In May 1979, English-speaking Canadians, tired of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the way he badgered them about the threat of Quebec separatism, ousted him from office. That vote, reflecting the English Canadians’ indifference to Quebec, split Canada along dangerous communal lines. On February 18, barely nine months later, many English-speaking Canadians changed their minds about Trudeau and voted him back into office. On the surface, the recall might seem like a new awakening by English-speakers to the gravest crisis facing their country. But, in fact, it represented the same old indifference. Trudeau, the Montreal intellectual who has based his political career on his ability to deal with the awesome problem of Quebec, came back from defeat and near retirement to regain power as Prime Minister with a campaign that made believe the problem did not exist at all.

The problem not only exists but must be met in the months and years ahead. There is, in fact, some urgency now. The Parti Québécois Government of Premier René Lévesque has promised a referendum in Quebec this spring, probably in early June, that could nudge the province a step closer to separation. It is not clear what role Trudeau intends to play in this, but it is hard to believe that he will stay aloof.

English Canadians will stay aloof. The election made it clear that the unity of Canada is now in the hands of three intellectual Quebecers of French descent - the separatist Lévesque, the strong federalist Trudeau and the moderate federalist Claude Ryan, leader of the provincial Liberal Party. They alone will wrangle about the future of Quebec and Canada. From time to time, if they shake off their usual indifference, English Canadians may emit a cheer or boo, but only as spectators from the sidelines. In the long run, however, they cannot remain indifferent. English Canadians will have to accept or reject the scheme for Canada that is offered them. As a result, guesses about the English reaction will be a factor in the Quebec wrangling.

In the most practical political sense, there were sound reasons for the politicians to ignore the Quebec problem during the campaign. Trudeau probably felt he had little choice, in view of the lesson of the May 1979 election. (See Meisler, “Taking Quebec Seriously,” The Nation, April 28, 1979.) English Canadians did not want to hear about Quebec then. Some even accepted the argument of his opponents that Trudeau brought on the problem, or at least aggravated it, by constantly arguing about it.

Trudeau probably never expected to use the lesson. His rejection had been so stark that the 60-year-old Trudeau faced what appeared to be political reality and announced his retirement in November. But a few weeks later, Prime Minister Joe Clark, the 40-year-old Progressive Conservative who had defeated Trudeau, somehow failed to count and court enough votes in the House of Commons and let his minority Government crash into parliamentary defeat. A surprise winter election was on. The Liberal Party felt it had no alternative but to call on Trudeau once more, and the strategists around him decided that this time he would keep his mouth shut about Quebec and, in fact, anything else that might remind English-speaking voters of why he once irritated them. Trudeau concentrated on ridiculing Clark.

For Clark as well, there was no advantage in raising the issue of Quebec. Although bilingual, Clark, an Albertan, was regarded as an outsider in Quebec with no role to play there; he would win no Quebecer votes by interfering. On top of this, Clark, who tended to see Quebec nationalism as somewhat analogous to the feelings of alienation from Ottawa prevalent in his own Alberta, sincerely believed that the anxieties of Quebec needed quiet and calm now, not confrontation. That, of course, made political sense as well, for it fit the mood of English-speaking voters.

As a political stratagem, ignoring Quebec worked more to Trudeau’s advantage than to Clark’s. The voters, in fact, gave Trudeau a majority in the House of Commons. His Liberal Party won 146 seats, five more than half, while the Progressive Conservative Party had 103 and the socialist New Democratic Party 32.

The actual issues that spawned this result offer, as might be expected, few clues to what the people of Canada, whether English-speaking or French-speaking, really want for the constitutional future of their country. The election was mainly about Joe Clark, who had disappointed many Canadians in his few months in office. From the beginning of the campaign, the young Prime Minister was dogged by a procession of Joe Clark jokes that demeaned him, sometimes vilely, as a jerk, a turkey or a klutz. (A mild example: Why does Joe Clark carry a turkey under his arm? The answer: For spare parts.) Clark and his aides, citing the jokes in particular, later blamed his defeat on image, not substance. This is partly true. Clark, with only the nub of a chin, with a face of Archie comics innocence, with the awkward, stiff movements of an uncoordinated teen-ager, with a nervous, hollow laugh, does not look like a leader. But he might have overcome this superficial disadvantage if he had not at times acted the way he looked. His first major action as Prime Minister was to announce, without thinking it through, the movement of the Canadian Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, an announcement that upset the United States Government and the Arab world and from which he had to back down in the resulting furor. Nor did his last major action as Prime Minister inspire much confidence. His Government fell because of his failure to manage the business of the House of Commons and his foolish refusal to throw a few bones for parliamentary votes.

The second major issue was his attempt to raise the excise tax on gasoline by 18 cents. That was a part of the austerity budget that led to his defeat in the House of Commons. The voters, of course, did not like the idea of paying more for the use of their cars. But, even more important, Clark could never answer the Trudeau argument that this increase was not a conservation measure but a way for the Progressive Conservative Government to pay for a campaign promise - partial tax deductions for home mortgages.

A final issue, mostly in Ontario, which is the largest province in Canada, with more than a third of the population, rose out of Clark’s constant advocacy of provincial rights. As a practical matter, in the eyes of Ontarians, these views seemed to conspire to raise oil prices for the benefit of Clark’s native Alberta and to the detriment of the industrial centers of Ontario.

