The Government is Seeking a Mandate:

The Liberal Party of Canada’s Use of Democratic Rhetoric in the Interwar years, 1919–

1940

by

Adam Coombs

B.A., Carleton University, 2010

M.A., The University of British Columbia, 2012

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

Doctor of Philosophy

in

THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES

(History)

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

(VANCOUVER)

July 2021

© Adam Coombs, 2021 The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled:

The Government is Seeking a Mandate: The Liberal Party of Canada’s Use of Democratic Rhetoric in the Interwar years, 1919–1940

submitted by Adam Coombs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History

Examining Committee:

Dr. Michel Ducharme, Associate Professor, History, UBC Supervisor

Dr. Tina Loo, Professor, History, UBC Supervisory Committee Member

Dr. Bradley Miller, Associate Professor, History, UBC Supervisory Committee Member

Dr. Steven Lee, Associate Professor, History, UBC University Examiner

Dr. Barbara Arneil, Professor, Political Science, UBC University Examiner

ii

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to explain how and why the political concepts Canadians value differ substantially from the foundational ideals of the British North America Act 1867. It seeks to answer this question by examining democratic discourses propagated by national political parties during the key years of 1919–1940. In particular, it focuses on the role of the Liberal Party of

Canada and its leader William Lyon Mackenzie King in advancing a certain set of democratic discourses as a means of responding to specific challenges the party faced during these years.

Ultimately, it argues the Liberals used discourses based on the concept of popular sovereignty to justify centralizing political power in the person of the Prime Minister and creating a centralized political party designed to support the legislative agenda of their leader. While the Liberals were not the only party to employ democratic discourses as a means of advancing their political fortunes, their particular articulation of how Canada should function was uniquely successful in appealing to the popular imagination. Other parties, from the Progressive Party of the early

1920s, who advocated group governance, proportional representation and multi–member constituencies, to the Conservatives, who steadfastly defended British constitutional norms, all were either unable or unwilling to create an effective counter–narrative and so remained in the minority within the House of Commons, leading to a prolonged period of Liberal rule.

iii

Lay Summary

This work focuses on how throughout the 1920s and 30s the Liberal Party of Canada and their leader William Lyon Mackenzie King employed democratic ideas as a means of enhancing their political position vis–a–vie other parties, namely the Progressive Party, the Co–operative

Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Conservative Party. The result of this rhetorical strategy has been to offer a reinterpretation of the Canadian Constitution that Canadians have come to see as fundamental to how their system operates. Fundamentally, this dissertation argues that the way the Liberal Party talked about how the political system should operate shaped peoples’ expectations and subsequent demands for democratic reforms.

iv

Preface

This dissertation is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, A. Coombs.

A section of Chapter 3 was published as Adam Coombs. “Marginalizing the Upper House:

Canada's Liberal Party, the Senate and Democratic Reform in 1920s Canada.” in Nikolaj

Bijleveld, Colin Grittner, David E. Smith, Wybren Verstegen (Eds.). Reforming Senates: Upper

Legislative Houses in North Atlantic Small Powers 1800–Present. New York: Routledge, 2019.

v

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... iii

Lay Summary ...... iv

Preface ...... v

Table of Contents ...... vi

Acknowledgements ...... viii

Dedication ...... xi

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 2: Mandate Politics and Parliamentary Supremacy ...... 28

2.1 Practicing Mandate Politics in Opposition ...... 32

2.2 Dealing with a Hostile Senate ...... 43

2.3 The King–Byng Crisis ...... 57

2.4 Returning Focus to the Senate ...... 70

2.5 Conclusion ...... 73

Chapter 3: Celebrating the Brokerage Party ...... 76

3.1 Justifying the Continued Existence of the Liberal Party ...... 85

3.2 Progressive Party Beliefs ...... 93

3.3 The Decline of the Progressive Party...... 100

3.4 Conclusion ...... 116

Chapter 4: Attacking Autocracy: The Liberal Party and R.B. Bennett ...... 118

4.1 The Conservative Party under R.B. Bennett ...... 122

4.2 Attacking Autocracy and Defending Democracy ...... 136 vi

4.3 In the Aftermath of 1935...... 170

4.4 Conclusion ...... 175

Chapter 5: Empowering Party Members ...... 178

5.1 Party Organization and Development ...... 181

5.2 Building the Liberal Extra-Parliamentary Party ...... 186

5.3 The Conservative Party Experience ...... 208

5.4 Liberal Attacks ...... 217

5.5 Conclusion ...... 226

Chapter 6: Limiting the Power of Private Members ...... 229

6.1 Patronage in a Canadian Context ...... 233

6.2 Patronage after World War I ...... 237

6.3 Patronage during the Great Depression ...... 246

6.4 Opposition to Centralization ...... 253

6.5 Patronage in Wartime ...... 268

6.6 Conclusion ...... 272

Chapter 7: Conclusion ...... 275

Bibliography ...... 284

Archival Sources ...... 284

Newspapers and Periodicals ...... 284

Published Sources ...... 286

vii

Acknowledgements

Completing a dissertation is a massive undertaking and there are too many people to thank individually. There are, however, many people to whom I owe an immense and specific debt of gratitude. First, I am incredibly grateful for all the support, love and time that my wife Carrie

Komesch has given me over my entire career as a graduate student. I am also grateful for the unconditional love and support of my daughter Sadie Coombs. Second, I would like to thank members of my family. Thank you to my parents Donald and Debbie as well as to my Aunt and

Uncle Karen and Alex, my cousins by birth and choice Karl, Sneha and Erik, my late Nana Nora for hosting me on a research trip to the UK, Grandad Ivor and Val, as well as my late

Grandparents Jim and Bertie. I only wished I could have finished in time for them to read it.

A good supervisor makes all the difference and I could not have had a better supervisor and mentor than Professor Michel Ducharme. Throughout my MA and Ph.D., he has provided invaluable feedback and advice on my dissertation, teaching, and career choices. I could not have completed this project without him. Additionally, I would like to thank the other two members of my committee, Professors Tina Loo and Bradley Miller; both have served as valuable mentors and their work has made this dissertation a much better final document than I could have ever written on my own.

I would also like to thank other members of the UBC History Faculty for their feedback on my work, informal discussions, and serving as wonderful role models. In particular, I would like to thank Professor Jessica Wang and Professor Tamara Myers for serving on my Comprehensive

Exam Committee and working with me to create my reading lists. Additionally, my sincerest viii

thanks goes to Professors Leslie Paris, Paul Krause, Courtney Booker, Eagle Glassheim and

Laura Ishiguro. Finally, I am incredibly appreciative to the guidance, support and mentorship provided by the late Professor Robert McDonald. Thanks Bob!

My work has been shaped by being part of the UBC student community in Vancouver. In particular, I would like to thank the other three members of my 2012 cohort, Kilroy Abney,

Sebastian Huebel and Teil Paradela, all of whom read very early versions of this work. I would also like to thank Dr. Stephen Hay for providing advice and companionship in both Ottawa and

Vancouver. Finally, special thanks to Dr. Daniel Westlake for a political scientist’s perspective on my work and a fellow Montreal Canadiens fan friendship.

I would also like to thank members of the OGC who provided support, advice and friendship through various technological mediums. Particular thanks go to my long-suffering CKCU co- host Mike Powell.

Since 2018, I have worked at Library and Archives Canada and I would like to thank my colleagues there for their interest and support in my ongoing work. In particular, I would like to thank my fellow “coffee club” members Joseph Trivers and Keven Palendat as well as my cubicle neighbor and fellow hockey fan Martha Sellens.

While it was over 15 years ago, special thanks goes to my Grade 12 English teacher Stephanie

Goodwin. She made it her goal to ensure students knew not only how to write, but how to think.

My university career would have been much longer and arduous without her. ix

Additionally, I would like to thank members of the Carleton University History Department for helping me start my academic career. Special thanks go to Professors Norman Hillmer, Joanna

Dean, Matthew Bellamy and Peter Fitzgerald.

I would also like to thank the reference staff at Library and Archives Canada for their help in consulting the archival sources necessary for completing this project. I would also like to thank the reference staff from the Queen’s University Archives in Kingston and the Glenbow Museum and Archives in Calgary. As well thank you to the staff and librarians at Carleton University

Library and the University of Ottawa Library for helping me to access the secondary sources required.

x

Dedication

To my daughter, Sadie Elizabeth Coombs. Dad has finally finished his “book”

xi

Chapter 1: Introduction

On 2 December 2008, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion was poised to become the first Canadian

prime minister in history to head a true coalition government. In a joint statement signed by

Liberal leader Dion, New Democratic Party (NDP) Leader Jack Layton and Bloc Québécois

(Bloc) Leader Gilles Duceppe, the Liberals and NDP agreed to form a coalition government with

Dion serving as prime minister at the head of a twenty–four member cabinet, with six ministers

drawn from the ranks of the NDP. The Bloc promised to support the coalition in the House of

Commons for eighteen months, but would not officially join the government. The catalyst for

this potentially historic agreement was the 27 November 2008 Fiscal Update delivered to the

Commons by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Included in this update were promises to cut

government–spending, sell off Crown assets and most controversially, remove the $1.95 per vote

subsidy provided to political parties. This combination of austerity and removal of public party

funding proved to be an unpalatable combination for the opposition parties, prompting

immediate negotiations on how to remove Prime Minister Stephen Harper from power.1

However, before the nascent coalition could bring forward a no–confidence motion against the

government, Harper successfully requested that Governor General Michaëlle Jean prorogue

Parliament for three months. By the end of January 2009, internal divisions within the Liberal

Party, including Michael Ignatieff replacing Dion as party leader, caused the Liberals to abandon

the coalition and support the Conservatives’ modified budget when the house resumed sitting in

March of 2009.2

1 David Akin, Mike De Souza, Andrew Mayeda and Juliet O'Neill, “Duceppe, Dion, Layton to Form Coalition,” 2 December 2008, National Post, A1. 2 “Ignatieff Okays Budget, with Conditions,” Globe and Mail, 28 January 2009. 1

The proposed coalition and Harper's request for prorogation prompted intense public

discussion, rallies and internet debate. While the coalition partners emphasized the importance of

economic stimulus funding, Harper and the Conservatives instead repeated particular discourses

rooted in democratic ideas to attack the coalition and defend proroguing Parliament. The prime

minister stated that Dion and Layton were forming a “coalition nobody had voted for” while

Revenue Minister Jean–Pierre Blackburn described it as a “coup d’état” and Environment

Minister Jim Prentice stated that the coalition was “irresponsible and undemocratic.”3 The

Conservatives’ decision to emphasize their self–professed commitment to democratic norms

while attacking that of the opposition, despite the Liberals, NDP and Bloc acting entirely

constitutionally, is not surprising. Opinion polling demonstrates that Canadians are incredibly

supportive of democratic practices and ideals. Furthermore, the national media repeatedly

reinforces the importance of democratic values.4 In that respect, it is easy to understand why the

governing party would appeal to almost universally accepted norms to buttress their position.

Superficially, the appeal of such rhetoric is not surprising and yet, for many reasons, it

actually should be, as it reflects a substantial shift from how Canadians have historically thought

about such issues. The British North America Act 1867 (since 1982 the Constitution Act 1867

and referred to in this work at BNA Act) which formed the Dominion of Canada and outlined the

structure of its political institutions sought to limit the influence of democratic ideas most

3 “The First Minister and the Viceroy,” Globe and Mail, 6 December 2008 and Akin et al. “Duceppe, Dion, Layton Form Coalition,” 2 December 2008, National Post, A1. 4 The centrality of broadly defined democratic ideals is demonstrated by numerous recent opinion polls and public debates. For examples see “Does Canada have a democracy deficit?” Globe and Mail. 21 December 2010, Angus Reid Global, “Seven–in–ten Canadians Want to Directly Elect Their Senators,” 12 June 2011. Retrieved from http://www.angusreidglobal.com/polls/43954/seven–in–ten–canadians–want–to–directly–elect–their–senators/, Kirk Makin, “Two Thirds Back Electing Judges,” Globe and Mail, 9 April 2007 and Ryan Maloney, “Most Canadians Want Electoral Reform Referendum, Forum Poll Suggests,” Huffington Post Canada, 11 July 2016. 2

Canadians now find fundamental. The system implemented at Confederation preserved a

prominent role for un–elected officials in the form of the Senate, the Crown and the Judiciary.

Furthermore, even within the representative House of Commons, elected members required only

a plurality of votes in their riding and after winning election to the House, MPs could not be

compelled to vote a certain way by voters. Finally, despite what contemporary Canadians

oftentimes assume, they do not directly elect the prime minister and cabinet ministers, rather the

Crown appoints MPs to fill these roles. Furthermore, the legitimacy of the government does not

rest in the will of the population as expressed through elections, since there is only an indirect

connection between the results of the popular vote the make–up of the House of Commons.5

Instead, a government’s legitimacy to exercise power rests in the capacity of the PM and cabinet

to command support from a majority of parliamentarians on confidence matters.

These institutional structures and political practices reflect the stated intentions of many

Fathers of Confederation who argued publicly for limiting the influence of explicitly democratic

ideals over the country's politics. Prominent political leaders of the time, such as Canada's first

Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, spoke openly about the problems posed by overly

democratic institutions. Additionally, the creation of institutions like the appointed Senate was

justified by invoking the dangers of unchecked democracy to the rights of minorities in the

nascent dominion.6 Furthermore, Canadian political institutions remain largely unchanged from

5 The last party to receive a majority of the popular vote was the Progressive Conservatives under the leadership of Brian Mulroney in the 33rd Federal General Election of 4 September 1984. 6 In particular, Macdonald was concerned about the rights of property owners and the wealthy, who he saw as being perpetually in the minority. For Macdonald's specific comments on the role of the Senate, see his comments in Canada, Parliamentary Debates on the Subject of the Confederation of the British North American Provinces (Confederation Debates), (Quebec: Hunter Rose & Co., 1865), 33. For a scholarly examination of Macdonald's ideas regarding democracy and the Senate see David E. Smith, “The Senate of Canada and the Conundrum of Reform,” in Jennifer Smith (ed.) The Democratic Dilemma, (Montreal–Kingston: McGill–Queen's University Press, 2009), 11–26. 3

those outlined in the BNA Act. Reforms to Canada's political institutions have been incredibly

rare and often only limited in scale. The British government initiated the most substantial

reforms over the course of the twentieth century, which involved a redistribution of power from

London and the British Parliament to Ottawa, all while the fundamental political decision

making structures remained the same. Certainly, there is substantial and continuing debate

among scholars about how hostile various Founders of the Dominion of Canada actually were to

all democratic principles.7 Regardless, the theoretical and constitutional basis for the Canadian

state as constituted in 1867 was not rooted in democratic philosophy and is not reflective of

modern day Canadians’ understanding of the concept.

When put within this historical context, the fact that The Harper–led Conservatives were

not the first party in Canadian history to respond to partisan attacks with explicitly democratic

rhetoric is intriguing. In fact, Canada’s longest serving Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie

King, who led the Liberal Party from 1919 to 1948 and served as prime minister from 1921 to

1930 (barring a three–month interregnum discussed in Chapter 2) and again from 1935 to 1948,

repeatedly relied on democratic rhetoric when responding to political challenges throughout his

career. Furthermore, it was not just the Liberal leader, but the entire party, from their supporters

at major newspapers to cabinet minister, party officials, Senators and MPs all of whom,

throughout the 1920s and 30s, invoked democratic ideas to buttress their political position. It was

7 Janet Ajzenstat uses the term “Founders” to encompass both the delegates at the three conferences that led up to Confederation (Charlottetown, Quebec City and London) as well as the members of the colonial legislators that debated and ratified the agreement that brought their respective colonies into Confederation. This author uses the term in the same way that Ajzenstat does. See Janet Ajzenstat, Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen's University Press, 2007) and Once and Future Canadian Democracy: An Essay in Political Thought, ( Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen's University Press, 2003), For further examples see Christopher Moore, 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal, (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1997), and Paul Romney, Getting it Wrong: Getting it Wrong: How Canadians Forgot Their Past and Imperiled Confederation, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), Introduction and Chapter 1. 4

also during the period of King’s leadership that the Liberals cemented their federal electoral

dominance. From their electoral victory in 1921, they would govern for sixty–three of the next

one hundred years. By comparison, between 1867 and 1921, the Liberals had been in

government for only fifteen of fifty–four years. Clearly, the adoption and proliferation of

democratic discourses by the Liberal Party correlated with their establishment as, in the words of

political scientist R. Kenneth Carty and others, “Canada’s nature governing party.”8

It is this tension between the constitutional basis of political power in Canada and the

types of discourses the Liberals employed during their establishment of a political dynasty that is

the focus of this dissertation. Namely, it seeks to answer three interrelated questions. First, what

was the nature of these specific democratic discourses and what were the key ideas embedded

within them? Second, what was the political contexts and specific challenges that led the

Liberals to adopt these particular discourses and what immediate political work did they do?

Finally, how did the Liberal Party apply the standards of legitimacy articulated within these

discourses to other political parties and how did these parties respond?

In order to answer these questions it is necessary to examine the activities and rhetoric of

not only the Liberal Party and its leaders, but also of other political parties and their supporters

within the Canadian parliamentary system. While parties have been a ubiquitous part of the

political landscape in all countries with Westminster–based political systems, Canada’s founding

document, the BNA Act, does not mention them. Rather, as in Britain during the eighteenth

century, Canadian parties emerged organically in the nineteenth century to ensure that the

8 R. Ken Carty, Big Tent Politics: The Liberal Party’s Long Mastery of Canada’s Public Life, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015), 15. 5

government could secure and maintain the confidence of the House as required under the norms of responsible government. Over the first fifty years of Canadian history, the emergence of first the Conservative Party and then the Liberal Party, allowed increasingly coordinated national election campaigns, publications and central policy development on a level impossible without their centralizing influence.

Thus, to answer the questions posed above, this dissertation investigates the activities of national political parties between the years 1919 and 1940, with a particular focus on the role of the Liberal Party and their leader William Lyon Mackenzie King. This project will examine how, why and when employing these discourses became the dominant rhetorical strategy for the

Liberal Party and their supporters when looking to advance their positions with the Canadian electorate. Additionally, it will examine how other parties responded to this approach by the

Liberals and how successful they were at dealing with the shifting paradigm of democratic politics. At their root, these discourses present specific democratic ideals rooted the concept of popular sovereignty in as the only legitimate basis for exercising political power. Fundamentally, they focus on four main ideas. The first was that the only way for a government and a prime minister to govern legitimately was by securing a popular mandate from the Canadian people through a national election. Second, and stemming from the first, was legislative power should only be exercised by a political party who represented and brokered the interests of all

Canadians, not factional interests of class or region. Third was a rejection of all other justifications for exercising political power, including appeals to the constitutional conventions of the Westminster system. Fourth and final was the insistence that these large, brokerage parties reflect democratic norms in their internal decision making process.

6

Focusing on this particular set of discourses is not to suggest that they are the only way

that Canadians engaged with democratic ideas during the twentieth century. Nor is it to suggest

that the following concepts are integral to a valid definition of democracy. Rather, given that

conceptions of democracy differ widely based on time and place, any attempt to forward one

definitive definition is exceptionally difficult and would require its own argumentative

monograph. Instead, these particular discourses are the subject of this analysis because they are

the ones the Liberal Party deployed during the period when they established their electoral

dominance. Consequently, they ended up forming the “common sense” intellectual context for

many Canadians when thinking about political issues. Hence, tracing how the Liberal Party used

these discourses and how other political actors adopted them during a crucial period in Canadian

history is an important endeavor.

In classifying these discourses as democratic, it is best to understand democracy as an

underlying ideology with many different variants. Ideology, as defined by Robert Leach, is “a

coherent system of beliefs or ideas regarding society and politics [that] can be contradictory and

inconsistent and be articulated in a variety of ways.”9 Furthermore, as British scholar Stuart Hall

emphasizes, ideologies are a framework of thought that provide, “the basis of practical reasoning

and thought for many ordinary people.”10 Rather than understanding democracy as a rigid set of

ideas espoused by a particular theorist, readers should understand it as an interconnected system

of ideas political actors apply to specific situations. Thus, rather than there being one standard

interpretation of democracy during the Interwar years, there existed multiple versions of

9 Robert Leach, British Political Ideologies 2nd Ed., (London: Prentice Hall, 1996), 16–19. 10 Stuart Hall, “Variants of Liberalism,” in J. Donald and S. Hall (ed.) Politics and Ideology: A Reader, (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1996), 34–35. 7

democratic ideology circulating in Canadian intellectual life during this time. Indeed, many

different politicians during the 1920s and 30s could – and did – claim to be supporters of

democracy as an organizing concept for the Canadian state, yet supported divergent specific

policies and actions.

The particular cluster of discourses invoked by the Liberals during this period are part of

a variant of democratic thought this dissertation will refer to as popular democracy. It draws on

the concept of popular sovereignty as the core justification for exercising political power.

Popular sovereignty as a basic idea emphasizes the supremacy of the people as the ultimate

decision–making power within a given territory. As scholar C.B. Macpherson states, this

conception of democracy is, at its root, an appeal to an ethical justification for an exercise of

coercive power by a centralized authority rooted in a sovereign people.11 Yet, while a relatively

simple concept in articulation, popular sovereignty is substantially more complex in its

application as a governing principle to human societies. Who constitutes the people? How is

their will determined? Then once determined, how is it put into place and subsequently

enforced? All these questions stemming from the initial premise of a sovereign people have been

answered in many different ways throughout history.

Thinkers from across the Atlantic World contributed to the development of the concept of

popular sovereignty throughout the eighteenth century. Within France, republican thinkers such

as political theorist Jean–Jacques Rousseau developed the idea of the General Will as the means

by which people expressed their sovereignty. For Rousseau citizens could only realize this idea

when all of them participated in the governance of their polity through the creation of its laws.

11 C.B. Macpherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 5–6. 8

While due to practical considerations, he reluctantly supported creating representative

institutions, Rousseau added the critical caveat that the General Will was more than any decision

a representative body reached. Rather, he conceived of it as the transcendental incarnation of the

people's common interest, regardless of the expressed preferences of any individual person.12

These ideas were particularly influential on the French Revolutionaries and the creation of the

French Republic in the late eighteenth century.

Across the Atlantic, the American Revolutionaries also developed the idea of a sovereign

people to justify declaring independence from Britain. Both the 1776 Declaration of

Independence and the 1787 Constitution reference a sovereign American People, most famously

in the opening line of the preamble to the Constitution, stating that, “We the people of the United

States...” However, the American experience living in under British rule and their struggles to

create a functioning government for the early republic influenced how the framers shaped the

Constitution of 1787.13 Rather than draw on Rousseau for inspiration, these men invoked the

concept of the separation of powers as outlined in the writings of another French political

thinker, those of Charles de Montesquieu. In order to prevent abuse of power by any one part of

government while still ensuring functional legislative and executive branches, the Americans

settled on creating a series of checks and balances in their constitution.14 Therefore, despite

drawing their legitimacy from the expressed will of the people through a national election, these

limitations created a relatively weak executive in relation to the legislative branch when

12 Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, G.D.H. Cole (Trans.) (London: N.P, 1782), book one, chapters 1–8. 13 For a full analysis of the influence of republican ideals on the American Constitution as well as the specific challenges the drafting of the American Constitution was designed to address see Gordon Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787, (Chapel Hill, NC.; University of North Carolina Press, 1970), 471–565. 14 Charles de Montesquieu, De l'Esprit des Lois, (1748), Book XI, Chapter 4. 9

compared to that of members of cabinet in the Westminster system who drew their legitimacy

from Parliament.

The idea of popular sovereignty also developed in Great Britain as well, but there it

contrasted with another variant of democratic thought that eventually became dominant, that of

liberal parliamentary democracy. It was not that popular sovereignty was foreign to Great Britain

for, as documented by Edmund Morgan, the British Parliament first drew on the idea in the

middle of the 17th century as a means of opposing the English King’s claim of complete

sovereignty. However, during the English Civil War, the invocation of popular sovereignty by

the Long Parliament to justify despotic powers made subsequent generations of Britons, in the

words of Morgan, “squeamish” regarding the concept.15 Instead, the Whigs, or supporters of the

Glorious Revolution of 1688, which forced King James II off the throne in favour of his sister

Mary II and her husband William III of Orange, turned to the idea of Parliamentary sovereignty

as a means of countering claims of royal power and preventing popular despotism. In Whig

thought, any legislation passed by Parliament was not an expression of the indivisible General

Will as articulated by Rousseau. Rather, Parliament represented the combined interests of the

three traditional orders of British society – the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the people – as

expressed through the three constituent parts of Parliament: The Crown, the House of Lords and

the House of Commons. This idea of representing all parts of the British nation in one governing

institution became known as “mixed government” and while incorporating the views of the

people, it was not subject to it only.16

15 Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America, (New York: Norton, 1988), 142–144. 16 Michel Ducharme, “Macdonald and the Concept of Liberty,” in Patrice Dutil and Roger Hall (ed.) Macdonald at 200: New Reflections and Legacies, (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2014): 141–170. 10

This Whig view took hold as the dominant conception of sovereignty in Britain and

became the intellectual basis for the British variant of liberal parliamentary democracy. In the

late seventeenth century, John Locke argued for a foundation of state power that rested on the

consent of the governed. In order to avoid the pitfalls of the state of nature, people make a double

compact, one to form a society and the other to form a government to govern said society. In

Locke’s articulation, in agreeing to form a government, an individual forfeited their ability to

protect their rights in favour of submitting disputes to a common judge. Therefore, it was

necessary that those governed by this process consented to it; otherwise, they had simply traded

the oppressions of the state of nature for those of the state.17 Thus, unlike in Rousseau, the

primary purpose of the state was not to ensure the will of the people was made manifest but

rather, was to protect the individual rights of its members.

This dual focus on the consent of the governed and the idea of inalienable individual

rights as articulated in Locke was not democratic but it did provide the intellectual foundations

for the development of British parliamentary democracy. In nineteenth century, British

philosopher and sometimes Liberal Party MP John Stuart Mill further developed these ideas.

Mill’s most famous work is on the importance of individual freedom of speech and thought as he

articulates in his seminal work On Liberty. However, Mill also wrote on the importance of

representative government in his work Consideration on Representative Government from 1861.

In this book, Mill argues that representative government, or one chosen by the general population

to represent their interests, is the superior form of government as it encourages both protection of

17 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C.B MacPherson, (Cambridge, UK.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980). 11

individual rights and the development of individual and collective moral virtue.18 Combined,

Locke and Mill’s vision of government present democracy as an instrumental good that best

protects individuals’ rights and freedoms. Thus the Westminster Parliament, with its elected

House of Commons, was best suited to act as the key defender of British freedoms from various

threats.

While these liberal parliamentary ideas were dominant in Britain, as Gareth Stedman

Jones demonstrates in his work on the Chartists, democratic ideas prioritizing popular

sovereignty were also part of the intellectual milieu. Their influence culminated with the

Chartists attempts in the 1840s to reform the British political system to reflect the idea of a

sovereign British people and not simply a sovereign Parliament. Yet, these attempts proved

unsuccessful.19 By the late nineteenth century, the paradigm of Parliamentary sovereignty was

widely accepted across the British Empire as the basis of political power, with legitimacy

flowing from the sovereign Parliament of the Empire located in London.20 However, the

Westminster system still did not represent a complete negation of popular sovereignty; rather it

involved granting legal sovereignty to Parliament, which would act in line with the will of the

people. Legal scholar A.V. Dicey outlined in his 1866 work that Parliament functioned as the

legal sovereign while the electors acted as the political sovereign and, “The validity of

constitutional maxims is subordinate and subservient to the fundamental principle of popular

sovereignty.”21 If it did not, then the mechanism for resolving this conflict was the power of

18 John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, (New York: Library of Liberal Arts, 1958). 19 Gareth Stedman Jones, “Rethinking Chartism,” in Language of Class: Studies in English Working Class History 1832– 1982, (Cambridge, UK.: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 90–178. 20 Peter H. Russell, Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become a Sovereign People? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 11. 21 A.V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 8th ed. (London: MacMillan, 1915), 291. 12

dissolution held by the Crown. The electorate would then be able to select a new Parliament that

would better reflect its desires and thus, reconcile the conflict between the political and legal

sovereign.22

Within a Canadian context, the BNA Act created a political system for Canada based on

the existing British one and so rested legal claims to power on Parliamentary sovereignty.

Consequently, unlike the American Constitution, the Canadian Constitution as written in 1867

never acknowledged the existence of a Canadian people as a sovereign power. While questions

of sovereignty were complex given the substantial degree of control the British Parliament still

held over the new Dominion, as well as the federal nature of the state, there simply was not a

constitutionally recognized sovereign people as existed in the United States. Summarized

succinctly by Robert Martin, the Canadian Constitution “is not a people's constitution.”23 It is

also important to note that the lack of any reference to a sovereign Canadian people was not an

oversight by the Fathers of Confederation. Rather, this conception of the people reflected the

views of politicians like John A. Macdonald who, following in the Whig tradition, used the terms

people and nation interchangeable, but importantly, never conferred sovereignty on them.24

Rather, as Peter Russell highlights, the ultimate constitutional power for the Dominion of Canada

rested in the Imperial Parliament in London for “These British North Americans believed that

that was where constitutional sovereignty... belonged.”25 Thus, when later Canadian politicians

22 Ibid 23 Robert Martin, “A Lament for British North America,” in Rethinking the Constitution: Perspectives on Canadian Constitutional Reform, Interpretation, and Theory, ed. Anthony A. Peacock (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996), 4. Additionally see David Thomas, Whistling Past the Graveyard: Constitutional Abeyances, Quebec, and the Future of Canada, (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997). 24 Ducharme, 158. 25 Russell, 4. 13

articulated discourses that drew on ideas of popular sovereignty they, either knowingly or not,

were reinterpreting the foundations of the political and constitutional order in Canada. By

seeking to summon into existence a sovereign people, these discourses were truly a radical

departure from the norm since they were based on an extra–constitutional concept.

As discussed above, invoking popular democratic ideals was a substantial challenge to

the intellectual foundations of the Canadian Constitutional order. Yet, given that the democratic

variants investigated in this dissertation represented a substantial diversion from the political

norm, historians and political scientists examining these ideas and associated discourses have

largely focused on how they were used in a radical context as a means of challenging established

power structures and not by established actors like the Liberal Party. As a result, and perhaps

somewhat ironically, scholars have not extensively studied elite conceptions of democratic

ideals.

While there have obviously been in–depth studies of political parties and their leaders,

detailed examinations of Canada's major political parties during the Interwar years – the Liberals

and Conservatives – have largely focused on how the parties organized themselves or how they

interacted with various stakeholders in Canadian society, rather than ideological or discursive

analysis.26 Further work has analyzed the Liberal Party in the post–1945 period and has largely

26 For a discussion about how the Liberals financed their party operations and created an effective patron–client relations with representatives from the business community see Reginald Whitaker, The Government Party: Organizing and Financing the Liberal Party of Canada, 1930–1958, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). For an analysis about the relationship between the Liberal Party and the print media, see Patrick Brennan, Reporting the Nation's Business: Press–Government Relations during the Liberal Years, 1935–1957, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). For the role of the party leader in fostering electoral success in Western Canada see Robert Wardhaugh, Mackenzie King and the Prairie West, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). For a broad overview of the reasons for Liberal Party success in the twentieth century see Carty, Big Tent Politics. For the Conservatives the two most comprehensive histories are Larry Glassford, Reaction and Reform: The Politics of the Conservative Party under R.B. Bennett, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992) for the years 1926 to 1937 and J.L. Granatstein, The Politics of Survival: The Conservative Party of Canada, 1939–1945, (Toronto: 14

focused on how inter–party competition shaped policy and political practice. The best example

of this trend is Penny Bryden’s monograph on how the Liberals sought to regain power after

their disastrous 1958 election loss by developing and promoting a dramatic expansion of the

Canadian welfare state.27 Additionally, while there has been active and sustained work related to

the intellectual life of Liberal leader and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, a large

selection of it focuses on his unorthodox personal beliefs and his interest in spiritualism.28

Scholarship that is more recent has expanded to include a detailed analysis of King’s approach to

foreign policy.29 Alternatively, Conservative prime minister and party leader from 1928 to 1936,

R.B. Bennett has only been the subject of two biographical studies, both of which seek to

reconstruct the major personal and political events of his life.30 Similarly, other major figures in

the Liberal and Conservative Parties during the 1920s and 30s are the subject of scholarly

University of Toronto Press, 1967). 27 See Penny Bryden, Planners and Politicians: Liberal Politics and Social Policy, 1957–1968, (Montreal–Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1998). Another excellent example of post–1945 scholarship on the Liberal Party and partisan competition is Stephen Clarkson, The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominated Canadian Politics, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005). 28 The most recent biography of King is Allan Levine, King: William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny, (Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 2011). Other biographies include Allen Wells, The First Canadian: William Lyon Mackenzie King 1874–1950, (USA: Xlibris Corporation, 2014) and Robert Dawson (vol.1) and H. Blair Neatby (vols.2 and 3) William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Political Biography 3 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958–1976). The focus on King's private life began with C.P. Stacey, A Very Double Life: The Private World of Mackenzie King, (Toronto: MacMillan, 1976). Other examples include Joy Esberey, Knight of the Holy Spirit: A Study of William Lyon Mackenzie King, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980) and Charlotte Gray, Mrs. King: The Life and Times of Isabel Mackenzie King, (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 1998). The focus on King's private life has even led to a history of Canadians' interest in his private life, see Christopher Dummitt, Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King's Secret Life, (Montreal–Kingston: McGill–Queen's University Press, 2017). 29 Roy MacLaren, Mackenzie King in the Age of Dictators: Canada's Imperial and Foreign Policy, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen's University Press, 2019) and Robert Teigrob, Four Days in Hitler's Germany: Mackenzie King's Mission to Avert a World War II, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019). 30 The main biography of R.B. Bennett is P.B. Waite, In Search of R.B. Bennett, (Montreal–Kingston: McGill– Queen's University Press, 2012). H. James Gray, R.B. Bennett: The Calgary Years, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) focuses on, as the title suggests, Bennett's time in Calgary before entering becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 1927. Bennett’s decision to have his personal papers destroyed upon his death means that a comprehensive scholarly biography will likely never be possible. 15

biographies but the authors treat their lives much like those of their party leaders, with traditional

biographies documenting the life and times of their subject.31 As public administration scholar

and historian Patrice Dutil has stated, Canadian political biographers have much to say about

politics and personality, but less about larger changes in ideas and practice.32

Scholars who have examined the practice of prime ministerial power have analyzed it

within the broader body of literature concerning the “presidentialization” of the office of the PM

in Westminster systems. Academics working within this vein have identified the increased power

of the prime minister and their office as part of a broader trend in Commonwealth countries

towards concentrating power in the executive branch of the government, much as in a

presidential, or American, system.33 Similarly, political scientists in Canada have also argued for

the presidentialization of the prime minister’s office, most notable Thomas Hockin and R.M.

Punnett in the 1970s and Donald Savoie in the late 1990s.34 Subsequent scholars such as Graham

White and Patrice Dutil have contested these conclusions but generally have not disputed the fact

31 For King's Quebec Lieutenant and Justice Minister Ernest Lapointe see Lita–Rose Betcherman, Ernest Lapointe: Mackenzie King's Great Quebec Lieutenant, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). For influential Quebec Liberal Charles Gavan “Chubby” Power see Charles Gavan Power and Norman Ward, A Party Politician: The Memoirs of Chubby Power, (Toronto: MacMillan, 1966). For Conservative leader and Prime Minister Arthur Meighen see Roger Graham, Arthur Meighen: A Biography 2 vols. (Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 1964–65). For Conservative leader R.J. Manion see Harold Naugler, “R.J. Manion and the Conservative Party 1938–1940,” M.A. Thesis 1966, Queen's University, Kingston, ON. 32 Patrice Dutil, Prime Ministerial Power in Canada: Its Origins under Macdonald, Laurier and Borden, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), 6–7. 33 An example of this approach applied to the British system is Michael Foley, The Rise of the British Presidency (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993). For examples of a comparative approach see Patrick Weller, First Among Equals: Prime Ministers in the Westminster System, (Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1985) and Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb (ed.), The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Of particular relevance to this work is the chapter on Canada by Herman Bakvis and Steven B. Wolinetz entitled, "Canada: Executive Dominance and Presidentialization." 34 See Thomas A. Hockin (ed.) Apex of Power: The Prime Minister and Political Leadership in Canada, (Toronto: Prentice Hall, 1977) and R.M. Punnett, The Prime Minister in Canadian Government and Politics, (Toronto: Macmillan, 1977) as well as Donald Savoie, Governing from the Centre: The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999). 16

that political power in Canada has concentrated in the office of the PM, only the causes and

consequences of such concentration.35 Regardless of their conclusions, these works have all

examined the practice of prime ministerial power when compared to other executives in

presidential systems. This work expands that focus to examine particularly how Prime Minister

King, shaped his role through his use of particular discourses, ones often associated with, or

drawn directly from, American presidents.

Beyond individual studies of parties and politicians, scholars of Canadian political parties

have largely engaged in system–wide analysis and not focused on particular parties and the

discourses they employed. In his periodization of different eras of Canadian political systems,

outlined in his seminal article “Three Canadian Party Systems,” political scientist R. Kenneth

Carty argued that Canadian political parties largely responded to changing ideological norms

rather than helping to shape them. Regardless of whether it was during the first party system –

Confederation to World War I – the second party system – World War I to 1957 – or the third

party system, which arguably continues to this day, scholars have depicted Canadian political

parties as creatures of their environment, responding to the intellectual trends around them,

rather than actively shaping the systems of thought that influenced Canadian political life. For

the purpose of this dissertation, Carty's discussion of the second party system, particularly its

formation and early years is the most relevant. Yet, while he rightly identifies the adoption of

democratic norms as a defining feature of this particular system, he does not explain the process

by which these norms because widely accepted.36 While political scientist Richard Johnston has

35 See Graham White, Cabinets and First Minister, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006) and Dutil, Prime Ministerial Power in Canada as well as Brooke Jeffrey, “Canadian Liberalism as a Distinctive Tradition” in D. McGrane and N. Hibbert. Applied Political Theory and Canadian Politics. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019). 42–68. 36 R. Kenneth Carty, “Three Canadian Party Systems: An Interpretation of the Development of National Politics,” in 17

incorporated ideological considerations into an analysis of the party systems model, Johnston

predominately identifies the left–right divide as the main intellectual difference between

Canadian parties. Democratic ideas are treated by Johnson as a static variable, widely accepted

by all Canadian political parties and not a source of partisan conflict.37

The major focus for scholars who have studied the intellectual and discursive aspects of

Canadian politics have largely focused on the nineteenth century. As referenced earlier in the

chapter, much of the debate centers on the nature of Confederation. While the general scholarly

consensus is that justifications for exercising political power based on popular sovereignty were

defeated in the 1830s with the end of the revolutionary movements in Upper and Lower Canada,

a minority of scholars have argued that these conceptions were still influential in shaping

Confederation.38 In particular, Janet Ajzenstat has argued that Confederation explicitly

recognized a sovereign Canadian people.39 While her view of a sovereign people enacting

Confederation is mostly unique, other scholars have argued that the intent of the BNA Act was

not to limit democratic ideals but rather reflected a compromise between the centralizing ideas of

Hugh Thorburn, ed. Party Politics in Canada, 7th Ed, (Scarborough: Prentice Hall, 1996), 15–24. For a further development of the idea of the Canadian Party Systems see Steve Patten, “The Evolution of the Canadian Party System,” in Alain Gagnon and A. Brian Tanguay (ed.) Canadian Parties in Transition, (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2007), 55–81. Recent Canadian scholarship also uses the Canadian Party System model as its theoretical grounding and periodization for a quantitative exploration of Canadian electoral politics. See Richard Johnston, The Canadian Party System: An Analytical History, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017). 37 Johnston, 5–15. 38 For details on the defeat of the popular sovereignty alternative see Michel Ducharme, Le concept de liberté au Canada à l’époque des révolutions atlantiques 1776–1838, (Montréal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2010). 39 For the best summary of this view see Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament, (Montreal–Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2007). Her argument is based on a unique reading of Locke that argues for his acceptance of popular sovereignty as the moral basis for any government. Her view is unique though and not embraced by most scholars who study Locke. 18

Macdonald and his supporters and the democratic ones of Ontario delegates like George

Brown.40

Regardless of the nature of Confederation, early twentieth century Canada remained far

from a democracy as modern citizens conceive of it. As Shirley Tillotson highlights in her

cultural and political history of Canadian taxation, “Canadians during the World War I were not

yet enjoying the full measure of democratic public life.”41 As Tillotson and other scholars such

as David Tough have documented by exploring citizen–state interactions through the lens of

taxation, it was during the Interwar years that the meaning of democracy increasingly became an

integral element to political conversations in the country.42 However, these studies focus on how

citizens related to the Canadian Government as an administrative state and not on the discursive

aspect of partisan politics.

Scholars studying the use of democratic discourses in popular politics have largely

focused on radical movements, particularly, but not exclusively, movements who situated

themselves on the political left. Specifically, historians have identified democratic discourses

within the broader economic protest movements of the 1920s and Great Depression.

