What is the secret of Canadian Premier Jean Chretien? Alexander Craig reports.

Most Canadians face mandatory retirement at 65. Not so their Prime Minister: Jean Chretien, whose 65th birthday it is today, hints he looks forward to the year 2001, when he intends to fight for a third mandate.

Chretien's Liberal government is helped by a divided Opposition. And a strong economy: University of Toronto economists showed on Friday that in the past two years Canada's economic growth has created 871,100 net new jobs - the 3.2% gain put it at the top of the Group of Seven (G7) nations.

This will be an unusual year in Canada. There will be no federal election, nor major reshuffle among top party leaders. Last, but emphatically not least, the Quebec question is quiet for the moment, with no referendum planned for the foreseeable future.

So Jean Chretien just chugs along. When he defeated the nine-year-long Tory regime in 1993, he promised no surprises, and his is a practical, workman-like rather than visionary administration. His Finance Minister Paul Martin has brought Canada's deficit from $45bn 10 years ago to zero today.

Preston Manning's Official Opposition party, Reform, is stuck in the West, and Manning himself ''enjoys'' only 11% support in the polls. The next two biggest parties, the separatist Bloc Quebecois, and the Labour-equivalent New Democrats, are unlikely to get beyond the limited support they already have.

On February 19-21 in Ottawa, Canada's traditional other party, the Progressive Conservatives (at present only fifth-largest in the House of Commons) get together with Reform to try to work out the United Alternative. However, the Tories' ''fresh'' new leader Joe Clark (briefly Prime Minister in 1979-80 during Trudeau's long spell) swears he won't allow the right to unite. Reform's right-wing, populist, anti-French approach means it will hardly ever win seats in Ontario let alone Quebec.

Chretien keeps his federal Liberal party tightly disciplined, and himself, too. He's a wiry, tough, street-fighter type of politician. His ''aw-shucks'' style masks a politician with 36 years' experience in federal politics - longer than many of his voters have been alive - and as a Minister he held no fewer than 11 different portfolios.

His no-frills, no-nonsense approach helped devastate the flashy Tories of the Mulroney era. Chretien promised he wouldn't go fishing with George Bush. Instead, he golfs regularly with Bill Clinton (with whom, he told Canada's news magazine Maclean's two weeks ago in his year-end interview, he ''has a personal, professional friendship''). Who wins? ''That's a state secret,'' is the wily response.

Of the G7 leaders, only Yeltsin and Chirac (at 67 and 66, respectively) are older (but not, one supposes, fitter). Yet Canada's main Father of Confederation, the even wilier Sir John A Macdonald, was Prime Minister on his 65th birthday - and continued to do the job for another 11 years. (He, too, was born on January 11, but in 1815, in High Street, Glasgow.)

Chretien, of course, has problems. More than 80% of Canada's trade is with the US, so the economic health of the southern neighbour is always of prime importance. There's considerable concern, and ever-present disputes with the provinces, over healthcare and other social issues. In next month's federal budget, Paul Martin will have to decide how much to resume spending in these areas (and on the armed forces), and how much to react to widespread concern among Canadians about high taxes which are being blamed for, among other things, increased brain drain to the US.