By JOHN F. BURNS, Special to the New York Times

AS TRUDEAU ENDS SILENCE, STORM BEGINS

By JOHN F. BURNS, Special to the New York Times

Published: June 1, 1987

TORONTO, May 31—A month ago, in a single day and without public debate, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the premiers of Canada's 10 provinces agreed on a far-reaching re-drafting of Canada's Constitution that would recognize Quebec as ''a distinct society'' and grant broad new powers to all of the provinces at the national Government's expense.

Because the deal included Quebec's agreement to sign the Canada Constitution Act of 1982 after a five-year holdout, it was enthusiastically received. Mr. Mulroney, who had been in the worst slump that opinion polls have recorded for a Canadian leader, saw his standing begin to rise.

And then something happened that few had foreseen.

On Wednesday, Pierre Elliott Trudeau ended the three-year-long silence on public affairs he had maintained since retiring as Prime Minister in April 1984. With a newspaper article that described the accord as a ''total bungle'' and Mr. Mulroney as ''a weakling'' for agreeing to Quebec's demands, he sent the kind of shock waves across the country that characterized his 15-year tenure as Canada's leader. 'Balkanized' Country Feared

Mr. Trudeau, 67 years old, said he had stepped back into public debate because he despaired of anybody else's ''sounding the alarm.'' He has kept campaigning against the accord with radio and television interviews. His theme has been that Mr. Mulroney is turning away from the Trudeau vision of a strong federal state, with equal rights for French- and English-speaking Canadians, and moving toward a newly ''balkanized'' country with an ''impotent'' national Government, in which French Canadians would have to look to Quebec as their homeland.

Since his article was published in La Presse of Montreal and The Toronto Star, the former Prime Minister has insisted that he has no intention of returning full time to political life. ''I'm an elder statesman now,'' he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with what sounded like a self-mocking laugh. But Mr. Trudeau, once known as the the man with the shaprest tongue in Canadian politics, has become the most talked-about figure in the country all over again.

Mr. Mulroney has called his predecessor's invectives ''a bit of low-level comedy'' and predicted that Mr. Trudeau would change his stand on the Meech Lake accord, named for the placed in Quebec where it was worked out. ''In about six months he's going to be saying that the Meech Lake accord was terrific, he's been in favor of it all along, and I'm a great Prime Minister just like him,'' he said.

Other critics have been less sparing. LiseBissonnette, a Quebec-based columnist for The Globe and Mail of Toronto, described Mr. Trudeau as a ''sore loser'' raging against ''his vanishing dreams.'' Marcel Prud'homme, a Montreal politician who was made a Cabinet minister by Mr. Trudeau, drew a withering analogy to another powerful figure. ''John XXIII was a great Pope, but he's dead too,'' he said.

Behind the polemics, however, there was a widespread sense that Mr. Trudeau had done the country a service by provoking a debate about a deal that might have proceeded to ratification in virtual silence. Newspapers this weekend were packed with articles examining the accord, and influential voices were demanding that its adoption be delayed to permit a full examination.

Liberal Split Develops

In Mr. Trudeau's Liberal Party, now in opposition, a split has developed that threatens to undermine John Turner, Mr. Trudeau's successor as party leader. Mr. Turner has given qualified approval to the agreement.

The country's foremost constitutional expert, Senator Eugene Forsey, has called for a delay in ratification. So has a group of leading artists and intellectuals, among them Farley Mowat, the writer, and Ramsay Cook, a noted historian. While these and other opponents share Mr. Trudeau's concern that the agreement may have laid the groundwork for a renewed separatist drive in Quebec, nationalists like Pierre-Marc Johnson, leader of the Parti Quebecois, once the standard-bearer for separatism, have condemned the pact as not going far enough.

Undaunted, Mr. Mulroney has scheduled a meeting with the premiers for Tuesday to sign the agreement. If they can resolve last-minute problems in the wording, the pact will go forward for ratification by Parliament and the provincial legislatures. Mr. Mulroney has said he would like to have the process completed by the fall.

Having accomplished his purpose in stirring a debate, Mr. Trudeau has said he intends to return to his former, almost invisible life as a partner in a Montreal law firm, as a world traveler and as father to his three sons, the oldest of whom is now 15.

''I'm like Garbo,'' he told a CBC interviewer. ''I like to be alone.''