Predominately, they have argued that the rural agrarian protest movement of the United Farmers

at the provincial level and the Progressive Party at the federal level invoked certain democratic

concepts to argue for greater economic and political concessions from Ottawa.43 Beyond

40 For examples of this view see Romney, Getting it Wrong, Robert Vipond, Liberty and Community: Canadian Federalism and the Failure of the Constitution, (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991) and Janet Ajzenstat and Peter Smith (ed.), Canada’s Origins: Liberal, Tory or Republican?, (Montreal–Kingston: McGill– Queen’s University Press, 1995). 41 Shirley Tillotson, Give and Take: The Citizen–Taxpayer and the Rise of Canadian Democracy, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), 6. 42 See Tillotson, Give and Take as well as David Tough, The Terrific Engine: Income Taxation and the Modernization of the Canadian Political Imaginary, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018). 43 For the definitive chronological account of the rise and fall of the Progressive Party see W.L. Morton, The 19

examining the agrarian movement of the 1920s, other scholars have argued that these same

democratic discourses also pervaded the rhetoric of the Co–operative Commonwealth Federation

(CCF) and their allies in the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR) throughout the 1930s.

Particularly, they have argued that democracy and not socialism was central for the CCF

throughout the decade.44 Finally, other scholars have argued that the Alberta incarnation of

Social Credit, the William Aberhart–led movement originating in 1930s, also reproduced popular

democratic discourses, at least during their initial rise to power, which explains their initial

appeal to working class Albertans.45 For each of these movements, democratic discourses,

Progressive Party in Canada 2nd Ed., (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967). For a specific history of the United Farmers movement in Alberta see Bradford James Rennie, The Rise of Agrarian Democracy: The United Farmers and the Farm Women of Alberta, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000) while for a comparative history with the United States see J. F. Conway, "Populism in the United States, Russia, and Canada: Explaining the Roots of Canada's Third Parties," Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol.1 No.1 (March 1978): 99–124 and Robert C. McMath, “Populism in Two Countries: Agrarian Protest in the Great Plains and the Prairie Provinces,” Agricultural History, Vol.69, No.4 (Fall 1995). For a history of the United Farmers in Ontario see Wylie, T. Robin. “Direct Democrat: W.C. Good and the Ontario Farm Progressive Challenge, 1895–1929.” PhD thesis, Carleton University, Ottawa, 1991 and Kerry A. Badgley, Ringing in the Common Love of Good: The United Farmers of Ontario 1916–1926, (Montreal–Kingston: McGill–Queen's University Press, 2000). For a discussion about the role of social gospel in the United Farmers of Ontario see Mark Sholdice, “Brotherhood Extended to All Practical Affairs: The Social Gospel as the Religion of the Agrarian Revolt in Ontario.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture Vol.25 (Fall 2013): 358–371. 44 For the standard history of the CCF that advances this argument see Walter Young, Anatomy of a Party: The National CCF, 1932–61, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969). Young's American contemporary M.S. Lipsett also make the same argument in Seymore Martin Lipsett, Agrarian Socialism, and (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press, 1971). Similarly, while Michiel Horn does not deny the socialist and Marxist roots of the intellectuals behind the League for Social Reconstruction, he also emphasizes the prominent role of democratic discourses within their writings in The League for Social Reconstruction: Intellectual Origins of the Democratic Left in Canada 1930–1942, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980). For a similar argument see Sean Mills “When Democratic Socialists Discovered Democracy: The League for Social Reconstruction confronts the ‘Quebec Problem.’” The Canadian Historical Review, Vol.86 (March 2005): 53–81. This view is not unanimous though as recent scholarship by James Naylor has argued that Marxist thought was the defining element of the early party. See James Naylor, The Fate of Labour Socialism: The Co–operative Commonwealth Federation and the Dream of a Working Class Future, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016). 45 See C.B. Macpherson, Democracy in Alberta: Social Credit and the Party System, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1953). All subsequent work on Social Credit in Canada either supports or contests Macpherson's thesis that Social Credit presented a political solution to the problem of how to ensure that the will of the people prevailed. For other works that support or modify Macpherson's thesis see Alvin Finkle, The Social Credit Phenomenon in Alberta, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989) and Bob Hesketh, Major Douglas and Alberta Social Credit, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997). For those who have contested the centrality of democratic discourses to Social Credit see Edward Bell, Social Classes and Social Credit in Alberta, (Montreal–Kingston: McGill– Queen's University Press, 1994) and Robert Ascah, Politics and Public Debt: The Dominion, The Banks and 20

regardless of the particular variant of democratic though they invoked, were a key means of

justifying reform towards a more re–distributive economic system. Thus, political protest

movements and democratic discourses were often convenient partners.

This focus on democracy as a tool for arguing against entrenched interest has led to the

dominance in Canadian historiography of a particular meta–narrative that depicts a popular

democratic left opposing a center–right coalition of liberals, conservatives and capitalists.

Conveniently, this divide can also easily map onto Canada's geography with Pacific Coast and

Prairie radicals challenging a Central Canadian elite. The most trenchant example of this

narrative is in the work of Canadian historian Ian McKay who’s “Liberal Order Framework”

clearly identifies, clarifies and expands upon this decades old trend. In his work, McKay argues

that Canadians should consider their country a project of liberal rule where, beginning in the

1840s, a small group of elites in Central Canada sought to extend the supremacy of liberal ideals

across what we now know as Canada. For McKay, liberalism is an individual centered belief

system – or ideology – that prioritizes private property, liberty and procedural equality in that

order.46 Democracy in the Liberal Order Framework directly challenges the Liberal Order as it

rejects the supremacy of private property as the primary organizing principle of Canadian society

and instead posits that the people, not the elite property owners, hold the moral basis for

decision-making.

Alberta Social Credit, (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1999). 46 Ian McKay, “The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian history,” Canadian Historical Review, Vol.81, No.3 (December 2000): 617–645. For a further exploration of the Liberal Order Framework and its political implications see Ian McKay, Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada's Left History, (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2005). 21

Furthermore, McKay issues a call to action for scholars, arguing that their work should

uncover how people in the past have challenged liberal power structures; a challenge McKay has

taken up in his own scholarship with a proposed multi–volume history of the left, the first

volume published in 2008.47

Since the first discussion of the Liberal Order Framework in 2000, numerous Canadian

historians have taken up McKay's challenge, documenting ways that liberalism has shaped

Canada and also been resisted or subverted. The result of McKay's work is that a number of

scholars have produced excellent works, which continue in the tradition of work described

above, documenting how movements from the left have used democratic ideas to challenge the

dominant power structure of Canada.48

Undoubtedly, this depiction of Canadian politics captures an important element of

Canada's political history; the repeated rise and decline of protest movements, mostly originating

in Western Canada, whose agenda was alternatively suppressed or co–opted by the governing

Liberals or Conservatives. The appeal of democratic discourses, in particular those of the popular

kind, for protest movements seeking to overturn the established order is obvious. Simply put,

they represented an appeal to a source of authority other than the Canadian Constitution and the

conventions of the Westminster system. However, for the already established Liberal Party the

appeal of popular democratic ideas is less easy to understand. What drove the party and their

47 Ian McKay, Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada 1890–1920, (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2008). 48 Examples of the influence of liberalism on moral regulation include Suzanne Morton, At Odds: Gambling and Canadians: 1919–1969, (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2003) and Jarett Rudy, The Freedom to Smoke: Tobacco Consumption and Identity, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queens University Press, 2005). For the role of liberalism and resistance to its fundamental assumptions on social movements see Stuart Henderson, Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011) and Sean Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill– Queen's University Press, 2010). 22

leader to utilize these discourses? If they were largely the province of protest movements and these movements were almost uniformly unsuccessful, then how and why did the Liberal Party adopt these discourses? Was it a process of co–option and if so, how and when did this process begin and how do scholars incorporate it into the existing understanding of the Liberal Party as non–ideological brokerage organization? The chapters that follow aim to address these questions.

In the political climate immediately following World War I, the Liberal Party of Canada and their new leader William Lyon Mackenzie King needed to both reinvigorate the party and regain relevance in the eyes of the electorate after being reduced to a small core of Quebec MPs in the 1917 federal election. In response, they seized the initiative in forwarding modest proposals, such as changing the role of the Senate in the legislative process, which, combined with adopting and diluting the more radical proposals of the agrarian reformers in the

Progressive movement, allowed the party to present itself to Canadians as the only one capable of protecting Canadian democracy. By doing so, the Liberals were able to portray their opposition as anti–democratic while avoiding expending political capital on actual institutional reforms that could have also weakened the party's control over the machinery of government.

Ultimately, this dissertation argues that between the years 1919 and 1940, the Liberal

Party elites utilized a set of discourses that drew on a particular Anglo–American conception of democracy that this dissertation refers to as popular democracy, to respond to the partisan challenges facing their party. They used these discourses to justify centralizing political power in the person of the prime minister and creating a centralized political party designed to support the legislative agenda of their leader. While the Liberals were not the only party to employ democratic discourses as a means of advancing their political fortunes, the Liberals’ particular articulation of democratic ideas was uniquely successful. Other parties, from the Progressives of 23

the early 1920s who advocated for a House of Commons divided upon occupational lines, to the

Conservatives, who steadfastly defended constitutional norms, were either unable or unwilling to create an effective counter–narrative and so remained in the minority within the House of

Commons, leading to a prolonged period of Liberal rule.

In order to study how the Liberals propagated popular democratic discourses during the

Interwar years, this work draws on a number of primary sources from the years 1920 through to

1945. These sources are divided into three main categories: party records, individuals' private papers, and published sources. Since the focus of this work is on political parties, notably the

Liberal Party of Canada, this dissertation draws on records from organizations that operated on a national level. Hence records from the Liberals, Conservatives, Progressives, Social Credit and the CCF are all incorporated into the analysis as they all ran candidates in general elections in multiple provinces and broadly speaking, aimed to form government. Alternatively, records from strictly provincial parties, such as the United Farmers of Manitoba and Alberta respectively have been excluded.

Similarly, in relation to personal papers, this work draws heavily on the records of key public figures from federal political parties, with a particular focus on the Liberal Party. Largely, the people under study were closely associated with the party leader William Lyon Mackenzie

King, either as people in his employ, such as his private secretary Norman Rogers, or key members of his cabinet such as Ernest Lapointe, Ian Mackenzie or Charles Gavan “Chubby”

Power. Similarly, for the Conservative Party, the records of leader R.B. Bennett and key cabinet ministers such as H.H. Stevens form the core source base, while for the CCF the papers of House

Leader J.S. Woodsworth and other influential policy advisers and founders of the LSR such as

Frank R. Scott and Frank Underhill are central to analyzing the organization. 24

Finally, published sources are divided into three main categories. First is works written

by key public figures. The second is newspaper and periodical articles that appeared in

publications supportive of certain political parties. These could either be official party

publications, such as The UFA for the Progressive Party, or respected and influential but still

partisan papers such as the Manitoba Free Press/Winnipeg Free Press or the Toronto Globe,

both of which were emphatically liberal and Liberal in their editorial policy. The final category

of published sources is official publications of various political parties, almost exclusively issued

during election campaigns. Either the Liberal or Conservative Parties published the bulk of these

as they had much greater resources to print extensively in both French and English. However

other parties, such as Social Credit, periodically issued political pamphlets relating to issues they

believed were particularly worthy of attention.

Given both the subject of this dissertation and the nature of politics in Interwar Canada,

the vast majority of subjects for this project are upper class white men from Central Canada. In

order to study how political parties employed democratic discourses during this period, focusing

on a narrow section of Canadian society is necessary. Political parties of this era, particularly at

the higher echelons, were institutions of exclusion not inclusion. While openly courting the

support of a select number of minority communities, federal parties were also openly

discriminatory towards anyone who was not of European heritage and actively sought to exclude

anyone not of Franco–Canadian or British/American origins from positions of leadership.49

Furthermore, the decision making structures for the Liberal and Conservative Parties in

49 The first non–Anglo or Franco–Canadian cabinet minister was Michael Starr, appointed by John Diefenbaker, in 1957. 25

particular, was highly centralized with the leader and a limited cadre of supporters responsible for setting policy, determining political strategy and communicating with the voting public.

Other organizations like the various agrarian protest groups did seek to make Canadian politics more inclusive – to a point – the Liberal Party resisted these initiatives, instead justifying their centralizing initiatives by seemingly paradoxically, invoking democratic ideas. In order to understand this process and the seeming contradiction of how democratic ideas were used to justify exclusionary politics, it is important to examine closely the ideas and actions of those at the center of this process who were responsible for shaping and changing how Canadians talked about democracy as a concept and a practical guiding principle.

Based on a detailed examination of these sources, the central thesis of this project develops over the course of five chapters. The first four chapters outline a specific way that the

Liberal Party invoked popular democratic ideals and how other parties responded to the Liberals’ use of these discourses. Chapter 2 focuses on the concept of the mandate to govern and argues that during the early to mid–1920s, Mackenzie King and the Liberals imported this concept from the United States as a tool to undermine the legitimacy of Arthur Meighen and the Conservative

Party. Chapter 3 focuses on the idea of a brokerage party compared to other models of party organization. It argues that the Liberals employed discourses celebrating brokerage parties as the only truly democratic organizational model in order to counter the political reforms championed by the newly formed Progressive Party. Chapter 4 examines the discourses employed by both the

Conservatives and Liberals in the electoral contests between Mackenzie King and Conservative leader R.B. Bennett. It argues that the Conservatives under Bennett employed discourses that invoked constitutional and parliamentary norms to defend themselves against King and the

Liberals, but these arguments were unable to address the new standards of democratic legitimacy 26

developed and invoked by Liberals in the 1935 federal election. Chapter 5 examines how the

Liberals justified the creation of an extra–parliamentary organization for their party and then applied these idealized standards to opposition parties. It argues that the Liberals presented this process of creating a party bureaucracy to the public as a democratic one as it empowered individual party members, yet did so at the expense of backbench MPs. The final chapter switches focus to examine how those who resisted the centralization of power in the Liberal

Party used these discourses internally. It argues that despite employing democratic discourses to justify its own actions, the Liberal Party elite ignored and suppressed these same ideas when utilized to resist the centralization of power in the party.

27

Chapter 2: Mandate Politics and Parliamentary Supremacy

When William Lyon Mackenzie King won the first ever Liberal Leadership Convention in 1919, the grandson of the famous Upper Canadian firebrand William Mackenzie could have been forgiven for wondering what type of prize the leadership of the Liberal Party actually was. While the Liberals under the late Sir Wilfrid Laurier had governed Canada from 1896 through to 1911, they lost the 1911 federal election to the Conservative Party led by Halifax lawyer Sir Robert

Borden. King even managed to lose his own seat of Waterloo North, which he had first won in a

1908 by–election. Thus, Borden led Canada into World War I and headed up the Union

Government that implemented conscription in 1917 following a bitterly contested federal election of that same year. After 1917, the Liberal Party was reduced to a rump of Quebec members with most Anglo–Liberals supporting the government as Liberal–Unionists. Even after the war ended in 1918, Laurier's death in February of 1919 left the party leaderless and with seemingly little influence outside of Quebec. It was this party that King, a relative political neophyte who had spent most of the war in the United States working for the Rockefeller family, took over after winning the leadership in August of 1919. Even King's victory was largely thanks to the votes of Quebec Liberals secured for the anglophone King by his political ally Ernest

Lapointe.

Yet, despite appearances, the Liberal Party was actually in a much stronger position than the governing Conservatives were, as the next two decades would demonstrate. While the Union

Government continued in power after the cessation of hostilities with Germany in November of

1918, it was a union in name only, with most Liberal–Unionists either retiring or returning to the

Liberal fold. All the while key Conservatives, including Prime Minister Borden and Finance

Minister Thomas White, had retired from politics. Manitoba MP Arthur Meighen now led the 28

Conservative Party and the government and despite his rhetorical flourishes in the Commons, he lacked the political instincts or tact of the retired Borden. Additionally, Borden's decision to implement conscription for overseas service in 1917, despite strong opposition from French

Canada and agrarian groups, had alienated the Conservative Party from large swaths of the voting public. Meighen, who had been one of the most vocal proponents of conscription, was indelibly linked with the unpopular policy. Finally, although the scale of their organization was yet unknown, former Union Minister of Agriculture and Grain Growers Guide editor Thomas A.

Crerar, who resigned from cabinet over the Conservatives’ support for high tariffs, was the leader of a nascent agrarian protest movement that had the potential to win substantial numbers of votes in rural Ontario and the Prairies.

It was within this context that King sought to return the Liberal Party to power, then after their victory in the general election of 1921, maintain, and consolidate their position. However, the Liberals faced multiple challenges in doing so. The largest challenge confronting the party was their weak position in the House of Commons throughout the 1920s. When King assumed the leadership in 1920, the Meighen–led government was not required to face the electorate until

December of 1922. Such time in office could allow Meighen and his cabinet to demonstrate their ability to govern and allow the government to begin to enact a peacetime agenda of reconstruction. Thus, the Liberal Party's strategy from 1919 on focused on forcing the government to face the public in a general election as soon as possible, a move that proved successful with Canadians going to the polls in 1921. Even after the Liberals’ victory in the 1921 election, the party only held a majority of one seat. Throughout the entire decade, the Liberal

Party never had a majority larger than two seats. In order to maintain the confidence of the

29

House, the party had to rely on the support of sympathetic members of the Progressive Party or

ideologically aligned independents.

The other major challenge for the Liberals in consolidating power was the divided nature

of political authority within the Westminster system. Both the Senate and the Crown had specific

constitutional roles originally designed to limit the influence of the representative element of

Parliament as embodied by the House of Commons. Consequently, despite losing power in the

Commons, the Conservative Party still dominated the Senate and Conservative Senators could

defeat any legislation the Liberals managed to pass through the Commons. Additionally, the

Governor General, who served as the representative of the Crown in Canada, had the

constitutional power to dissolve the House and call an election. While convention dictated that

he or she should only do so on the advice of the prime minister, the Governor General had the

ability to deny a request for dissolution if he/she believed another person could command the

confidence of the house. Further complicating matters was that prior to 1950, the Governor

General was an appointed British aristocrat free from domestic Canadian political pressures and

not accountable to the Canadian public.

Most scholarly attention on federal politics in the 1920s focuses on the King–Byng Crisis

of 1925–26. While this chapter is no exception to the trend, its analysis is different. Unlike the

existing body of literature, which examines the constitutionality of key players’ actions, this

chapter discusses how the Liberals employed democratic discourses to stigmatize Arthur

Meighen and the Conservative Party as a whole, while defending their leader’s conduct.1 Beyond

1 Both King and Meighen’s biographers cover the King–Byng episode in their studies of the two men. See H. Blair Neatby, William Lyon Mackenzie King, 1924–1932: The Lonely Heights, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963), and Roger Graham, Arthur Meighen: A Biography, (Toronto: Clarke and Irwin, 1965). Additionally, Lord Byng’s biographer also discusses the episode in his biography. See Jeffery Williams, Byng of Vimy: General and 30

the crisis of 1925–26, very few scholars have focused on the middle part of the decade. One

exception is Frank Kunz who has analyzed the role of the Senate between the years 1925 and

1963 through a functional lens.2 This chapter aims to demonstrate how events like the King–

Byng Crisis, the actions of the Senate and the partisan clashes between King and Meighen were

all were part of a broader national discussion about democracy initiated and directed by the

Liberals to respond to specific political challenges the party faced throughout the 1920s.

In order to solidify their political position the Liberals needed to justify not only the

supremacy of the House of Commons and by extension the prime minister as the preeminent

element of Parliament, but also to support their claim to be the only party capable of governing

despite facing substantial opposition in the Commons. The purpose of this chapter is to

demonstrate how the Liberals engaged with the issues detailed above by deploying democratic

rhetoric regarding who could exercise decision making authority and under what circumstances.

Ultimately, King and the Liberal Party’s response was to employ the concept of the democratic

mandate as a means of justifying their own exercise of power and delegitimizing the actions of

other political actors, from the Meighen–led Conservatives Party in the Commons to the

unelected members of the Senate. While this particular articulation of the concept of the mandate

was often inconsistent, it gave King and his party a powerful discursive tool with which to attack

Governor General, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 303–306. Beyond these biographical studies, scholars have also investigated the specific constitutional questions. See Bruce Hicks, "The Crowns 'Democratic' Reserve Powers," Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol.44, No.2 (2010):5–31 and Peter Neary, "The Morning after a General Election: The Vice Regal Perspective," Scholarship@Western, (Fall 2012). Available at https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1668&context=historypub Accessed 19 November 2020. Kenny William Le also covers the King–Byng Crisis in his MA thesis on the Canadian Prime Ministership. See Kenny William Le, "Individuals and Institutions: Creating and Recreating the Canadian Prime Ministership. MA Thesis, McGill University, 2012. 2 See Frank Andrew Kunz, Modern Senate of Canada, 1925–1963: A Reappraisal, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965). 31

their political opponents. Subsequently, while politicians and the public could interpret what exactly qualified as a mandate and whether a particular leader or party possessed one, the idea itself was now embedded in Canadian political discourses.

In order to demonstrate this argument, the chapter first focuses on the history of the democratic mandate as a political concept, rooting its origins in Antebellum USA. It then examines how King, when serving as leader of the opposition, used the concept of the mandate to delegitimize the Meighen–led government and agitate for a general election. After the election and in power, King and the Liberals faced a hostile Senate dominated by the Conservatives. In response, King argued that Canadian voters granted the House of Commons a mandate to govern and the unelected Senate should not impede its will. King also employed the idea of a mandate once in power to bolster his claims of Crown interference and Meighen’s perfidy after the

Governor General Lord Julian Byng of Vimy refused to grant the PM’s request for a dissolution in 1926. Finally, after 1926 King and the Liberals controlled a majority of seats in the House of

Commons, decreasing the immediacy of their push for Senate reform. However, as is demonstrated below, they continued to articulate a concept of democratic governance that delegitimized the constitutional role of the Senate in favour of the elected Commons.

2.1 Practicing Mandate Politics in Opposition

The concept of the political mandate is a relatively recent invention that traces its origins to the United States and the populist rhetoric of seventh American President Andrew Jackson.

This theory of politics and elections rests on three basic assumptions regarding the behavior of the electorate and political leaders. First is the idea that election results carry a clear and directive message from the electorate to political leaders about the problems facing society and the various solutions proposed by different leaders or parties. Second, the specific message the electorate 32

sends is authoritative and an individual candidate or his/her party are bound by adherence to

democratic norms to uphold it, with a larger electoral victory meaning a more authoritative

mandate. The final assumption is a negative imperative, stating that other than in exceptional

circumstances, governments should not undertake substantial innovations in policy or procedure

without seeking and receiving a mandate from the electorate.3 Essentially, the idea of a mandate

stems from a delegate theory of democratic representation and can be summarized as follows:

voters send a message with their vote and public officials receive this message and act on it.4

While recent research in political science has undermined assumptions that voters use their vote

to send a direct message about policies to their political leaders, individual politicians and parties

still employ the idea of a mandate to justify their policies and procedures, hence the concept of a

mandate is still a relevant one for the study of political discourses.5 Furthermore, while the way

leaders and parties have constructed mandates has varied substantially, these constructs generally

adhere to the three basic ideas detailed above. The constructed nature of political mandates does

not take away their persuasive power. If a political leader says they have a mandate and enough

of the voting populace believes this claim, then in practice, one exists.

Throughout the nineteenth century, discourses invoking the concept of a political

mandate were most frequently found in American politics. Its American origins lie with

President Jackson who was the first to assert the idea that they were the embodiment of the will

of the American People – as so defined by Jackson in a way that excluded many due to their race

and sex – and that victory in the general election represented a specific mandate to implement

3 Stanley Kelley Jr., Interpreting Elections, (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 126–128. 4 Lawrence Grossback, David Peterson and James Stimson, Mandate Politics, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 14. 5 Ibid, 27–28. 33

their policies.6 Jackson's views were anomalous among nineteenth century American presidents

however, as the majority accepted Whig principles that argued for legislative superiority over the

executive. Almost eighty years later in 1912, Woodrow Wilson's electoral victory marked the

reintroduction of mandate politics to American presidential politics. Rather than accepting the

Whig argument that legislative superiority was imperative for true democracy to flourish, Wilson

inversed the proposition, arguing that legislative restrictions on presidential power were

undemocratic. For Wilson, as for Jackson before him, centralizing power in the Oval Office was

justified because the president was the only true elected representative of the American People

and had a popular mandate to act whereas congressmen and senators only had a local or at best,

statewide mandate.7

Mackenzie King was attracted to the idea of a popular mandate as it served as both a

means of delegitimizing the Conservative government and for reinforcing his own position as

prime minister after 1921. King, who had worked in the US with the Rockefellers during the

presidency of Woodrow Wilson, was a keen student of American politics and was able to

observe how Wilson utilized the concept to buttress his demands for greater executive power.8

The problem for King was that, unlike in a proportional representative system, and to a lesser

degree the American Electoral College model, Parliamentary systems have no mechanism that

links the results of the popular vote with who forms the executive. Rather, King had to construct

what Matthew Shugart and John Carey describe as a “false mandate.”9 In other words, there was

6 Robert Dahl, “Myth of the Presidential Mandate, “Political Science Quarterly, vol.105, no.3 (Autumn 1990): 356. 7 Ibid, 359–360. 8 Allan Levine, King: William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny, (Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 2012), 83–110. 9 Matthew Shugart and John Carey, Presidents and Assemblies, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 34

no authority or institution to legitimize King’s claim to a mandate. These circumstances meant that it was much more challenging for King to convince Canadians that such a concept was relevant to Canadian politics. Ultimately, though, King and the Liberals successfully employed the idea of a mandate in a variety of ways to respond to specific political changes the party faced in the 1920s.

The first political challenge for the Liberals’ new leader was to mobilize public pressure to force Prime Minister Meighen and his Conservatives to face the Canadian public in a federal election. After Parliament rose for the summer of 1920, King undertook an extensive speaking tour of English Canada, seeking to both win back voters who had supported the Liberal–

Unionists and undermine public faith in the Conservative government. Often giving three speeches a day, King traveled throughout Ontario and the Prairies and in these speeches outlined the line of attack the Liberal Party would pursue until the federal election of 1921. King's speech from 7 August of 1920 in Newmarket, Ontario illustrates how King presented the Liberals as progressive and democratic when compared with the supposedly autocratic and illegitimate

Union Government. Unambiguously titling his speech “Autocracy versus Government by the

People,” King described his party as one “which is without fear or favour toward any class or interests in the country... has regard only for the common well–being of the people as a whole.”

Yet with the Conservative Party in power, “[Canada] has a government democratic in form, but autocratic in behavior.” The problem facing King was that Meighen and his government had both assumed and remained in power legally based on the conventions of the Canadian

Constitution. Meighen, as the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons, had every right to govern until either he was defeated in the House or the Governor General dissolved

Parliament, which he was not required to do until 1922. Hence, King conceded that the Meighen 35

government was “democratic in form.” As a result, King and the Liberals needed to find a way to

undermine the legitimacy of Meighen’s government in spite of its constitutional validity and to

demonstrate to Canadians how the Conservatives were “autocratic in behavior.”

It was within this context that the idea of a mandate granted by the people provided the

Liberals just such a tool. Under this framework, King could describe Meighen's premiership to

voters as autocratic because true reconstruction of the country after the World War I would have:

Demanded a new Parliament and a new ministry at the termination of the war. It certainly demanded recognition of these fundamental rights of the people upon the retirement of Sir Robert Borden and the resignation of his entire ministry. Instead of reconstruction, we have had the most glaring example of usurpation of the rights of the people in matters of government, which it would have been possible for the combined forces of reaction to afford.10

Keen to demonstrate that true adherence to democratic principles would compel Meighen to

resign and dissolve Parliament; King argued that any government needed the expressed support

of the Canadian people, or a mandate, rather than fulfilling the simple constitutional requirement

to maintain support from a majority of members of the House of Commons. Indeed, in this

speech King argued that it was the right of the people to pronounce on any new prime minister in

a general election. While constitutionally this right did not exist in the Westminster system as

practiced in either Canada or Britain, invoking democratic ideals gave King the intellectual

justification to demand a federal election as soon as possible.

In the Liberal Party's discourses of democratic legitimacy, all governments needed to

secure a mandate to govern from the Canadian people and they could only confer one through a

general election. Throughout 1920, King and the Liberals sought to demonstrate how the

10 “Autocracy versus Government by the People,” Speech by William Lyon Mackenzie King in Newmarket, Ontario, 7 August 1920, MG26 J4 Vol.8 File 27 Reel C1987, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 36

incumbent Conservative administration did not meet this standard for legitimacy. In a speech

given later on in the same day as the Newmarket address quoted above, King told a North York,

Ontario audience that the root of all freedom and justice was “the right of the people to govern

themselves, through the agency of a representative Parliament and a responsible ministry. If this

right is denied the people as a whole... their aims and purposes failing altogether of legitimate

expression, can be of little avail.” Certainly, this articulation of democratic principles was

consistent with the Canadian Constitution and Parliamentary practice. King then chose to

reinterpret the meaning of representative and responsible government in a novel way, arguing

that “It must be perfectly clear that [The Meighen government] has received no mandate

whatsoever from the Canadian people. By the wildest stretch of the imagination, these gentlemen

cannot be regarded as in any sense of the word members of a ministry that is representative of

the popular will.” King concluded by telling his audience that, “Not only is the government

indifferent to the voice of the people as expressed at the polls in several by–elections and in the

daily press, it is equally indifferent to its waning support in the House of Commons itself.”11

While these barometers of popular opinion that King pointed out were indicators of how people

felt, they had no legal force. The Union Government had only to maintain the support of a

majority of MPs in the Commons, which Meighen continued to do, even if their absolute

majority shrunk slightly due to bye-election loses. Overall, in these summer speeches King

attempted to separate the legal or constitutional right to govern, as conferred by the House of

Commons, with the democratic or moral justification for exercising political power. In King’s

11 Address by Mackenzie King in North York, ON. 7 August 1920, MG26 J4 Vol.8 File 27 Reel C1987, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 37

novel position, Meighen gained power legally but it was only through a general election could he

secure the moral right to govern, which was imperative for any government claiming to be

democratic.

King clearly demonstrated the degree to which the Liberal Party's conception of the

mandate and its role in the functioning of Canadian democracy diverged from conventional

notions of how the Westminster system worked in one of his speeches from September of 1920.

Speaking to an audience in Victoria, BC, King again expounded on the illegitimacy of the

current Union Government, stating that:

The rights of the people in matters of government have been usurped, are being usurped at the present time by a Parliament that is not representative of the will of the people and by a ministry that has become indifferent to Parliament and its rights. What is needed today as the foundation of all else is to restore the control of the people over Parliament and to restore the control of Parliament over the Executive.12

As discussed in the introduction, nineteenth century Whig parliamentarians used the rhetoric of

the popular will to justify the supremacy of the British House of Commons. The fact that

members of the House were elected meant Whigs could claim its expressions were reflective of

the general desires of the population and so the Commons was justified in checking the

aristocratic or monarchical powers of the House of Lords or the Crown respectively. However, in

an inverse of this argument, the Liberals, much like Woodrow Wilson in the USA, now argued

that the elected legislature could actually become the oppressive element by catering to factional

and not general interest. Indeed, King argued that Parliament acted against the people if it

continued to enable Meighen to stay in power. The solution to this problem, following King’s

12 “The Restoration of Parliamentary Government,” Speech by Mackenzie King in Victoria, BC. 27 September 1920, MG26 J4 Vol.8 File 27 Reel C1987, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 38

line of argumentation, was a general election. Through said election, the people would ensure the composition of the House of Commons was reflective of the popular will and the Commons would then select a cabinet that reflected this new balance of power. Parliamentary support was not sufficient for the Liberals because the House of Commons could misuse its power to prop up a supposedly illegitimate prime minister and cabinet.

Despite King's attacks against the right of the Conservative Party to continue to govern,

Prime Minister Meighen refused to request the dissolution of Parliament. While the Liberal leader continued to speak publicly about the supposedly autocratic nature of the Union

Government, other prominent Liberals assailed Meighen and his government in the House of

Commons. Charles Gavan “Chubby” Power, the fluently bilingual Member of Parliament for

Quebec South who was first elected as an anti–conscription “Laurier Liberal” in 1917, argued that the government's lackadaisical response to the economic and social challenges of the post– war environment was due to its lack of a democratic mandate for reconstruction. In February of

1921, Power told the House of Commons that, “Parliament has denied to the electors of Canada any opportunity since 1911 to assert their views upon domestic questions by means of the ballot... Parliament has outlived its mandate.” The key word in Power's statement is domestic, for, despite Power's assertion otherwise; there had been a general election in 1917, which his party had lost. Yet by presenting the 1917 vote as solely a referendum on wartime leadership and more specifically the issue of conscription, Power could argue that the current government had not sought a mandate from the people in ten years, well past the constitutional requirement of five years. In Liberal discourses, the 1917 election had only conferred a mandate to govern until the war was over. After Borden had signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 officially ending

39

hostilities with Germany, the Union Government's mandate had expired and any attempts to

continue governing was a denial of the peoples' rights.

Yet while the election of 1917 was unique for a variety of reasons, the fact that it

happened during wartime or that Robert Borden ran at the head of a national unity government

did not change the constitutional validity of the results. Just as with all previous Parliaments, this

one would sit for five years from the election and only the Governor General could dissolve it on

the advice of the prime minister. That the war, which led to a Union Government, had ended and

that the head of said government had changed was irrelevant from a constitutional perspective.

So long as the leader of the government maintained the confidence of the House, they could

continue to govern until well into 1922. Yet if the Liberals could convince enough voters to

enforce the democratic conventions King and his supporters had outlined, these standards of

legitimacy would become real in a very important sense regardless of questions of

constitutionality.

Beyond failing to meet the standard of democratic validity he outlined, Power also argued

that the position of the Meighen government was fundamentally “American.” He told the House

that, “They take their principles from the American Constitution which states that a government,

or a ministry, or a member, or a congressman is elected for a certain term of years and may

13 remain in office for a full term.” Why such a system is American is unclear, for while in the

Westminster system governments only remained in power as long as they maintained a majority

in the Commons, each individual member was elected and served until the House was dissolved

13 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 17 February 1921 (Charles Gavan Power, Liberal). https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC1305_01. 40

or they resigned. The only meaningful difference was that the Westminster system did not

prescribe fixed election dates, whereas the American Constitution fixed terms for the House of

Representatives at two years, presidents at four years and senators at six. Regardless, Power told

the House that the Meighen Ministry “Holds that their tie to office is to be assimilated to the

marriage tie – only to be dissolved by death or the Senate.”14 In reproducing this discourse of

democratic governance, Power forwarded the idea that the length of time a government had a

mandate to govern should not be dictated by the calendar but by their ability to maintain the

support of the people. The Liberals argued that the House of Commons could not always serve as

a proxy for the will of the people, but rather, a truly responsible government would go to the

polls when they felt they ceased to have the moral authority to govern. Power failed to articulate

where the power to make the final determination rested, but one suspects that for Power, King

and other Liberal elites, the Liberal Party functioned as a suitable judge in this case.

Ultimately, Meighen did ask the Governor General to dissolve the House in November of

1921 and a general election date was set for 6 December 1921. While a full year earlier than was

legally required, it reflected the dominant convention that governments call an election after four

years in power. The Liberals, facing the general election they had demanded for over a year,

relied on the same rhetorical tropes regarding democracy and the mandate to attack Meighen and

the Conservative Party. In the final campaign document produced by the Liberals, a letter to

Canadians signed by King and written by a committee of high profile Liberals, the party outlined

the stark choice voters faced on 6 December 1921, telling them:

14 Op cite. Prior to the liberalization of divorce laws in Canada with the Divorce Act, 1968, approval for each divorce required a bill passed by Parliament. 41

The political campaign now drawing to a close has demonstrated clearly that, in the exercise of your franchise on December the 6th you will be called upon to decide as respects the next five years... Whether we are to have a return to representative and responsible government in the fullest meaning of the word with a due recognition of the character of the House of Commons as a deliberative assembly and of the supremacy of Parliament in all that pertains to our domestic inter–imperial and international affairs.15

The Liberals warned Canadians about the consequences of not voting for their party but had to

be deliberate in the particular discourse they employed. This open letter promised a return to

representative and responsible government “in the fullest meaning of the word” because, in fact,

Canada under the Union Government continued to have both responsible and representative

government. It was only in the Liberals’ redefinition of Canadian political concepts that the

Meighen government failed to meet these basic standards. Rather than representing a return to

governing traditions, the Liberals’ discourses outlined a stark departure from the established

governing norms pre–1921.

In the federal election of 1921, the Mackenzie King–led Liberals won 41% of the popular

vote, which translated into a majority of one seat in the Commons. However, the party only

managed to win seven seats west of Ontario, further reinforcing Central Canadian control over

the party. While the Liberals could celebrate returning to power, the returns for the

Conservatives were disastrous. Not only did the party's share of the popular vote decline from

57% to 30%, they only managed to win forty–nine seats. Thus, despite the Progressive Party

only winning 21% of the vote, they captured fifty–eight seats and displaced the Conservatives as

15 “To the Electors of Canada,” Speech by Mackenzie King in Newmarket, ON. 5 December 1921, MG26 J4, Volume 5, File 38: Election of 1921, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 42

the second largest party in Parliament. As a final blow, Conservative Leader Meighen lost his

seat in Portage–La–Prairie to Progressive Party candidate Harry Leader.

2.2 Dealing with a Hostile Senate

Despite the Conservatives’ dramatic loss, King's powers as Prime Minister were still

limited. With only a one–seat majority in the House of Commons, the Liberal government

needed to be cautious when pursuing the party's legislative agenda and fiercely contest every by–

election. Even with the Liberal Party in control of the government, they still faced a hostile

Senate dominated by Conservative partisans appointed by Borden and Meighen respectively,

during their ten years in power.16 The election results, combined with continued Conservative

dominance in the Senate, necessitated a change in how the Liberal Party presented themselves

and their policies to the Canadian public. As the opposition party, the Liberals described the

governing Conservatives as autocratic in a bid to limit their moral authority to exercise political

power in the eyes of voters. However, now that the Liberals formed government, the high

standard for exercising power they had demanded voters to apply to the government throughout

1920–21 now represented a serious problem for the Liberals. Since the party had only received a

plurality of votes in the general election, by their own standards they lacked a clear democratic

mandate. However, the weakened state of the Conservative Party and the dis–unified nature of

the Progressive Party meant that the Liberals were the only party in a position to form

government. Hence, they quickly abandoned talk of a popular mandate as articulated pre–1921.

Instead, the government focused their attacks on the most pressing challenge to their ability to

16 Up until 1965, Senators were appointed for life. In order to appoint a new Senator the government had to wait until a Senator either died or voluntarily retired. 43

govern, the Conservative controlled Senate. Over the course of the next four years, the Liberal

Party and its supporters in the media publicly reinterpreted the idea of a democratic mandate to

garner popular support for Parliamentary legislation that would limit the Senate's powers. As

opposed to being either a neutered force unable to resist the autocratic Meighen or the very

mechanism through which Meighen usurped power, the Commons under King now became the

protectors of the Canadian people.

As the Ottawa Evening Citizen highlighted in their 1921 Election Day issue, reforming

the Senate had been the subject of political discussion in Canada since shortly after

Confederation. The paper chronicled eight previous attempts to pass legislation limiting the

power of the Senate, all of which had failed.17 Additionally, as King’s political secretary Norman

Rogers informed his boss in a 1927 report, Conservative MP Edward Lancaster had introduced

failed legislation calling for the complete abolition of the Senate in 1909, 1910 and 1911.18

Finally, the Liberal Party grassroots also had repeatedly voiced their concerns regarding the

power of the Senate. Particularly during the 1919 Liberal Leadership Convention, numerous

local organizations had forwarded resolutions calling for reform of the Upper Chamber, with

options ranging from instituting a mandatory retirement age to outright abolition. A common

reason cited in the preamble to these resolutions was that, as the Northern Ontario Liberal

Association detailed, the Senate was “an appointed body, holding office for life, which is

contrary to Liberal opinion and principle.”19 Thus, King's attacks on the power of the Senate

17 “Eighth Attempt to Curb Power Upper Chamber,” Ottawa Evening Citizen, 6 December 1921. 18 The Reform of the Senate by N. McL. Rogers, 12 September 1927, MG 26 J4, Vol.1053, Reel C2723, Senate Reform File, pp.97087–97152, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 19 National Liberal Convention: Resolutions, Recommendations and Suggestions for Platform and Programme. 5–7 August, 1919, MG28 IV 3, Vol.1215, General Election 1935 file, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and 44

were not only expedient politically, but also reflected a history of Liberal support for Senate

reform initiatives and tapped into existing sympathies among many of the party's grassroots.

