada after Trudeau.

FOR A YEAR he had reveled in his role as centerpiece of the national guessing game. When he finally announced his retirement as Liberal leader it was on February 29, ensuring that Canadians could only celebrate its anniversary quadrennially.

When Pierre Trudeau burst onto the national scene in 1968, it was as a popular figure who could unify the nation. Fifteen years and numerous disappointments later, he was a reverse force for national unity, hated from sea to sea. A Canadian entering a gathering anywhere in the country could count on establishing instant contact with strangers by making an anti-Trudeau remark. Canadian unity is a fragile thing, and Trudeauphobia has recently been its glue.

Apart from a few loyalists, the only mourners after the resignation were Tory strategists. They know their party's huge Gallup lead is due more to Trudeau than to public confidence in the ambiguous agglomeration that persists in styling itself "Progressive-Conservative." Give the Liberals an attractive, bilingual new leader not tarred with the Trudeau brush, and Tory confidence becomes nail-biting anxiety.

Just such a man exists in the person of John Turner, the brightest Anglo-Canadian star in the first Trudeau government, who jumped ship in time to avoid the fallout from Trudeau's ill-starred venture into wage and price controls.

Although formally eschewing politics, Turner has kept a high profile, becoming leader-in-waiting, receiving delegations, earning returns from a lucrative Toronto law practice, and building a national organization. When, as he is expected to, he formally announces his candidacy for the leadership, the job will be his with little more difficulty than Teddy Kennedy experienced in claiming a Massachusetts Senate seat. There will, of course, be the tedium of a leadership convention to endure, but his opponents are Trudeau cabinet ministers, who range from the charmingly inept to the blindly bland.

TRUDEAU LEAVES his successor an economy staggering under mountainous deficits and record unemployment. Inflation remains above 5 per cent despite a recession that was the worst experienced by any member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The National Energy Program, which was going to drive out American imperialists and finance an orgy of social programs, succeeded only in cutting oil and gas exploration by more than half, thereby crippling the one domestic industry still displaying real dynamism. Every major East Coast fish-processing company is in financial difficulties of outright bankruptcy. The U.S. economic recovery was starting to improve things for some of the hardest-hit sectors of the Canadian economy, but a revival of kamikaze unionism threatens to end the recovery before it gains steam.

The Tories, under their new leader, Brian Mulroney, have chosen to avoid policy commitments; they are seeking public endorsement as the alternative to the discreditable Liberals, rather than for a coherent program of their own. This worked for a time, but the Liberals have recently been forcing the Tories to take stands on contentious issues, ranging from French language rights in Manitoba to the right of doctors to "extra bill" under Medicare.

Although the Manitoba question involved pitting the national party against the provincial Tories, Mulroney surprised the Liberals by standing up for fair treatment of the French minority. On Medicare, his agreement to back the Liberals' new intrusion into the medical profession was generally seen as being shrewd politically among those who think doctor-bashing is a vote-grabber.

The issue-barren Tories are in danger of becoming a national joke. They could not even formulate a policy on Grenada, despite their having sent a fact-finding mission that included the sensible Edmonton MP David Kilgour. In seeking to offend nobody, the Tories may end up as a gaseous blur, to be blown away once John Turner grabs the reins in forthright fashion.

There is one consolation: Whoever leads the next government, it has to be an improvement on Trudeau. Canada's worst days are over. Past perfectly awful, president indefinite, future definitely better.