The voting patterns revealed by the returns also provide few clues to what the people want for their constitutional future. Trudeau’s party swept Quebec, winning seventy-three of the seventy-four seats up for election. But Quebecers were obviously rallying around a native son who had been rejected by outsiders nine months ago and not necessarily endorsing his views on Quebec. In Ontario, the Liberals took fifty-two of the ninety-five seats, mainly because of the rejection of Clark as a leader and as a provincial-rights man. In the Atlantic provinces, the Liberals took nineteen of thirty-two seats, largely because farmers and fishermen were upset by the increase in the excise tax on gasoline.

The West probably gave out the strongest signal of its feelings on national unity. In the four western provinces and two northern territories, Trudeau’s Liberals were able to win only two of seventy-eight seats. Westerners, while never concerned about Quebec itself, have long been incensed by the Trudeau policies that put French translations on their boxes of breakfast cereal and by what they have historically regarded as the anti-Western policies of the Government in Ottawa. Trudeau’s silence on these issues did not change their minds.

After the election results were in, the 57-year-old Lévesque, looking relaxed and confident, professed optimism about his referendum. He described the vote for Trudeau in Quebec not as support for federalism but as “a kind of revenge” against English Canada for rejecting Trudeau last time. The Premier predicted that “the old Quebec wisdom” would prevail and Quebecers would counterbalance their massive vote for Trudeau with a massive vote in favor of the referendum. Parti Québécois officials put out the theory that even antiseparatist Quebecers, knowing there was now a powerful and friendly figure in Ottawa to protect Canadian unity, would vote in favor of the referendum to make sure the province had a strong voice demanding its rights within Canada.

Some analysts agree that Quebecers have traditionally tried to hedge their bets by voting for a strong provincial government and a strong federal Government at the same time. Yet the results made it clear that Trudeau has enormous popularity within Quebec. No other politician can match him. His views on the referendum and the place of Quebec surely influence his admirers. On top of this, his position as the most powerful figure in Canada undermines the Parti Québécois’s contention that French Canada has always been shortchanged in Ottawa.

Lévesque’s referendum has the advantage, for Lévesque, of cautious wording. It would not lock Quebec into Lévesque’s separatist vision. Levesque wants a sovereign Quebec that would legislate all its own laws, raise all its taxes and establish its own diplomatic relations abroad even while keeping in a common market and currency union with the rest of Canada. He and his party call this “sovereignty-association.” But his referendum would not authorize the provincial government to declare sovereignty on its own. Instead, it asks only for a mandate to negotiate sovereignty-association with Canada and pledges that any negotiated change in political status would be submitted to Quebec in another referendum.

This second vote is designed to appeal to Quebecers who, while suspicious about separation, feel that a show of support for Lévesque would strengthen the province in dealing with the rest of Canada. It enables them to support the referendum without really supporting separation. There is a profound cultural nationalism within Quebec and a deep resentment about the way English-speaking Canadians have long turned their back on history and refused to recognize the dual nature of Canada. Lévesque’s Parti Québécois has been playing on these feelings and rallying support for the referendum as a show of Quebec chauvinism.

Officially, the opposition to the referendum will be led by the 55-year-old, austere-looking Ryan, who is leader of the opposition in the Quebec National Assembly, as the provincial legislature is called. But Ryan will probably now be overshadowed by Trudeau. As head of the provincial Liberal Party, Ryan presented his alternative last month to the sovereignty-association of Lévesque. Ryan, a federalist, would keep Quebec within Canada, but the Canada of his vision would have a central government of diminished power. Ryan’s plan, in effect, offers a third alternative to the separatism of Lévesque and the strong federalism of Trudeau. Its obvious intent is to keep Quebec inside Canada by giving all the provinces the kind of control over their own destiny that many Quebecers want. These ideas tend to coincide somewhat with those of Clark, who has described Canada as “a community of communities” with provinces like Quebec and his own Alberta yearning for roughly the same kind of freedom from meddling by Ottawa. This way of treating Quebec and Alberta as two sides of the same coin has a vogue in Canada these days even though it tends to belittle the profound differences and grievances of Quebec by making them seem a kind of regionalism.

During the election campaign, Trudeau refused to comment on Ryan’s proposals and, in fact, said he would refrain from talking about them until after the referendum. Everyone, Trudeau told an interviewer, knew where he stood on the issue of Quebec and national unity. If the past dozen years mean anything, Trudeau, to most Canadians, stands for a central government strong enough to guarantee the cultural and language rights of Quebec and of French-speakers throughout Canada. His vision is of a unified Canada that accepts and even rejoices in its historical and present duality. It is a vision, however, that he has never been able to sell. It also is a vision that seems to contradict Ryan’s completely. After the election, however, Ryan denied that he and Trudeau had great differences. He said they had already reached a general understanding in previous meetings.

In the interests of the federation, Trudeau and Ryan may reconcile their differences. But it could prove difficult. After the election, Lévesque was asked if he was looking forward to a referendum fight with Trudeau. The Premier grinned and, in an obvious allusion to Trudeau and Ryan, said, “It remains to be seen who is going to fight whom.”

Trudeau is now the dominant federalist force in Quebec politics. Although this would be out of character, he might be content to let Ryan carry most of the fight against the referendum. But, should Ryan falter, Trudeau is sure to step in to lead the drive. It would be difficult, in that case, to hold back on proclaiming his vision of the future. He already has held back once this year. It would be too much to expect a man like Trudeau to do that again.

Stanley Meisler reports from Canada for The Los Angeles Times.