When discussing Senate reform proposals the Liberals were not only part of a long

history of reform discourses in Canada, but also the ongoing debate across the British Empire

regarding the role of the Upper House in Parliament, particularly the powers of the House of

Lords in Britain. In the years leading up to World War I, debates over what legislative or

procedural mechanisms were required to resolve deadlock between the Commons and Lords

became one of the most controversial issues in twentieth century British politics. Traditionally,

the only mechanism for resolving a deadlock between the Commons and the Lords was to have

the Crown appoint additional peers who would support the particular piece of contested

legislation. With the passage of the Reform Act 1832, only after King William IV threatened the

Lords with fulfilling the request of Prime Minister Earl Grey to create an additional 80 peerages

to ensure the bill received Parliamentary approval, the informal convention developed that the

Lords would not defeat publicly popular legislation. Additionally, convention dictated that the

House of Lords could not amend money bills as only the Commons had the ability to decide

what money would be available for the Crown to spend. Although unable to amend money bills,

the Lords still had the prerogative to defeat them outright, setting the stage for the 1909–1911

conflict over “the People's Budget.”20

By the turn of the twentieth century, the Conservative–Unionists had a substantial

majority in the Lords.21 The 1906 general election however, saw the Liberals form government

Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 20 A.W. Bradley and K.W. Ewing, Constitutional and Administrative Law (8th ed.), (Harlow, UK. Longman, 2008), 200–205. 21 The Conservative–Unionist Government was a union between the Conservative or Tory Party and Anglo–Irish 45

led by a reform–minded leader who had publicly committed to substantial welfare reforms. From

1906 to 1908 conflict simmered between the two chambers with the Lords rejecting or

substantially modifying key pieces of legislation in 1906 and 1907. The conflict came to a head

in 1909 when Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George introduced “the People's

Budget” which, among other measures, increased income taxes on the wealthy, as well as

instituted an additional land tax targeted at the landed gentry. Conservatives in both houses saw

the budget as highly re–distributive and an attack on the wealthy and while they did not have the

votes in the Commons to defeat the budget, in the House of Lords they did and voted three

hundred and fifty to seventy five to veto the budget.22

In response, the Liberals derided the Upper Chamber as undemocratic and called for its

reform. Additionally, Prime Minister Asquith asked King Edward VII to appoint Liberal peers to

ensure the budget's passage. However, the King would be required to appoint over 300 new peers

and refused to take such drastic action without a clear indication of support from the British

electorate. Consequently, Asquith asked the King for a dissolution and in the general election of

January 1910 the Liberals won enough seats to remain in power, albeit with the help of Labour

and Irish Parliamentary Party support. This coalition was subsequently able to force through a

modified version of the 1909 budget but with the controversial land tax removed. In response to

the budget crisis, Asquith attempted to use his Parliamentary majority to pass a bill removing the

House of Lords’ veto over legislation and replace it with only the ability to delay money bills for

a month and all other bills for a maximum of two years. This measure was, as predicted, quickly

members of Parliament opposed to “Home Rule” for the Irish. 22 Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon, Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 46

defeated in the Upper Chamber. Yet, with the death of Edward VII in May of 1910 and George

V's ascension to the throne, Asquith now had a sympathetic monarch willing to appoint

additional peers to ensure the passage of reform legislation. When the Liberals’ reform

legislation was once again defeated in the House of Lords, Asquith requested another general

election for December 1910, which his coalition subsequently won. The Liberals were now able

to pass a reform bill similar to the one rejected in 1910, and in August of 1911, the House of

Lords passed the Parliament Act 1911 by a majority of 17 votes with over 100 lords abstaining.23

The political drama surrounding the House of Lords reforms was well covered by the Canadian

press and for many Canadians provided a template for Senate reform in their country.

Despite the importance of Senate reform to many Liberals, as well as an essentially

ready–made legislation based on the British Parliamentary Act 1911, the prime minister did not

publicly discuss the perceived need for Senate reform until the summer of 1924.24 Rather, the

Liberals relied on the Manitoba Free Press and their partisan Liberal editor J.W. Dafoe to

highlight how the Senate allegedly abused its power to “trip up the government” and slowly

build a popular base of support for reform measures. When King finally did address the issue in

July of 1924 he told the House that, “This year we have instances of bills that have passed this

House in three separate sessions of Parliament, and which have been rejected each time by the

second Chamber.” King then referred to the 1911 British reforms and argued that, “The time has

come when the Commons in Canada should seek to gain rights and privileges with respect to

legislation originating in the Chamber similar to those which have been obtained by the House of

23 For a full text of the law see http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/1–2/13/contents 24 “The Branch Lines That Were Not Built,” Manitoba Free Press, 9 January 1924. 47

Commons in the Parliament of Westminster.” After assuring the House that his government

would introduce legislation to ensure the supremacy of the Commons in the near future, King

proceeded to justify his proposed legislation by invoking a sense of civic duty in his audience.

King stated that, “I think we owe it to the people of our country with respect to laws demanded

by the electorate to see to the supremacy in Parliament of the elective chamber.”25 By virtue of

its status as the appointed element of Parliament, King argued that the appointed Senate should

not hinder legislation passed by the House of Commons. In arguing for these reforms, King also

pressured for reforms greater than those contained in the Parliament Act, 1911. One of the key

constitutional justifications for legally defining the powers of the Lords in respect to the

Commons was to ensure that the Lords could not dictate government spending by amending or

defeating a budget passed by the Commons. On other legislation, the Lords could vote to delay it

by two years, which meant that combined with procedural delays and a maximum five years

Parliamentary term, the Upper Chamber could effectively veto legislation. Thus, it was possible

to understand the 1911 reforms not as a radical redistribution of powers within Parliament but

rather a codification of existing conventions. Within the Canadian context however, the issue

was not money bills, for King's budgets were never as radical as Lloyd George's and easily

passed the Senate, but rather criminal code reform. In particular, the Liberals since 1919 had

pledged to repeal the wartime anti–subversion laws of Section 98 of the Criminal Code. Since the

end of World War I, these laws had been used to target communist organizations and

Conservative Senators were almost unanimously opposed to repealing the section.26 In order to

25 Text of a speech by Mackenzie King in Parliament, 19 July 1924. MG26 K, Vol.630, p.389339, R.B. Bennett Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 26 Section 98 of the Canadian Criminal Code was originally introduced by Justice Minister Arthur Meighen in 1919 in the aftermath of the Winnipeg General Strike and was designed to combat communist influences in Canada by 48

ensure that his government's legislation could pass unimpeded by the Senate, any reforms would

have to be much more extensive in their changes than the 1911 British ones. Hence, the Liberals

had to justify possible reform initiatives not by appealing to constitutional precedent but by

invoking a new standard of democratic legitimacy; the popular mandate.

This message, that the Liberals’ attempts to limit the power of the Senate were part of the

fight to protect the rights of the people by empowering the Commons, was a key theme of many

of the prime minister's speeches throughout the summer of 1924. In a speech from 20 August

1924 to the Kent County Liberal Association in Chatham, Ontario, King assured the partisan

audience that, “The government would proceed with all due caution in an effort to secure

supremacy of the people's will.” While seeking to downplay the radical natures of his party's

proposals, King stated that, “I do believe the people will expect a Liberal government to see that

the machinery of government is so arranged as to make possible that the will of the people will

prevail in those great measures which are of such great concern to the people as a whole.”27 King

attempted to present it as self–evident that the House of Commons should be the pre–eminent

legislative body in the country and any limits imposed on it by an appointed body were

necessarily anti–democratic. Much like his comments in the House of Commons in July, King

repeated his assertion that the Liberals, by virtue of their position as the governing party in the

Commons, were acting in accordance with the expressed wishes of the people. Any partisan

allowing police to arrest those who supported political or economic change through violent means. The language of the section was purposely vague to allow police forces the greatest discretion possible when enforcing the law. This deeply unpopular law was ultimately repealed in 1935 by the newly elected Liberal government. This differs from the current Section 98 of the Criminal Code which deals with break and enter. See “Section 98 of Criminal Code” 20 June 1936, Box 11, File 38, Grant Dexter Fonds, Queens University Archives, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. 27 Speech by Mackenzie King to Kent Liberal Association in Chatham, 20 August 1924, MG26 K, Vol.630, Senate Reform File p.389339, R.B. Bennett Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 49

advantage the Liberals gained from this legislation was simply a by–product of the party's

success and broad appeal to the general population.

After spending the summer rallying support for reform measures, the King–led Liberals

hesitated and refused to introduce legislation on the matter during the autumn Parliamentary

session of 1924. Rather, King made vague promises to pass a bill similar to the 1911 one in

Britain without actually committing to a particular course of action. Such hesitancy did not stop

the Manitoba Free Press from outlining the proposed changes to their readers in the most

generous light. In an editorial from October of 1924 Dafoe argued that, “The object of a second

chamber is to ensure careful deliberation and to prevent hasty, ill–considered legislation. The

proposed amendment would allow for this without permanently blocking the will of the

people...” Additionally, Dafoe attempted to undermine any opposition to possible reform

initiatives, stating that:

Opposition to such an amendment cannot come from regard for the public interest

but only from dark, ulterior considerations. Is the will of the people to prevail in

Canada, or are the interests to retain the hold, which they have had upon the

government of the country through the irresponsible Senate and otherwise?28

By invoking the idea that the Senate was not responsible to any elected body, Dafoe sought to

stigmatize attempts by the Senate to exercise its constitutional power to block reform legislation,

all while emphasizing the democratic nature of the Liberals’ reforms. In the pages of the Free

28 J.W. Dafoe, “The Senate and the Veto”, Manitoba Free Press, 22 October 1924. 50

Press, what could be interpreted as a simple partisan conflict between the Liberals and

Conservatives was instead presented to readers as a clash of principles between the

democratically elected representatives of the Canadian people and nefarious forces acting out of

self–interest.

In December of 1924, the Manitoba Free Press published another editorial attacking

Conservatives who defended the status quo regarding the Senate. The paper characterized the

Tories’ opposition as doomed to failure for, “The Second Chamber occupies no such invincible

position as our die–hards and stand–patters think.”29 However, in the face of substantial and

sustained opposition from Conservative parliamentarians in both houses, the Free Press became

more vocal in their support of the Liberal position. In an article from the summer of 1925 titled

“The Senate Reaches Out,” the paper informed readers that not only were senators and their

Conservative Party peers in the House of Commons resisting reform, they were the driving force

behind “a persistent movement to enlarge the powers of the Canadian Senate for a reason that is

quite plain. [Certain] powers and influences that believe they have an indefeasible right to

control this country are turning to the Senate as the grip upon the Commons shows signs of

weakening.” Much as during 1920–21 when King had depicted the Conservative Party under

Meighen as usurpers without the moral authority to govern, the Liberals and their supporters

continued to attack the Conservatives for failing to respect the basic pillar of Canadian

democracy: responsible government. As Dafoe reminded readers, “our nominated Senate is...

entirely irresponsible.”30 Yet just as Meighen had every constitutional right to govern until the

29 “The Senate and Its Powers,” Manitoba Free Press, 22 December 1924. 30 “The Senate Reaches Out,” Manitoba Free Press, 26 June 1925. 51

House was dissolved for he continued to command a majority in the Commons, the Senate had a

legal right to amend or even veto legislation and doing so did not contravene the tenets of

responsible government as the Senate was not a confidence chamber. Yet, rather than relying on

constitutional arguments, which only served to undermine the Liberals’ position, the party's

intellectual leaders drew on popular democratic discourses as an alternative standard for judging

actions.

While it was the most prominent and widely read newspaper supporting the Liberals, the

Manitoba Free Press was not alone. On 22 December 1924, the same day as the Free Press

published their editorial quoted above, the traditionally Liberal Toronto Globe published a long

editorial arguing in favour of Senate reform. Specifically invoking Western Canadian grievances

with the Upper Chamber to bolster their argument, the Toronto Globe piece from 22 December

1924 argued for the uniqueness of the Canadian Senate, stating that, “In no other country with a

Parliamentary tradition is the Upper House so frankly based on party patronage and so wholly

independent of public opinion or public favour. Students of constitutional history who believe in

democracy have a logical quarrel with such a body...”31 The truth of the Globe's claim was

certainly debatable and the paper declined to offer any evidentiary support for their assertion.

Regardless, telling Canadians that the Senate was uniquely undemocratic had become part of the

arsenal of arguments supporters of reform deployed with regularity. In a Free Press editorial

from June of 1925 Dafoe compared the Senate unfavorably with the British House of Lords,

writing, “The House of Lords, it appears, is a mere shadow of a legislative body compared with

31 “The Senate as an Issue,” Toronto Globe, 22 December 1924. 52

our nominated Senate.”32 Dafoe chose to ignore the hereditary nature of the House of Lords or

the presence of Church of England Bishops in the British Upper House, rather emphasizing that

the appointed nature of the Senate, combined with its unrestricted power to amend or veto

legislation, was of the utmost importance in determining the democratic nature of each country's

Parliament.

Despite the advocacy of partisan newspapers in Winnipeg and Toronto, any changes to

the relationship between the Senate and the Commons similar to the 1911 British reforms faced

substantial political obstacles. Foremost among them was any government legislation would

require approval from both the House of Commons and the Senate. Essentially, the Conservative

dominated Senate would have to vote to limit their own powers and ensure the supremacy of the

Liberal controlled House. Thus, throughout the 1924–25 session of Parliament, the Liberals, with

a majority of only two votes in the Commons, continued to face substantial opposition in both

chambers. By May of 1925, a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery recorded a frustrated

King telling the House of Commons that, “the government does not propose to stay here all

through the hot summer months impeded in their business by two elements both going in

opposite directions at the same time... I am speaking the minds of the people of this country that

they will not tolerate a situation where the government is continually faced with uncertainty.”33

For King the two obstructionist elements were the Conservative dominated Senate threatening to

defeat any reform measures and the Progressive Party, whose members demanded reform on a

scale that the Liberals were unwilling to contemplate, such as reorganizing the Senate along

32 “The Senate Reaches Out,” Manitoba Free Press, 26 June 1925. 33 “Letter #12: On Parliament Hill by A Member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery,” 2 May 1925, MG26 J4, Vol.115, File 825 Liberal Party. p.84526, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 53

occupational lines.34 In an attempt to end the legislative stand–off King made a series of personal

guarantees to the Progressive Party regarding Senate appointments to secure their votes in the

Commons, essentially promising to only appoint Senators who would pledge to support reform

legislation in the future. Thus, once the Liberals gained a majority in the Senate they would then

be in a position to enact their desired reform measures. As a means of bypassing the obstacles to

reforming the Senate, this solution was flawed, as neither King’s assurances nor the pledge of

newly appointed Senators was enforceable. Even if the Progressives could withdraw their

support of the Liberals in the House as punishment for Senators refusing to honour their oath,

once a Senator took their seat, there was no way to remove them from the Upper House.

Therefore, the Progressive Party dismissed this overture from the Liberal Party.35

While later in 1925 the King government did set up a Dominion–Provincial Conference

to discuss possible constitutional changes, including reforming the Senate, employing promises

of reform to woo Progressive Party members was a strategic dead end.36 Yet on a broader level,

propagating these discourses about the Upper Chamber was incredibly valuable politically as it

reinforced the image of the Liberal Party as the protectors of Canadian democracy. By stopping

government legislation, the Liberals could attack the “hostile Senate” not only on partisan

grounds, but also for impeding the will of the Canadian people, who King argued, had given his

party a mandate to govern. At the same time, the Liberals could attack the Progressives for their

radical proposals. King’s party could position itself as one of moderates operating within the

34 For a detailed explanation of this proposal see William Irvine, “The Senate: Functional or Partisan, or Re– Organizing the Senate,” The Calgary Albertan, 26 November 1924. 35 Blair Fraser, "A New Senate, This is Why We Need It," Maclean's, April 15, 1954: 40. 36 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 18 January 1926, (Arthur Meighen, Liberal–Conservative), 208–209. 54

established confines of the Westminster system, regardless of the actual nature of their proposed

reforms.

King's attempts to equate opposing government policies with opposition to democratic

governance in general became an important campaign message for the Liberal Party in the 1925

election campaign. In a pamphlet entitled Progress and Achievement published in September of

that year, the National Liberal Federation (NLF) employed King's rhetoric in a direct appeal to

the electorate. The pamphlet's author first reiterated the problems the Liberals faced dealing with

a hostile Senate before demonstrating how, if elected, the Liberals would solve this problem:

When there is a change in government in Canada, it usually happens that the Senate is controlled by the Opposition. This embarrasses a new government and its majority in the House and prevents the will of the people being fully carried out as expressed at the general election... The people believe that the Canadian House of Commons should have the same power as the British House of Commons to pass legislation and the Prime Minister personally declared this to be his view. How he is going to bring this about was fully set forth in his keynote speech in North York. Liberal Senators already in office, as well as those who are to be appointed, will be pledged to support the necessary constitutional change. The government in this campaign is seeking a mandate from the people. If that be forthcoming, the will of the people will be translated into political action as soon as the supporters of the government constitute a substantial majority of the Senate.37

The NLF elevated what was essentially the promise King made to the Progressives earlier in the

year into a key part of the Liberals’ election platform. The author echoed King's public

comments from earlier in the year by emphasizing the importance of the Commons, and through

it cabinet, having the power to pass legislation unimpeded by the Senate. The Liberals justified

their desire to ensure the unimpeded ability of the Commons to pass legislation by again

appealing to the idea of a democratic mandate conferred through a general election. Specifically,

37 Progress and Achievement, Publication #1, published by the National Liberal Committee, September 1926, MG28 IV 3, Vol.1200, Liberal Political Pamphlets 1925 Election file, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 55

the Liberals argued that the victorious party in an election represented the will of the majority of

Canadians. Such a claim was not based on historical precedent nor supported by the popular vote

totals, as only 41% of voters supported the Liberals in the 1921 election. Furthermore, with

67.7% voter turnout, only 29% of eligible Canadians actually voted for the Liberals.38 Beyond

the number of votes cast, the popular vote played no role in determining which party formed

government, as the 1925 and 1926 Federal Elections would demonstrate. For King to claim that

the 1921 Election results meant the Liberal Party spoke on behalf of the majority of Canadians

relied on a particular interpretation of what constituted a democratic mandate. Nonetheless, it

functioned effectively as a tool to delegitimize opposition attempts to oppose the Liberals’

legislative agenda.

The Conservative Party was able to offer some resistance to the Liberals' attacks on the

legitimacy of the Senate but the disorganized state of the party and internal conflicts served to

blunt their effectiveness. In particular, conservative newspapers such as the Montreal Gazette

focused on the Liberal government's proposal to eliminate the Senate's veto. Responding to the

articles printed in the Manitoba Free Press and the Toronto Globe advocating for the Senate

reform initiatives, the Gazette argued in a lengthy editorial that:

A Senate, which has not the power to review or reject ill–considered legislation or to protect the interests of minorities and the rights of provinces, cannot fill the place in our Parliamentary system for which it was deliberately created, and we have abolition in fact if not in form. Second thought will do no good if it cannot be translated into action, or if action is not to be effective; yet that, and nothing less, is meant by Senate “reform.39

38 For voter turnout information from 1867 to2004 see Elections Canada, “Voter Turnout at Federal Elections and Referendums,” available at http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=ele&dir=turn&document=index&lang=e accessed 2 August 2017. 39 “Reforming the Senate,” Montreal Gazette, 29 December 1924. 56

Rather than engage with the Liberal position that political authority stemmed from the Canadian people, the Gazette's defence of the Senate rested on a restatement of the principles articulated by the Fathers of Confederation when drafting the BNA Act. Furthermore, by arguing that reform was tantamount to abolition, the author attempted to equate the Liberals’ policy of legislating Senate reform with the more radical proposals of the agrarian protest movements, many of whom advocated for outright abolition. By appealing to the Canadian Constitution, opponents of Senate reform tried to invoke the authority of the Constitution and associated conventions to counter the Liberals’ initiatives. Yet this approach overlooked the power a direct appeal to the Canadian people had in the political environment of the 1920s.

2.3 The King–Byng Crisis

Despite promising during the 1925 campaign that senators would be made accountable to the public, King and the Liberals abandoned any serious legislative attempt at Senate reform after the 1925 session of Parliament and subsequent federal election. The largest reason for the

Liberals’ sudden abandonment of the issue was the constitution crisis of 1925–1926 that served to reorient the immediate priorities of the Liberals towards partisan conflict with the

Conservatives in the House of Commons and not the Senate.

When King advised Governor General Byng to dissolve the House of Commons in

September of 1925, the Liberal Party held a majority of two seats. In the subsequent federal election, the Conservative Party won 46% of the vote, which translated into a plurality of seats with 116. Comparatively, the Liberals received slightly less than 40% of the popular vote and won only 100 seats. However, the Progressive Party garnered 8.5% of the vote nationally resulting in twenty–two seats. With these results, King decided to rely on the support of the

Progressives and refused to resign as prime minister, attempting instead to govern at the head of 57

a minority government. Despite ongoing negotiations with the Progressive Party leadership to

secure a stable governing coalition, King was unable to secure an official agreement and so had

to rely on ad–hoc coalitions to maintain his tenuous hold on power. The unstable nature of King's

government led Lord Byng to advise King that he should resign, advice King, as was his right,

ignored. However, the Governor General did tell King in confidence that he would not honour

any request for dissolution until Conservative Arthur Meighen had an opportunity to form

government.40 While Byng's statement was perfectly in line with his powers as the Crown's

representative in Canada, it also set the stage for future conflict.

The Liberals’ public position regarding King's attempt to remain prime minister after the

1925 election reflected the PM's own private convictions. Writing in his diary only two days

after the election, King reflected that, “I have to safeguard the party's interests of which I am the

leader, as well as the people's interests, who in the main have decided against Meighen.”41

Certainly, the first claim, that he was safeguarding the party's interests, was factual. The Liberals,

like any political party, existed to gain and hold power, and the divided nature of Parliament after

the 1925 election provided an avenue through which the party could do just that. It would be

irresponsible of the leader not to explore all possible options for keeping his party in power.

However, King's claim that he was defending the interests of the people was more subjective.

The Conservatives only won 46% of the vote and so a majority of voters had supported another

party yet King relied on the assumption that any voter who supported a third party or

40 Jeffery Williams, Byng of Vimy: General and Governor General, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 303–306. 41 Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, October 31st, 1925, MG26 J5, Reel G4327 Item 9510, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fond, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Available at https://www.bac– lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics–government/prime–ministers/william–lyon–mackenzie– king/Pages/item.aspx?IdNumber=9510& 58

independent would rather have King as prime minister than Meighen. The problem is that King's

claim could easily be reversed and Meighen could argue that the people had in the main decided

against King, with 60% of people voting against the incumbent prime minister’s party. Given the

failure of the Liberals to win either a plurality of the popular vote or seats in the commons, the

counter–argument was equal to, if not, stronger, than King's. Yet King's private remarks are

consistent with his public rhetoric over the previous five years, where he equated his party's

interests with those of the Canadian people. Such a claim was certainly easier to substantiate

when the Liberals formed a majority government but King's continued insistence that the

Liberals had a mandate from the Canadian people to protect their interests reflects a consistency

of argument, even if it required more work to maintain after 1925.

Consistent with his private writings, in his first public statement to the press on 4

November 1926, King emphasized that parties opposed to the Conservatives won the majority of

seats. In the statement given to the Parliamentary Press Gallery and later read into Hansard, King

stated:

With respect to the leader of the political party having the largest definite following in the House of Commons being called upon to form an administration, the Cabinet holds the view that responsible self–government in Canada rests on the principle that the majority are entitled to govern, the majority so understood meaning not the political party or group having the largest number of members, but the majority as determined by the duly elected representatives of the people in Parliament... To take any other course would be to fail to recognize the supreme right of the people to govern themselves in the manner, which the constitution has provided, namely, expressing their will through their duly elected representatives in Parliament and in accordance with recognized Parliamentary practice.42

42 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 18 February 1927, (Mackenzie King, Liberal), 438–39. 59

While he was certainly correct that the majority was entitled to govern, the Liberal leader's

articulation of what constituted one was unorthodox. The principle of responsible government

did mean that the person who could command a majority the Lower House would govern and, in

almost all situations, that individual was the leader of the party that had won at least a plurality

of seats in the Commons. In regards to the Meighen–led Tories, while they had won a plurality

of seats in 1925, they faced four parties in Parliament who were publicly opposed to substantial

sections of the Tories’ campaign platform and King was justifiably skeptical of the

Conservatives’ ability to govern.43 Similarly though, King's argument could be applied to his

own ability to govern. Yet, by reinterpreting constitutional conventions, King was able to make a

novel argument to the voting public and force the Tories onto the defensive where King could

claim that the Conservatives’ defence of tradition was driven by crass self–interest at best and

autocratic ambitions at worst.

If King's argument for refusing to resign lacked historical precedent, legally he was

entitled to attempt to govern until he lost the confidence of the House. Politically, governing

effectively would be the best justification for maintaining power in the face of a hostile

electorate. To do so the Liberals needed the support of a majority of the twenty two Progressive

MPs. Ensuring the Progressives remained on–side should not have been particularly difficult for

the Liberals, for in the words of Manitoba Free Press editor Dafoe, “The Progressive policies

[were] largely the pre–election pledges but post–election violations of the Liberals.”44 However,

over a month after the election, Dafoe highlighted the Liberals’ seemingly lackadaisical

43 In addition to the Liberals and Progressives, The Labour Party won two seats, as did The United Farmers of Alberta. There were also four independent private members. 44 Ramsey Cook (ed.) The Dafoe–Sifton Correspondence 1919–1927, (Altona, MB.: Friesen and Sons, 1966), 230. 60

approach to securing Progressive support, writing that, “King must have a definite understanding

45 with the Progressives or as many of them as will come in.” Two weeks later, Dafoe privately

expressed his frustration with King to the owner of his paper, former Liberal Cabinet Minister

Clifford Sifton, scathingly summing up the Liberals’ present strategy as, “[Making] a bid for

Progressive support by submitting a programme which they are supposed to favour, and then

[trusting] to Providence to keep them in line.”46 While the Liberals were engaged in closed–door

negotiations with prominent Progressives, the party elites decided to keep these negotiations

secret – going so far as to rely on coded telegrams to communicate – and so, even to well–

informed Liberal supporters such as Dafoe and Sifton, the Liberals appeared to be squandering

their best chance to solidify their position as Canada's governing party.

A developing scandal in the Department of Customs and Excise threatened to undermine

further Liberal efforts to secure Progressive votes. In September of 1925, King had replaced the

Minister of Customs and Excise Jacques Bureau with Georges Henri Boivin, the MP for

Shefford, Quebec, after a Liberal appointee in the department was caught taking bribes.

However, King subsequently appointed Bureau to the Senate after he resigned his seat in the

House of Commons. His appointment to the Upper Chamber gave the Conservatives a perfect

opportunity to drag the scandal out throughout the fall session of Parliament, alleging that King

was protecting Bureau to cover up corruption in the Department of Customs and Excise that

extended to the highest levels of the Liberal Party.47 In order to keep the Progressive Party from

joining with the Conservatives to defeat the Liberals, the government agreed to form a special

45 Ibid, 231. 46 Ibid, 232–233. 47 Williams, 314–315. 61

committee to investigate the affair. This committee reported in June of 1926 and while it

condemned former Minister Bureau, and recommending the firing of numerous low–level

officials, critically for King, it did not censure him or his party.48

There then proceeded a series of procedural debates as the Tories tried to defeat the King

government in the House of Commons over the report. First, Vancouver South Conservative MP

H.H. Stevens attempted to amend the report to censure the government and force its resignation.

In response, Labour MP J.S. Woodsworth proposed an amendment to the amendment that

removed the censure, replacing it with a general condemnation of the minister responsible and

creating a Royal Commission to investigate the customs department. This motion, despite full

Liberal support, was defeated and led to another amendment, this time from Progressive MP

W.R. Fansher, combining the original motion of censure with the creation of a Royal

Commission. While the speaker ruled this motion out of order, the members overruled his ruling

and defeated an attempt by the Liberals to adjourn the House. Finally, sensing defeat, King

agreed to have cabinet support Fansher's motion and received an adjournment. Knowing that his

government would be censured and forced to resign when the House met again on 26 June 1926,

King chose to ask for a dissolution instead. When Lord Byng subsequently refused, the Liberal

Cabinet submitted an Order in Council on 28 June 1926 officially requesting a dissolution, which

Byng refused to sign, precipitating King's resignation as prime minister.49

Lord Byng, acting in accordance with what he told King in October of 1925, offered

Arthur Meighen the opportunity to govern, which Meighen accepted. The Tory Leader now

48 Roger Grahan, The King–Byng Affair, 1926: A Question of Responsible Government, (Toronto: Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1967): 3. 49 Ibid, 4–12. 62

faced two main obstacles in creating a functioning administration. The first was the problem of

securing Progressive Party support. Second, before 1931, convention stipulated that any MP

appointed to cabinet had to resign their seat and stand in a by–election. Since the smallest

possible functional cabinet would consist of twelve ministers, having a dozen Conservatives

resign would fatally weaken the government in the House, leaving them with only a three–seat

plurality. The Conservatives were able to solve the first problem by promising Progressive Party

members that, in exchange for their support until the end of the summer session, the Tories

would continue to pursue an inquiry into Liberal corruption. The problem of cabinet ministers

running in by–elections was a greater obstacle. Meighen resigned his seat to re–run in his riding

of Portage–Le–Prairie and then appointed six “acting” ministers as ministers without portfolio,

all of whom had previously been appointed to the Privy Council during Meighen's tenure as

prime minister in 1920–21. The Conservatives argued that due to their previous appointment as

members of the Privy Council, these six men could serve as ministers until the end of the

session, when Meighen would appoint a full cabinet and his appointees would run in by–

elections over the summer.50

This approach towards appointing cabinet ministers provided the Liberals with their first

opportunity to attack the days–old government. Beginning on 29 June 1926, the Liberals

introduced multiple motions of non–confidence in the Meighen government, which the

Conservatives, with the help of the Progressive Party, managed, to defeat. The Liberals’ attacks

on the Meighen government echoed their traditional line that the government lacked a mandate

from the Canadian people. More specifically, they argued that the six acting ministers were

50 Ibid, 22–39. 63

unable to authorize spending public funds because both collectively as a party, and individually

as minister, they lacked a mandate conferred on them through a by–election. Finally, the

Liberals’ attacks on the legitimacy of the government's ministers managed to convince enough

Progressives to desert their new allies and defeat the government by one vote. In an official

statement to the Parliamentary Press Gallery on 5 July, the Progressives who had united with the

Liberals to defeat Meighen justified their decision by using rhetoric King and the Liberals would

have found very familiar. The Progressive Group stated that:

The act of Mr. Meighen in attempting to usurp the functions of government in so illegal a manner is evident when it is known that the proper step for Mr. Meighen to have taken was to have sought adjournment for six weeks to have properly elected and sworn in his ministry.51

Reflecting the success of the Liberals' almost six–year effort to define Meighen as an autocrat

whose naked ambition made him unsuitable to govern, the Progressive Party now openly

reproduced these discourses. By ensuring that all non–Conservatives in the House spoke of

Meighen as an unsuitable leader, the Liberals hoped that King would then become the default

choice. Overall, the Liberals’ attacks on Meighen throughout the 1925–26 Parliamentary Session

can best be characterized as attempting to ensure that King's statements about the majority of

voters deciding against Meighen was true and by July of 1926 Canadians’ elected representatives

certainly had turned against the Tory leader.

Throughout the entire King–Byng Affair, the Liberals rarely offered any public rebuke to

the Governor General. Instead, they chose to depict Meighen as the central villain in the political

drama of 1926. Speaking in the House of Commons on 4 July 1926 before the vote of non–

51 “Statement by the Progressive Group” 5 July 1925, Quoted in Grahan, The King–Byng Affair, 50–54. 64

confidence that brought down the three–day–old Meighen government, King offered his only

direct public condemnation of the Governor General. He stated that, “If at the insistence of one

individual a prime minister can be put into office... we have reached a condition in this country

that threatens constitutional liberty, freedom and right in all parts of the world.” King then went

on to condemn Meighen and his government, stating that, “I was never prouder in my life than to

have the privilege of standing in this Parliament tonight and on behalf of British Parliamentary

institutions denouncing the irresponsible government of his party.”52 While King wanted to make

clear that he and his party thought Byng has acted inappropriately, he made sure to emphasize

that Meighen was the greater threat to Canadian democracy. As the Liberals would repeat

throughout the summer, Meighen should have refused Byng's invitation to form a government. It

was by accepting Byng's offer that Meighen had transformed the theoretical threat of the Crown

arbitrarily installing a prime minister into an actual one. The Liberal message was that once

again, in his desire for power, the Tory leader ignored that neither him nor his party had a

mandate to govern and thus was forced to collude with Byng to seize power.

After Meighen's defeat in the House, Byng dissolved Parliament and Canada entered its

second federal election campaign in less than a year. King spent the summer campaigning

against Conservatives and particularly Meighen. In a public address from 23 July 1926, King

defended his actions while outlining what he saw as Meighen's various failings. He told his

audience that, “The supremacy of Parliament, the rights, the dignities, [and] the existence of

Parliament have been challenged by the present prime minister in a manner that surpasses all

52 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 4 July 1926, (Mackenzie King, Liberal), 5211–61. 65

belief.” Of all of Meighen's alleged transgressions against democratic norms, his appointment of

six “acting ministers” was the worst, according to King. The Liberal leader told the crowd that:

[Meighen] alone was the Government of Canada over that period of time. If that is not anarchy or absolutism in government, I should like to know to what category political philosophy would assign government carried on under such conditions. Surely, it will not be termed responsible self–government under the British Parliamentary system.53

As he did in many speeches during the summer of 1926, King provided an extensive list of all

the ways Meighen had tried to undermine democratic government in Canada. These attacks on

Meighen served two purposes for the Liberals. First, as the repeated references to responsible

government, absolutism and supremacy of Parliament demonstrate, the Liberals wanted to frame

the events of 1925–26 as a conflict between two parties with radically different visions for

Canada’s future. Thus, just as in 1921, the Liberals presented the 1926 election as a choice for

voters between the democratic Liberals or the autocratic Tories. To reinforce this perception,

King described Meighen as a collaborator with the unelected Crown. Much as the Liberals had

demonized Meighen for collaborating with the appointed Senate, now King argued that he had

unscrupulously accepted an illegitimate offer from the Governor General to usurp power.

The second reason for the Liberals casting Meighen as the central antagonist in the events

of 1926 was driven by strategic considerations. Canadians had a deep respect for Lord Byng after

he commanded the Canadian Corps at the Battle of Vimy Ridge and critically, he was not

running for election. In contrast, Meighen was a deeply divisive figure who many Canadians

associated with the Borden government's decision to implement conscription. Furthermore, while

53 “Mr. King's Speech” 23 July 1925, Quoted in Roger Grahan (ed.) The King–Byng Affair, 1926: A Question of Responsible Government, (Toronto: Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1967), 61–65. 66

Meighen was an excellent orator who could embarrass King in the House of Commons, in an era

before television or even widespread radio coverage, most voters received news via newspapers

where transcripts of King's speeches could be edited for clarity and then reprinted in sympathetic

papers, thus neutralizing Meighen's major advantage.

While the Liberal Party was set on publicly promoting their image as the only possible

governing party based on the will of the people, privately King relied on an entirely different set

of arguments. Writing to Lord Byng on 3 July, King maintained that after the 1925 election both

party leaders had had an equal opportunity to secure a majority in the Commons and but only he

had the requisite political acumen to secure support in Parliament. King told Byng that:

Mr. Meighen's chances to obtain the support of the Commons had been quite as good as my own; that the House of Commons having declined to express any confidence in Mr. Meighen throughout the entire session, I could not see wherein there was any possibility of the House giving him the support which would enable him to carry on the government, and that therefore I could not assume the responsibility of advising your Excellency to send for him.54

King clearly believed he was the only suitable choice to form government and when he lost the

support of the Commons, requesting a dissolution was the only responsible democratic option.

Yet the arguments he presented to Byng to justify this position drew directly from orthodox ideas

about responsible government. In his letter, King argued that Meighen was an unsuitable choice

for leader because he lacked the confidence of the House. There is no mention of a popular

mandate or the will of the people in King's discussions with the Governor General because those

concepts had no legal force, a fact Byng would have known. Similarly, in writing to the head

editor of the Toronto Globe requesting that the paper publicly support King, the Liberal leader

54 Correspondence between Mackenzie King and Lord Julian Byng, 3 July 1926, Quotes in Roger Grahan (ed.) The King–Byng Affair, 1926: A Question of Responsible Government, (Toronto: Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1967), 34. 67

relied on constitutional arguments regarding responsible government, not ones relating to the

will of the people.55 The different emphasis in King's public and private rhetoric suggests he

recognized that his party's public arguments were not constitutional but rather were attempt

change how Canadians thought about democratic government in their country.

The Conservatives needed to respond to the public messaging of the Liberals, yet they

consistently failed to understand the nature of King's attacks on their leader. Instead of

vigorously defending the conduct of Meighen, the party as a whole fell back on justifying Byng’s

decision to refuse a dissolution. Replying to King's speech in the Commons on 4 July 1926

newly elected Conservative MP for St. Lawrence – St. George in Montreal, Charles Cahan told

the House that:

The obvious object of the advice given by the Prime Minister at that time for a dissolution of this Parliament was to prevent this Parliament from exercising its duty and its responsibility of passing upon the conduct of the late administration in connection with the customs report.56

Similarly, in a speech in Ottawa from later in the month, Meighen made a similar argument as

Cahan. Meighen defended Lord Byng's decision, telling his audience, “If such advice must

always be accepted then no Parliament could ever censure a minister. If such advice always be

accepted then the supremacy of Parliament would be over and the Prime Minister would be

supreme himself.”57 Yet what the Liberals realized that the Conservatives apparently did not was

that the upcoming election was not a contest between Lord Byng and King, but rather between

King and Meighen and their respective parties. Even if voters were convinced that the Governor

55 Political Correspondence between William Lyon Mackenzie King and H.W. Anderson, 9 July 1926,, R–11614–3– 9–E, Volume 2 File 1, Harry Anderson Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 56 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 4 July 1926, (Charles Cahan, Liberal–Conservative), 5211–61. 57 “Mr. Meighen's Ottawa Speech,” Ottawa Journal, 21 July 1926, 6. 68

General had acted correctly, that conclusion did not necessarily lead to a vote for the

Conservatives. Voters could agree that Byng was justified in refusing King's request while

simultaneously thinking that Meighen had acted inappropriately, but the Conservatives remained

either unwilling or unable to recognize this distinction.

Even during the election campaign, Meighen spent little time focusing on the events of

June and July. He only briefly commented on it in his Maclean's Magazine “The Issues as I See

Them” section where the magazine editors gave each leader a feature length article to detail what

they and their party saw as the critical issues in the upcoming election. Rather, Meighen

highlighted Conservative promises to maintain a strong connection to the United Kingdom and

promote economic growth. King, alternatively, made the issue of protecting Canadian democracy

central to the Liberals’ campaign. In defending his request for a dissolution, King stated that he

was “simply asking that the people who are, or who, at least ought to be, the sovereign power in

the nation, might in the necessity of the circumstances, be given an opportunity of themselves

deciding by whom they desired their government be carried on.” Later on in his Maclean’s piece

King also stated that, “When Parliament ceased to be in a position to make a satisfactory

decision as to which party should govern, it was then for the people to decide.”58 King insisted

that by attempting to form government, Meighen had taken away the right of the people to

decide on their leader. While the Governor General had enabled him, it was Meighen’s ambition

to usurp power that was the root of the problem. King and the Liberals decided that their path to

victory was to characterize Meighen as the unchanging autocrat, attempting to illegitimately

maintain power in 1921 and then to seize it in 1926.

58 William Lyon Mackenzie King, “The Issues as I See Them,” Maclean's Magazine, 1 September 1926. 69

Ultimately, the federal election of 1926 was only a partial victory for the Liberals. While they managed to win a plurality of seats with 116 and increase their popular vote share by 3% to

43%, the Liberals lost the popular vote by 2% to the Conservatives and were still seven seats short of a majority. However, King was able to rely on the eight votes of the Liberal–

Progressives who, led by Manitoba MP and former Progressive Party leader Robert Forke, agreed to caucus with the Liberals and support the government on matters of confidence. This arrangement only gave the Liberals a one–seat majority but unlike a year ago, the Conservatives were in no position to challenge King in the House. Among the twenty–four seats the

Conservatives lost was Portage–Le–Prairie, Arthur Meighen's riding. As well as losing his seat for the second time in five years, the entire King–Byng Affair had seriously undermined

Meighen's leadership, forcing him to resign and sparking the first Conservative Leadership

Convention, held in 1927. Thus, much like after 1921, the Conservatives were once again unable to offer effective opposition in the House of Commons and relied on their much decreased but still effective presence in the Senate to obstruct King's legislative agenda.

