A Socialist From the North

DAVID LEWIS is courtly, slow of speech, reflective and almost doleful in conversation. Since last month's military coup against Chile's Popular Unity government, he is also the only non-Cuban socialist in the Western Hemisphere in a position to determine the fate of his country's government.

Lewis is the parliamentary leader of Canada's New Democratic Party, which holds three provincial governments and the balance of power in Canada's national Parliament, where the ruling Liberal party continues to rule only by the New Democrats' sufferance. Lewis came to Harvard last week, as a guest of Martin Peretz, Master of South House. While he was here, he met with Neiman Fellows and undergraduates, especially Canadian undergraduates. And he spoke at South House on "A Socialist Program for Modern Democracy," a topic close to his heart since his student days in the early '30s.

Actually, Lewis's political affiliation goes back even further than that, to the small town in Poland where he was born to Jewish Social-Democratic parents. Lewis's family came to Canada when he was 12, and he went to Canadian schools, McGill University in Montreal (like Ron Ziegler, Lewis supported himself by working as a tour guide), and then to England as a Rhodes scholar. When he came back to Canada, Lewis became active in the Canadian Commonwealth Federation, a moderately leftist political group to which Canadian Prime Minister Pierre-Elliot Trudeau also once belonged. Lewis became the group's national secretary. He was also the only one of its leaders, by his own account, who spoke French.

In 1961 the CCF became the New Democratic Party, and in the late 1960s it began growing rapidly, especially in the west. In Canada's last election its 32 seats in Parliament became enough to determine the balance of power-so far, in the Liberals' favor.

The first question Lewis faces is often why the New Democrats let Trudeau's Liberals continue to rule. "I'm sometimes accused of being in bed with Trudeau," he says. "I always give two answers to that."

"The first answer is very elegant: I say that neither of us is a consenting adult. It's the Canadian people's responsibility." He shakes his head ruefully before going on. "The second answer is much less elegant. I say that history will have to show who is doing what to whom."

IF HE'S asked how New Democratic policy on the increasingly sensitive issue of U.S. investment in Canada would differ from Liberal policy, Lewis begins with another half serious, half self-mocking response: "That would depend on whether we had the guts we say we have...If we had the guts we say we have, there'd be three main approaches. First, a lot of American companies with Canadian interests only obey American law; for instance, they refused to trade with China, and now with Cuba...we'd stop that pretty damn quick. Then secondly, we would extend public control over these industries...Most of these firms are multinationals, which means that even when they are very efficient, so efficient that there would be no point in nationalizing them, they are making their decisions on the basis of their interests elsewhere...And finally, we would hope ultimately to nationalize large industries, with compensation-I tell you frankly, it would be fairer without compensation, but I do not think we have the guts for that-and if we were to nationalize Canadian firms with compensation, our people's sense of fairness would demand, I think, that Americans be treated the same way."

LEWIS insists that the New Democrats have already brought about significant progress towards their goals. He points particularly to increases in unemployment benefits, family allowances and old age pensions, and the socialization of medicine,

"Today no one in Canada has to worry that he will be bankrupt in addition to being sick," Lewis said last week. "The only question that a hospital will ask even the poorest person from Canada's poorest district is, what do you need? And this is very important...I am not interested in my soul. My religious beliefs do not admit of a soul, but if the concept of a soul is a valid one, I hope I have a soul, and I think I have a soul-in fact, I am often twitted by Canadian journalists because I enjoy poetry and I enjoy music when I am not working-but what is important to me is not safeguarding the purity of my soul, but helping to bring progress for Canada's workers and farmers...It is important that hospitals no longer ask people how much money they have, but only what they need. That is what is important."