2.4 Returning Focus to the Senate

Without the political imperative of securing Progressive Party support and with an increasing number of Liberal appointees filling seats in the Upper Chamber, Senate reform was a much less pressing issue for the King administration. Rather than engage in public discussions regarding the Senate, King instead commissioned a private report for cabinet on possible options for the Liberals moving forward. King tasked his personal secretary and future Kingston, Ontario

MP Norman Rogers with writing the report and he presented his final draft to the entire Liberal

Cabinet on 12 September 1927. In the report, Rogers specifically engaged with the idea of the

Senate limiting the power of the elected House of Commons. Rogers recognized that, “An 70

elective Senate having a direct mandate from the people would be more aggressive and active in

the discharge of its functions, and would thus command a greater respect throughout the

country.” However, Rogers went on to articulate the Liberal Party's reasons for opposing an

elected Upper Chamber. He stated that:

If the Senate were elective, would it not be disposed to claim equal powers with the House of Commons, or at least to insist on a measure of control with respect to money bills? Moreover, an elected Senate would be an avowedly partisan body. If the majorities in the two houses were of the same political complexion, the Senate would impose no effective check on the House of Commons. If the majorities in the two houses were of opposite political complexions, the Senate under partisan influence might abuse its powers for political purposes... No method of constituting a Second Chamber has effectually prevented its domination by partisan influences. In no case does it appear to operate as in theory it ought to operate, as an independent chamber of revision charged with the high responsibility of expressing the sober second thought of the people, and imposing a prudent and impartial check on the more popular House.59

Unsurprisingly, given that Rogers was King's private secretary, the report provided an extensive

intellectual justification for the Liberal Party's existing approach to Senate reform. Rogers argued

that rather than focusing legislative efforts on changing how the Senate was constituted, the

Liberals should instead try to limit the Senate's ability to check the power of the Commons. This

approach still preserved the ability of the governing party to use Senate appointments for

patronage purposes, but also confirmed the power of the prime minister and his cabinet while

ensuring that the Senate would not have the democratic legitimacy to challenge the legislative

power of the governing party.

After 1926, the Senate still effectively delayed the more controversial aspects of the

Liberals’ legislative agenda. Most notable was the government’s continued attempts to repeal

59 The Reform of the Senate by N. McL. Rogers, 12 September 1927, MG 26 J4, Vol.1053, Reel C2723, Senate Reform File, pp.97087–97152, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 71

Section 98 of the Criminal Code, legislation that the Senate defeated five times between 1926

and 1930. As well, the Senate defeated a Liberal proposal to overhaul of the Immigration Act in

1927. Yet, these defeats presented an excellent opportunity for the Liberals to highlight the

supposed differences between their party and the opposition. In January of 1928, Vancouver Sun

editor and partisan Liberal Robert J. Cromie published an editorial condemning the Conservative

Party, of which Vancouver MP Henry H. Stevens was a prominent member, arguing that the

Party's willingness to obstruct legislation in the Senate was anti–democratic. While professing

his concern for “Canadianism”, an exchange of letters between Cromie and Minister of Justice

Ernest Lapointe reveals that the Liberals were happy to exploit the Conservatives’ intransigence

for long–term political gain. Cromie told Lapointe that, “If the Liberal Party can hang this [anti–

democratic] angle onto Toryism and drive it home... it will be a master stroke.” Cromie then

went on to offer a historical analogy, writing that:

From 1890 to 1900, there was an inferiority complex about the Conservative Party in England because of their associations with the rich and rotting House of Lords; there was a superiority complex associated with Liberals during that period because they had associated with them the idea of progressiveness and intellectualism. That superiority complex is offering and is available to either of the political parties in Canada today; it properly belongs to the Liberal Party with its Liberal program of Canadianism. But you have got to reach out and snatch it and drive it home.60

The Senate certainly did obstruct the legislative agenda of King's Liberals, but their opposition

actually provided the Liberals with a tremendous opportunity to reinforce the image of their

party as the protectors of Canadian democracy. The Liberals were also willing to further this

impression by letting the Senate Conservatives defeat legislation in the upper chamber by

60 Correspondence between Robert J Cromie and Ernest Lapointe, 10 January 1928, MG27 III B10, Vol.3, File 3 Correspondence, Ernest Lapointe Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 72

conveniently having multiple Liberal Senators not show up for key votes.61 In the short–term,

these defeats could be a slight setback to that session's legislative agenda but cumulatively, they

served to reinforce the image the Liberal Party wanted to present to the Canadian public. Telling

people that a certain party is anti–democratic was a much more effective when they occasionally

acted in the exact manner that the Liberals predicted they would.

By the end of the decade the Liberal Party had appointed a sufficient number of Senators

to the upper chamber that the Conservatives lost their majority. With their party in control of

both chambers, King and his allies' incentive for redefining the relationship between the

constituent parts of the Canadian Parliament was substantially reduced. Additionally, despite

King's promise to appoint only Senators who were committed to supporting reform legislation,

Senators were much more independent than MPs and the Liberal Party had limited means of

enforcing party discipline in the Upper Chamber. Even as late as 1930, Liberal legislation was

still defeated in the Senate despite the party's nominal control of the chamber.

2.5 Conclusion

As discussed above, these defeats, even if inconvenient, were exceptionally useful for

reinforcing the Liberals message that they were the party of Canadian democracy and more

specifically, that Prime Minister King headed a government with a mandate to govern granted by

the Canadian people. Throughout the decade long conflict with the Conservative Party, King

sought to create the impression that any opposition to his government's actions was not part of

the usual functioning of politics in the Westminster system, but rather an attempt to impede the

61 “Section 98 of Criminal Code” 20 June 1936, Box 11, File 38, Grant Dexter Fonds, Queens University Archives, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. 73

will of the Canadian people. Thus, when Arthur Meighen became leader of the Conservative

Party after Robert Borden's retirement in 1920 and refused to go to the polls, King, rather than accepting the constitutionally valid transition of government leadership from Borden to Meighen, instead argued that these actions were a case of the Tories usurping the power of Parliament and the Canadian people. Similarly, when the Senate and the Governor General refused to act in accordance with the wishes of King or his cabinet, the Liberals vilified them as opponents of the

Canadian people, rather than actors fulfilling their constitutionally prescribed role.

Throughout this period, King sought to convince Canadians that a government could only exercise power if they had the clear support of the people as expressed through a democratic mandate. The prime minister and their cabinet were legally able to exercise power because a majority in the House of Commons supported them. However, in order to have the democratic legitimacy to govern, King and the Liberals stated that the make–up of the Commons needed to reflect the will of the Canadian people. Hence, before winning the 1921 election King argued that the Conservatives, despite their majority in the Commons, formed an illegitimate government because the end of World War I and Borden's retirement had nullified any popular mandate the Tories had won in 1917. After assuming the premiership in 1921, King shifted focus, arguing that any other institution which attempted to exercise its power in a manner that impeded the Liberal government, was necessarily anti–democratic because they did not have the support of the House of Commons and by extension lacked a mandate to exercise political authority. Yet a leader's ability to secure a majority of votes in the commons was not enough in this formula to secure legitimacy. For Meighen did have the support of a majority of MPs yet

King still repeatedly referred to him as a “usurper” at public appearances. The problem for

Meighen, according to the Liberals, was that the composition of the commons needed to reflect 74

the desires of the Canadian people as expressed through an election and with the end of World

War I, the mandate the Union Government had received in 1917 was no longer valid. Of course, what constituted a valid mandate was entirely subjective and based on the exceptionally biased assessment of the Liberal Leader and his supporters. Yet it was a powerful rhetorical tool for undermining an already unstable government.

Later in the decade when Conservative Senators or a popular Governor General and former military hero stood in opposition to the Liberals’ agenda, King could similarly invoke the idea of the mandate. King and his government portrayed those who opposed them as opposing the will of the people and, by extension, as opponents of democratic government in general. By repeating discourses that equated bills passed in the House of Commons with the expressed will of the people, King portrayed his party as the champion of the people against those who would usurp their authority.

Such a strategy not only provided short–term benefits to the Liberal Party but also changed Canadians expectations for how their political leaders should act. Rather than relying on the support of parliamentarians, a leader and their party should appeal directly to the public to win a governing mandate. The Liberals were happy to portray electing an individual MP as simply a necessary in–between step in choosing a government and a prime minister. Thus, while rhetorically elevating democratic practices, the practical consequence was to dis–empower individual members while elevating the position of the leader and limiting the flexibility of

Parliament, as an institution to respond to events. Instead, in this new governing paradigm, the prime minister was inseparable from Parliament and a change of prime minister should only happen through a general election.

75

Chapter 3: Celebrating the Brokerage Party

The idea of voters granting a party and its leader a mandate to form government was not a concept easily inserted into Canada’s existing political structure. With only an indirect link between voters' expressed preferences for who should be prime minister and the composition of the House of Commons, William Lyon Mackenzie King and the Liberals had to engage in some creative massaging of the concept to argue why the Liberals, who lost the popular vote in 1925 and again in 1926, were the ones with a mandate to govern. Yet, the mandate was a key intellectual tool the Liberal Party relied on to claim legitimacy to govern. Employing this concept forced other parties to justify their ambitions to form government on the terms established by the Liberals. The Conservatives’ utter inability to concede that the idea of a democratic mandate now had force in Canadian politics allowed the Liberals to marginalize the

Conservatives during Meighen's tenure as leader.

Yet discourses invoking a mandate to govern were of limited utility when it came to engaging with the newly formed Progressive Party. The Progressives professed no intention of forming government and never claimed to represent all Canadians. Rather than simply a third option on the ballot, this agrarian party was part of a wholesale revolt against the two party system in many areas of rural Canada after World War I. Led by disaffected former Union

Government Minister and agricultural journal editor Thomas A. Crerar, the farmers’ political protest galvanized at the federal level in the form of the Progressive Party. While the party only fielded candidates for the first time in federal by–elections during 1919, by 1921 the party had displaced the Conservatives as the second largest in Parliament, winning fifty–eight seats to the

Tories’ forty–nine. Their unexpected success in 1921 was the high water mark of the Progressive

Party in federal politics. After 1921, internal tensions within the party, as well as external attacks 76

from the Liberals, served to limit the party's growth beyond its agrarian base in rural Canada.

While provincial incarnations of the party in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario managed to win power in provincial elections under the name of the United Farmers, the last federal election the

Progressive Party contested was in 1930, where they won only three seats. Two years later, in

1932 the party officially dissolved.

The Progressive Party began as a collection of rural protest movements across Canada.

The catalyst for forming a more formal party organization was the 1919 federal budget when

Unionist Finance Minister Thomas White refused to lower the tariff on imported farm equipment. In response, Crerar, then serving as agricultural minister, resigned from cabinet and, drawing on his connections with the agricultural community formed during his previous role as head editor of Winnipeg's Grain Grower's Guide, began to organize a national political movement. More broadly, the Progressive Party was not an isolated movement but represented larger and longer lasting rural political concerns regarding how the entire Canadian political system functioned. What was markedly different about the agrarian protest movement was that it rejected not only the Union Government, but also traditional party politics as a whole. Rather than acting as a group of block voters who could shift their support to either the Liberals or

Conservatives based on their support for, or opposition to, particular policies, the disgruntled farmers entered into electoral politics en masse and propagated political discourses that called for system–wide reform. In other words, their political rhetoric was completely different from the

Conservatives and most other political parties that operated within a parliamentary system.

The rise – and ultimate fall – of the Progressive Party represented the Canadian culmination of political developments in North America where discourses critical of the two party system in both Canada and the United States entered the mainstream of North American 77

politics in the first half of the twentieth century.1 These discourses, which first emerged in the

American Mid–west, spread to the Canadian Prairies by the early twentieth century and drew

inspiration from the 1890s American Populist Movement as well as New England Progressive

doctrines.2 At their core, these Progressive discourses celebrated political independence and a

rejection of party politics. Additionally, within these strains of Progressive rhetoric, the

legislature was not an arena for contests between the government and opposition, but rather a

chamber of debate and compromise that directly represented the “different shades of opinion

across [the country].”3 Tied to this idea was also an elevation of anti–partisanship, describing

partisans, or politicians who supported their party's positions in the legislature consistently, as

political dependents, who through some combination of greed, ambition, gullibility or other

character flaws, had given up their capacity to judge issues clearly and represent their

constituents.4

Conversely though, the Progressive's celebration of independence did not mean a

wholesale abandonment of political organization, rather the Progressive ideal was to

paradoxically, form a party of independents. Instead of organizing based on gaining and

maintaining power, as they claimed mainstream parties did, truly democratic – or progressive –

1 Mark Sholdice, “Brotherhood Extended to All Practical Affairs: The Social Gospel as the Religion of the Agrarian Revolt in Ontario,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 25 (Fall 2013): 366. 2 For a discussion about the development of Progressive ideas in Canada and the United States see J. F. Conway, "Populism in the United States, Russia, and Canada: Explaining the Roots of Canada's Third Parties," Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol.1 No.1 (March 1978): 99–124 and Robert C. McMath, “Populism in Two Countries: Agrarian Protest in the Great Plains and the Prairie Provinces,” Agricultural History, Vol.69, No.4 (Fall 1995). For a specific comparison between Alberta and North Dakota see Kelly, Hannan. “The Non–Partisan League in Alberta and North Dakota: A Comparison.” Alberta History Vol.52 (January 2004). 3 Walter Young, Democracy and Discontent: Progressivism, Socialism and Social Credit in the Canadian West 2nd ed., (Toronto: McGraw–Hill Ryerson, 1978). 4 Nancy Rosenblum, On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship, (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 2008). 78

politics involved groups of people uniting to promote their mutual, shared interests. By the

1920s, this ideal had emerged as a fully formed platform for re–organizing legislatures according

to the ideal of group governance, where legislators from the same socio–economic class or

occupation would unite to form groups that would then negotiate with one another to govern as a

coalition of interest groups.5 Stemming from this goal, many Progressives opposed the First Past

the Post (FPTP) electoral system, which they saw as a nearly insurmountable obstacle to group

governance. Consequently, many argued that electoral reform was a necessary step in making

Canadian politics more democratic. Throughout the 1920s, North America Progressives

advanced various reform proposals, the majority of which reflected the influence of British

political scientist Thomas Hare, an advocate of proportional representation. Specifically, Hare

argued for the use of a ranked ballot in a system known as the single transferable vote (STV).6

Progressives viewed electoral reform as a cure for all that ailed any political system, a sentiment

best reflected by Hare himself who stated that his electoral system “would end the evils of

corruption, violent discontent and restricted power of selection or voter choice.”7

Discourses about elevating the morality of Canadian politics were not exclusive to the

agrarians, as John English details in his study of Conservative Prime Minister Robert Borden.

Yet Borden's own party strongly resisted his ideas and he never focused on democratizing

Canadian politics, but rather on limiting partisan conflict because of what Borden viewed as its

inherent irrationality. The Tories before World War I were little concerned with the rhetoric of

5 Ibid, 14–17. 6 Thomas Hare's most influential works are Treatise on the Election of Representatives: Parliamentary and Municipal 4th ed, (London: Longman, Green, Reader, & Dyer, 1873) and The Machinery of Representation 2nd Ed, (London: W. Maxwell, 1859). 7 Hare, Treatise on the Election of Representatives, v. 79

democratization.8 While some sections of the Tory Party did discuss elevating the moral tone of

Canadian politics, throughout the early 1920s the Progressive Party and the various provincial

United Farmers' organizations in Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario argued for wholesale political

reform in the form of group governance as the solution to the moral failings of Canadian politics.

Each of these particular organizations has been the subject of a book length monograph that

focuses on the internal workings of each group and the conflict between their decentralizing and

democratic principles and the reality of operating as a political party.9 The authors of these works

provide valuable insight into the inner workings of these Progressive organizations and detail the

spread of their ideology across Canada. In particular, they highlight how the farmers' political

strategy changed from acting as a pressure group that could switch support between the two

major parties to entering electoral politics as an independent third party. This chapter builds on

these insights by focusing on the discursive relationship between these groups, particularly the

Progressive Party in the House of Commons and the Liberal Party.

In contrast to the Progressive Party’s rejection of partisan politics, the Liberal Party drew

on longstanding alternative discourses defending partisanship and embracing party politics as a

necessary, and even beneficial, aspect of Parliamentary governance. The most significant thinker

within this intellectual tradition is Irish born Member of the British Parliament Edmund Burke.

8 John English, The Decline of Politics: Conservatives and the Party System 1901–1920, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993). 9 For a discussion on the Federal Progressive Party see William L. Morton, The Progressive Party in Canada 2nd Edition, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967). For an analysis of the United Farmers and United Farm Women of Alberta see Bradford James Rennie, The Rise of Agrarian Democracy: The United Farmers and the Farm Women of Alberta, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). For the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) see Kerry Badgley, Ringing in the Common Love of Good: The United Farmers of Ontario, 1914–1926, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen's University Press, 2000). For additional information on the UFO see T. Robin Wylie, “Direct Democrat: W.C. Good and the Ontario Farm Progressive Challenge, 1895–1929,” Ph.D. thesis, (Carleton University, 1991). 80

His most famous defence of political parties came in his work Thoughts on the Present

Discontents from 1770. In this work, Burke offered a basic definition of a political party,

describing it as, “A body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavors the national

interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.”10 For Burke, parties were

not opposed to the common good but actually promoted it, with partisan disagreements

stemming from differing interpretations of what that entails. Later in the same work, Burke

defended the moral necessity of political organization, writing that, “When bad men combine,

the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible

struggle.”11 In Burke’s thought, not all political associations were morally righteous, but in order

to promote the common good, unity was integral.

Despite the ubiquity of parties in countries utilizing Westminster systems, Burke was one

of the few political theorists, either ancient or modern, to celebrate the value of political parties.

Even Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic Party in the United States, saw parties as

vehicles for achieving specific ends, which once achieved, should dissolve.12 Rather than issuing

an outright defence of political parties, thinkers like Benjamin Constant and John Stuart Mill

accepted them as a tolerable consequence of representative political assemblies. In his work,

Constant described the process of party formation, writing that when within a political body, men

are “forced to debate together, they soon notice respective sacrifices which are indispensable.

They strive to keep these at a minimum... Necessity always ends by uniting them in common

10 Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent, (London, [N.P], 1770), 110. 11 Ibid, 526. 12 John Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 28. 81

negotiation.”13 For Constant, governing necessitated individual compromise and negotiation and

these necessities required unity and organization. Similar to Constant, Mill argued that parties

provided a useful function within a representative legislature through encouraging debate and

discussion, which was “in the great public interests of the country.”14 Yet Mill's defence of

parties was more theoretical than practical. Mill himself served one–term as a Liberal MP but

was quickly disillusioned with Britain's actual Liberal and Conservative Parties who, in his

assessment, frequently acted against their founding principles. In Considerations on

Representative Government, Mill stated, “It would be a great improvement if each party

understood and acted upon its [principles]. Well would it be for England if Conservatives voted

consistently for everything conservative and Liberals for everything liberal.”15 For Mill, parties

best fulfilled their role in a representative government when they acted consistently in line with

their founding principles; ideological flexibility was not a laudable characteristic.

The Progressive Party in the 1920s not only embodied not only a practical challenge to

the Liberal Party, particularly in their strongholds of Western Canada and rural Ontario, but also

a theoretical challenge to the nature and operation of Canadian politics. Since Confederation, the

dominant model of party organization was that of the brokerage party. This theorization of party

behaviour draws insights from political science and argues that one of the main functions of

Canada's governing parties has been to act as brokers of diverse interests. The theory is premised

on the idea that Canadian society contains a number of “complex cleavages” and that these

societal divisions are relevant to the political process. In this model, social, political and

13 Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments, ed. Etienne Hofmann (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), 327–328. 14 John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, (New York: Library of Liberal Arts, 1958), 86. 15 Ibid, 108. 82

economic elites seek to broker these competing interests in order to maintain national stability.16

Specifically within a Canadian context, William Christian and Colin Campbell describe the role

of the Liberal and Conservative Parties as attempting to “balance competing interests and varied

regions within the country” by facilitating compromise between various interests in the

country.17 Furthermore, during the period from Confederation to 1921, the prolonged stage of

relatively predictable electoral competition between the Liberal and Conservative Parties

mirrored their combined desire to prevent political conflict over potentially divisive issues of

social class, language or ethnic identity. Instead the Liberals and Conservatives prioritized “non–

economic social identities and short–term political appeals” based on party identification and

awarding patronage. This approach served only to reinforce the centrality of the brokerage

politics where contentious political issues were resolved within the governing party.18

The Progressive Party rejected this model of brokerage politics. Despite calling itself a

party, the Progressives eschewed the traditional structures and practices of a large brokerage

party, instead organizing itself in what could best be described as a cooperative coalition of rural

parliamentarians. The decentralized structure of the group was a conscious choice and reflected

their underlying ideas about how MPs should associate and organize themselves in the House of

Commons. While the Liberals and Conservatives centralized power in the office of the leader,

Progressives argued each MP should have much greater leeway in representing the desires of

16 M. Janine Brodie, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada Revisited, (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1988), 7. 17 William Christian and Colin Campbell, Political Parties and Ideologies in Canada, (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen's University Press, 1974), 3. 18 Alain Gagnon and A. Brian Tanguay, “Piercing the Smokescreen: Stability and Change in Brokerage Politics,” in Alain Gagnon and A. Brian Tanguay (ed.) Canadian Parties in Transition, (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2007), 35. 83

their constituents. Furthermore, the Progressives explicitly rejected the traditional structures of a

political party such as a whip and extra–Parliamentary organization, instead advocating for a

Parliamentary caucus composed of small groups of members united by a shared social class or

occupation. In this model, the Progressives saw themselves serving as the farmers' political

representatives. These disparate groups would then unite to form a governing coalition. While

very similar in substance to the Catholic Church's idea of corporatism, advocates and detractors

in Canada collectively referred to this ideal as “group governance.”19 It was the threat of group

governance that most concerned both the Liberals and Conservatives, for while it certainly would

have been possible for either party to grant at least the appearance of greater independence to

their private members, discourses advancing ideas of occupational or class representation

undermined the very idea of a large brokerage party.

Throughout the period of engagement with the Progressive Party as a rival political force,

the Liberals were forced to articulate and implement their specific conception of a political party

as a centralized brokerage organization transcending class and occupational lines. By doing so

successfully, the Liberals delegitimized group governance as a model for political organization

and forced future reform movements to adopt the brokerage model. To demonstrate how this

process unfolded, this chapter will trace the relationship between the Progressives, the Liberals

and Conservatives throughout the 1920s. Superficially, it is the story of how the Liberals sought

to neutralize the threat of the Progressives by actively courting liberal–minded members of the

movement. However, the implications of this narrative on the role of parties within Canadian

19 For a discussion of Catholic Corporatism see Howard J. Wiarda, Corporatism and Comparative Politics, (Armonk, NY.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997). 84

democracy were massive. In the process of marginalizing the Progressive's rhetoric regarding

parties and government, the Liberal Party successfully employed discourses that equated a

particular form of partisan politics with democratic governance in general.

In order to explore this process the chapter first examines how the Liberal Party and King

articulated the idea of a brokerage party and how they presented the Liberal Party as the ideal

embodiment of this model. It then explores how the Progressive Party challenged these ideas

with their own conception of group governance. After examining their intellectual foundations,

the chapter traces how divisions emerged within the Progressive Party regarding the proper

functioning of a political party within a Parliamentary system. Finally, it documents how King

and his supporters were able to take advantage of the divisions between Progressive MPs to

reinforce the Liberals’ weak position in the House of Commons following the 1926.

3.1 Justifying the Continued Existence of the Liberal Party

As early as 1919, Liberal Party officials sought to convince the public they were driven

by a strong commitment to core party principles and not partisan conflict for its own sake. Part of

the motivation to justify the very existence of the political party itself stemmed from the

formation and relative success of the Union Government during World War I, combined with the

near destruction of the Liberal Party in English Canada. The Union Government represented not

only an attempt to secure a solid political base for implementing conscription, it also was

reflective of Borden's progressive ideas concerning rationalizing politics and moving the country

past what he saw as harmful partisan divisions.20 Part of Borden's lasting influence on Canadian

politics was the lingering idea that the national interest was separate, and often opposed to,

20 English, 4–30. 85

partisan interests. Hence, the defection of a large number of Liberals to the Union Government

was not only a substantial political problem for the party, as it reduced them to a group of almost

exclusively Quebec members, but also conveyed the impression that the Laurier Liberals only

remained independent out of partisan and selfish interests. Consequently, the process of

rebuilding the Liberal Party after the end of the war and Laurier's death in February of 1919

involved the Liberals justifying to both themselves and the country why their party was an

essential part of Canada's political system.

In order to explain why they remained outside of the Union Government, the Liberals and

King presented on a unique reading of the history surrounding Liberal Party founder George

Brown, the Great Coalition of 1864 and Confederation. In King's articulation of Canadian

history, “unity” or coalition governments were necessarily partisan, even if they claimed

otherwise. In one of his first public addresses as Liberal Leader, King stated that Prime Minister

Meighen at the head of the Union Government was behaving exactly as Sir John A. Macdonald

had after Confederation. He told his audience, “The tactics now being employed to maintain and

continue union are the same as those employed by Sir John A. Macdonald at the time of

Confederation – Weld together men of different parties to form a Tory Party – a course to divide

and weaken reform parties.”21 In citing this example, King attempted to demonstrate that claims

to non–partisanship from Meighen were not sincere. According to King, Macdonald had also

made similar statements as part of a strategy to weaken opposition parties and build up the Tory

party. King's interpretation of Confederation ignores the fact that Macdonald was always an

21 Coalition Government and Unionists, MG26 J4, Volume 30, File 172: Party Government, Reel C1970, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 86

avowed Tory partisan and unlike Borden in 1917, had never claimed impartiality. Yet this

comparison was expedient as it allowed the Liberals to add weight to their argument that the

Union Government's strategy was simply to entrench the Conservatives’ position as the

governing party, necessitating a continued Liberal opposition.

Rather than joining with the Tories, King repeatedly asserted that the correct course of

action for the Liberals was to emulate their founder George Brown and disavow the governing

coalition now that it had outlived its usefulness. In multiple public speeches given immediately

after his ascension to the Liberal leadership, King quoted extensively from former Liberal MP

and journalist James Young's book on Canadian politics Public Men and Public Life, published

in 1902. In particular, he exerted the following paragraph relating to the Great Coalition of 1864:

Resolved that coalitions of opposing political parties for ordinary administrative purposes inevitably result in the abandonment of principle by one or both of the parties to the compact, the lowering of public morality, lavish public expenditures and widespread corruption; that the coalition of 1864 could only be justified on the ground of imperial necessity, as the only available mode of obtaining just representation for the people of Upper Canada, and on the grounds that the compact then made was for a specific purpose and for a stipulated period, and was to come to an end for a specific purpose and for a stipulated period and was to come to an end as soon as the measure was attained.22

King and the Liberals highlighted this section of Young’s book to equate the 1864 coalition

between Macdonald, Cartier and Brown with the Union Government on 1917. Canadian

politicians created the Great Coalition to achieve a specific objective and the Reform Party, led

by Brown, removed itself from the government when the goal of a federal union was achieved.

Similarly, with World War I now over, the need for a national unity government had passed and

22 Quotation from James Young's work Public Men and Public Life 2nd Ed., MG26 J4, Vol.30, File 172, p.22968, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 87

it was the duty of the Liberals to resist any attempts to continue with a coalition government.

Rather than acting selfishly, King portrayed himself as emulating Brown by adhering to a long

tradition of reform–minded politicians defending democratic practices.

Justifying resistance to Tory calls for a government of national unity was only half of the

Liberals’ task. The other half was putting forward a positive vision of a modern political party

suited to the post–war environment. Speaking to the Liberal Caucus shortly after Laurier's death,

party whip James Robb outlined his idealized vision of the Liberal Party. After providing

specific details about how the party should function and what duties were required of various

members of the caucus, Robb described his, and more broadly his party's, vision for a national

political organization. Robb stated that these plans would, “without interference, or overlapping,

of any kind, bring each part of [Ontario] in touch with every other part; it will provide a place in

the party ranks for every person who is willing to support Liberal principles.”23 In many ways,

Robb was simply articulating the conventional role of a political party in pre–war Canada.

However, in light of the formation of both the Union Government and the Progressive Party,

such an apparently conservative statement was much more controversial than it would have been

in 1914. In Robb's articulation, the purpose of a political party was to unite people from across

the province or country into a unified and functioning organization. Factors like class or

language should be irrelevant, and the only appropriate test for membership should be whether

someone supported Liberal principles or not. This idea of the Liberal Party as an inclusive

23 Correspondence between James A. Robb and Liberal Party Members, 24 March 1919, MG26 J4, Vol.28, File 157 The Liberal Party, pp. C20007–20010, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 88

organization uniting people with similar ideas about how to govern the country was to become a

touchstone for King and his political allies throughout the 1920s.

The diverse nature of the Liberal Party was a theme King returned to multiple times

throughout his 1920 speaking tour of Canada. In a speech in Edmonton on 6 October 1920, one

he would subsequently repeat in Moose Jaw and Regina later that month, King articulated his

vision of a party inclusive enough to absorb the vast majority of Progressive Party supporters.

King argued that the intellectual core of his party was a “faith in the people” whereas his

opponents were motivated by “a fear of the people.” King went on to tell his audiences that the

purpose of his trip through the Prairies was “not to oppose any progressive group but rather for

the purpose of emphasizing those great features of public policy which all progressives have in

common.” Finally, the Liberal leader argued that what Canadian politics desperately needed was,

“co–operation between progressives in the face of a common enemy which has usurped the

control of government in Canada today and will maintain control unless division in the ranks of

those by whom they are opposed gives way to united action.”24 King was telling his audience

that they should not view ‘progressive’ as simply a party identifier, but rather an approach

towards electoral politics that both the agrarians and his Liberals embraced.

In King's definition, an integral aspect of “progressivism” was opposition to the

Conservative Government of Meighen. Much as he had done throughout the summer of 1920,

King repeated his claim that Meighen and the Conservatives had usurped power and denied the

24 “Aims and Methods of Progressives,” Speech by Mackenzie King in Edmonton, Alberta, 6 October 1920, MG26 J4, Vol.9, File 29 Edmonton, p.4681, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. For transcripts of King's other speeches see “King Opens Sask.: Takes Strong Knock at Farmers' Party and Says They Take the Same Stand the Liberal Party Did...” Moose Jaw News, 23 October 1920. P.4790 and “Mr. King in Regina,” Regina Morning Leader, 26 October 1920. 89

people their democratic right to pronounce on the new government. Furthermore, the

Conservatives, according to King, refused to call an election because they were afraid of the

Canadian people and the power the electorate had to remove them from power. Alternatively,

King argued that the Liberals trusted the people and fought against the Conservatives, making

them as much a legitimate progressive option as the agrarian party. King's goal was to emphasize

the similarities in philosophy between the Liberals and the Progressives while presenting his

Liberals as the only viable alternative to a Tory autocracy. If, as King asserted, the only

meaningful test for progressives was their opposition to Meighen, then keeping the

Conservatives out of office should be priority number one and King's Liberals were the only

viable option for doing so.

Liberal members also repeated the party leader’s message across the country, in both

English and French Canada. The clearest and most blunt statement by the Liberal Party on the

necessity for co–operation to defeat the Tories came from Quebec Liberal MP Joseph Demers.

Speaking in French to a Montreal audience, Demers emphasized the ephemeral nature of the

Progressive Party, all while highlighting what he saw as the enduring mass appeal of his party.

The Montreal Gazette subsequently printed a translated transcript of his speech and recorded

Demers stating that:

I am sure that our people do not want a government of class. Look at the Farmers' Party, which exists in Ontario. I say that it is a party of class and anti–democratic, because they want privileges for certain people and want the people to judge men not by their tolerance and justice, but by their profession or occupation. The principle is false, and a party of that kind cannot live except by making appeals to classes. The existence of the Farmers' Party is ephemeral. Its birth was accidental, it does not meet the needs, and its survival cannot be guaranteed. It must come back to its base, and that is the Liberal Party.25

25 “Mackenzie King Predicts Victory for His Party,” Montreal Gazette, 4 July 1921. 90

Like his party leader, Demers emphasized that the farmers’ organization fundamentally

supported the same goals as the Liberal Party. Yet, because of their focus on class concerns, the

new party had abandoned the democratic ideal of a large, brokerage party and instead only

promoted the interests of farmers to the exclusion of all others. While King and Western

Canadian Liberals were actively courting Progressive Party sympathizers, Demers, speaking in

French to a Quebec audience, had no political requirements to be nearly so diplomatic in

describing the rival party. Consequently, he could clearly outline the Liberals’ underlying

political strategy, which was to present their large, national party as the truly democratic option

for Canadians while seeking to marginalize class or occupational movements as self–interested

and anti–democratic.

In the subsequent election campaign of 1921, the Liberals continued to reinforce their

message that their party, in contrast to the Progressives, was an inclusive one that would

represent all Canadians. When speaking in North York, Ontario during the election campaign,

King told his audience that he and his party would serve all people, not exclusively one class or

group. King stated:

In asking for your support I have no object in view but to serve, to the best of my ability, the citizens of our country, irrespective of their origin, faith, calling or occupation, believing that only in this way is it possible to further the well–being of the people at large and to ensure that co–operation and good will between all parts and all classes so essential to national unity and prosperity.26

26 William Lyon Mackenzie King to Electors of North York, Newmarket, ON. 22 November 1921, MG26 J4, Vol.5, File 38 Election of 1921, p.3773, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 91

The municipality of North York was in the federal riding of Newmarket where King was running

for a seat. However, rather than speaking specifically about how he would represent the people

of his riding, King emphasized that he was running to serve all Canadians. Also by explaining

what he would do in Parliament, King sought to draw a contrast between his Liberals and the

Progressives. Particularly, King argued only political leadership operating based not on

promoting the interests of one particular social class or occupation, but instead on fostering

cooperation between different groups could advance the wellbeing of the entire country. The

model of the Liberal Party as a large brokerage party was, in King's presentation, the ideal

vehicle for encouraging these essential virtues.

King repeated these ideas in an open letter to the electors of Newmarket, published the

day before the election. In the missive ghostwritten by an anonymous member of the National

Liberal Federation (NLF), King told voters that they had to decide, “Whether at this critical time

in our country's affairs and the unsettled condition of other countries, we in Canada are to

experiment in our federal politics with a government by class particularly in the interests of a

class.”27 The Liberal leader presented a supposedly clear contrast between his party and the

Progressives: the farmers wanted a farmers’ government that would legislate in their interest

exclusively whereas the Liberals would govern in the interest of Canada a whole. In case the

nature of the Liberal Party remained unclear to electors, the NLF published a campaign

pamphlet, unambiguously titled, “The Liberal Party: Not a Class Party but one of

Reconstruction.”28 The overall message of the Liberals’ campaign against the Progressives was

27 “To the Electors of Canada,” Speech by Mackenzie King in Newmarket, ON., 5 December 1921, MG26 J4, Vol.5, File 38 Election of 1921, p.3819–3820, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 28 “The Liberal Party: Not a Class Party but one of Reconstruction,” Speech by Mackenzie King, MG26 J4, Vol.30, 92

that party governance and the national interest were inseparable. In King's messaging, if each

occupational group was represented in Parliament, responsible government would meaningfully

cease to exist and Canadian democracy would be imperiled. King presented the fact that the

Liberals represented many people from across the country not a flaw or a limit on democratic

governance, but an essential feature of it; it was only by having a diverse membership could any

party ensure it governed in the interest of all Canadians.

3.2 Progressive Party Beliefs

King was correct in identifying the importance of democratic ideas, however inexactly

defined by either the Liberals or Progressives, as central to both parties’ opposition to the

Conservatives. For the Progressives, the idea that Canadian politics needed democratizing was

central to the message of the movement. In an article from the farming magazine Canadian

Countryman in December of 1919, the author describes the genesis of the movement writing:

The political side of the movement, which began as an effort to secure adequate class representation, has already got beyond that objective; and might, with propriety, make an effort to link up with so called Labour movement in the formation of a people's party, with a progressive program designed to establish greater degree of democracy in our political institutions.29

While highlighting the party's roots in agricultural organizations such as the Grain Growers

Association of Manitoba and the United Farmers of Ontario, the author clearly recognized that

the movement had quickly grown beyond simply a farmer advocacy group. Rather than work

within the two party system, the various agrarian interest groups had chosen to seek

representation for their occupation through the institution of a political party, yet one deeply

File 172 Party Governance, p.22991–22992, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 29 “The Story of the U.F.O.,” Canadian Countryman, December 1919, 10. 93

influenced by the idea of class representation. Hence, this new agrarian party, rather than seeking

to recruit sympathetic members from other social classes or occupations, attempted to create

political alliances with labour groups and other ideologically similar organizations. This

arrangement would maintain, in theory at least, each group's political independence while giving

them greater influence in the political process.

Central to the Progressives' discussion of democratic reform was the principle that people

needed to organize to represent their own interests in politics, be it federally or provincially.

While traditionally the two major political parties had been how citizens engaged in electoral

politics, the farmers, instead of agreeing with King that these parties were institutions of

inclusion, depicted them as gatekeepers, limiting access to political power to a select few elites.

Agitators like Progressive MP William C. Good argued repeatedly that people needed the ability

to organize political representation outside of the two dominant parties. In an opinion piece

published in the Toronto Globe on January of 1920, he wrote:

Why not let our citizens organize on whatever basis they like? We cannot have democracy unless we are free to think and utter our own thoughts, be they wise or foolish; and if a number of electors should desire to organize so as to secure legislation requiring the editor of The Globe to wear a frock coat and a silk hat three feet high, The Globe ought to give them every facility to find political expression.30

The United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) in a pamphlet entitled, “Why the UFO is in Politics” also

publicized Good’s proposal. The group stated that their purpose was, “To get adequate

representation for Agriculture in all legislative bodies.”31 Progressives like Good and members

of the UFO argued that the ability of the Liberals and Conservatives to broker the interests of

30 W.C. Good, “Voice of the People,” Toronto Globe, 26 January 1920. 31 “Why the U.F.O Is In Politics” Speech by W.C. Good, 1919, MG 27 IIIC1 Vol.15: United Farmers Co–op 1919– 1937, William Charles Good Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 94

different factions within the party and produce a consensus was not a virtue but rather one of the most effective strategies deployed by the two parties to maintain their dominant position and stifle dissident voices. While King argued that his Liberals needed to be the unifying force that would bring all progressively minded people together because of their shared belief in certain key principles, Good and others suggested that the Liberals’ message was in fact anti– democratic. Rather, what the country needed was the opportunity for any group to express their political opinions. Good and others emphasized to farmers that the Progressive Party was the only means to secure real democratic representation unmediated by the brokerage politics of the

Liberals or Conservatives.

Agrarians also presented the problems of partisan politics in Canada as extending well beyond the lack of group representation in the Commons. Over the course of a series of articles published in 1922 in The UFA, Henry Wise Wood, President of the United Farmers of Alberta, attacked the existing practices of partisan politics while advancing group governance as a more democratic alternative for political organization. Wood stated that the basic question farmers needed to ask themselves was, “whether we want to continue to exercise our citizenship rights and try to fulfill our citizenship obligations through the medium of citizenship organization or through the medium of the political party system.” Wood's clear answer was that citizenship organizations were the only option because, “[Parties] could not carry on democratically because the political party structure cannot implement democratic political action.” He defended his stance by arguing that the leaders of all parties “believe in a form of organization in the interest of politicians, but which is not in the interest of the people. They believe in an organization for

95

the people to serve rather than an organization to serve the people.”32 While King publicly

characterized the Liberals as an organization empowered by a popular mandate and designed to

implement the will of the Canadian people, Wood instead argued that King's presentation of his

party's purpose was a ruse. Rather, the party organization existed to advance the interests of its

political leaders and sought to coerce, bribe or trick Canadians into supporting their agenda.

The fact that political parties, in Wood's argument, were simply vehicles to advance the

interests of controlling elites made them inherently unstable organizations as they lacked any

coherent philosophy to provide a sense of unity and purpose to its members. Instead, he stated

that because parties organized around self–interest, their members would not make the necessary

personal sacrifices to enhance the long–term prospects of the organization. In one of his UFA

articles from 1922 Wood wrote that, “The political party... is not a stable organization. On

account of its instability the great effort of politicians is to hold the unorganized elements of their

unstable group together.”33 In the Progressive's political rhetoric, groups that existed solely for

the purpose of attaining and maintaining power were unstable alliances, as the individual

members were not united by any shared experience or commitment to a cause, but only to mutual

self–interest. So long as the party advanced the immediate interests of its members, the group

could function. However, in the long term Wood assured his readers that the selfish interests of

their membership would eventually undercut any party’s stability.

For Wood the instability that came from the fluctuating alliances and jockeying for

political power within the two major parties meant that, “Few questions are seriously discussed

32 H.W. Wood, “Shall We Go Forward or Turn Back?” The UFA, 1 September 1922, 1. 33 H.W. Wood. “Significance of Democratic Group Organization,” The UFA, 15 April 1922. 96

on their merits. Truth is frequently not sought after but systematically concealed in a mass of

confusion.” Consequently, in Wood's writing, partisanship undermined the very institution of

citizenship itself, as individuals were unable to debate important political questions. The solution

to this crisis lay in creating a different type of political organization. He wrote:

The only material out of which higher citizenship units can be built is individual citizens. This means transferring the unit from the individual to the group, and to do this the group must be stabilized and made permanent... When the people learn to speak through the medium of the developed, stable group, the voice of the group will become the voice of the people and then the voice of the people may become the voice of god.34

Consequently, as Wood outlined in an unpublished article from 1922, “The party system makes

it almost impossible for the legislature to function as a deliberative assembly, because the

tendency is always for questions to be considered not on their merits but as they affect the

fortunes of the contending parties.”35 In order to preserve party unity leaders minimized

discussion of any potentially divisive issue and instead encouraged members to make broad

statements of principle. While an effective strategy for preserving unity, the Progressive's

strongly implied that the system impoverished political discourses and denied the people a

chance to discuss critical issues.

In Progressive discourses, the ultimate solution to the problem of partisan politics and

the two party system was to have groups in the legislature organize around unifying factors such

as social class or occupation. One of the concrete policies that the Progressives promoted as a

means of implementing their vision was electoral reform. Specifically, Progressives advocated

replacing single–member constituencies with multi–member ones, where each riding would elect

34 Ibid 35 H.W. Wood, “Reflections on the Party System” Unpublished article 1922, MG 27 IIIC1 Vol.18 Subject Files, William Charles Good Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 97

multiple members to the House of Commons using a ranked ballot based on Thomas Hare's

single transferable ballot proposal. This proposal was commonly referred to as the alternative

ballot. Under this system, voters would rank each candidate within their constituency and then,

once a candidate had achieved the minimum number of first place votes, as determined by the

number of seats divided by the number of voters (the Hare Quota), the rest of the votes would be

distributed to the candidates ranked second on the ballot. This process of redistribution would

continue until all the seats available in the constituency were filled. The best example of this

system in practice in Canada was in Manitoba for their provincial elections during the Interwar

years where Winnipeg as a city elected six candidates to the Provincial Legislature based on the

alternative ballot.

In May of 1922 Good introduced a private member's bill calling for, as The Ottawa

Citizen stated, “The [use of the] single transferable vote in constituencies where more than two

candidates are nominated for one seat. The purpose of the single transferable vote is to ensure

that the majority of voters [do not] fail to secure representation.”36 The Progressives generally,

and Good especially, stated it was essential that the composition of the House of Commons

reflected the demographic and economic characteristics of the population it was supposed to

represent. However, the existing system of FPTP with single member constituencies favoured

candidates who could draw a large amount of votes from a diversity of people in one riding.

Thus, agrarian candidates struggled to win in ridings where farmers were not in the majority

because of their narrow, class–based appeal. The solution Good presented to the United Farmers

of Ontario Social Services Council in February of 1923 was the alternative ballot. He stated,

36 “For More Effective Voting,” Ottawa Citizen, 12 May 1922, 16. 98

“There were no wasted votes under that method. The underlying principle of all legislative

bodies was that they should be a mirror of the nation. If they were not, a fundamental institution

of the state was undermined.”37 Good and others emphasized the importance of electoral reform

as to change the composition of Parliament it would be necessary to have an electoral system that

rewarded groups who could mobilize a strong cohort of minority voters rather than fostering a

national appeal that cut across occupational, class and linguistic lines. Progressives presented the

alternative ballot as just such a mechanism. Hence, while electoral reform proponents may have

been inspired by a commitment to certain philosophical ideals, they repeated specific discourses

that emphasized its benefits for the Progressives who sought greater influence in the House

without having to compromise the party's original purpose as a farmers' party.

Recognizing that achieving any type of electoral reform was a long–term project, the

Progressives stated that the immediate solution to the problems of the party system was granting

greater freedom for individual members to vote and speak in the Commons as they saw fit. At

the 1920 United Farmers of Ontario Convention, members put forward numerous resolutions,

which demonstrated how agrarians conceived of the ideal relationship between elected

representatives and their constituents. The text of one motion stated that, “the local member has

been elected to the legislature in the House of Commons to represent his own electorate and to

act as their leader in putting into effect their will as it may be determined in conference.”38 Much

as King claimed that his Liberals represented the will of the Canadian people, the Progressives

turned King's attacks on Meighen back onto the Liberal leader. The Liberals, according to the

37 “Report of the Social Service Council Meeting – PR and the Alternative Vote,” Ottawa Citizen, 1 February 1923. 38 United Farmers of Ontario 1920 Convention Resolutions, MG 27 IIIC1 Vol.15 United Farmers Co–op 1919–1937, William Charles Good Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 99

delegates’ statements, were simply another party attempting to subvert the “matured judgment of the majority” to the will of a small group of men. These delegates argued that in order to maintain control over their party, the Liberals prevented individual MPs from representing their constituents’ interests, which should be their primary duty as elected representatives. According to the convention delegates, the individual MP was the base of all legitimacy and all political institutions should prioritize and protect their relationship with their constituents. Additionally, greater freedom of action for individual MPs would also weaken the dominance of the Liberals and Conservatives and lay the groundwork for future reform.

3.3 The Decline of the Progressive Party

Superficially, the fate of the Progressive Party between the 1921 election and the end of the decade can be understood as a straightforward narrative of a spectacular rise followed by an equally quick descent into irrelevance. However, the Progressive Party's challenge to the status quo was not only on the level of practice politics – they won seats at the expense of the Liberals and Conservatives – but also ideological. Consequently, the Liberal Party's response to the farmers' foray into politics needs to be understood as driven not only by the calculus of political advantage, but also the necessity of the Liberal Party elites to publicly articulate the role of political parties themselves. Thus, while the Liberals neutralized the Progressive threat by successfully exploiting the farmers' idealistic rejection of rigid party unity and their unwillingness to adopt the structures and institutions of traditional parties, the Liberals ensured they accompanied these political maneuverings with discourses articulating a normative standard for the organizational basis of political parties.

As early as November of 1922, supporters of various agrarian organizations were predicting the death of the Progressive Party as an effective force in federal politics. The 100

resignation of party founder and leader T.A. Crerar after the Progressive Caucus refused to

implement the trappings of a more traditional party, such as a party whip and national, extra–

Parliamentary organization was one of the key factors driving this pessimism. In his article “The

Death of the Progressive Party” W.C. Good highlighted the inherent weakness in the movement

and, while his prediction of the Progressive's death was a decade premature, his writing clearly

outlined what he saw as internal tensions in the party regarding how they should organize

themselves. He wrote:

The real situation was that there had arisen in the farmers' movement a distinctly new philosophy of government, though this fact was not widely apparent, and that among the progressive members there were some who held to the old idea of political action and government by party, and some who did not. It was therefore scarcely to be wondered at that with such a radical cleavage, it was never possible to weld the group into a solid unit acting along well–known old party lines, and that many discords were inevitable... From one point of view, by splitting the Liberal Party and finally merging with one section of it, the project of a Progressive Party may be commended. But it doesn't get us away from the party system and is therefore not acceptable to those who disbelieve in that way of carrying on government.39

Good, along with H.W. Wood, was one of the key figures in reproducing Progressive discourses

concerning the role of parties and group representation in Parliament. Consequently, he was well

positioned to identify an emerging split in the federal party. While some Progressives had

specific policy goals and sought to influence the position of the governing party, others argued

the very system itself was in dire need of reform. Co–operation with the Liberals, or even

adopting the structure of a traditional party, was continuing and enabling a flawed political

system. As Good concluded in his 1922 article, “Competition between classes is an ugly thing

39 “The Death of the Progressive Party.” Unpublished article by W.C. Good, November 1922, MG 27 IIIC1 Vol.15 Subject Files, William Charles Good Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 101

but I do not think that it can be abolished by the political party method of throwing a lot of

different things together and calling them all the same name.”40

This tension between general and specific ideas of popular representation was

exacerbated by Crerar's departure from the party and – for the next seven years at least –

electoral politics in general. Robert Forke subsequently took over as leader of the Parliamentary

wing of the Progressives but still was unable to resolve the fundamental divide in the party. A

Liberal candidate in the 1909 Manitoba Provincial Election, Forke supported most of Crerar's

positions, including the necessity of formalizing the party's organization and the importance of

co–operation with the Federal Liberals. In fact, Forke's sympathies towards the Liberals was

such an open secret that Saskatchewan Liberal organizer John Stevenson told fellow Liberal

supporter and Queens University professor Hume Wrong that, “I knew that [Forke] was working

vigorously [within] the Progressive caucus for Willie [King].”41 Forke's partisan sympathies and

support for many of Crerar's positions regarding party structures and practice, led to further

division in the Progressive caucus. The result of Forke's tenure as leader was that one section of

the party coalesced around the United Farmers of Alberta and their informal leader in Ottawa,

H.W. Wood, while others grouped organized around Forke. These hardline UFA members

rejected Forke's appeals for moderation and refused to compromise on the idea of group

governance, limited party discipline or central organization and Wood’s followers were appalled

by the idea of forming a functioning, even if unofficial, coalition with the Liberals.

40 Ibid. 41 Willie was a derogatory reference to Prime Minister (William) King. Correspondence between John Stevenson and Hume Wrong, 27 June 1926, MG30–E101 Volume 1, File 1, Hume Wrong Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 102

In an article from the summer of 1924 in The Western Producer, Saskatchewan

Progressive MP Milton Neil Campbell explained in detail the divided nature of his party.

Campbell was a radical and a member of the informal “Ginger Group” of left wing MPs

committed to substantial reform of Canada's political and economic system. Campbell told his

readers that the original Progressives “confidently hoped that all members elected under such a

plan would realize their primary responsibility to their constituencies instead of, as formerly, to a

party organization.” Yet by 1924, the two factions' vision for the party were irreconcilable,

particularly over the issue of majority rule. As Campbell wrote regarding this specific issue:

Constituency autonomy, with which is involved constituency control of the member, has been for many years one of the fundamental principles enunciated by the organized farmers. Those who took this seriously have steadfastly refused to accept majority rule in the caucus... Needless to say, [majority rule] was never enforced, as the minority steadfastly refused to recognize it; but when they voted against the majority on the floor of the house, they were made to feel that they were a source of embarrassment to the main group, and it was to relieve the majority from their disadvantage, as well as to secure more freedom to represent their constituents, that they eventually refused to further attend the official caucus.42

The inability of the Progressive Party to enforce any degree of caucus solidarity greatly limited

their ability to be influence legislative proceedings in the House of Commons. Rather than

forming one voting bloc, which could extract concessions from the governing Liberals, King and

his party were able to secure ad–hoc arrangements with individual Progressive MPs to ensure the

government’s survival on two votes of non–confidence initiated by “Ginger Group” members.

By making direct appeals to individual Progressive Party members and promising specific

economic benefits to these members’ ridings, the Liberals were able to ensure they maintained

42 M.N. Campbell, “The Progressive Split,” Western Producer, 10 July 1924. 103

the confidence of the House.43 While sitting together in the Commons as one group, the

Progressive Party’s internal divisions meant that the Liberals could secure enough votes from the

moderate faction when needed, thereby making the party more of a collection of independent

MPs than a true party. All the while, this practice continued to reinforce the Liberals’ claim to be

the only practical alternative to the Tories.

The strategic problems the Progressives faced in the House of Commons stemmed from

the independent nature of their membership. This mindset prevented the party from adopting the

necessary institutions that would allow them to resolve these inter–party conflicts, as was clearly

explained in an article written by an anonymous member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery in

the winter of 1925. The author described how the Liberals, when compared to the Conservatives,

were much closer in terms of policy to the Progressives. Hence, when the Liberals introduced

moderate progressive legislation, many agrarians had to either side with the reactionary Tory

Party to defeat it, or support the Liberals. The anonymous journalist described this situation in

detail, writing:

Although on occasions the Liberal Government and its supporters could not see their way to go all the distance with the Progressives, sometimes perhaps only a short distance, at all events the government went further than hon gentlemen opposite, and consequently if the Progressives voted at all they would have to support those who came nearer to their ideals. I do not see how a Progressive could go home and ask Progressive electors for their support if he has done anything else.44

By introducing legislation that was broadly progressive in nature, such as means tested pensions

for those over sixty–five, the Liberals forced Progressive MPs to either side with the

43 Morton, 190–191. 44 “Letter #3: On Parliament Hill By A Member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery,” 28 February 1925, MG26 J4, Vol.115, File 825 Liberal Party, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 104

Conservative Party and vote against their principles, or to continue to support the centrist

government that, while not entirely adhering to a progressive agenda, was willing to pass

legislation popular with Progressive voters. Each subsequent vote that the government won with

Progressive support only further reinforced their narrative that the Liberals were the party of

national unity. Without a critical number of party members willing to accept a degree of party

discipline or put themselves under the authority of a leader and/or whip, the Progressives were

unable to effectively counter this Liberal narrative and use their status as the second largest party

in the commons to force large concessions from the government. Rather, their strength was

limited to that of individual members' willingness to vote a certain way depending on the bill put

forward.

Matters came to a head in May of 1925 with the Liberal government's budget. Eighteen

Progressives, mostly from Ontario, voted with the government, while the rest of the party voted

with the Conservatives. As a result, the Progressive's whip J.F. Johnston, who occupied a

position newly created and whose simple existence was unpopular with many party members,

resigned. C.W. Stewart, a member from Saskatchewan, subsequently replaced him. However, the

division in the Progressive caucus was more than simply a “family row” as one Parliament Hill

journalist described it.45 Rather, as at least one outside observer noted:

The net result of this whole affair has been to show to the country the difficulty of a third party preserving even a semblance of cohesion where matters effecting all classes and sections of the country have to be considered on broad national lines. It has also served to make somewhat easier the realignment if the Progressive members in Ontario with the Liberal Party.46

45 Letter #14: On Parliament Hill By A Member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery,” 16 May 1925, MG26 J4, Vol.115, File 825 Liberal Party, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 46 “Letter #13: On Parliament Hill By A Member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery,” 9 May 1925, MG26 J4, 105

Progressive disunity reflected a broader problem underlying the philosophy of group governance

espoused by many of the party's members. The motivating forces that propelled many

Progressives into electoral politics were agrarian issues and a general feeling of rural alienation.

Yet, as the perceptive journalist quoted above noted, these issues were only a small percentage of

those that the House of Commons dealt with. Thus, while the Progressives could agree on tariff

policy, the party necessarily diverged on a variety of other issues. This lack of unity stemmed

from the basic principles of the party that prioritized group representation over ideological

agreement. Consequently, the Liberal Party was able to neutralize the threat the agrarians posed

to both their party specifically, and to a two-party system more broadly.

The turmoil in the Progressive Party only reinforced to many observers the importance of

strong internal party structures. Writing in the Ottawa Journal in the fall of 1925, four months

after the budget vote divided the agrarians, Librarian for the Parliament of Canada Martin Burrell

outlined the pitfalls of non–party governance. Burrell pointed to the case of British Columbia,

which had no governing party until Richard McBride formed a government along party lines in

1902. The result was, “In the previous thirty years of non–party government there had been no

less than fifteen administrations! The experiment had been a long and costly one. It was a record

of instability...” Burrell went on to suggest that the Progressives’ idea of group governance was

only “this evil in modified form,” and pointed to the problems created in the British House of

Commons by the Irish Group and their shifting allegiance.47 While other attempts at challenging

the two party system had failed, political observers presented the slow dissolution of the

Vol.115, File 825 Liberal Party, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 47 Martin Burrell, “Party Governance,” Ottawa Journal, 24 October 1925. 106

Progressive Party as evidence of their flawed approach to politics and party governance. The

failure of the Progressives not only strengthened the Liberals’ message, but also undermined the

basis of the agrarian political movement as a whole.

By 1925, the party's situation in Ontario had become untenable with many Ontario

members and supporters joining the Liberal fold. In response, Forke decided the party would

only campaign in Manitoba and west during the next election in an effort to preserve the

Progressive's influence in the region. In a quote given to a member of the Parliamentary Press

Gallery, Ontario Progressive John W. King, described the problems the party faced. He told the

reporter that:

The Progressive Party is a modest, retiring party, and we have been subjected to political thrusts, some of them not very clean, from all sides of the House – even from our own side; but I desire to affirm right here, that not only will the Progressive Party come back after the next election, but will come back more than a mere remnant – more than a sad remnant. The Progressive Party is here to do business and will do business in this House [with] all the other members.48

While John King conceded that internal divisions in his party had weakened its organization, he

also highlighted how “political thrusts” from the opposition had exacerbated disunity within the

party. Certainly, his optimistic presentation of his cause to the press is laudable, but the

Progressives’ failure to formulate or agree on a strategy to deal with the Liberals’ political

attacks meant the party remained a “sad remnant” until its end in the 1930s.

The results of the 1925 election were predictable. The Progressive Party lost every seat

east of Manitoba but still managed to win twenty two seats overall. Additionally, the revived

Conservative Party displaced them as the second largest party in the House of Commons. As

48 “Letter#11: On Parliament Hill By A Member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery,” 25 April 1925, MG26 J4, Vol.115, File 825 Liberal Party, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 107

discussed in the previous chapter, the Conservatives actually managed to win a plurality of seats in the commons but no party held a majority. Consequently, the Progressive's twenty–two seats were tremendously important in propping up any party with aspirations at forming government.

Thus, beginning shortly after the 1925 election and continuing well into 1926, the Liberal Party's tactics regarding the Progressive Party became much more aggressive. Instead of simply proposing legislation that many agrarian MPs would be hard–pressed to vote against, King and his inner circle formulated a plan to recruit key Progressives to the Liberal Party, even striking a cabinet committee, chaired by Senator Andrew Haydon, to negotiate a formal merger. In order to court Progressive MPs the Liberals once again emphasized that their party encouraged all people broadly sympathetic to progressive or liberal ideas to participate in the party. Overall, the goal for the Liberals throughout the mid–1920s was to present to Progressives and the electorate a more compelling vision of democracy that addressed the root concerns of the Progressives, while also reinforcing the central role of the Liberal Party as a large brokerage party.

The key figure in the official negotiations between sympathetic Progressives and the

Liberal leadership was lawyer Albert B. Hudson. Hudson served as a Liberal member of

Manitoba's Legislative Assembly from 1914 until 1920, after which he won election as a Liberal

MP for Winnipeg South in 1921, but chose not to contest his seat in the 1925 election. Hudson's partisan service combined with his political connections in Western Canada thus made him a perfect intermediary for the Liberals. Beginning on 2 November 1925 and continuing for the next 11 months, Hudson negotiated with prominent Manitoba Progressives in an attempt to convince them to defect to the Liberals, or failing that, to support the King government in

Parliament. Throughout this process, Hudson exchanged numerous coded telegrams with Prime

Minister King and Senator Haydon, as well as un–encoded ones with Progressive Leader Robert 108

Forke. These telegrams, combined with other correspondence between key Liberal Party

decision makers demonstrate how the party justified offering practical enticements and policy

concessions to the Progressives by expounding on the principled vision of partisan politics that

supposedly underlay the Liberal Party.

In his first message to Forke, four days after the 1925 election, Hudson related the

substance of his conversation with King. Hudson acknowledged to Forke that the divided nature

of the Progressive caucus meant that no one could speak for the entirety of the party, but that

Forke still carried a great degree of influence with many agrarians, particularly in Manitoba.

Hudson then went on to tell Forke that King would consult with him on any potentially

controversial legislation the Liberals were planning to introduce in the Commons. Hudson wrote,

“If your associates had an opportunity of expressing your views, [King] could be certain that you

would appreciate the difficulty of the situation and not make any demands which anyone could

regard as unreasonable.”49 In these correspondences, Hudson emphasized the importance of open

dialogue between various interest groups within the government but that the Liberal Party would

ultimately resolve the conflicts in private before presenting a unified stance in the House. King's

reply to Hudson regarding a potential alliance with Forke also reflected this sentiment. King

wrote on 19 November, “If we can now arrange to unite in Parliament the forces which have

been divided there and in the country we will at least have succeeded in forming a party strong

enough to make its principles and policies prevail.”50 Much as he did publicly in 1920, King

49 Correspondence between Albert Hudson and Robert Forke, MP, 2 November 1925, R4653–0–8–E Vol.2: Negotiations between the Liberal Party and Progressives, Albert Bellock Hudson Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 50 Correspondence between William Lyon Mackenzie King and Albert B. Hudson, 19 November 1925, R4653–0–8– E Vol.2: Negotiations between the Liberal Party and Progressives, Albert Bellock Hudson Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 109

highlighted how the Progressives and Liberals were a divided force both working towards the

same general goal. Yet in order to be optimally effective, the different factions needed to unite

into a functional party that had sufficient strength in the House of Commons to defeat the

Conservatives. Rather than political party structures undermining principles, as many agrarian

protesters alleged, for King the only way principles could be put into practice was with a strong

and organized party like the Liberals.

By December, negotiations between the Liberals and Progressives had stalled. Delays in

achieving any meaningful agreement were exacerbated by allegations of corruption leveled at the

King government by opposition Conservatives. As discussed in Chapter 2, the King government

had pressured Minister of Customs and Excise Jacques Bureau to resign after evidence of

corruption in his department were exposed by the Conservatives. However, in order to soften the

blow, King appointed Bureau to the Senate. Sensing a possible political scandal the opposition,

Conservatives pounced and throughout the fall of 1925 and winter of 1926 attacked the Liberals

in the House of Commons and the media, arguing corruption was endemic to the party and ran

all the way to the Prime Minister's Office.51 These allegations only reinforced the Progressives’

basic distrust of partisan politics and made any co–operation with the Liberals impossible for

many individual members. In particular, King's decision to appoint Bureau to the Senate served

as one more demonstration of how the governing party used patronage and Senate appointments

in particular, to protect party officials at the expense of the public good.

Writing a year later in 1926, William Irvine, a committed agrarian reformer who at

various points in his political career identified as a Labour, United Farmer or independent MP,

51 Williams, 314–315. 110

stated that, “It was largely because of the fact that the stench of corruption reached the nostrils of

the public that the Liberal government fell.”52 While there was no definitive evidence of

widespread corruption in the Department of Customs and Excise, the Liberal Party's desire to

protect a loyal party politician poisoned relations with the farmers in Parliament, be they

officially Progressives or simply sympathetic to the movement. More importantly though, the

Liberals’ alleged corruption undermined not only their immediate prospects of a political alliance

with various agrarian factions in the Commons, radical element of the Progressive Party and its

allies used the affair to argue that the party system itself was flawed. In the same article Irvine

also wrote, “In view of the condition of the party system today, how can a citizen with honest

intentions and with a desire for stable and just government vote for it?”53 Irvine argued the

Progressives’ willingness to work with the Liberals had compromised the party, making it

impossible for him to continue as a member and leading to him joining the breakaway United

Farmers of Alberta Parliamentary caucus. Irvine's arguments effectively summarized the

challenges the Liberals faced in securing support for their government in the House. Negotiation

and governing necessitated compromise yet these very compromises made co–operation

impossible for many agrarians. The root cause of the Liberals’ problem was that their vision of a

brokerage party was fundamentally incompatible with the absolutist public positions of many of

the more radical agrarians in the House.

By the middle of December, any possible agreement between the Progressives and

Liberals was unraveling, threatening the survival of the Liberal government. In messages from

52 “To the Electors of Wetaskiwin Federal Constituency.” Speech by William Irvine, 28 April 1926, 1922, MG 27 IIIC1 Vol.29: United Farmers Co–op 1922–1926, William Charles Good Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 53 Ibid 111

Justice Minister Ernest Lapointe and Prime Minister King to Haydon – sent via King’s secretary

F.A. McGregor – both men reaffirmed their faith in the idea of a unified centralist party that

could moderate between different groups united in their opposition to the Conservatives. While

Lapointe told Senator Haydon “The country [was] on [the] verge of collapse,” he also

emphasized that:

Honest and well–meaning men must come together to save [Canada] and trust one another. Only way to find moderate and best solution of all big problems. Now is opportunity for building a reunited Canada, which may not present itself again. Speedy decisions necessary otherwise shall have to yield to pressure from others quarters whose views as to incoming cabinet differ from his and mine.54

Despite being forced to deal with MPs on an individual basis, as the Liberals did with former

Progressive Leader Crerar, Lapointe still emphasized the importance of unity and moderation in

his message. He warned Haydon and others that if the moderates would not support the Liberals,

the governing party would negotiate with the more radical wing of the agrarian protest

movement to ensure its survival. Yet the Liberals’ offer to prominent Progressives to cross the

floor was not a blank cheque, rather King told Haydon that the Liberals could “Only consider

taking representation from Progressive Party into cabinet on same basis as representation for

rank of Liberals, namely on policy as announced and faith in personnel of administration to do

justly by all concerned.”55 While willing to incorporate Progressives into the party, King

emphasized that the farmers would only be one interest group within the broader tent of the

Liberal Party. Ultimately, the Liberals’ final offer to sympathetic Progressives was to join them

54 Telegram from Ernest Lapointe to Senator Haydon, 15 December 1925. R4653–0–8–E Vol.2: Negotiations between the Liberal Party and Progressives, Albert Bellock Hudson Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 55 Telegram from McGregor to Haydon, 15 December 1925, R4653–0–8–E Vol.2: Negotiations between the Liberal Party and Progressives, Albert Bellock Hudson Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 112

and be part of a broader and effective governing coalition, or be marginalized by the radicals in

their own movement.

In first nine months of 1926, King's government lost the confidence of the House, his

dissolution request was denied by the Governor General, Arthur Meighen became prime

minister, the Liberals and Progressives’ defeated this new government in the Commons and

ultimately, a general election in 1926 returned the Liberals to power with a plurality of seats,

despite having lost the popular vote 43% to 45% to the Conservatives. After the election, the

Liberals were able to form a stable majority due to the support of nine Liberal–Progressives who,

while not committing to join officially – although most did before the 1930 federal election – had

agreed to vote with the government on confidence matters and caucus with the governing party.

Included in this number was former Progressive Leader Robert Forke, who now led the Liberal–

Progressive block. In his election post–mortem for Prime Minister King, Albert Hudson

explained how the relationships between the Liberals and their Progressive allies would work,

writing:

Forke... is satisfied that the members elected as Liberal–Progressive will without exception, desire to sit on the government side of the House and for the most part attend the government caucus. They may wish to maintain the identity of their own group in some minor way, and probably it would be wise to encourage this, so that their progressive supporters will feel that they have not entirely abandoned the faith.56

The Liberals’ primary objective was securing a majority in the Commons. So long as the

Liberal–Progressives would vote with the government, they could retain their own identity,

particularly if it helped them maintain voters' support in their home constituencies. The

56 Correspondence between Albert Hudson to W.L.M. King, 18 September 1926. R4653–0–8–E Vol.2: Negotiations between the Liberal Party and Progressives, Albert Bellock Hudson Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 113

arrangement between the Liberals and Forke's group also served to undercut the anti–party

arguments of the more radical of the agrarians. Forke and his fellow members could maintain

their own distinct identity while also participating in a governing coalition and theoretically

influencing policy. While the Liberals–Progressives did agree to vote with the government on

confidence matters, they provided a practical refutation to the stark dichotomy promoted by

Wood and other United Farmers who claimed group governance was the only alternative to

outright Tory or Liberal partisanship.

By the end of 1926, the Liberals had managed to consolidate their position as the party of

rural Canada. While their base in the Prairies, particularly Alberta, was permanently weakened

due to the continuing electoral success of the United Farmers of Alberta and later Social Credit

and the CCF, the Liberals had re–established a stable national coalition of voters that the party’s

leadership believed could be counted on to keep them in power. Yet the Progressives’ distrust of

party politics remained a part of Canadian political discourse, kept alive by a small number of

rural representatives. The most vocal and articulate of these was former United Farmers of

Ontario and now independent MP for Grey–Bruce in Ontario, Agnes Macphail. Throughout the

1920s Macphail, the first female MP in Canadian history, advanced the Progressive's idea of

group governance and railed against partisan politics. In her response to the Liberals’ budget of

1928, she delivered the following remarks in the House:

I should not like to say that only functional or occupational groups should come to the House, but I do think that the two parties are simply that. [I feel] and hope that someday other groups [will] appear and find representation in the House of Commons. Then the old parties [will] be unable to carry on the government in the old way; the people [will] come into their own, and government institutions [will] be changed to meet the needs of the changing views of the people.57

57 “Group Government and the Party System: Quotations from Budget Speech,” Speech by Agnes Macphail, 28 114

While former Progressive Leaders Robert Forke and Thomas Crerar both joined the Liberal

Party, Macphail remained a strong independent voice for progressive ideals well into the 1930s.

Along with other “Ginger Group” members, she promoted an uncompromising standard for political conduct that directly contradicted the Liberals vision of a large and intellectually diverse party.

Although Macphail remained committed to promoting these ideals until the end of her career in the 1940s, after 1926 these views remained on the margins of Canadian political discourse. While political parties organized around class identity such as the Labour Party in

Britain, New Zealand and Australia managed to grow and even form government, in Canada the

Progressive Party represented the only moderately successful attempt at transforming class or occupational identity into an electoral force. Yet, the end of the Progressives did not mean an end to agrarian grievances. Liberal inaction on key issues such as the tariff and electoral reform only served to exacerbate many of them. However, future political action to force the Liberals or

Conservatives to address rural issues was not organized around occupation but rather ideology, specifically that of democratic socialism. The CCF certainly proposed solutions to the problems facing farmers in the 1930s, but they were truly a federation of multiple different groups, from western farmers to west coast resource workers and Central Canadian intellectuals. The failure of the Progressives represented the triumph of the brokerage party model in Canadian politics.

These brokerage parties could be large or small but they all were centralized organizations that mediated among the divergent interests of their members.

February 1928, MG26 J4, Vol.127 File 995 Party Government, p.92779, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 115

3.4 Conclusion

Overall, given the fractious nature of electoral politics in the 1920s, King and the Liberals needed to construct as broad a coalition as possible. Such a requirement necessitated flexibility, particularly when it came to matters of policy. One could easily characterize the Liberals’ approach to maintaining power as opportunistic and King's embrace of old age pensions certain reinforces that perception. However, King sold these decisions to the Canadian public, other

Liberals, and the Progressive Party as part of the party's adherence to a broader set of underlying principles driven by the leader and his allies' conception about what a political party should be and how it should act. When competing with the Conservatives, the Liberals were never forced to justify their very existence to voters, for the primary function of both parties was to win elections and form government. Yet the Progressive Party seemed to shatter the established form for parties. Despite winning the second most seats in the 1921 federal election, they refused the title and status of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. The agrarians also refused to create the structures of a political party, only implementing the position of party whip after a long, internal struggle. Even then, the whip proved ineffective at actually whipping votes in the Commons.

Additionally, the farmer's party proposed radical reform to how parties were constituted, an idea known as group governance, where political representation was based on class and occupation.

These attacks on the Liberals and Conservatives potentially appealed to large sections of the

Canadian population and for a brief time in the early 1920s were remarkably successful at attracting voters to the new party. In response to this challenge, the Liberals needed to present themselves, particularly to progressive voters, as a democratic and effective alternative through which they could combat the policies of the Conservatives.

116

In response, from 1920 through 1926, the Liberal Party elite presented a vision to the public a vision of their party as one committed to certain, often hazily defined, democratic and progressive principles and one that was open to all who were willing to adopt these foundational beliefs. The Liberal Party represented itself as a unifying organization where various like– minded political groups could gather together and where the party leadership brokered disputes between different elements to allow successful advocacy for a comprise position that would satisfy most, if not all, sections of the party. This big tent model of political organization meant that at some point, all individual members would be forced to compromise on certain values, however, by virtue of membership in a unified and effective Liberal Party, they were assured that would have the ability to influence government policy and pass legislation. Essentially, the

Liberal Party offered a tradeoff between unfettered advocacy in the House of Commons on certain issues but with little ability to influence the proceedings, as opposed to the ability to shape government policy within the private confines of the Liberal Caucus. Ultimately, access to power was a powerful inducement for the majority of agrarians yet, because the Liberals had outlined a clear vision for how their party should function, the former Progressive MPs were able to provide a democratic justification to their constituents

117

Chapter 4: Attacking Autocracy: The Liberal Party and R.B. Bennett

In the hot and dry summer of 1933, Liberal Leader William Lyon Mackenzie King returned to a

theme common in his public remarks throughout the 1920s and 30s. Speaking before a crowd of

roughly 1,000 Manitobans at Rock Lake, Manitoba, about 130km south of Brandon, King told

the crowd that, “The Liberal Party... had always been willing to ‘trust the people’.” He went on

to explain that it was only by relying on the collective wisdom of the people that a government

could govern effectively. With a clear allusion to his political opponent Conservative Prime

Minister R.B. Bennett, King stated that, “The wisdom that will tend to good government is the

wisdom that comes from the people instead of that of some little group, self–appointed or

otherwise.”1 King's insistence that the Liberal Party trusted the people of Canada while their

opponents distrusted democratic governance was nothing new. Throughout the interwar years,

King and his Liberal supporters presented a vision of their party as the defenders of Canadian

democracy from all threats, be it power–hungry politicians like Conservative Arthur Meighen, or

dangerous agrarian radicals with their demands for Parliamentary reform.

Yet, since 1927 the dynamics of electoral politics in Canada had shifted as the Liberals

now faced a new Conservative leader in the House of Commons and then on the campaign trail

in 1930. After three federal elections under Meighen’s leadership, in 1927 the Conservative

Party chose Calgary lawyer and Meighen political ally R.B. Bennett as the new leader of the

party. The more significant change came in 1930 when, for the first time in a decade, the

Liberals found themselves in opposition. Unlike when previously in opposition in 1920 or briefly

in 1926, the Liberals could not convincingly contest the legitimacy of the Conservative

1 T.H. Hart, “King Says People Must Vote for Restoring Rights,” Winnipeg Free Press, 24 July 1933, A1. 118

government. While the Conservative caucus selected Meighen as leader and he became prime minister by virtue of assuming leadership of the governing party, Bennett won the leadership of his party at their first delegated national convention, a convention explicitly modeled on the 1919

Liberal one that selected King as leader. Furthermore, Bennett and the Tories had clearly won a majority in the general election of 1930, with the Conservatives garnering 47.7% of the popular vote and 135 seats, compared to the Liberals 45.5% vote share and eighty–nine seats. The

Conservatives’ victory was also a truly national one, as they won the majority of seats in every province other than Saskatchewan and Quebec. Claiming that Bennett was simply another usurper like Meighen was simply not convincing.

Shifting ahead to 1935 and the situation was very different. The Liberals had recovered from their 1930 defeat and proceeded to win a majority government while the Conservatives suffered a complete collapse in both seat totals and their share of the popular vote. Furthermore, other parties that attempted to position themselves as alternatives to either major party, such as the recently formed CCF and the Reconstruction Party led by former Conservative Cabinet

Minister H.H. Stevens, failed to make an impact, winning only seven seats and one seat respectively. So how did the Liberals effectively position themselves to return to government after losing power only five years earlier? The party had not replaced its leader or prominent members of the party’s inner circle, nor did it offer either contrition for presiding of the economic collapse of 1929–30 or even a new economic policy to address the ongoing national economic stagnation. Yet, 1935 was the first of five consecutive majority governments that the

Liberals would win.

Due to the dramatic reversal of fortunes for both major parties in 1935, a number of scholars have sought to explain the outcome of this election. Since the Conservatives’ vote 119

collapsed while the Liberals’ vote share remained relatively consistent between 1930 and 1935,

the majority of historians have focused on what factors led voters to abandon the Conservatives

and generally have concluded that the proliferation of third party competition negatively affected

the Tories. Richard Wilbur, H.H. Stevens’s biographer, argues that it was Stevens’ own

breakaway party, The Reconstruction Party, which was the most effective third party in

siphoning away Conservative voters.2 Alternatively, historians Larry Glassford and Richard

Wardhaugh argue it was the multitude of third parties, from the Reconstruction Party to

Alberta’s Social Credit to the CCF, all competing for votes that hurt Bennett's re–election bid. In

particular, Wardhaugh highlights the effect of these parties on vote totals in the Prairie

Provinces.3 Finally, recent work by political scientist Richard Johnston has reinforced these

conclusions, demonstrating quantitatively how successful third parties attracted the majority of

support from the Conservative Party while leaving the Liberals relatively unaffected.4

Each of these scholars provide a clear and convincing answer for why the Conservatives

lost the 1935 election. Yet, they also leave an important question unanswered, namely why were

the Liberals able to maintain voter support when the Conservatives could not? One of the few

academics to engage with this question is Reginald Whitaker, who argues it was the Liberals’

ability to maintain an electoral machine despite the turbulence of the Great Depression that set

the party apart.5 Furthermore, Whitaker also argues that it is important to understand the electoral

and partisan politics of the 1930s because it represented a freezing of political alternatives.

Rather than abandoning the two traditional parties en masse, the majority of voters rejected third

2 Richard Wilbur, H.H. Stevens 1878–1973, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 200–205. 3 Glassford, 174 and Wardhaugh, Mackenzie King and the Prairie West. 4 Johnston, The Canadian Party System. 5 Whitaker, 28, 86. 120

party options and entrenched a two party system with a dominant centrist party.6 This chapter

will build on Whitaker's work and while it is impossible to know why people voted the way they

did, particularly in absence of detailed opinion polling, it is possible to analyze the discourses

parties and their leaders' employed to understand what the major themes of their campaigns

were. Hence, this chapter will focus on how, beginning in 1933, the King–led Liberals drew

inspiration from agrarian and labour critiques of Bennett's administration, along with their own

democratic messaging refined in the years campaigning against Meighen, to present voters with

an image of their party as the sole defenders of the democratic process.

Ultimately, rather than claim that Bennett had gained or held power illegitimately, King

and the Liberals presented voters with a narrative where an autocratic prime minister abused the

powers of his office and in doing so undermined the institutions and practices of the Westminster

system that allowed Canada to function as a democracy. In the interpretation of the Westminster

system the Liberals presented to voters, British subjects, which Canadians were until 1947,

enjoyed a collection of rights and liberties won for the people by liberal–minded political leaders

over the course of British and Canadian history. These rights and liberties, foremost among them

the right for the people to select their representatives, formed the foundation of Canadian

democracy and any attempt to limit them should be understood as an attack on democracy itself.

Critically though, what constituted these liberties was, in the Liberal campaign rhetoric,

exceptionally flexible and not tied to what historically had been the rights and liberties of British

subjects. Ultimately, this chapter will argue that by appealing to a purposely-vague conception of

Parliamentary governance, King and the Liberals sought to convince voters that the Conservative

6 Ibid, xiv–xvi 121

government of R.B. Bennett threatened Canadian democracy and created the basis for a fascist state.

In order to demonstrate this claim, this chapter will first examine how the Conservative

Party under R.B. Bennett described Canada's system of governance and the role of democratic thought in this system to the voting public. It will then turn to examine initial critiques of the

Bennett government from labour and agrarian MPs who later united to form the CCF. Finally, it will analyze the Liberals’ two–year campaign against Bennett and how the Liberals subsequently presented their victory in the federal election of 1935. The 1935 campaign thus represented the culmination of Liberal attacks on Bennett and the theme of protecting Canadians from an aspiring autocrat dominated the Liberals’ printed campaign material and public speeches leading up to the October 1935 election.

4.1 The Conservative Party under R.B. Bennett

Bennett's victorious leadership bid in 1927 was significant because it meant that for the first time in his almost decade long tenure as Liberal leader, Mackenzie King would campaign against a Conservative Party leader other than Arthur Meighen. The new leader of the

Conservatives, R.B. Bennett, despite superficial similarities, was a very different type of politician from the previous leader Meighen. Bennett, born in Hopewell Hill, New Brunswick, spent his first twenty–seven years in the Maritimes, earning his teaching degree and then his law degree from Dalhousie University. In 1897, he moved to Calgary and began working in the law firm of Conservative Senator James A. Lougheed. In Alberta, Bennett's legal career prospered and combined with his own shrewd investing, he amassed a large fortune. His first attempt to enter federal politics as a Conservative MP failed in 1900, but in the 1911 election, he successfully stood as a Conservative candidate for a Calgary riding and won election to the 122

House of Commons. However, Prime Minister Robert Borden did not select Bennett for his cabinet and, combined with his opposition to Borden's proposed Union Government of 1917,

Bennett chose not to defend his seat in the 1917 election. He returned to politics briefly in 1921 by winning a by–election and then served as Meighen's justice minister, but lost his seat in the

1921 election. Bennett once again returned to the House of Commons in 1925 via a by–election and was appointed as acting finance minister in Meighen's short–lived government of 1926, thus becoming a footnote in the history of the King–Byng Crisis. Bennett retained his seat in the 1926 election and following Meighen's resignation as Conservative leader, successfully ran for the party's leadership in 1927 at their first ever leadership convention. Thus, while Bennett had managed to distance himself from the Borden–led Union Government, he was a political ally of

Arthur Meighen and had been deeply involved in both of Meighen's attempts to govern during the 1920s.

Bennett's ultimate victory in the 1930 election owed much to the efforts of Maj–Gen

(ret.) Alexander McRae, who directed the party's public relations and publishing activities.

McRae, a former real estate and timber entrepreneur in Western Canada, joined the Canadian

Expeditionary Force (CEF) at the outbreak of World War I. Conservative Minister of Militia

Sam Hughes subsequently appointed McRae as head of the remount section, making him responsible for securing all the horses needed by the CEF. One of the few successful Hughes’ appointments, McRae eventually gained promotion to director of supply and transportation for the entire CEF. After the end of the war, he entered politics as a Conservative and successfully won his local Vancouver seat in the 1926 election. Departing leader Meighen subsequently recruited McRae to organize the 1927 leadership convention, which thanks to his organizational ability, was a success. Building on the momentum generated by the convention, and now funded 123

by contributions from Bennett and Montreal Gazette owner Hugh Graham, McRae built up a

network of grassroots Conservative organizations from coast to coast. Additionally, aided by

former Ottawa Journal, Winnipeg Telegram and Montreal Star journalist Robert Lipsett, the

Conservatives established a publishing facility in Ottawa that could produce and distribute over

250 000 pamphlets a week.7

During the campaign McRae acted as campaign manager, directing Bennett's travels and

ensuring that radio stations broadcast the leader's speeches, a first for Canadian politics. McRae

also hired Lipsett, to act as his assistant. Additionally, Lipsett was a good friend and sometimes

confident of Bennett which made him invaluable as a mediator between the leader and the

campaign manager McRae. Lipsett's major role was editing and printing The Canadian. A

weekly periodical that started in February of 1930 and published at the Conservative Party's

Ottawa office, The Canadian features a mixture of reprints of newspaper and magazine articles

and editorials, extracts from Hansard and transcripts of speeches given by prominent

Conservatives, often with a brief and partisan introduction from Lipsett. Given their close

relationship, Lipsett often sought Bennett's input regarding what to include in the publication,

meaning The Canadian captures the image the Conservative Party and their leader wanted to

present to the Canadian public.

Unlike Meighen in the 1920s, who had let King and the partisan Liberal media define

him, Bennett, aided by McRae and Lipsett, was proactive in creating a narrative about his party

and its animating principles. He also sought to respond to Liberal critiques and adjust his

message throughout his time in office. Starting in 1927 and continuing throughout his term in

7 Allan Levine, Scrum Wars: The Prime Ministers and the Media, (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1996), 156–158. 124

office, Bennett and the Conservative Party articulated a particular vision of how Canada should

be governed. Through an analysis of the party's official publications, the public remarks of key

party figures and correspondence between Conservatives, it is possible to identify the basic

themes that underlay the Bennett–led party's rhetoric. While their description of how politics

should function was indeed conservative, in that it closely aligned with longstanding

interpretations of how the Westminster system worked, Bennett did not represent a departure

from established discursive norms. Instead, the Tory leader reinforced the status quo, promoting

democratic ideas introduced by the Liberals in the 1920s while still drawing on the unwritten

constitution of the United Kingdom and the history of Canadian Parliamentary governance to

support his public positions. Yet the Conservatives’ ultimate appeal to convention and tradition

as a source of legitimacy failed to recognize how thoroughly the Liberals, along with the

economic devastation of the early 1930s, had redefined standards of legitimacy.

One of the key elements of the Conservatives’ rhetoric regarding how government should

function was the centrality of a strong prime minister supported by a united cabinet. In the

opening editorial from the third issue of The Canadian, published in April of 1930, three months

before the federal election, Lipsett outlined the Conservatives’ depiction of the role of prime

minister. Entitled “The Dignity of Government” Lipsett stated that:

When the Prime Minister speaks, the nation speaks. Sincerity and frankness are fundamentals of the position. The duty of leadership goes with it. The welfare, and not infrequently the security of the people are in the Prime Minister's keeping... No Prime Minister can afford to equivocate, to make statements, which lend themselves to different interpretations or to doubt.8

8 “Dignity of Government,” The Canadian Vol.1 No.3 1930, R1300 Vol.1490, Morris Norman Collection, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 125

While reading like a descriptive passage from a textbook, Lipsett articulated a key claim that

departed from standard political orthodoxy. In his description of how politics should function,

the prime minister was not only the leader of the party in Parliament but spoke as the voice of the

Canadian people. Despite the absence of a consultative mechanism by which Canadians could

grant such power, the Conservatives, much as King and the Liberals had done earlier, were quite

willing to claim this role for their leader.

A strong prime minister was only part of the equation though, and the leader needed

support from a unified cabinet. To reinforce this point, for the same edition of The Canadian

Lipsett selected an excerpt from a much longer 5 April 1930 editorial from Toronto Saturday

Night magazine, a publication that was broadly sympathetic to the Conservatives. The excerpted

text stated that:

By this present day it may, beyond all question, be said that solidarity among cabinet ministers is a cardinal and essential feature of the cabinet system... To any thinking person it must be obvious that unanimity in public among members of the same cabinet is a sine qua non of Parliamentary government and of ministry responsibility... It is intolerable that ministers professing opposite opinions on government measures should be encouraging the public to think what has been called the “cohesion of office” merely consists in the common interest of members in the importance and emoluments of their respective offices and has little, if any, relation to unanimity of opinion or speech. (Original emphasis)9

Lipsett's decisions on which sections of the editorial to print and to highlight for readers are

revealing. The editorial, as it originally ran in Saturday Night, was written to address what the

magazine's editor saw as the problematic lack of unity in King's cabinet. However, Lipsett's

selections do not mention King or the Liberals directly, instead highlighting the importance of

9 “Cabinet Solidarity,” The Canadian Vol.1 No.3 1930: 25. R1300 Vol.1490, Morris Norman Collection, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 126

the principles of collective ministerial responsibility and cabinet solidarity. These practices are

two constitutional conventions in the Westminster system that dictate that cabinet ministers will

keep cabinet discussions confidential and will publicly support the final decision reached by

cabinet, even if they privately disagree. For the Conservatives though, voting along party lines

on matters of confidence was not sufficient. Rather, they stated that ministers needed to publicly

support the prime minister on all issues and present a unified front to the country. Such support

on all issues was more than a question of party loyalty but was, in the Tories’ formulation, a key

responsibility of all cabinet ministers and the prime minister.

As the articles in The Canadian argued, the Conservative Party under Bennett was, like

the Macdonald Conservatives in the nineteenth century or Laurier Liberals in the early twentieth,

“a leader–centric organization that emphasized the importance of a strong leader supported by a

loyal party.”10 The Tories’ 1930 federal election campaign only reinforced this message. The fact

that Bennett was responsible for either directly funding or securing financial support for much of

the party's campaign infrastructure only increased his power and perceived importance to the

party. Additionally, McRae's campaign plan made Bennett the centre of attention, particularly by

encouraging Bennett to speak on the radio where his eloquence contrasted sharply with King's

often–impenetrable speaking style.11 Thus, in both the battle of rhetoric during the campaign, as

well as on the ground contest between the two parties, the Conservative Party relied extensively

on Bennett and indelibly linked the fortunes and appeal of their party with the public image of

their leader.

10 Ibid. 11 Levine, 158–159. 127

Ultimately McRae and Bennett's decision to speak to as many voters as possible – he

covered over 14 000 km by rail during the campaign – was vindicated by the 1930 election

results. Whether because of Bennett and the successful Conservative campaign, erosion of voter

trust in the King government or some combination of these and other factors, the Conservatives

managed to win 47.7% of the popular vote, which translated into 135 seats, twelve over the

threshold required for a majority government. In contrast, the Liberals only managed to win

45.5% of the popular vote and lost twenty–seven seats, sinking to eighty–nine. Now in power,

the Tories had the opportunity to implement the ideas they had advocated for in The Canadian.

As the governing party, the Conservatives continued to focus their rhetoric on the

importance of adhering to established practices and constitutional conventions. Vancouver area

MP and Cabinet Minister H.H. Stevens most clearly demonstrated the party's emphasis on this

point. In a letter to George A. Dobbie from 1932, a textile mill owner from Galt, Ontario,

Stevens stated that:

There is a very trite old saying that the first duty of the government is to keep in power. This, of course, is often looked upon as a very callous and sinister observation but in fact, it is logical because if a government does not keep in power its policies cannot be perpetuated. Therefore, if the policies are desirable it is necessary that the Government should be maintained...12

That the governing party should desire to remain in power is certainly not a surprise, even if

Stevens recognized that the voting public might view such a position with suspicion. Now that

the Conservatives formed government, their efforts switched from campaigning to governing and

implementing the policies they had campaigned on. Like all parties, the Tories relied on their

12 Correspondence between H.H. Stevens and George A. Dobbie of Galt, ON. 19 March 1932, MG 27 III B9, Vol.15 CCF Party and Conservative Party Organization, H.H. Stevens Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 128

majority in Parliament to pass legislation and prevent opposition MPs from embarrassing the

governing party in the Commons. However, Meighen had previously suffered because the

Liberals managed to portray him as power hungry because he was willing to take advantage of

constitutionally valid means of forming a government. King had also followed the exact same

maxim as Stevens and the Tories, but he simply presented the Liberals position more effectively.

For Bennett a key part of his role as the head of the governing party was to exercise,

along with his cabinet, executive power. As Bennett argued, a strong and active executive was

essential to ensuring the will of the people was made manifest. In an address to the Young

Conservative Association of Newmarket in September of 1933, Bennett defended his use of

executive power. He first told his audience that, “There is one problem I have given more

attention and thought to, although I have not been able to devise any means to meet it, and that is

the problem of how the will of the people may be made manifest.” Despite supposedly being

unable to propose a solution to the problem of popular representation, Bennett was clear that

democratic governance and the active use of the power of the Crown was complimentary. The

PM emphasized that:

It is almost incomprehensible that the vital issues of death to nations, peace or war, bankruptcy or solvency, should be determined by the counting of heads and knowing as we do that the majority under modern conditions – happily the majority becoming smaller – are untrained and unskilled in dealing with the problems with which they have to determine.13

While Bennett's opponents could – and did – selectively quote his speech to depict him as an

autocrat, what Bennett was publicly defending was not a negation of democracy but rather a

13 Address to the Young Conservative Association of Newmarket by R.B. Bennett, 7 September 1933, MG26 K, Vol.711, pp. 436788–436793, R.B. Bennett Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 129

defence of the Westminster system that conferred the power to make war or spend money to the

Crown. With the advent of responsible government, the Crown exercised these powers on the

advice of its ministers. Bennett asserted that there was no contradiction between the prime

minister exercising legitimate powers and ensuring that the government's actions reflected the

will of the people. In this established articulation of how Parliamentary democracy worked,

ensuring the will of the people was followed did not mean mechanically following the majority

on every issue.

Importantly, the Conservatives insisted there was no contradiction between supporting

both a strong prime minister and democratic principles. They portrayed efforts to label Bennett

an authoritarian as driven by hostile newspaper editors and not reflective of the party's actual

record while in power. In a letter to the prime minister discussing the role of Western Canadian

newspapers in partisan politics, Winnipeg Conservative and lawyer H.R. Drummond–Hay

emphasized his party's commitment to democracy. He wrote, “The fact that the present

Conservative government, under the leadership of R.B. Bennett, has shown itself to be the most

completely democratic of all the governments in Canadian history has proved a large and jagged

thorn in the aforementioned journalistic flesh.”14 Since the letter was part of a private

correspondence between the two men, Drummond–Hay's observations were unaffected by the

need to present a public image. Throughout the election campaign and their time in office

Conservative members defended in both public and private, the strictures of the Canadian

Constitution and their party’s adherence to them. Many party members equated adhering to

14 Correspondence between H.R. Drummond–Hay and Hon. R.B. Bennett, eighteenth August 1934, MG26 K, Vol.477 Dominion Election Law, pp.299766–299833, R.B. Bennett Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 130

constitutional conventions regarding Parliamentary practice with acting democratically and

viewed any suggestion otherwise as an unfair partisan attack. Unfortunately for the Tories’

electoral fortunes, their assumption that previous standards for judging the conduct of a

government were valid, failed to recognize that the conceptual ground was quickly shifting

beneath their feet.

Ultimately, Canadian voters would render their verdict on Bennett and his government's

vision for the country. Constitutionally, no Parliament could last longer than five years and 1935

was the Bennett government’s fifth year in power.15 All parties knew a federal election would

happen before January 1936 and consequently, began laying the intellectual groundwork for their

campaign. The Conservatives were already deeply unpopular as their 1930 Election promise to

use high tariffs to “blast their way into foreign markets” had largely failed and despite increasing

trade with the other Dominions in the British Commonwealth, it was not enough to mitigate the

effects of the Depression and the loss of the American market.16 Furthermore, Bennett's

unwillingness over his first four years in office to offer an extensive program of economic

intervention in response to the conditions of the 1930s alienated many of his allies. The internal

divisions in the Conservative Party became irreparable in early 1935 when Vancouver MP and

Minister of Trade and Commerce Henry H. Stevens resigned from cabinet. Stevens, who had

chaired a Royal Commission investigating price gouging in 1934, was incensed that Bennett

refused to implement the recommendations of this commission, known as the Price Spreads

Commission. By June of 1935, Stevens had quit the party and started his own Reconstruction

15 Constitution Act 1867, R.S.C. 1985, Appendix II, No.5, c.50. 16 H. Blair Neatby, The Politics of Chaos: Canada in the Thirties, (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2003). 131

Party to contest the 1935 election, running candidates in 170 out of 230 ridings across the

country. 17

In order to have any hope of reinvigorating his party, staying in power and defeating the

Liberals and CCF in the upcoming election, Bennett needed to present positive reasons for

Canadians to vote for him and his party. This political crisis became the impetus for what

Bennett described as a “New Deal” for Canadians. Beginning 1 January 1935 and continuing

over a series of five radio broadcasts throughout January, Bennett outlined a program of

significant economic intervention that the Conservative government would begin to legislate on

immediately. Among the many initiatives Bennett promised were minimum wage and maximum

workweek legislation, unemployment and hospital insurance, as well as various agricultural

support programs. Most prominent of these programs was the reestablishment of the Canadian

Wheat Board after its initial single growing season trial in 1919.18 Bennett, in close consultation

with his brother in law William D. Herridge who served as the Canadian envoy to the United

States, drafted this package of legislation during Bennett’s term in office. Herridge took general

inspiration and specific policy proposals from those of Franklin D. Roosevelt's “New Deal”

legislation proposed by the American President during the 1932 presidential election campaign.

However, Bennett's attempts to pass his wide–ranging legislation were undermined by a

prolonged period of illness from March until June 1935 that largely removed him from

Parliament for the winter and spring session.19 Yet, despite his illness, Parliament did pass key

17 For a discussion of Steven's career see Richard Wilbur's biography of Stevens. 18 Grant MacEwan, Harvest of Bread, (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1969), 103. 19 For details about Bennett's New Deal and its formation see Waite, In Search of R.B. Bennett. The full text of Bennett's five radio addresses can be found online at the Library and Archives Canada website. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/primeministers/h4–4049–e.html 132

sections of the Bennett “New Deal”, the most significant of which was legislation authorizing the

recreation of the Wheat Board and a complete reform of bankruptcy laws.

Throughout the 1935 campaign, Conservative candidates emphasized what they said was

an inalienable connection between defending British ideals and defending democracy. Yet many

of the party supporters’ protestations and restatements of their own beliefs failed to engage with

the substance of the attacks on them. Speaking to the Young People's Conservative Association

in Winnipeg, Conservative Candidate for the riding of North–Centre Winnipeg R.R. Pattinson

dismissed his opponents’ insistence that Canadians must vote Liberal to save their democracy.

Pattinson told his audience that:

Another Liberal poster I see is, “Vote for Hermanson and Save Democracy.” Well, I have nothing but good to say of my opponent Mr. Hermanson, but in 1812, my great grandfather fought against the United States to save this country for democracy and I did in 1914–1918. In all fairness, I think anyone that votes for me can count on my preserving democracy and I also think democracy is safe under a leader such as Mr. Bennett. In spite of the accusation made by Mr. King that Mr. Bennett is a dictator, has Mr. Bennett done anything in his five years in office that has not been ratified by Parliament?20

In discussing his family's military service, Pattinson argued that in fighting for the British

Empire in the War of 1812 and the World War I, his family had fought for democracy. For

Pattinson and his audience such a claim, despite its ahistorical nature, was not controversial. In

the popular imagination, British tradition was a flexible grouping of ideals that after World War I

was popularly associated with a defence of democracy. Hence, Pattinson's professed familial

loyalty to Britain made, in his mind, any acceptance of dictatorship impossible.

20 R.R. Pattinson, Conservative Candidate in North Centre Winnipeg, Speaking to the Young People's Conservative Association, 26th September, 1935, MG27 K, Vol.206 Civil Service Votes, pp.135174–135462, R.B. Bennett Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 133

Prime Minister Bennett also justified his actions by arguing that his legislation, in

particular the “New Deal” proposals, reflected the will of the majority of Canadians. Much as

Lipsett argued in The Canadian in 1930 that the Prime Minister spoke for the people of Canada,

Bennett now asserted that he legislated for them as well. During the 1935 campaign, the Tories

arranged for five national radio addresses where Bennett outlined his case for remaining prime

minister. In the second broadcast, Bennett contrasted the options before voters before telling the

Canadian electorate:

Your government will not permit the welfare of the great majority, the happiness of the people, to be imperiled by the cupidity of a very few, who, in the holy name of Big Business, bring discredit upon the rank and file of our industrialists and businessmen who have worked manfully in this time of stress. Mr. King says that this is the language of a dictator. When Mr. King was Prime Minister, there was certainly a dictator in Canada. But that dictator wasn't Mr. King.21

The purpose of these broadcasts, as revealed by Bennett's comments in the second one, was two–

fold. First was to reassure voters that his government had heard their demands for substantial

legislative action to alleviate the economic crisis and was responding. The second was to deal

with King and the Liberals’ claims that the means by which the Bennett government had enacted

this legislation was dictatorial. To counter King's allegations, the prime minister told voters that

the Liberal government had failed to act when in power in 1930 and by implication, the Liberals

would be equally inactive if returned to government. The reason for their inaction, Bennett told

his audience, was the Liberal Party was in thrall to a certain clique within the Canadian business

community that placed their desire for profit over the wants and needs of the majority of

Canadians. Hence, in Bennett's parlance, King was not a dictator, rather he was a tool used by

21 Radio Broadcast 1 through 4 from 1935 Election Campaign, MG27 K, Vol.713 General Election Campaign 1935 Speeches, pp.437740–437847, R.B. Bennett Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 134

corrupt financiers who were the real power behind the throne in Canada. The problem with these

claims was that while the Bennett administration had introduced substantive legislation in 1935,

they had consistently rejected large–scale intervention in the economy for the first four years of

their time in office. Bennett's earlier resistance to economic intervention had resulted in H.H.

Stevens leaving the party, an action which Stevens justified using similar language to Bennett's

comment on of King.22 Consequently, Bennett attacking King's inaction most likely came across

as discreditable and hypocritical.

Election night 1935 served as a major rebuke for the governing Conservatives. The party

lost ninety–five seats, slumping to only thirty–nine members in the House of Commons. The

Liberals were the benefactors of the Conservatives’ collapse, winning 171 seats, giving King and

his Liberals a massive forty–eight seat majority. In addition, dissident Conservative H.H.

Stevens' Reconstruction Party only won one seat, that of their leader Stevens, while the newly

formed federal branch of the Social Credit Party and the CCF won seventeen and seven seats

respectively. The popular vote totals, however undermine the narrative of a sweeping Liberal

victory. While the Liberals garnered 44% of the total vote, it was actually 1.5% lower than the

45.5% they had won in 1930. Granted, in absolute terms the Liberals gained 250 000 additional

votes, the story of the 1935 election was not Canadians flocking to the Liberal Party but rather

them abandoning the Tories, whose vote share dropped to only 30% of votes cast. The

proliferation of minor parties contributed much to the Tories’ decline in vote share. In the 1930

election, the two major parties received 93% of the total vote compared to 1935, where the

Liberals and Conservatives won a little less than 75% of the popular vote.

22 Wilbur, 100–105 135

The breakdown of election results from 1935 undermined the Liberal’s claim to have won a convincing mandate, however, what was clear was that a substantial majority of Canadian voters had sought an alternative to Bennett and the governing Conservatives. Critical to the

Liberals’ success was that they had been able to convince the vast majority of their voters in

1930 to continue to supporting the party. The support of many left–wing Liberals was by no means a given, as the nascent CCF most certainly held substantial appeal for many of these voters, as the success of the CCF in the BC provincial election of the fall of 1933 had demonstrated. Once the Liberals were able to maintain their own voting base, the proliferation of third parties actually aided King and his supporters. For the Liberals, the challenge in 1930 campaign had been convincing voters to abandon the Conservatives and switch to their party. In

1935, it became simply convincing them to abandon Bennett and his party. If the Liberals’ vote totals could remain static at around 45% then any voter who switched support from the

Conservatives to a third party like Social Credit or the Reconstruction Party was effectively helping the Liberals win. In employing popular democratic discourses, the Liberals could accomplish both their strategic aims. The could argue to left–wing voters that the Liberals would deliver democratic governance that was responsive to the needs of the people, while telling Tory supporters that their leader was an autocrat in waiting whom they should not vote for. Ultimately the election results, while obvious the result of many complex factors, do demonstrate that the

Liberals decision to emphasize popular democratic ideas in their campaign was an effective one.

4.2 Attacking Autocracy and Defending Democracy

In the months before the 1930 Federal Election, the Liberals treated the Bennett–led

Conservatives as simply a continuation of Meighen's rule under a new man. Given Bennett's role

136

in Meighen's short–lived 1926 government, such an approach was understandable. By proposing

continuity between the unpopular Meighen government and the new Bennett regime, the Liberals

attempted to create a biased narrative of Canadian history where their party was the defender of

the Canadian Constitution and democracy, against the autocratic Conservatives. In a pamphlet

entitled Liberal Clubs by Men and Women, issued by the Dominion Federation of Liberal Clubs

during the 1930 election campaign, the anonymous author celebrated his party's commitment to

the constitution and the role of the party in promoting democratic governance. The author stated

that:

Women cannot fail to admire the splendid battle, which the Liberal Party has always fought for constitutional principles. It is for us not only to appreciate these grand achievements but also to endeavour to have the people enjoy them to the fullest possible extent... Democratic government to the Liberals is an essential condition of the free growth of the individual soul.23

In the Liberals’ public communications at least, the constitutional principles that the Liberals

defended were democratic ones. Much as the Conservatives had equated fidelity to the

Westminster system as the equivalent of defending democracy, the Liberals also advanced such a

position. Except, the purpose of the pamphlet was to convince voters that it was exclusively the

Liberals who had defended important constitutional principle and continued to be inspired to

further action in defence of democracy. Regardless of how historically accurate the party's claims

that both the Canadian Constitution was democratic and that the Liberals had always been

staunch defenders of it, the extra–Parliamentary wing of the party wanted to present their party,

democracy and British traditions as inseparable.

23 Liberal Clubs by Men and Women, Dominion Federation of Liberal Clubs: Ottawa, 1930, MG28 IV3, Vol.1200, Liberal Political Pamphlets 1926 Election file, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 137

In attempting to construct a grand historical narrative that effectively demonized the

Conservatives, the Liberals were also responding to a pressing political liability. In particular,

these pamphlets were designed to deal with the damage King caused by stating publicly that his

government would not provide financial support to provinces who had elected Conservative

governments. Since the Conservative Party was in power in seven of nine provinces in 1930, that

meant denying assistance to a substantial section of the country. In order to manage the political

fallout from his statement, the National Liberal Federation (NLF) presented an alternative image

of King as the reconciling force Canada needed. Part of the Liberals’ attempts to deal with the

repercussions of King's comment was their pamphlet entitled “Strengthening the Foundations of

Confederation”. Its author claimed that:

The Liberal Party has had a more correct appreciation of the true nature of federal government... If most of the difficult constitutional and economic problems of Canada have been settled under Liberal Administration, it is because the Liberal Party has approached these problems in a spirit of conciliation and compromise.24

During the campaign the Liberal Party wanted to emphasize that because they were a brokerage

party based on reconciling competing interests, the party had the unique ability to resolve the

problems facing the country, in spite of their leader's public comment. The pamphlet went on to

state that:

“In a country situated as Canada is, with the necessity of reconciling the divergent interests of different races, creeds, provinces and economic groups, there is no higher quality of statesmanship than the gift of conciliation... With the many difficult problems that still lie before us, and the great task of welding the scattered sections of the Dominion into a united nation, Canada needs Mackenzie King at the helm of government.”25

24 “Strengthening the Foundations of Confederation,” Pamphlet #20, June 1930. MG28 IV3, Vol.1200, Liberal Political Pamphlets 1930 Election file, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 25 Ibid. 138

The Liberals argued that the party's record of action demonstrated it was the only party

committed to defending the constitution and so Canadians could trust them. Furthermore,

because their party functioned by melding multiple different interest groups together, the

Liberals under the leadership of King presented themselves as uniquely suited to govern Canada.

Essentially, the party’s campaign message implored Canadians to look at King's record of action

as leader of the party and discount specific public comments he had made.

To convince Canadians during the 1930 election campaign of the Liberals’ historic

commitment to democratic ideals, the party's extra–Parliamentary wing reprinted the text of

resolutions passed at their 1919 Convention in another pamphlet entitled “Liberalism and

Labour”. Among the resolutions were ones reaffirming the Liberals’ commitment to “the

restoration of the control of the executive by Parliament, and of Parliament, by the people

through a discontinuance of government by order–in council and a just franchise and its exercise

under free conditions.”26 Given the Liberals passed these resolutions while serving as the

opposition over eleven years ago, their relevance to the 1930 campaign would seem limited. Yet

the body of Liberal campaign literature, of which these three pamphlets were drawn from, sought

to create a historical narrative that celebrated the Liberals as defenders of Parliament and its

members’ rights and privileges throughout the history. The Liberals saw such actions as

democratic for they consistently depicted Parliament as the institution through which the

people’s will was made manifest. Rather than acting as the sovereign power, the Liberal view

portrayed Parliament – but really, just the House of Commons – as simply a conduit and by

26 “Liberalism and Labour,” Pamphlet #15, June 1930. MG28 IV3, Vol.1200, Liberal Political Pamphlets 1930 Election file, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 139

defending its powers, the party was defending the right of the people to govern themselves. A

right, by implication, that the Conservatives were keen to limit or remove.

Ultimately, the Liberals lost power after the 1930 federal election and were to serve as

the Official Opposition for the next five years. While the federal party struggled to create a

national strategy for how to attack the Bennett Conservatives and simultaneously identify the

factors that led to their defeat, the initial burden of articulating a consistent opposition line

against the Conservatives fell to the labour and agricultural groups who would later merge to

form the CCF. While the Progressive Party had largely disappeared by the 1930 election, with

only three members retaining their seats, many of the same people involved in the agrarians

protest movement of the early 1920s remained active in federal politics and continued to

mobilize farm and labour organizations. Many of these activists identified themselves as

democratic socialists and emphasized both the importance of democratic governance and the

threat that Bennett and the Tories posed to Canadian democracy. While James Naylor has

detailed how labour movements by the middle of the 1920s had rejected the tenets of the

Westminster system as flawed, many of the disparate components of the CCF were still willing

to appeal to the accepted political norms of the British system to justify their positions. In

particular, agrarian activists adopted a similar position to the Liberals during the 1930 campaign,

arguing that the House of Commons was a conduit for the rule of the Canadian people.27

Within the labour movement specifically, Independent Labour Party (ILP) MP James S.

Woodsworth, a Winnipeg clergyman who had served as the ILP representative for the riding of

27 For a discussion of Labourism and organized labour's embrace and then rejection of Parliamentary governance, see James Naylor, The New Democracy: Challenging the Social Order in Industrial Ontario, 1914–1925, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). 140

Winnipeg North since 1921, was the most prominent voice. As the economic crisis of the Great

Depression deepened throughout the first eighteen months of Bennett's term, Woodsworth was

increasingly critical of what he perceived as the prime minister's inaction. He laced his attacks on

Bennett with references to democratic principles and appealed to what he presented as an

idealized standard for democratic legitimacy. In February of 1932, Woodsworth told the house

that, “Although the nominal representatives of the people are supposed to form the government

of this country, in practice the real government is a financial oligarchy functioning through the

forms of democracy.” Rather than governing in the interests of all people, the Winnipeg MP

stated that, “We find our government of today functioning not in the interests of people but in the

interests of no more than, I should say, five percent of the people.”28 Woodsworth did not contest

the fact that democratic structures existed in Canada, but rather that financial interests had

corrupted elected representatives so they no longer represented the will of the people. Bennett,

with his wealth and connections to some of the largest corporations in the country, including

Canadian Pacific Railway, could easily be labeled as the embodiment of the pernicious influence

of money in Canadian politics. Thus, for democrats on the left, Bennett quickly became a

convenient representative of what they saw as deeper structural problems in Canadian politics.

Woodsworth's critiques of the prime minister and clashes with Bennett in the House of

Commons became symbolic for many on the left of the broader threat facing Canadian

democracy. On 22 February 1932, Woodsworth sought leave from the House, as per official

procedure, to introduce a Private Members Bill to repeal Section 98 of the Canadian Criminal

Code. As discussed in Chapter 2, the Union Government originally designed this section to

28 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 9 February 1932, (Mr. J.S. Woodsworth, Independent Labour Party). 141

combat sedition during World War I and had been the subject of multiple repeal attempts by the

Liberal Party during their time in power in the 1920s, each one defeated in the Senate. With the

Conservatives holding a majority of seats in the House, Woodsworth's proposed legislation

would never pass and it was unlikely it would even get beyond a first reading. However, the

Conservatives viewed the possibility of a debate where they would be forced to defend a

particularly divisive section of the criminal code as too much of a political risk. Consequently,

the prime minister used the Tories’ majority in the House to deny leave to introduce the bill.

While procedurally allowed, Bennett's actions represented a substantial deviation from

established practice. Since Confederation, a standing order had granted leave to any member

who wished to introduce a Private Members Bill. In 1913, the Commons amended the order to

stipulate that motions for leave were not debatable or amendable.29 Normally, a member would

only be denied leave if their bill required government expenditure without the necessary

Parliamentary resolution authorizing this outlay, or if the speaker ruled the bill out of order.

However, on rare occasions, after a member asked for leave to introduce a bill and gave a brief

outline to the House on their proposed legislation, members could choose to, with a majority

vote, negate the motion for leave and prevent the bill from being introduced. It was this

procedural tactic that Bennett and the Conservatives employed to prevent Woodsworth from

introducing his bill.30

While seemingly a matter of procedural wrangling with little practical political

consequence, the United Farmers of Alberta used this incident as evidence of Bennett's growing

29 Originally known as Rule 39, in 1913 this rule changed to Rule 17. In 1955 Rule 17 became Standing Order 68 (1), which was subsequently elaborated on with Standing Order 68 (2) in April of 1991. 30 Parliament of Canada, Annotated Standing Orders of the House of Commons 2nd Ed., (Ottawa: Parliament of Canada, 2005), Chapter IX. 142

autocratic power. In an article from their official magazine, The UFA, the farmers of Alberta

decried Bennett's actions as, “Ruthlessly outraging the British tradition to which in innumerable

public addresses he has vowed allegiance, and providing a demonstration of autocratic power

such as is without parallel in Canadian Parliamentary history.” However, the major issue for the

author of the article was not that the specific bill was defeated, but rather with the broader

precedent set by Bennett's actions. They argued that the larger issue at stake was:

Mr. Bennett’s use of his power over his followers to prevent even the introduction and discussion of a bill, which he disliked. If the precedent he has set were allowed to stand, even the consideration by Parliament of any proposal to which Mr. Bennett takes exception would be prevented. Nothing of which Mr. Bennett had not approved in advance could be discussed by the people’s elected representatives.31

As demonstrated in Chapter 3, the UFA and other farmers' groups had repeatedly commented on

partisan politics throughout the 1920s, attacking both the Liberal government and the system of

party governance in general, preferring the concept of group governance. However, in these

attacks on Bennett, the farmers never mentioned the Conservative Party; rather they describe

members as simply “followers.” The PM was the sole subject of attack and it was his autocratic

ambitions that the UFA warned Canadians of in their periodical. Beyond the alleged threat

Bennett posed to Canada's constitution, the UFA's specific issue with Bennett was that he stifled

the voice of the people by preventing individual MPs from fulfilling their role as popular

representatives. Of course, using one's majority in the Commons to prevent opposition members

from introducing bills for debate that could embarrass the government was legal. The real basis

of the UFA's objection was that Bennett had a majority government and was willing to use this

31 “Premier Bennett’s Autocracy: a Parliamentary Episode without Parallel in Canadian history.” The UFA, 1 March 1932, 6. 143

majority to advance the interests of his administration, as any party leader had the right to do.

What had changed since the 1920s was that rather than decrying party government in general, the

agrarians switched focus to the specific failings of the governing party's leader, much as the

Liberals had done a decade earlier.

It was not only Bennett's actions in the House of Commons that concerned agrarians.

Rather, many former Progressives presented his government’s support for policies such as

“Section 98” of the Criminal Code as a broader attack against all Canadians. In particular, they

objected to the 1931 Unemployment and Farm Relief Act. In addition to providing an initial

twenty million dollars to provinces and municipalities for infrastructure projects, section four of

the act also granted cabinet the ability, “to make such orders and regulations as may be deemed

necessary or desirable for relieving distress, providing employment and within the competence

of Parliament, maintaining peace, order and good government.”32 Referencing this act

specifically in an April 1933 editorial in The Western Producer, the Farmer–Labour Group of

Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan argued that:

We have in this country all too many evidences of a disposition to restrict the rights of the common man to back up his convictions by open advocacy of the things he believes to be right, as witness the use of the “iron heel.” In fact, this same person and a small group of associates have been successful in securing the right to do pretty well anything they in their judgment may consider the measures necessary for “maintenance of peace and good government.”33

By quoting the last phrase of section four of the legislation, itself drawn from BNA Act out of

context, the agrarians implied that Bennett had granted himself and his Cabinet near unlimited

32 An act to confer certain powers upon the Governor in Council in respect to unemployment and farm relief and the maintenance of peace, order and good government in Canada. 21–22 George V. Chap. 58, assented to 3 August 1931. Canada. Statutes of Canada. 33 Farmer–Labor Group of Meadow Lake, “The Pool and Politics,” The Western Producer, 27 April 1933. 144

power. Farmers and workers in this particular Prairie town presented the legislation not only as

threatening to the freedom of action for their elected representatives, but also to an individual’s

right to engage in political advocacy. Such limitations attacked the foundations of civil political

activity and for the agrarians, were a pre–emptive strike to prevent any democratic checks on

Bennett’s exercise of power. As demonstrated, many former Progressives depicted the different

pieces of legislation passed by Bennett in the first few years of his term as measures designed to

consolidate his power and provide a legislative base for greater authoritarian action.

These attacks on Bennett created a substantial strategic problem for the Liberals. King

and his party wanted to position themselves as the only plausible alternative to the Conservatives

come the next federal election. However, the changing political landscape of the early 1930s

made the Liberals’ attempts to portray themselves as the government in waiting increasingly

difficult. First, with the formation of the CCF, there was now a third party that had a presence in

substantial areas of English Canada and unlike the Progressive Party's challenge of the 1920s, the

CCF explicitly aimed to form government. Any ideas that the CCF only represented a fringe

alternative were dispelled after the British Columbia provincial election of November 1933

where the CCF won 31.5% of the popular vote and formed the official opposition in the

province.34 Furthermore, by incorporating various labour and agricultural organizations into their

federation, the CCF became a unified vehicle for previously disparate attacks on Bennett and his

alleged autocratic leadership. Yet, as discussed above, many of these attacks mirrored the

arguments the Liberals used against Meighen and the Conservative Party for the previous

decade, which created a substantial problem for the Liberals.

34 Elections BC, Electoral History of BC, (Victoria, Elections BC, 1988). 145

King needed to convince Canadians that they should return the Liberal Party to power despite the fact that the party had previously demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to prevent the worsening of the Great Depression over the course of 1930 and had no new policy ideas to present to the public. As such, the Liberals risked having their message of democratic accountability and cabinet governance undermined by the CCF, whose message resonated with

Canadians during the Depression.

After January 1935, the challenge for the Liberals further increased as the Bennett government's “New Deal” demonstrated that the Conservatives, and not just the CCF, were willing to support substantial government intervention in the economy to remedy the Depression.

With both of their major opponents presenting substantial positive agendas for change, the

Liberals lack of new ideas was now a substantial political liability. As well, many of these proposals, as far as rudimentary public polling determined, were very popular. Thus, rather than attacking the actual substance of either party's proposed legislation, the Liberals argued that the danger lay in how Bennett and his government either had, or proposed to, implement these policies. Consequently, over the course of the three years from 1932 to the Federal Election of

1935, the Liberals attempted to stake out a middle ground where they depicted both Bennett and the CCF as historically unprecedented threats to Canada and argued that only the Liberals could be entrusted to uphold the Westminster institutions and traditions that preserved Canada's democratic government.

The international and domestic political climate also helped lend credence to Liberal attacks on Bennett and the Conservatives as fascists in waiting. With Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome and take–over of Italy in 1921 as well as the subsequent ascension of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party to power in Germany, two European powers were now firmly in the control of 146

overtly fascist dictators. Additionally, in Britain Oswald Mosley and his British Union of

Fascists had gained a degree of notoriety, alerting Canadians to the threat of extreme right–wing

parties in Great Britain. More importantly, Canada’s self–style “Canadian Fuhrer” Adrien

Arcand and his Parti national social chrétien (PNSC) openly emulated Mosley’s tactics. While

Arcand subsequently distanced himself from the Nazis after 1937, his overt use of Nazi imagery,

ritual and symbols sent a clear message regarding his intentions.35 Combined with the

development of Swastika Clubs in English Canada and their attacks on Jewish Canadians,

particularly in Toronto during the summer of 1933, fascism no longer seemed like an abstract or

far away threat for many Canadians.36

Bennett also was sufficiently publicly associated with Arcand to provide a veneer of truth

to Liberal claims about the Conservatives’ autocratic intentions. Not only did he publicly praise

some of Arcand’s less radical but still anti–Semitic positions, he even arranged for an editorial

by Arcand to be distributed across Quebec. Furthermore, the Conservative leader in the Senate,

Edouard Blondin was an open admirer of Arcand and even wrote to Bennett encouraging

cooperation between the two men.37 While the Conservatives never did work with the PNSC,

these links provided ample fodder for the Liberals during the 1935 election.

While Parliament was sitting, the two main issues the Liberals chose to attack the Bennett

government on were their alleged abuses of orders–in–council and executive spending powers.

35 For an analysis of Arcand and his movement see Hugues Theoret, The Blue Shirts: Adrien Arcand and Fascist Anti–Semitism in Canada, (Trans. Ferdinanda van Gennip and Howard Scott, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2017). As Pierre Trepanier argues, Arcand’s fascism needs to be understood not as an extension of Nazism but rather of late nineteenth and early twentieth century French Catholic Anti–Semitism. However, most Canadians were not attuned to such distinctions. See Pierre Trepanier, “La religion dans la pensée d’Adrien Arcand,” Les Cahier des dix, 1991 (46): 207–247. 36 Lita–Rose Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf: Fascist Movements in Canada in the Thirties, (Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1977), 52–54. 37 Theoret, 75–78. 147

In order to argue that Bennett was a threat to democratic governance, King and the Liberals

presented a version of Canadian politics where the Conservative prime minister had alienated the

House of Commons monopoly over passing legislation and approving government spending.

However, in order to substantiate his argument, King presented a novel interpretation to the

Canadian public about how Bennett and his cabinet had actually utilized orders–in–council and

spent money.

To understand King's argument it is necessary to outline how orders–in–council

functioned in the Westminster system. They were a legitimate part of the governing process that

had evolved out of the traditional governance powers of the Crown. Initially, orders–in–council

were literally an order from the King or Queen, or in the case of the North American colonies the

governor, based on the advice they received from the Privy Council. Over time, Parliamentary

legislation gradually gained pre–eminence over orders from the Crown and these orders became

tools that allowed members of the Privy Council to aid the Crown in fulfilling its executive

function. With the advent of cabinet governance in Great Britain and later responsible

government in the colonies of British North America, orders–in–council were initiated on a

government minister's recommendation and after securing cabinet approval, were presented to

the Crown as an order signed by all of cabinet for the monarch or governor to approve.38 Unlike

government legislation, which needed to be passed by Parliament, neither the House of

Commons nor the Senate needed to approve orders in council. By the Interwar years, the

majority of these orders were simply Prerogative Orders, meaning they dealt with government

38 Peter Jupp, The Governing of Britain: The Executive, Parliament and the People, 1688–1848, (London: Routledge, 2006), 25. 148

appointments to the civil service, Crown Corporations and the Senate. In certain situations

though, these orders could be used to authorize government action to ensure legislation was

enacted. In these situations, Parliament would pass a bill known as enabling legislation, directing

the relevant minister to draft the appropriate order–in–council designed to ensure implementation

of a particular piece of legislation. Importantly, orders–in–council did not constitute a blank

cheque that allowed cabinet and the prime minister specifically, to govern without oversight. An

important check on cabinet's power to abuse this mechanism was a process known as negative

resolution. Under this measure, either the Canadian Senate or House of Commons could nullify

the order with a majority vote. As a final recourse, Parliament could pass a vote of non–

confidence in the cabinet and force the dissolution of the House of Commons. Thus, even

excluding challenging the legality of these orders in the courts, there were many mechanisms

available to check the executive's abuse of orders in council.

Regardless of the possible checks on the use of executive orders, the Liberal Party during

Bennett’s tenure as PM argued that the very use of this tool was a step towards autocracy. This

idea of the orders–in–council as an anti–democratic instrument was most explicitly stated in a

1935 campaign pamphlet issued by the central party. Entitled “For Peace, Order and Good

Government: The Liberal Way.” The pamphlet warned readers that:

In the event of the outbreak of war in Europe or elsewhere, and especially a war in which the United Kingdom might be involved, the present Prime Minister would have the fate of this country decided by the Executive authority of the government as expressed by Order in Councils, and not be reference to the elected representatives of the Canadian people assembled in Parliament.39

39 “For Peace, Order and Good Government: The Liberal Way,” Pamphlet #8, National Liberal Federation of Canada, 1935, MG28 IV3, Vol.991, Federal Election Campaign 1935 Scrapbook, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 149

Critically, the Liberals did not provide any actual examples of Bennett abusing orders in council.

Their attempt to invoke fears of Canada being dragged into a foreign war, while possibly

effective politics, was a misrepresentation of Parliament's authority. In particular, the ability to

make war or peace was not the prerogative of the House of Commons but rather of the Crown

and did not relate to how the prime minister used orders in council. As prime minister, King had

publicly recognized this reality in 1924 when speaking in the House of Commons on the Treaty

of Lausanne, which ended Britain's war with the Turkish Republic, the successor state of the old

Ottoman Empire. King told the House, “When His Majesty declared war, Canada was brought

into the war as a consequence of the declaration, and when the King ratifies the treaty, Canada

will be brought out just as she went into the war by the action of the sovereign without any

consultation with our ministers in that regard.”40 While the subsequent 1931 Statute of

Westminster limited Britain’s authority over Canada, it did not remove from the Crown the

prerogative of declaring war or making peace, only transferred this power to the newly created

Canadian Crown. Constitutional experts such as W.P.M. Kennedy further reinforced the Crown

and not the Common’s ultimate control over questions of war, even after the Statue of

Westminster.41 While the Prime Minister could promise a debate and vote on any declaration of

war in the House of Commons, as King did in 1939 with Canada’s declaration of war on Nazi

Germany, a vote not to go to war would not prevent Canada from going to war if the prime

minister requested a declaration from the Crown. King knew that such a debate and vote would

merely be symbolic and not have any legal force and furthermore, the issue was not related to

40 Canada, House of Commons Debate, 9 June 1924, (Mackenzie King, Liberal), 2928. 41 W.P.M. Kennedy, The Constitution of Canada 2nd Ed., (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 540–541. 150

orders in council. Yet, by capitalizing on Canadians' fear of a foreign war and conflating the

issue with preserving Canadian democracy, the Liberals were able to construct a particular

narrative of Bennett as an autocrat.

The Liberals’ campaign literature relied on a particular interpretation of how the Bennett

government used orders in council because the prime minister had, as King's government before

him, employed these orders as a constitutionally valid tool for governing. In order to address the

counter–argument that Bennett had simply exercised valid executive powers as authorized by

relevant enabling legislation, the Liberals argued the enabling legislation itself was illegitimate.

The two acts that drew the majority of criticism were the Unemployment and Farm Relief Act

1931 and the Public Works Construction Act 1934. Much like the farmers and labourers of

Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, the Liberals also objected to section four of the legislation.

Additionally, the Liberals attacked section five of the act, which stipulated, “All orders and

regulations shall have the force of law and shall be enforced in such manner and by such court

officers and authorities as the Governor in Council may prescribe, and may be varied, extended

or revoked by any subsequent order or regulation.”42

The second act, the Public Works Construction Act 1934 was, in many ways, simply an

extension of the 1930–31 farm relief legislation. It authorized the government to spend $40

million on “construction of certain public works” except, rather than distributing the money to

provinces and cities, the federal government would be responsible for all aspects of the

construction projects. The act also greatly expanded the authority of cabinet to use orders in

council. Of particular note was section two of the act, which stipulated, “The Governor in

42 Ibid, 541–542. 151

Council is hereby authorized to enter into all such contracts and agreements and do all such other

acts and things as may be necessary and expedient for the purpose of executing and completing

several works and undertakings mentioned in Schedule A to this act.”43 According, for the

Liberals these sections of the Relief Acts demonstrated, “the extent to which the present

government is willing to go in these times to exercise the autocratic powers conferred upon it by

such legislation as the Relief Act.”44

In their campaign literature, the Liberals highlighted the particular powers conferred on

government ministers by the 1931 Act. While the Liberals accepted that ministers needed the

ability to act in their executive function, they must be deferential to Parliament. In their

pamphlet, entitled Dictatorship or Freedom, the NLF argued that cabinet ministers’ willingness

to use these powers while Parliament was sitting constituted the real problem. They told voters:

When Parliament is not in session, to take all such measures as in his discretion may be deemed necessary or advisable to maintain, within the competence of Parliament, Peace, Order and Good Government throughout Canada; and at all times to take all such measures as in his discretion may be deemed necessary or advisable to protect and maintain the credit and financial position of the Dominion or any province thereof. In 1933, he went further and used this power while Parliament was in session as well.45

While granting Bennett and his cabinet a fair degree of leeway in administering relief programs

and empowering them to use orders in council to implement a broadly defined agenda, the two

bills were entirely legitimate in that they would have withstood any court challenge.

43 An act to provide for the construction and improvement of certain public works and undertakings throughout Canada. 24–25 George V, Chap. 59. Assented to 3 July 1934. Canada Statues of Canada. 44 “For Peace, Order and Good Government: The Liberal Way,” Pamphlet #8, National Liberal Federation of Canada, 1935, MG28 IV3, Vol.991, Federal Election Campaign 1935 Scrapbook, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 45 Dictatorship or Freedom, National Liberal Federation, 1935. MG28 IV3, Vol.991, Federal Election Campaign 1935 Scrapbook, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 152

Furthermore, the provisions of the 1931 Act had been approved by Parliament and it could either

repeal the bill entirely or limit the minister's use of orders in council to govern, but decline to do

so. The Liberals’ critique was not, however a legal one, but rather rooted in the fact that the

Conservatives controlled a majority in the House of Commons and their MPs were unwilling to

check the actions of the prime minister and cabinet due to partisan loyalty. The failure of the

Tory caucus to limit their leader’s use of these instruments created a situation where, according

to the Liberals, Bennett could abuse the provisions included in these specific pieces of

legislation. To further these allegations, the Liberal campaign also claimed that, “The present

prime minister would have the fate of this country decided by the executive authority of the

government as expressed by order in council and not by reference to the elected representatives

of the Canadian people assembled in Parliament.”46 Similar to King's reference to issues of war

and peace, the Liberals did not cite examples of how the Bennett administration had operated in

this manner. Rather, they argued that Bennett had created the legislative means to limit

democratic governance if he was emboldened with another majority government.

It was not only the Conservatives’ use of orders in council that King argued was

dangerous to Canadian democracy. According to King, the Bennett administration had also

abused the discretionary spending power granted to cabinet ministers by the Relief Acts. The

clearest articulation of the Liberals’ disagreement with the Conservative over spending powers

was outlined in a speech entitled “Alienation of Parliamentary Authority and Control” given by

King in the House of Commons in January of 1935. In his speech, King did not comment on the

46 “For Peace, Order and Good Government: The Liberal Way,” Pamphlet #8, National Liberal Federation of Canada, 1935, MG28 IV3, Vol.991, Federal Election Campaign 1935 Scrapbook, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 153

substantive goals of the Relief Acts but focused on how Bennett had used the spending powers

granted to his government in the bill. In his particular interpretation of political norms, King

presented to his listeners, “In no ways are the rights and liberties of a people more effectively

secured than in the degree of control which their representatives in Parliament are able to

exercise over money matters.” The issue for King was that Bennett and his cabinet had corrupted

this process. King went on to explain that:

The largest expenditures made during the years the present administration has been in office, expenditures with respect to unemployment in one form or another... all of this money was taken from the public treasury, not under the rules and procedures and practices which obtains generally to the grants of public monies, monies appropriated in amounts set forth in detail in estimates presented to Parliament for consideration and discussion, but under authority and power taken from Parliament to itself by the executive.47

As discussed above, the two acts, titled The Unemployment and Farm Relief Act and The Public

Works Construction Act, granted substantial discretionary spending powers to cabinet ministers.

In addition to acting as enabling legislation for orders in council, they also granted cabinet

ministers a large degree of leeway in deciding how to spend relief money. In particular, section

seven of the act authorized cabinet ministers to direct work “when delay would be injurious to

the public interest.” It also allowed ministers to authorize construction projects under the

supervision of the relevant department without “inviting tenders.”48 Rather than object to the

projects themselves, many of which were exceptionally popular, King instead focused on the

process, arguing that only having the House approve the initial $20 000 000 grant and the

47 “Alienation of Parliamentary Authority and Control” Speech by Mackenzie King, January 1935, MG26 J4, Vol.201, Parliamentary Supremacy File, p.140050, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 48 An act to provide for the construction and improvement of certain public works and undertakings throughout Canada. 24–25 George V, Chap. 59. Assented to 3 July 1934. Canada, Statues of Canada. 154

subsequent $40 000 000 program in 1934 and not each individual project was a complete

alienation of Parliament's powers to control spending. In this articulation of Parliamentary

democracy, King argued that the House of Commons needed the ability to oversee and

ultimately control government spending. If the Commons, which represented the people, could

not exercise this control in a meaningful way beyond approving lump sums then an excessively

powerful executive imperiled democracy in Canada.49

King’s explanation of Parliament’s role in controlling expenditure was constitutionally

valid. The legislature's ability to control public monies had traditionally been the means by

which members of the elected assembly could limit the power of the executive. While the

Commons had to approve both the collection of public money through taxation and its

expenditure, it was the role of the Crown, as advised by cabinet, to disperse the funds. In this

regard, Bennett and his government could argue they had acted entirely in accordance with

established practices. Rather, King's objection was that the spirit and not the letter of the law was

breached, as the government had not granted the Commons sufficient oversight regarding

specific spending initiatives. As a result, the Liberals presented this process as, “a stealthy

alienation of the authority and control of Parliament over expenditure of public monies.”

Accordingly, the consequences of these actions if they continued would be disastrous to

Canadian democracy. King told his audience that, “To be rid of the control of Parliament in the

say of the amount of public monies to be or not to be expended, is going pretty far on the road to

49 For a detailed discussion about this act in relation to national parks see Bill Waiser, Park Prisoners: The Untold Story of Western Canada's National Parks, 1915–1945, (Markham: Fifth House Publishers, 1995). For a broader discussion about Bennett government’s spending practices see Robert Bryce, Maturing in Hard Times: Canada's Department of Finance through the Great Depression, (Montreal–Kingston: McGill–Queen's University Press, 1986), 67–85. 155

a complete dictatorship.”50 Despite legally passing the government's budget and maintaining the

confidence of the House, at the core of his argument, King highlighted the potential for abuse

imbedded within the relief legislation bills. Thus, much as the party had done with Meighen, the

Liberals appealed to certain principles of democratic governance to counter arguments from the

Conservatives regarding the legal validity of their actions.

In order to convince Canadians of their narrative of an autocratic leader in waiting

enabled by the Conservative Party and countered by a principled Liberal opposition, the NLF

highlighted past public comments by Conservatives that supposedly revealed this hidden agenda.

In a publication unambiguously titled “Dictatorship or Freedom” the Liberals took selective

quotes from Conservative and Liberal politicians and reprinted them to prove that the Liberals

stood for democracy while the Conservative Party rank and file were enabling Bennett's

autocratic ambitions. In the French version of the pamphlet entitled “Dictature ou Liberté?” the

NLF printed a quote from Quebec MP Charles M. Dorion stating, “Mussolini! Cela ne constitue

pas une insulte pour le chef du parti conservateur. Nous acceptons le titre comme un compliment

à l'adresse de notre premier ministre.”51 By supposedly revealing the autocratic sympathies of the

rank and file Conservatives, the NLF hoped to demonstrate that Conservative members were

more interested in maintaining power than protecting democracy. More specifically, to

demonstrate their point about Parliament enabling Bennett through accepting his use of orders–

in–council, the NLF pamphlet quoted Nova Scotian and Conservative Party MP Isaac D.

50 “Alienation of Parliamentary Authority and Control” Speech by Mackenzie King, January 1935, MG26 J5, Vol.201, Parliamentary Supremacy, file, p.140050, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 51 “Dictature ou Liberté? Pamphlet #20, Fédération Libérale Nationale du Canada. 1935, MG28 IV3, Vol.991, Federal Election Campaign 1935 Scrapbook, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 156

MacDougall telling the chamber that, “the great majority in this house have faith in their Right

Hon. leader and will be prepared to delegate power to the cabinet.”52 For the Liberals,

MacDougall's statement demonstrated King's contention from earlier in 1935 that the Bennett

government simply relied on its “mechanical majority” to take power away from the Commons.

The Liberals’ overall message was that all Conservative members were complicit in Bennett's

actions and voters should hold them accountable.

Beyond these specific grievances, the Liberal Party also invoked the concept of the

democratic mandate to condemn the Bennett Administration. King and the Liberals argued that

Bennett had not secured a mandate from the people to implement the sweeping changes he

proposed in his “New Deal”. The fact that the Conservatives had won a majority government in

1930 was irrelevant in King's rhetoric, as the prime minister had not campaigned on the actions

his government was now taking. In a speech entitled “We Are Told Old Order Not Only

Changed, But Gone,” King argued that in order for the “New Deal” proposals to be legitimate

the Bennett government needed the expressed approval of the Canadian people. King asserted in

his speech that, “Another custom under the British system is that where a ministry announces

policies different from those on which is has been elected to office it resigns and submits them to

the people.” Instead of securing a new mandate from the people, Bennett, like Meighen did

fourteen years earlier, decided to “avail himself of his mechanical majority in the House to place

on the statutes further measures, some of which no doubt will be wholly reactionary. All of this

is subversive of the British system of government (Original emphasis).” King then concluded

52 Dictatorship or Freedom, National Liberal Federation, 1935. MG28 IV3, Vol.991, Federal Election Campaign 1935 Scrapbook, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 157

with what was now a hallmark of most of his public remarks throughout 1935, warning

Canadians that, “We have in all this a change in our political institutions so far reaching as to

constitute the difference between Democracy and Fascism and Nazi–ism.”53 While King could

argue that there was a precedent in the British system, it involved a novel interpretation of recent

British political history. As discussed in Chapter 2, in 1911 the Liberal government of the United

Kingdom introduced legislation designed to remove the House of Lords’ ability to veto budget

bills passed by the House of Commons. The Lords blocked this legislation, like the Liberals’

1911 budget before it. In response, the prime minister requested King Edward VII dissolve the

House and call a general election so that the Liberals could secure a strong mandate from the

voting public for passing both the budget and the reform legislation. While not an isolated

incident, the idea that any government who held a majority of seats in the Commons was

required to seek re–election before introducing legislation it had not campaigned on was not an

established constitutional convention. King was an astute Parliamentary observer and most likely

recognized that he was extending the precedent of 1911 to cover a different set of circumstances.

Rather than debate the particulars of constitutional conventions however, the broader purpose of

King’s remarks was to support his claim regarding the undemocratic nature of Bennett's

Conservatives and their departure from the norms defended by the Liberals.

William Henry Moore also reinforced King's message about Bennett and the Tories in

one of his pamphlets for the Economic Liberal Institute. In his 1935 work The Lion's Lair,

Moore argued that the Canadian people delegated their sovereign power to the government as a

53 Speech Notes of Mackenzie King for speech entitled “We Are Told Old Order Not Only Changed, But Gone,” 1935, MG26 J4, Vol.156, File 1388 Conservative Party, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 158

whole and that said power was returned to the people when the government's mandate expired.

However, under a Bennett or a CCF government, Moore feared for the future of democracy in

Canada, writing, “I venture to predict you will be looking back on the vote cast in this election as

your final participation in the act of self–government.”54 Much like King, Moore emphasized the

supposed dangers of any party other than the Liberals gain power. He then went on to implore

his readers to:

Remember, please, it is the people who possess power over themselves and only for convenient exercise do the delegate it to their representatives, and mind you, they part with power over themselves only for specific period (democracy reserves the right to change its mind). When the period has expired, the power must be returned (as at the present juncture) and the people again proceed to exercise their judgment in government.55

What Moore outlined in his pamphlet was a simplified description of the concept of popular

sovereignty. In Moore's articulation, the people are sovereign and delegate their sovereignty to

the government, thus allowing it to govern with the consent of the people. Importantly, Moore

did not refer to individual parliamentarians elected on a riding–by–riding basis. Instead, he

referred only to the government as a single entity, headed by the prime minister. The problem is

that despite Moore's assertion to the contrary, the Canadian people were not sovereign and did

not elect a government, but rather voted for individual MPs to represent their riding. As outlined

in Chapter 1 of this dissertation, in the Westminster system, it is Parliament that is sovereign and

in Canada during the 1930s, ultimate sovereignty arguably rested with the British Parliament in

London. Moore was however, correct in asserting that the people were represented in Parliament

54 William Henry Moore, The Lion's Lair, (Pickering, ON.: Economic Liberal Institute, 1935), 3 55 Ibid. 159

through electing members to the House of Commons, which by the 1930s was ascendant over the

Senate and the Crown, the other two elements of Parliament.

Critically though, such representation did not mean the people had delegated their sovereignty to Parliament. Rather, the people elected members to the House of Commons who then chose to support a cabinet selected by the Crown. Hence, the lack of requirement for the governing party to win even a plurality of votes cast nationally, for so long as the party, through its leader, commanded a majority in the House of Commons, it would continue to govern. The major challenge for the Liberals was that Bennett commanded a solid majority in the Commons and until the next election, there was little the Liberals could do to stop Bennett from governing.

Since the Conservatives were ascendant, the Liberals’ response was to present a vision of how the Canadian system should function if its leaders were committed democrats. Then when the

Tories inevitably failed to live up to the democratic standards set by the Liberals, King and his allies could tell Canadians that they risked a dictatorship similar to Italy, Russia or Germany.

While their arguments for Bennett being an autocrat rested on how they alleged

Parliament should function, the Liberals’ argument that the Conservatives had restricted the historic rights and freedoms of British subjects in Canada, as all Canadian were until 1947, was based on an appeal to past practice. Even before he became prime minister, Bennett and the

Conservatives had used their numerical advantage in the Senate to block Liberal attempts to repeal “Section 98” of the criminal code. Furthermore, The Unemployment and Farm Relief Act and The Public Works Construction Act contained provisions that amplified the powers granted to the police under Section 98 to prosecute “subversive activity”. Additionally, Bennett had demonstrated a willingness to order the police to suppress popular demonstrations against his government, most notably the RCMP's violent break–up of the On–to–Ottawa trek in Regina in 160

1934, leading to the “Regina Riot.”56 Even traditionally Conservative newspapers such as The

Ottawa Journal were critical of Bennett's willingness to use the national police force against

political dissidents. In an editorial published in the paper regarding the use of the RCMP to

disrupt a left–wing protest on Parliament Hill, the head editor of the paper Grattan O’Leary

wrote:

The Journal has no sympathy with lawlessness or with Reds. It doesn't believe in “demands” nor in “threats”. But neither does the Journal believe in the almost craven and un–British things that went on on Parliament Hill yesterday; in this Chicago–like flaunting of firearms; in a scene that smacks more of Fascism than of Canadian Constitutional authority.57

Yet rather than distance himself from these actions, Bennett publicly embraced his role as an

anti–communist champion, asking Canadians to “Put the iron heel of ruthlessness against

[communism].”58 The Liberals sought to turn the image Bennett presented to the public of a

strong leader and defender of “British values” against him; that in his zeal to protect against

communist subversion, Bennett was putting Canada on the road to a right–wing dictatorship. The

occasional denunciation by a sympathetic conservative newspaper only helped to advance the

Liberals’ message as they gladly reprinted O'Leary's editorial in their 1935 campaign pamphlets.

King and the Liberals also reinforced the idea that Bennett was a threat to Canadians’

liberty in speeches during the 1935 campaign. In the Liberals’ rhetoric, Bennett's alleged attacks

on Canadians’ liberties were an attack on democracy itself. In his pamphlet The Lion's Lair,

referenced above, Moore, on behalf of the Liberals, emphasized what he saw as the innate

connection between liberty and democracy. Moore told his readers that an integral component of

56 For details about the On–To–Ottawa Trek and the Regina Riot see William Waiser, All Hell Can't Stop Us: The On–to–Ottawa Trek and Regina Riot, (Markham, ON,: Fifth House Publishing, 2003). 57 Grattan O'Leary, “Editorial” The Ottawa Journal, 4 March 1932. 58 Quoted in Waite, 163. 161

liberty was the ability for people to govern themselves, which meant the freedom to elect their

representatives.59 Furthermore, it was this right that underpinned the basic principle of equality.

Moore wrote, “The right of all sane grown–up citizens to vote in selecting candidates for the

governing body; and in that way we have approached political equality (although we may not

have quite secured it).”60 King drew on these ideas in his public speeches, texts of which were

subsequently edited and abridged for publication, to argue that these liberties were the

cornerstone of liberalism itself. According to transcripts, King told his audience on 17 September

1935, “The individuals and the nations which discard Liberalism, pay by losing their liberty.

When liberty goes, little else remains.” King continued, stating that, “[Liberalism] will serve to

hold Canada true to the ideals of democracy, and to preserve our country from dictatorship.

Sooner or later, Dictatorship leads inevitably to the destruction of liberty.”61 In King's outline of

the political climate at the time, the individual issues on which the Liberals opposed the Bennett

government, from the provisions of the relief acts to “Section 98” of the criminal code, were not

isolated incidents but rather part of a sustained attack on Canadians’ basic liberties and thus a

threat to democracy as a whole.

For the Liberals, the overall consequences of Bennett's actions was to initiate Canada's

descent into fascism. The hidden fascist intentions of the Conservative government was a theme

repeated throughout King's speeches, at Liberal campaign events, in newspapers and party

publications leading up to the 1935 election campaign. The clearest articulation of this idea

59 Moore, 2. 60 Moore, 4. 61 Mr. King Replies to Mr. Bennett September seventeenth, 1935, National Liberal Federation, MG28 IV 3, Vol.991 National Campaign Scrapbook 1935, Mackenzie King Fonds. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 162

comes from the transcript of a speech King gave to the House of Commons in January of 1935.

In his remarks, King told the assembled members that Bennett's style of governance was:

...A long step on the way to what in Europe finds its expression in Sovietism, Nazism and Fascism... It must be apparent that once a stage is reached where Parliament is called together simply more and more to give formal sanction to measures which give to the Executive control over unlimited expenditures, and the power to legislate on the more important matters independent altogether of further authority or control on the part of Parliament the Fascist state is already largely in existence.62

The basic problem with King's claims though, was the gap between how Bennett governed and

the claims the Liberals made. There certainly were legitimate critiques to be made about the Tory

administration, but when compared to Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia they were

relatively minor. Consequently, the Liberals emphasized that Bennett was creating the

conditions, which would allow such dictatorships to emerge if re–elected. Essentially, the

Liberals’ allegation was that Bennett had a hidden agenda to destroy Canadian democracy which

he had laid the groundwork for in his first term and would be implemented only when freed from

the threat of losing power for another five years.

After 1932, the Conservative Party ceased to be the only substantive threat to the

Liberals’ election chances. As King's comparison between the CCF and the communist Soviet

Union demonstrated, the Liberals were willing to invoke the specter of autocracy when dealing

with all political opponents, the nascent CCF included. King reflected the idea that only a vote

for the Liberals would preserve Canada’s democratic government in his 1933 speech in Rock

Lake, Manitoba quoted at the beginning of the chapter. King presented the stakes of the next

election as quite clear. He told his audience that, “Restoring and safeguarding of representative

62 Ibid. 163

government in Canada was one of the most important questions that the people will have to

decide at the next election.” He went on to repeat the claim that Bennett was a dictator who

threatened Canadian's rights. Canadians still had an option though, King continued on, stating

that:

At the next election, you will have three choices. You can vote for the Tory autocracy, which is bad, for the CCF autocracy, which is worse or for the Liberal Party, which as always will deal with the great public questions as from time to time they arise, in the best interests of everyone as decided in Parliament by the people themselves... You are free to send to Parliament those whom you think are best able to serve you. The CCF however, is an autocratic body who will tell you what you should do, where you shall work and what you shall be paid, if ever you have them in control of the government.63

In King and the Liberals’ rhetoric, the Bennett Conservatives were leading Canada down the

road to fascism or Nazism. Yet turning towards the CCF would also be a mistake, as they simply

embraced a different form of dictatorship. Hence, King sought to convince the crowd that the

CCF possibly posed an even greater danger than the Tories. The CCF's promise of economic

planning, as outlined in the Regina Manifesto, was for King, a promise to implement a

dictatorship by depriving individuals and their elected representatives of the freedom to legislate

on “great public questions.”

In order to advance their proposition that the CCF was a dangerous organization, the

Liberals also relied on economic organizations with a decidedly Liberal partisan bent to amplify

these claims. One of these was the Economic Liberal Institute, an Astro–turf organization created

and funded by prominent Liberal supporters in business and industry with the purpose of

advancing Liberal political interests. This group commissioned Moore to write a series of

63 All quotes taken from a transcript of King's speech published in article by T.H. Hart, “King Says People Must Vote for Restoring Rights,” Winnipeg Free Press, 24 July 1933, 1. 164

pamphlets for public consumption. Given both the organization's partisan leanings and Moore's

position within the Liberal Party, the political agenda of these publications is unsurprising.

Moore wrote, “In practice, social democracy has ceased to be democratic: fascism is frankly

autocratic; liberalism is alone capable of maintaining self–governing institutions.”64 While most

of the Liberals’ attacks on their political opponents were based on how they would subvert the

political process, Moore's articles were nominally concerned with economic issues. However, he

still attempted to connect economic and political actions, arguing that the proposed economic

solutions to the Great Depression, be they left–wing socialism or right–wing fascism, were both

threats to democracy. While not outlining how, Moore stated that these extremist ideologies

would destroy the institutions that allowed the Canadian people to govern themselves.

The Liberals’ allies in the print media were also part of a broader effort to label any

alternative to the Liberal Party as anti–democratic. In June of 1933, Toronto's Globe reprinted

extensive selections from a speech that King gave to the Twentieth Century Liberals on the

subject of the CCF.65 King told the young Liberals that, “[The CCF and Tories] were both

dictatorships in their own way, and there was evident in each case [of] a desire to subordinate the

individual and force him to accept the conditions imposed by the party.” In contrast to their

political opponents, King stated that the Liberals “believed in greater liberty and larger freedom

for the people.”66 King did not focus on Bennett but individual Conservative MPs, which he

argued enabled the prime minister. Yet, whether it was the Tories or the CCF in power, King

64 William Henry Moore, The Strange Case of Bridget McAlister, (Pickering, ON.: Economic Liberal Institute, 1935). 65 The 20th Century Liberals were the youth wing of the Liberal Party, identified by the fact that their members were born in the twentieth century. 66 William Marchington, “CCF Dictatorial, Young Liberals told by Mr. King,” Toronto Globe, 5 June 1933. 165

emphasized that both were opposed to granting the Canadian people the freedom to determine

their own destiny.

The Winnipeg Free Press also echoed the idea that left wing radicals were as dangerous

as right wing reactionaries were. In a series of editorial from July of 1934 penned by head editor

J.W. Dafoe, the paper told its readers that, “In the Dominion Parliament, the parties of the Right

and the Left have joined forces, with enthusiasm, in bringing in a system which replaces, in

many fields of human endeavor, a government of laws by a government of officials.”67 The next

day Dafoe specifically focused on the CCF and detailed the exact threat he argued this new party

posed to Canadian democracy. In the editorial entitled “The CCF Expresses Itself” Dafoe stated

that the socialist alternative to the Conservatives was not a real alternative at all. Dafoe told his

readers that:

In their natural tendency towards economic control and in other autocratic and bureaucratic similarities, the CCF and the Conservative Party have much in common and the idea of the country adopting policies based on Liberal non–bureaucratic principles is as little desired by Mr. Woodsworth, who is out for a Socialist state, as it is repugnant to Mr. Bennett, who champions the protected state... Liberalism, with its curious insistence on the old–fashioned virtues of personal liberty and individual freedom has first of all to be destroyed: as it has been in the countries where state control has superseded constitutional government and democratic institutions.68

While their motivations were different, Dafoe equated the Conservatives and the democratic–

socialist CCF, for both embraced the same top–down model of economic control. The only

difference between the two was who would be the beneficiary of state control and from what

pool they would draw the “government of officials”. Dafoe also connected the values of liberty

and freedom, which he implied only the Liberals supported, with the preservation of democratic

67 “Assault upon Government by Law.” Winnipeg Free Press 18 July 1934, A6. 68 “CCF Expresses Itself.” Winnipeg Free Press 19 July 1934. 166

institutions and the constitution itself. Regardless of whether aspiring tyrants were from the right

or the left, they were intent on marginalizing what the Liberal Party stood for. In portraying all

opposition parties as the same, the Liberals and their allies were happy to present a rather stark

dichotomy to Canadians, either one votes for the Liberals or else they send the country down the

road towards tyranny.

Despite their bleak vision of the country's fate should voters keep the Conservatives in

power or turn to the CCF, the Liberals did offer partisan–tinged hope. If the current problem was

the Bennett government, and the other alternatives were even worse, then the solution to restore

Canadian democracy was to support the Liberal Party. Prior to the 1935 election, voting out

Bennett was not an option, so the Liberals highlighted both their commitment to protecting

Parliament’s powers and their ongoing efforts to stymie Bennett's autocratic ambitions. In a 1932

national mail–out from the NLF, the party emphasized their opposition to Bennett's relief act and

its spending provisions, telling recipients that:

One thing the Liberal Party could not tolerate. That was the usurpation of Parliamentary power by the cabinet. The “riding–rough–shod” over time–honoured provisions for the protection of the people from dictatorship. The subversion of Parliamentary privileges, they fought these menaces to the last ditch.69

While repeating the basic message that their party was the only safe alternative to the

Conservatives, the party's leader also tried to demonstrate why they were a trusted alternative. In

his speech at Rock Lake in 1933, King told his audience that:

The present government... had set up a tyrannous dictatorship that, in many cases, had prevented free discussion by the representatives of the people in the House of Commons.... The first duty of the voter... must be to restore to Parliament all those

69 National Liberal Federation Mail–out, June 1932, MG26 J4, Vol.114, File 817 Liberal Party, p.84297, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 167

rights and powers won for the people by the Liberal Party in years gone by, after long continued serious and sacrificing struggle.70

As both the pamphlet and King's remarks demonstrated, the Liberals presented themselves as

defenders of Parliament and the rights and privileges of its members. By ensuring that each

individual MP’s rights were protected, the Liberals argued they could maintain the norms of

responsible government. In the vision of Canadian democracy King and his supporters presented

to Canadian voters, these rights and privileges were an essential component of democratic

government for they were the only tools that private members had to check the power of the

executive. These powers manifested themselves in the ultimate check on cabinet's power, which

was the ability of a majority of MPs to vote against the government on a confidence motion and

force a general election. Importantly, the backbench members of the Conservative government

never chose to abandon their party and vote with the opposition to bring down the Bennett

Administration. Yet King repeatedly stated that their failure to do so, whether motivated by

incompetence, cupidity or fear, was irresponsible and demonstrated the unsuitability of the entire

Conservative Party to sit on government benches. Conveniently, he overlooked that his party

behaved exactly the same way during the Liberals nine years in office, including multiple

whipped votes in the summer of 1926 to try to ensure the Liberal government's survival. Yet

Liberal backbenchers supporting King was different because, as their leader told the audience,

the Liberals were the only party suitable to protect the necessary norms that enabled democratic

government.

70 T.H. Hart, “King Says People Must Vote for Restoring Rights,” Winnipeg Free Press, 24 July 1933, A1. 168

Rejecting Bennett did not mean rejecting reform, as the Liberal Party’s literature made

clear during the 1935 election campaign. Significantly, the Liberals refused to attack the overall

aims of Bennett's New Deal and the broader reform impetus it reflected. The crux of the

Liberals’ anti–Bennett campaign was that his method of governing undermined Canadian

democracy and if voters elected the Liberals, they could still have the reform measures they

broadly supported, only implemented in a democratic manner that respected, rather than

destroyed, the Parliamentary traditions the Liberals argued were so integral to democratic

Canadian state. In concluding their pamphlet “For Peace, Order and Good Government”, the

NLF stated that:

If change comes about without orderly development, or by means and through channels which British Parliamentary institutions through many centuries have helped to ensure as certain to be for the benefit for all, it may have a submerging effect, and men and institutions alike may be swept away for its uncontrolled advance... I do believe that this country of Canada, with a Parliament fashioned on the model of free British Parliamentary institutions, if it will but be true to itself and its heritage, may serve as an example to the nations of the world of how great social and industrial changes, in a period of world upheaval and unrest, can be brought about in the interests of the great body of the people, and without injury to any deserving interest.71

Without explicitly identifying the Conservatives or the CCF, the Liberals contrasted the reckless

way that these parties pursued reform with the orderly and democratic method of the Liberals. In

their zeal for government action, either party was willing to discard the limits placed on

government power by the conventions of the Westminster system. Instead of railing against the

checks on executive power, as the CCF did, the Liberals embraced inaction and argued that their

own dearth of positive ideas to address the Great Depression was in fact a principled defence of

71 “For Peace, Order and Good Government: The Liberal Way,” Pamphlet #8, National Liberal Federation of Canada, 1935, MG28 IV3, Vol.991, Federal Election Campaign 1935 Scrapbook, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 169

British institutions and practices, without which Canadian democracy would falter. While not

ruling out economic reform measures if elected, the core promise of the Liberals was that it

would be reform pursued within existing limits of state action.

4.3 In the Aftermath of 1935

Even though scholars have subsequently attributed the Liberal victory to the mass

movement of voters from the Conservatives to third parties, in their post–election messaging, the

Liberals emphasized that their victory was a win for democracy. In the written version of his

victory speech given on the night of 14 October 1935, King reiterated this idea, opening his

speech with that exact statement, claiming, “Today's victory is a victory for democracy. It

discloses that the people may be relied upon to exercise their judgment clearly in spite of

innumerable and unscrupulous efforts to divert the electorate from the real issues before them.”

According to King, the Liberals’ determined opposition to the Conservatives over the previous

five years had made the 1935 election victory possible. King stated that the election results were

a “direct response to the Liberal protest against all forms of dictatorship in Canada, whether they

incline towards Fascism, Socialism or Sovietism... It is a direct response to the appeal for the

maintenance of British Parliamentary practice and procedure.”72 As King's victory remarks

demonstrate, Liberal discourses regarding British Parliamentary practice and procedure lay at the

heart of their articulation of Canadian democracy, they equated defending one with defending the

other. Yet this stance relied on a rhetorical sleight of hand, asking voters to interpret the Liberals’

72 Night of the General Elections, October 14th, 1935.” Ottawa: National Liberal Federation of Canada, 1935, MG28 IV3,Vol.991, Federal Election Campaign 1935 Scrapbook, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 170

actions in government as democratic while presenting equivalent political maneuvering of the

Conservatives as an existential threat to the country.

In his post–election rhetoric, King presented responsible government as the cornerstone

of British Parliamentary practice and thus Canadian democracy as a whole. In concluding his

victory speech on election night 1935, King stated:

A demand for the restoration of responsible government in Canada, and government not by a single individual but by the collective wisdom of many minds. The people have expressed their determination to end one–man government and to reverse the trend of the past five years in the direction of dictatorship. They have overwhelmingly condemned the present government, and the arbitrary and autocratic methods by which it has proceeded from the day it assumed office, and the manner in which it has persistently defied the unmistakable will of the people.73

King wanted to portray himself as the leader of a democratic restoration movement after

Bennett's usurpation of power. Yet the specific charges of how Bennett violated these ideals

were weak on specifics. While King argued that Bennett had disregarded broader principles of

responsible government, he actually had not violated any of the practices of responsible

government but had instead relied on the Conservatives’ majority in the Commons to pass

legislation, much as the Liberals had done previously and would do again. Rather, to prove his

point, King equated responsible government with respecting the principle that the government

should act strictly in accordance with the will of the people. Yet the two concepts were entirely

separate. Responsible government did not require that the composition or the actions of the

legislature reflect the will of the people. The decision making structure in the House of

Commons was based on aggregating votes of individually elected members, not soliciting one

expression of the national, popular will. The simple fact that the Liberals had won a substantial

73 Ibid. 171

majority of the seats in the Commons while receiving less than 50% of the vote belied that very

point. Everything changed in the Liberals’ public rhetoric now that they were in power though,

and relying on his party's majority ceased to be mechanical but was now a described as an

accurate reflection of the people's will.

The Liberal ministers in King's new government repeated discourses emphasizing

preserving democracy and Parliamentary traditions. Speaking a month after the election, British

Columbia MP and Minister of National Defence Ian Mackenzie further conflated democratic

ideals of popular sovereignty and the popular mandate with the British tradition of cabinet

government. Speaking before the 20th Century Liberal Clubs in November of 1935, Mackenzie

repeated his leader's claims from election night. He told his audience that the results of the

election were a clear vote for “the restoration of responsible government, a free Parliament, the

supremacy of Parliament and legislation under Peace, Order and Good Government.” Switching

emphasis, the defence minister then concluded his speech by telling his audience, “Let us use the

power the people gave us for the people's good.”74 Much as King had done during the election

campaign, Mackenzie argued that the Canadian people had delegated power to the Liberals. In

this formulation, the Liberals then had a duty to ensure that Parliament operated in a democratic

manner. Yet in the Westminster system, Parliament was not an institution designed to allow the

people to govern, rather Parliament itself was the sovereign power. While people elected their

own representatives, they did not collectively grant sovereign power to the government. The

government's power rested on its ability to control a simple majority in the legislature. More

74 Speech to 20th Century Liberals Club November 1935, MG 27 III B5, Vol.6, Folder 3, Item 31, Ian Mackenzie Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 172

broadly, the Liberals conflated the representative element of Parliament in the House of

Commons with democracy as an ideal. This approach allowed the Liberals to equate a parliamentary majority with a mandate from the people, when they had actually only won a plurality of votes. Yet it also created a further problem of how to distinguish their party from the

Conservatives, as both parties operated within the confines of the Westminster system. Hence

King's intense public focus on Bennett's supposedly unconstitutional and autocratic actions enabled by the Tory caucus. While the Tories’ had won power legitimately, the executive's abuse of it and Conservative private members’ unwillingness to employ the checks and balances afforded to them meant that, in King's articulation, Bennett's government forfeited any legitimacy conferred by winning a majority government in a general election.

Throughout their first months in power, the Liberal Party continued to describe the election results as a victory for the twin concepts of democracy and parliamentary governance.

On the last weekend of May 1936, the Twentieth Century Liberal Clubs of Canada hosted their second annual national convention in Ottawa at the Chateau Laurier. The weekend featured a host of high profile speakers, including Prime Minister King, Carine Wilson, the first female

Senator in Canadian history, and many members of the new Liberal cabinet. One of the ministers who spoke was James L. Ilsley of Nova Scotia, the newly sworn in minister of national revenue.

Ilsley, an MP since 1926, had survived the Liberals’ 1930 election defeat and was now a veteran of three federal election campaigns. Speaking near the end of the weekend, Ilsley told the assembled youth that the difference between their party and the Conservatives was a matter of leadership. He stated that, “Mr. Bennett attached great importance to domination of the party by its leader, and as a result, for five years, Mr. Bennet was the Conservative Party. The Liberals, on the contrary, held that any policy of a political party should emanate from the rank and file of the 173

party.”75 Given Ilsley was speaking at an extra–Parliamentary organization's convention, his

remarks about how much the Liberal Party valued its members compared with the Conservatives

was not surprising. However, Ilsley also demonstrates how the elites of the party wanted their

members to see their victory as a collective triumph.

At the NLF’s annual conference of 10 December 1936, King reinforced the Liberals’

campaign message that it alone was the party of Canadian democracy. In his speech to the

convention, King argued that his party’s record after a year in power reinforced its own self–

conception. King told the friendly audience that:

The past twelve months have been months of action, but of considered and temperate action. There have been no thundering declarations of overnight reform, announced on the radio with dramatic suddenness. There have been no rash and precipitate ventures which served only to startle the people and to confuse business. The reforms introduced have been the result of years of effort. The policies underlying them were the outcome of discussions and study over a long period by special committees, by the National Liberal Federation, and by caucus of members in Parliament. They have been based on principles and traditions as old as Liberalism himself... In all things, the government has regarded itself as the trustees of the people. It received its mandate from them, and has not forgotten that it is responsible to them.76

King, whose speech was written by a committee of high profile Liberals including Justice

Minister Ernest Lapointe, reflected the Liberals’ main message that they were defenders of a

process that ensured stable and democratic governance. Through adherence to established

decision–making structures and the Liberals’ self–identified intellectual traditions, the party

believed it had positioned itself in the public mind as the only capable defenders of democracy,

75 Report: 20th Century Liberal Clubs of Canada 2nd National Convention 29–30 May 1936, MG28 IV3, Vol.917 Conventions file, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 76 Speech Notes for Mackenzie King, for a speech entitled “The Record of the Liberal Government in Its First Year of Office,” 1936, MG27 III B10, Vol.30, File 122 Party–National Liberal Federation, Ernest Lapointe Fonds. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 174

which was synonymous with British Parliamentary institutions and conventions in the party's rhetoric.

4.4 Conclusion

After 1927, the Liberals faced a substantial challenge in the person of new Conservative leader R.B. Bennett. The Calgary lawyer was a charismatic and effective leader who managed to unite the Conservative Party and, with the use of his substantial private fortune, provide funds to ensure the Conservatives could compete with the Liberals nationally in the 1930 federal election.

The combined thrusts of an economic crisis, political blunders and a resurgent Conservative

Party led to the Liberals suffering their worst electoral defeat since 1917 and gave the

Conservatives a stable majority government. Throughout the campaign, the Conservatives had emphasized Bennett's abilities as a strong leader, particularly when compared with Mackenzie

King. Consequently, Bennett became the public face of the government while marginalizing both cabinet and his party in official party communications.

After a necessary period of reorganization following their defeat, the Liberals seized on the image of Bennett as a strong leader to attack his government. Many of the Liberals’ initial critiques drew on the ideas of agrarian and labour organizations who rightly criticized the

Bennett's willingness to use the coercive powers of the state to limit civil liberties. The increasing political influence of the newly organized left wing CCF meant that the Liberals could not simply label the Conservatives as autocrats, as they also needed to encourage voters to support their party and not simply drive them into the CCF fold. Giving voters a positive reason to vote Liberal was rendered even more difficult as Bennett's term progressed and both the CCF and Tories laid out detailed plans for government intervention in the Canadian economy.

Lacking any similar program and reluctant to overtly criticize government policy proposals 175

which could be popular with a large number of voters, the Liberals returned to a previously successful approach.

Rather than attack the substance of the CCF’s or the Conservatives’ proposals, the

Liberals argued the process by which these measures were passed – or would be in the case of the CCF – was anti–democratic and dangerously akin to the totalitarian ideologies dominating

Europe. The Liberals’ approach to electoral politics throughout this period thus became a balancing act. They presented themselves as the party of democracy but not the radical economic democracy of the social–democratic left. Rather, the Liberals represented a stable and predictable ideal that King argued was protected by the established norms of responsible government.

Alternatively, the party rejected the leader–centric model of politics represented by the

Conservatives, arguing that Bennett had been dangerously empowered by weak parliamentarians who refused to use their power to check a dangerously ambitious prime minister. Instead, the

Liberals depicted themselves as the ideal of good governance, a party driven by its members who governed through cabinet and a collection of private members who understood the appropriate role of parliamentarians.

The result of the Liberals’ overall approach to the campaign of 1935 was that they outlined a contradictory vision of Canadian democracy. In their rhetoric, King and his allies argued the Liberal Party was the defender of the Canadian people's inheritance of British rights and liberties. Additionally, they also reiterated their commitment to the norms of Parliamentary government, such as cabinet government and individual representation through elected members of Parliament. Combined, the Liberals presented themselves as defenders of the best of the

British political tradition and opposed to the threats of both the Conservatives and the CCF. Yet, despite the obvious tensions between the two ideals, the party of King also celebrated themselves 176

as protectors of democratic principles, arguing that the Conservatives lacked a mandate from the people to implement the economic reforms Bennett proposed. In fusing two different ideas, the

Liberals reinterpreted how the Canadian system should work but did so to their own party's advantage. Content with simply repeating that the Liberals were wrong, the Conservatives did not have an adequate reply to their political opponents and suffered because of it.

The result of the Bennett years was that the Liberals had formulated an invented political tradition of Parliamentary democracy. While the party was responsible for introducing the idea of the democratic mandate into Canadian electoral politics, the Liberals had operated throughout their history just as the Conservatives had. Yet King and his supporters had redefined this history, arguing the Liberals had always historically defended the Canadian people from political opportunists who would take their power from them. In King's political formulation, Bennett,

The Conservatives and the CCF were simply the latest threats to be seen off by a vigilant Liberal

Party.

177

Chapter 5: Empowering Party Members

Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King's attacks on R.B. Bennett and the Conservative

Party in the 1935 election campaign left little room conceptually for individual MPs. In King's vision, the Liberal Party was the institution tasked by Canadians with preserving democracy. He was the leader, and his supporters' job was to ensure the party performed this important function.

While decrying Bennett's supposed reliance on his mechanical majority and the unthinking conformity of the Conservative backbench, the Liberals increasingly relied on a small cadre of men loyal to King to make important decisions, with the implicit assumption that the rest of the party's Parliamentary caucus would automatically support them. Concentrating power in a small group of cabinet ministers and unelected officials made the Liberal Party better able to respond to various political challenges but it also undermined previous systems of political accountability.

Theoretically, the party leadership was accountable to caucus as it had the power to remove the leader or, by threatening to withdraw their support in the Commons, force concessions from their party's leadership on the pain of losing the confidence of the House. Yet,

King and the Liberals’ insistence on both public unity and the democratic mandate undermined any public justification private members could muster for opposing their party in the House of

Commons. All the while, centralizing power in the leader's office limited any practical ability to force changes from King. Furthermore, each individual MP's reliance on the federal party to provide resources, as well as the increasing importance of the national campaign organization for boosting the Liberals’ message, meant the vast majority of Liberals were in no position to resist the centralizing reforms of King and his allies.

178

Decreased MP influence, however, did not negate the need for continued organization on

a riding-by-riding level, nor did it mean that decision-making power regarding a multitude of

local issues could be simply relocated to the offices of a select group of cabinet ministers. The

increasing scale and complexity of election campaigns, as well as the necessity for maintaining

party organization outside of election time, meant that the central party leadership needed to

delegate power to lower-level officials. The pressing issue for the Liberals was how to do so

while maintaining centralized control and still be able to convince voters they were conforming

to the standards of democratic legitimacy that they demanded from other parties.

Scholars of Canadian politics who have studied this question have largely argued that the

solution King and the Liberal elite settled on was empowering the party's rank and file

membership by claiming to make the party more democratic and representative. According to the

argument, this newly empowered membership would be able to fill the organizational void and

allow a functioning extra-Parliamentary party. The main way of empowering the regular

membership was the party convention, especially the national, delegated leadership convention,

first adopted by the Liberals in 1919 and the Conservatives in 1927. In his two monograph-

length works on party conventions, John Courtney argues that both the Liberals and

Conservatives’ adoption of delegated leadership conventions “nurtured a democratic and

representational ethic in Canadian politics.”1 Other scholars have also reinforced Courtney's

conclusions, arguing that over the first half of the twentieth century the Liberals, Conservatives

and later the CCF adopted democratic structures in response to changing ideological

1 John Courtney, Do Conventions Matter: Choosing National Party Leaders in Canada, (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995), 7. See also John Courtney, The Selection of National Party Leaders in Canada, (Hamden, CT.: Archon Books, 1973). 179

circumstances.2 Certainly, Courtney and others are correct in identifying the rhetoric that party

leaders used democratic rhetoric to justify these reforms. Yet, in this particular case, the rhetoric

and consequences of reform were very different. Claims that substantial reforms created a more

democratic organization focus exclusively on who gained power but do not investigate how these

reforms also limited other influences, particular the power of individual private members.

Ultimately, this chapter will argue that while the Liberal Party deployed the rhetoric of

democratic accountability and accessibility to justify expanding the extra-Parliamentary wing of

the party and nominally granting greater power to party members, the result was to entrench

power in the central party leadership.

In order to make this argument, the chapter will first detail how the Liberal and

Conservative Party's extra-Parliamentary organization developed between Confederation and the

1920s, with a specific focus on the importance of leadership conventions. It will then outline

how the Liberals, prompted by their defeat in the 1930 federal election, began the process of

creating an effective and permanent party apparatus. Yet, this process was not a smooth one, as

demonstrated by Ontario Liberal Premier Andrew Hepburn's efforts to turn the provincial party

against the federal branch. After examining the Liberals, the chapter will look at how the

Conservatives attempted to implement democratic ideals into their party organization as well as

examining how the Liberals used the Conservatives’ failure to do so as fodder for partisan

attacks on the Tories.

2 Christian and Campbell, 3. 180

5.1 Party Organization and Development

Traditionally in Canada, party members and supporters had little influence over their

party. The one exception to this trend was party conventions, which provided an opportunity for

individual members to express their opinions. The first mass gathering of party supporters came

in 1857 when the Reform Party of George Brown called a convention in Toronto. Subsequent

conventions followed in 1859 and 1867, each attracting over 400 supporters from across Central

Canada.3 Drawing on their reform traditions, the Liberal Party organized the first modern party

convention in Canadian history in 1893. The idea of a party convention as a consultative body

was not only inspired by Brown and early reformers, but equally by the tradition of American

political conventions. In the Liberals’ case, the head editor of the Toronto Globe, J.S. Wilson,

urged the Laurier-led Liberals to call one after he attended the 1892 Democratic Party

Convention.4 While the Liberal Convention was significant because it was the first national

convention of a major Canadian party, it did not result in a change in either leadership or policy.

The subsequent Liberal Convention of 1919 was a different matter altogether. After the

Conscription Crisis and subsequent federal election of 1917 reduced the Liberal caucus to almost

exclusively members from Quebec, Laurier called the 1919 convention as a means of

rejuvenating the organization and rebuilding its capacity outside of Quebec. Laurier's unexpected

death before the convention led the party's interim leadership to declare it a leadership

convention. Four candidates put their names forward, but the race quickly developed into a

contest between Mackenzie King and pro-conscription Liberal-Unionist William Fielding, with

3 Courtney, The Selection of National Party Leaders in Canada, 22-27. 4 John Lederle, “The Liberal Convention of 1893,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, Vol. XVI (February 1950): 42-52. 181

George Graham and Daniel Duncan McKenzie, of Ontario and Nova Scotia, respectively,

rounding out the field. Since the goal of the convention was to elect a leader for Liberals from

across Canada, and the party's Parliamentary caucus was almost exclusively from Quebec, each

riding association was granted an equal number of votes at the convention. The goal was to

ensure the winner of the leadership race represented all Liberals and not just the wishes of MPs

from Quebec. All parts of the party, from caucus to each of the individual candidates, accepted

this decision to transfer selection power from caucus to the extra-Parliamentary party with King,

the eventual winner, declaring the process “inevitable.”5

The Liberal Party that King inherited from Laurier was very different from the one he

would leave to his successor, Louis St. Laurent, almost 30 years later. Superficially, many

aspects of the party had changed very little since its formation in the 1870s. The key

organizational units for the party were the provincial Liberal associations. In the case of Ontario

and Quebec, these associations predated Confederation and found their origins in the unification

of Upper and Lower Canada and the struggle for responsible government in the 1840s. Under the

supervision of the provincial association was each riding's local Liberal association that varied in

organizational ability and size depending on the success of the local Liberal candidate. While

associations in Liberal strongholds such as Southwestern Ontario and urban Montreal often had

hundreds of members, in other parts of the country dominated by the Conservative Party, they

barely existed at all. The federal Liberal Party’s leader nominally oversaw this hodgepodge of

organizations but early Liberal leaders such as Edward Blake and Wilfrid Laurier were almost

entirely dependent on the resources and cooperation of the provincial organizations. Hence,

5 Courtney, Do Conventions Matter, 5-12. 182

Laurier's victory in 1896 owed as much too long-serving Ontario Premier Oliver Mowat and his

work to build up the Liberal Party in the province as it did to the federal party's efforts.6

Conservative Party victories in the elections of 1911 and 1917 forced the Liberals to

confront their organizational deficits. After their 1911 loss, Laurier, now serving as leader of the

opposition for the second time in his long career, oversaw the creation of the Central Liberal

Information Office (CLIO). This body was the first to be exclusively under the purview of the

federal party and was responsible for distributing campaign material to Liberal candidates across

the country. Supposedly, a permanent body, it only meaningfully functioned during federal

election campaigns. However, many Liberals were still deeply concerned about the party's ability

to fight the next election and in December of 1915, MP and Laurier confidant Adam Kirk

Cameron convinced the leader to convene a meeting of Liberal members of the House of

Commons and Senate to select party advisers. At this meeting, Laurier reluctantly agreed to form

another organization known as the National Liberal Advisory Committee (NLAC). This

committee had thirty-seven members, increased to fifty-eight the next year, and was tasked with

advising the Liberal leader and his inner circle during the next election campaign. Many long-

serving Liberals, along with Laurier himself, objected to this group, seeing it as too large to

function effectively and as a threat to the power of existing riding associations. Consequently,

Laurier and his supporters mostly ignored the committee.7

Further impetus for change came due to the federal election of 1917 and Laurier's death

in early 1919. As described above, these events led to the first Liberal Leadership Convention in

6 Whitaker, xiv-xvi. 7 Carman Miller, A Knight in Politics: A Biography of Sir Fredrick Borden, (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010), 357. 183

1919. In addition to selecting King as their new leader, the party's delegates also authorized the

creation of the National Liberal Organizing Committee (NLOC), designed to relieve the leader of

responsibility for managing the extra-Parliamentary wing of the party. Functionally, these

organizational initiatives resulted in very little change to the party's operation as, upon returning

to power, the NLAC withered away to irrelevance with parliamentarians preferring to build up

their local riding associations. Similarly, the NLOC was essentially a one-man operation after

1922, run by its general secretary Senator Andrew Haydon of Pakenham, Ontario and funded by

Liberal Minister Charles Murphy. After the 1926 election, Murphy, whom King had appointed to

the Senate, ceased underwriting the organization's lease for its Ottawa office space and it folded.

The committee's hibernation did not have any substantial effect on the party's day-to-day

operations, though, as Haydon had also been appointed to the Senate in 1924 where he received a

salary from the Canadian Parliament while continuing to serve as the party’s main organizational

force.8

The Conservative Party's attempts to create a national extra-Parliamentary organization

were remarkably similar to the Liberals’ process. The Tories relied on their provincial

organizations and on local riding associations and were susceptible to the same weaknesses as

the Liberals. In 1911, the Robert Borden-led Conservatives benefited from strong and popular

provincial governments in Ontario, British Columbia and Nova Scotia. Similarly, the party

suffered in the 1921 election due to the organizational weakness of their provincial parties other

than in Ontario. Partially in response to their defeat in 1921, the provincial associations of

Quebec, Manitoba and Ontario all passed resolutions calling for a national convention. Meighen

8 Whitaker, 6-25. 184

responded by arranging a national meeting for November of 1924, which resulted in the

establishment of the Dominion Liberal-Conservative Convention Committee (DLCCC) made up

of representatives chosen by each provincial association. This committee was empowered to

organize a national convention. It is important to note though that the committee was not a

permanent body but rather an ad hoc organization responding to specific demands of the party's

members.9

The lack of any broader and permanent central organization for the Tories outside of the

leader's office continued until after their defeat in the 1926 election. Despite winning the popular

vote 45% to 43%, the party lost twenty-four seats including that of their leader Arthur Meighen,

resulting in his resignation. In order to select his replacement, Meighen summoned a special

Conservative Caucus to decide how his successor would be selected. His decision to ignore the

DLCCC sparked an intra-party fight, which raised the absurd possibility of two leadership

conventions. Ultimately, both groups agreed to a unified, delegated convention in Winnipeg in

1927 to select a new party leader. At this convention, delegates chose Calgary lawyer R.B.

Bennett as leader.10

Much as at the Liberal Convention of 1919, the Tories did more than simply choose their

new leader. The delegates also authorized the creation of the Dominion Liberal-Conservative

Council (DLCC), which included representatives from all nine provinces, the women's

organizations in each province, the leader of the federal party and every provincial party, as well

as a federal organizer who would function as the general secretary of the council. New leader

9 Correspondence between R.A. Bell and Rt. Hon. Arthur Meighen, 26 September 1942. MG32 C3, Vol.116, File 1178: Progressive Conservative Party, George Drew Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 10 Glassford, 18-20. 185

Bennett appointed Conservative MP and party whip General A.D. McRae in 1929 as the main

federal organizer. Backed by Bennett's substantial personal fortune, the council was able to

establish a central office in Ottawa as well as satellite offices in most provincial capitals. The

Conservatives’ provincial associations were also willing to hand over decision-making authority

to the central party council in exchange for a promise of stable funding. Thus, heading in to the

1930 federal election, the Conservative Party had a substantial organizational advantage, albeit

one that was dependent on the largess of their leader.11

5.2 Building the Liberal Extra-Parliamentary Party

Perhaps in response to the Conservatives’ developing extra-Parliamentary apparatus, the

Liberal Party tentatively initiated a process of party building prior to the 1930 federal election. In

March of 1930, the Liberals organized the inaugural meeting of the Twentieth Century Liberal

Club. The party intended this branch to function as their youth wing and named it so because it

would organize Liberal supporters born in the twentieth century. Numerous high profile Liberals

spoke at the meeting and in their speeches, they elucidated the reasoning behind establishing this

club. The most prominent of the speakers were Ottawa lawyer and political adviser to the prime

minister, Duncan K. MacTavish, as well as the PM himself. When addressing the assembled

Liberal partisans, MacTavish acknowledged that youth clubs had a long history in politics, but

that the current political climate necessitated a national affiliation. MacTavish stated that:

Young people's Liberal Clubs are not of course a new thing by any means and have been in active existence in this country for many years. It was felt, however, that by coordinating the activities of the Clubs already in existence and by organizing new clubs where none have existed and having all these clubs under a National organization, the efforts of all could be better directed to the achieving of their ideals... We hope to achieve through this national organization a system of young

11 Ibid, 154-157. 186

Liberal Clubs vital and constantly active in every constituency, Associations of young people bound by the common bond of youth and political conviction busy in all sorts of social and public service and not becoming politically conscious only at election time.12

As MacTavish stated, the pressing issue for the Liberals was not a lack of support but rather

mobilizing those supporters and ensuring they were organized and engaged outside of election

campaigns. MacTavish then went on to explain the ideals he thought the organization should

promote, stating:

It is agreed by old and young alike that a means of developing in youth a wholesome interest in the country's future is greatly to be desired. That the most direct method of bringing about this desired result is by education in the principles, ideas and record of the Liberal Party certainly cannot be quarreled with here.13

In MacTavish's words, the Liberals were not simply establishing the Twentieth Century Liberal

Club for partisan purposes. Rather, since his party was the self-proclaimed protector of

Parliamentary democracy, the youth clubs' fundamental purpose was to engage young Canadians

in the political process and to foster appropriate principles and ideas essential to the country's

future as a democratic society. By creating the next generation of Liberals, the party claimed

they were creating the next generation of Canadian democrats.

Prime Minister King followed MacTavish later on in the program. His speech entitled

“Citizenship and Politics” built on the ideas that MacTavish had discussed earlier in the evening.

At the beginning of his remarks, King discussed why political parties in general were an integral

element in a functioning Canadian democracy. Yet, King made a very different argument than

12 Report of Inaugural Assembly: Citizenship and Politics by W.L. Mackenzie King, 20th Century Liberal Clubs, Ottawa, 19 March 1930, MG27 III B5, Vol.34 File B-18 Liberal Party Speeches 1937, Ian Mackenzie Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 13 Ibid. 187

the one Liberals had presented during the 1920s when dismissing the Progressives’ idea of group

governance. King told the audience that:

A political party is not an end in itself. It is a means, and a very necessary means to an end. It is the means by which men and women who feel and think alike on the great principles, which should govern in the administration of a country's affairs, are able to make their views prevail in a practical way. Members of the government merely as such can achieve little in the realm of politics. In matters of government, more than anywhere else, cooperation among those who feel and think alike is essential.14

In this articulation of the purpose of a political party, King focused not on the role of

parliamentarians but on party supporters outside of Parliament. In King's parlance, a party

provided the organizational means to ensure that the members of the government could turn the

people's desires into action. Thus, the party performed a key function in a democracy. Critically,

this network of supporters needed to share common principles and not just a desire to hold

power. King explained that:

A political party where its membership is based upon the love of liberty and where it seeks a larger freedom for the mass of men is a great institution to which to belong. It brings together men and women of all classes and creeds who share a like attitude and a like outlook. It unites in the great work of government young and old from coast to coast, and it links the present with the past through the centuries of struggle for the larger freedom that we all enjoy today.15

Here King defended the ideal of a brokerage party the Liberals articulated a decade earlier,

emphasizing that the party was a voluntary association of people who bridged the major divides

of 1930s Canadian society. His party, in King's elevated rhetoric, was not simply a vehicle for

gaining power or governing, rather it served the higher purpose of advancing the freedom of all

14 William Lyon Mackenzie King on “Citizenship and Politics” in Report of Inaugural Assembly: Citizenship and Politics by W.L. Mackenzie King, 20th Century Liberal Clubs, Ottawa, 19 March 1930.MG27 III B5, Vol.34 File B- 18 Liberal Party Speeches 1937, Ian Mackenzie Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 15 Ibid. 188

Canadians. Instead of existing simply as an appendage to the Parliamentary party and only active during election campaigns, King now depicted the party outside of Parliament as the vehicle for advancing the bundle of British ideals that Liberals told Canadians constituted the basis of their freedom and democracy. In this articulation, a party bureaucrat and an elected MP were equal within the organization for both played a key role in furthering the mission of the Liberal Party.

Their defeat in the 1930 federal election threw the Liberals’ plans for the future into disarray. Throughout the campaign, the party, as mentioned, suffered from a lack of funds and national organization. The Liberals’ traditional donor base of businesses and wealthy professionals were suffering significant financial hardship due to the stock market crash of

October 1929 and the subsequent economic depression. Consequently, they were not in a position to donate. In contrast, the Conservatives were able to draw extensively on Bennett's large personal fortune and a network of corporate donors developed by McRae to fund newspaper ads and speaking events, Due to these institutional and financial failings, the Liberal

Party began a complete review of its practices and organization in order to avoid the pitfalls that beset them in 1930.

The major problem for the Liberals was that Senator Andrew Haydon essentially ran the party’s organizational activities out of his Senate office. During election campaigns, an ad-hoc organization would spring up to produce and distribute print material and then remain mostly dormant while Parliament was actually sitting in Ottawa. During non-election years, the duties for maintaining an extra-Parliamentary party fell to the provincial Liberal associations. This reliance on provincial organizations was one of the major problems identified by Liberals analyzing the issue of federal organization in early 1931. The minutes of a meeting on 12

189

February 1931 record the issue prominent Liberals had with relying on provincial organizations.

The problem was:

[A Provincial Organization's] main concern between elections is with purely provincial affairs. Yet during federal elections, they must assume practical control of the campaign in their respective provinces. Some method must be found of coordinating the work of the national and provincial organizations in advancing the interests of the federal party in the federal ridings between Dominion elections.16

The Liberals recognized that the demands of an election campaign required a multilevel

organization able to mobilize people on a riding-by-riding basis. The arrangement of relying on

provincial associations necessarily limited the ability of each riding campaign to utilize its

resources. The primary focus of provincial organizations was inherently the politics of their

respective province and not Ottawa. The main problem was not that they failed to contribute

during a federal election campaign, but rather with advancing the specific interests of the Federal

Liberal Party outside of the writ period.

In order to respond to this challenge, the federal party debated a series of proposals that

included establishing a monthly magazine as “the ultimate ideal medium to keep the political

issues and Liberal policies before the electorate.” Foremost among their proposals was one

intended to provide definite work “for these young people to do which will make them feel that

they are making a distinct contribution to the cause of Liberalism in Canada.”17 In order to

ensure their supporters remained engaged, it was critical for the Liberals to provide them with a

greater purpose than simply electing a Liberal to represent them in Ottawa and then returning to

organizing around local issues. Creating and communicating with a national community of

16 “Future Program of the National Liberal Office,” 12 February 1931. MG32 C85, Vol.2, File 20 General Organizational Material, Norman Lambert Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 17 Ibid. 190

Liberals now became as critical during the years between elections as campaigning was after the writ was dropped.

An empowered membership was particularly critical for party fundraising. The Liberals recognized they needed to diversify their donor base for relying on a small group of wealthy donors became problematic when economic circumstances made these people unable to give.

Additionally, enticing wealthy patrons carried with it political risks, as these large-scale donors often wanted access to influential cabinet ministers, political influence or government contracts and jobs in exchange for their contributions. Arrangements such as these were a political liability and, if made public, could seriously influence a party's standing with the electorate.

The Beauharnois Scandal of 1929-1932 concretely demonstrated to the Liberals the political risks of relying on large corporate donors. In 1929 the Beauharnois Light, Heat and

Power Company (BLHPC) sought permission from the Liberal government to divert a portion of the St. Lawrence River near Montreal in order to generate electricity. Five other hydroelectric companies who also relied on stable water levels in the St. Lawrence objected to the company's proposal, as did multiple Montreal based shipping companies who were concerned about the project's effect on navigation and shipping. In order to overcome these objections and secure the required permits, the BLHPC gave $700 000 to the Liberal Party, with the money split evenly between the Quebec and Federal sections of the party. The BLHPC also offered the same deal to the Conservatives to hedge their bets in case of a Tory victory in the 1930 election, but Bennett declined to accept the money. With the Liberal Party desperate for campaign funds, Liberal

Senators W.L. McDougall and Andrew Haydon accepted these donations directly from BLHPC

191

President R.O. Sweezey. Despite these contributions, the Liberals still lost the subsequent

election but signed the agreement to divert the river before leaving office.18

The links between BLHPC and the Liberal Party gradually surfaced between June 1931

and April 1932 when multiple Parliamentary committees chaired by the governing Conservatives

began investigating the corruption allegations against the former Liberal government. King

claimed ignorance in the matter despite having accepted a holiday to Bermuda from Sweezey.

Ultimately, these allegations were not particularly harmful to the Liberals’ electoral fortunes as

they came three years before the next election. The only casualties for the party were Haydon,

who King removed as the Liberal Party's federal campaign manager, and McDougal, who was

pushed to resign by King and the Liberal leader in the Senate, Raoul Dandurand.19 Despite

escaping relatively unscathed politically, the entire experience demonstrated to the Liberal

Party's leadership group the political risks of accepting large donations from businesses with

material interest in governmental decision-making. The party had mostly dodged the BLHPC

bullet but unless they changed their approach to raising funds, there was no guarantee they would

be able to avoid scandal again.

The major rhetorical point that King relied on when defending himself from accusations

of corruption was that the structure of the Liberal Party supposedly made it impossible for him to

have known about the donations. In a speech to the Commons in October of 1931, King argued

that there was no way he could have been aware of the BLHP donations. King stated that:

Throughout the whole of that time [of the 1930 campaign] except at public meetings I did not so much as see any of the party managers of the campaign, nor did I have communication with them on any subject other than those that pertained to the

18 For the definitive account of the scandal and its aftermath, see T.D. Regehr, The Beauharnois Scandal: A Story of Canadian Entrepreneurship and Politics, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990). 19 Regehr, 124-145. 192

meetings being held, the speakers at these meetings, and the like. I could not possibly have concerned myself even if I wished to do so, with the matter of campaign funds. It would be sheer hypocrisy to pretend to any such omniscience in the entirety of the party's affairs.20

Simply claiming ignorance was not sufficient for King, though. The Liberal leader also argued

that not knowing the identity of major party donors actually strengthened his hand when dealing

with attempts to lobby him for political favours. King praised the virtue of ignorance in the

Commons, stating:

It is conceivable that the men who have made contributions to political campaigns are so far removed from the world of business, of industry and of commerce as not to be even remotely affected by any of the legislation that has been or may yet be enacted. If not, then may I ask whether a Prime Minister, or a leader of a political party, is in a stronger or in a weaker position in dealing at first hand with these matters in virtue of having in his possession an inventory of all contributions made, or of some of the contributions, or, indeed, of any of them?21

King adopted an ironic tone and acknowledged that political donors wanted to advance their own

agenda with their donations. In spite of this fact, he argued that a party leader and prime minister

was in a stronger position when meeting with these people if he did not know how much they

had given to the party and if said donors also knew that the party leader was ignorant regarding

these matters. According to King, if the leader had foreknowledge of who had contributed to his

party, he would be more inclined to reward them for their support. However, if he was unaware

who had given money and in what amounts, then he would treat everyone seeking government

concessions equally. King designed his entire argument to defend him from the immediate

accusations of improper conduct but analyzing it does reveal a key impetus driving the Liberals’

20 “Re. Party Organization The Liberal Party,” Speech by William Lyon Mackenzie King, October 1931, MG26 J4, Vol.115, File 825 Liberal Party, p.84526, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 21 Ibid. 193

organizational efforts. By creating a national extra-Parliamentary party, elected leaders could

focus on the business of governing while leaving financial issues to unelected party bureaucrats.

King could then legitimately claim ignorance and be believed while those who were actually

responsible for administering the details of government patronage would not have to face the

electorate.

The leadership of the Liberal Party was well aware of how important it was to manage

the party's finances, which necessarily entailed organizing their fundraising initiatives in a more

systematic manner. What was significant about the process was how King chose to proceed. The

leader decided to work through the NLAC, originally created by Laurier with representatives

from the Liberal caucus and provincial associations. However, the council remained largely

dormant until King tasked it with creating a plan to revitalize the Liberal Party. Following King's

directive, the NLAC struck an advisory committee to help steer the process.22 In a memo to King

from the advisory committee from early 1932, the committee stated that is was “quite impossible

to raise [money] without organization for that purpose. Who is going to undertake this

organization across the country unless some permanent organization is first brought into being.”

The committee members also keenly understood the importance of appearing transparent, telling

King that it was “Absolutely necessary to be able to make clear to the country that Liberal Party

is financing its office by the people as a whole, not by amounts secretly obtained from

questionable sources.” In order to do so the members suggested that, “In every instance names of

individuals and amounts they are contributing should be made known to the committee as

22 “Vincent Massey Remarks,” Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the National Liberal Federation of Canada, held in Ottawa on December 1st and 2nd, 1933, MG28 IV 3, Vol.861 Advisory Council 1993, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 194

receipts sent from committee headquarters.”23 The committee's memo reveals how these two

concerns were interrelated. The Liberals needed to be organized to raise funds but money-raising

infrastructure itself was expensive to build and maintain. The Beauharnois scandal in part

occurred because the party's campaign officials tried to short cut the process by accepting a

massive cash injection from private industry. Yet, when a donation of this scale became public

knowledge, it undermined the Liberals’ claim to legislate on behalf of the people as a whole. The

Liberals’ answer to this solution was to appear transparent by revealing their funding sources to

Canadians. Through proactively disclosing the sources of their funds, the Liberals hoped to

demonstrate their commitment to popular democracy.

In spite of the difficulties in securing adequate and sustainable funding for a national

office, the party still moved ahead with creating a permanent organizational apparatus. One of

the most revealing suggestions from the advisory committee was that King should limit Liberal

private members' involvement in the process. In a memo to King, the committee stated that the

purpose in calling the council was “to have question of organization of National Office settled

before House reassembles.”24 Obviously, Liberal MPs would want to be part of the

organizational process, but rather than engage with them, the committee urged King to dispense

with any input from private members despite the impact any reform proposals would have on

them and their electoral fortunes. While publicly emphasizing the importance of a democratic

party structure, King's inner circle was happy to advise the precise opposite.

23 Liberal Party Fundraising Memorandum, 1932, MG26 J4, Vol.114, File 817 Liberal Party, p.84297, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 24 Ibid. 195

The advisory committee also stressed how important it was not to have the new Liberal

organization replace the existing NLAC. The committee wanted to make sure that any new

federation with grassroots participation did not make its parent, elite-run body obsolete. It was

particularly important in the committee's estimation that party members appear to have

mechanisms for influencing the party through the new federation without granting them actual

power to force changes by replacing the NLAC with a member driven governance structure. In a

memo to King from the committee, the members emphasized that it was “Absolutely necessary

to have [the NLAC] serve the purposes of conventions; to enable all federal federations, clubs,

associations, etc. to have their voice heard in matters of policy and funds – only alternative is

convention with the risks involved.”25 The private nature of the memo meant that the authors

could be candid in their advice to King. Ultimately, the Committee's advice to limit the

involvement of caucus and the broader membership in the formation and running of the new

organization was the result of a strong desire for centralization and control. By emphasizing the

importance of maintaining representative institutions and acting transparently, the committee

clearly wanted the process to appear democratic without granting members the power to force

real change through mechanisms like a national convention. As the memo stated, a convention

with thousands of voting delegates was simply too unpredictable.

After over a year of planning and discussion, the Liberals’ initiatives to establish a

permanent national federation culminated with the creation of the National Liberal Federation

(NLF) in 1933. The federation was inaugurated on 1 and 2 December 1933 with a two-day

meeting in Ottawa. King and the Liberal Leadership selected Vincent Massey, former president

25 Ibid. 196

of Massey-Harris Company, Canadian Ambassador to Washington from 1926 to 1930, and

political adviser to Mackenzie King, to serve as the first president of the NLF. In his opening

remarks to the meeting, Massey outlined the composition of this new organization, telling his

audience that:

The body assembled here today is composed, as you are aware, of delegates representing organized Liberalism in each of the nine provinces. In those provinces where there is a province-wide Liberal Association, the executive of that body appoints its own representatives... In addition to these delegates, we welcome as members of this organization two representatives from the National Federation of Liberal Women of Canada, and the same number from the 20th Century Liberal Clubs... The body meeting here this afternoon is therefore in fact an executive council of Liberalism in Canada in so far as the layman is concerned. It is representative of all Liberals in the Dominion but the federation is primarily a body of men and women who are not in Parliament.26

As Massey's speech demonstrated, King and the Liberals did not follow all the advice proffered

by the advisory committee. The functions of the old NLAC was merged into the new NLF which

was now to function both as the extra-parliamentary organizational wing of the party and also as

a representative body for Liberals from across the country. In Massey's words, it was an

“executive council of Liberalism in Canada.” While this new organization provided a separate

mechanism for Liberals from across Canada to become involved in the national party, the most

salient characteristic of the organization was that it was composed of people “who are not in

Parliament.”27

Historically in Canada, the Parliamentary caucus was the most powerful group in any

party. With the creation of the NLF, members outside of Parliament were now empowered to

26 “Vincent Massey Remarks,” Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the National Liberal Federation of Canada, held in Ottawa on December 1st and 2nd, 1933, MG28 IV 3, Vol.861 Advisory Council 1993, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 27 Ibid 197

assume a decision-making role through voting for a party leader and forwarding policy resolutions that could become part of the organization’s campaign platform. Previously, even a backbench MP was still relatively important because of the limited number of members in caucus and frequently the importance of a relatively few number of swing votes in ensuring a government's survival. Additionally, these individual MPs needed to maintain a strong relationship with the local communities they represented. Consequently, Liberal-supporting community leaders in each riding had a large amount of influence with their elected representative. With the formation of the NLF, these prominent local Liberals often leveraged their privileged place in their local communities to ensure riding organizations selected them as their representative to the NLF. Yet their influence in the Federation was limited due to the large number of representatives. Ultimately, the NLF marked an initial attempt to create a more direct relationship between the party leader and the membership using the justification of democratic principles and greater regional representation. Certainly, this new structure gave representatives from each province as well as the women's and youth wings of the party a more direct relationship with the party's central leadership. Yet it also served to strengthen the power of the central elite. Ultimately, by marginalizing the role of private members, the party elite replaced a more mediated, but often more influential, set of relationships with more direct but less powerful ones.

By 1936, four years after the initial NLF meeting, the Liberals had returned to power with the national organization playing a critical part in the party's 1935 election victory. At the fourth annual meeting held in Ottawa on 10 December 1936, multiple high profile party members emphasized the importance of the NLF and its role in both the party operations and

Canadian democracy as a whole. In his introductory remarks, the Honourable T.C. Davis, 198

Attorney General of Saskatchewan and Liberal MLA for the province, highlighted the continuing

importance of party unity now the Liberals were in power. He told the audience that, “In power it

seems difficult, without concentrated collective devotion to principle, to maintain unity while

your government, engaged earnestly in its constructive programme.”28 Davis argued that when

serving in opposition it was easy to unite around opposing the Conservatives, whereas being in

power meant governing, which necessarily involved compromise. Davis appealed to the entire

party to continue to support the efforts of the Liberal government even when they did not act in

exactly the manner the general membership would like. Party unity was paramount as it allowed

the party to govern effectively and that was the goal of gaining power in the first place. Even if

partisans did not get everything they wanted, the benefits of governing were greater than serving

in opposition.

As at the first meeting of the Federation in December of 1933, the keynote speaker in

1936 was Prime Minister Mackenzie King. His remarks to the meeting were particularly

revealing, as they were one of the clearest articulations from the long-serving party leader about

the purpose of the extra-parliamentary party. King began his speech with an impassioned defence

of organizing on party lines, telling the representatives that:

Canadians too often [are] apologetic of party organization [but it is] the backbone of Parliamentary Democracy... Party organization [is the] means whereby men and women who believe in some principles and policies obtain election of representatives of their choice, and through them, results in accordance with ideas held in common... Parliament and Cabinet [are] really the last, not the first step; self-government finds its origins in the individual.29

28 Memorandum re the Fourth Annual Meeting of the National Liberal Federation of Canada, held in the Chateau Laurier, Ottawa on Thursday December 10th, 1936. MG 32 C85, Vol.2, File 21 Minutes, General Meeting, Norman Lambert Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 29 “Suggested Opening Remarks by Prime Minister,” National Liberal Federation of Canada 4th Annual Meeting, December 10, 1936, MG27 III B10, Vol.30, File 122 National Liberal Federation Convention, Ernest Lapointe Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 199

Functioning political parties emerged in the Westminster system as a means of ensuring a

ministry had sufficient support to maintain the confidence of the House of Commons. Parties in

the British System emerged first in the House of Commons specifically with extra-parliamentary

organs only developing later to supplement the work of parliamentarians.30 Regardless of this

history, King reversed the relationship, arguing that the origins of any party was with the voting

public. Through political agitation, elected politicians transformed basic principles valued by

voters into policy. If self-government for King originated with the people, then they were the

ultimate source of legitimacy and were the only ones who could confer it on a government. Any

party that claimed to be democratic, as the Liberals did, needed to acknowledge the true source

of legitimacy and act accordingly. In this formulation of politics, cabinet formation, rather than a

fundamental aspect of responsible government, merely represented the final step of the

democratic process.

Beyond simply providing a means of connecting individual members with the

government, King argued that the NLF was one of the key factors that lead to the Liberals’ 1935

election victory. King stated that:

In a real way, the opportunity the Liberal Party enjoys today in service of the state, was made possible by Federation and associated bodies affording Liberal-minded men and women an effectively channel for expressing their views and making their voices heard... The meeting today is opportunity for the Liberal Party as a whole to indicate its views on questions of principle and on administration - “Shareholders meeting of the Liberal Party” - where the fullest and freest comment and suggestions [are] welcomed by my colleagues and myself.31

30 Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, The Growth of the British Party System, 1640-1923 Vol.1, (Ann Arbour, MI.: University of Michigan Press, 1965), 3-10. 31 “Suggested Opening Remarks by Prime Minister,” Ernest Lapointe Fonds. 200

By giving credit to the NLF for the Liberals’ election victory, King sought to highlight the importance of each member in the party and their work within the Federation. King's use of the shareholder metaphor furthered this emphasis on shared responsibility and influence. By calling party members shareholders, King implied that the party leadership worked for the members and was ultimately accountable to them, as the board of directors of a private company were to their shareholders. King's claim emphasized that, since 1919, caucus no longer had the power to legitimize a party leader. In this new vision of the Liberal organization, each MP was simply part of the party apparatus designed to turn the desires of members into political action. Furthermore, if the party elite was accountable to the “shareholders” then caucus had no legitimacy to contest the party's leader as by doing so, they would implicitly be overriding the power of the membership. An MP was now simply another member with one vote.

King also echoed these sentiments when speaking at the annual meeting of the Twentieth

Century Liberal Clubs in 1936. He told the assembled youth delegates that it was only through a well-organized party structure that they could realize true democracy. Repeating the claim the

Liberals had made since the 1920s that their party was the only one able to represent all

Canadians, King insisted the Liberal Party was “the best and perhaps only agency which can bring together people of all creeds and classes, and thus foster a true democracy. In the ranks of such a party, men and women work out together, and not in isolation, the problems of government and democracy.” Over a decade and a half since he first became Liberal leader, the ideal of a brokerage party representing the interests of all Canadians was still at the centre of

King's overall vision. However, while the ideal of a brokerage party from the 1920s largely focused on reconciling competing interests of parliamentarians, now the Parliamentary wing of

201

the party was simply another part of a broader organization that sought to “foster a true

democracy.”32

King further told his audience that only through effective organization could the actual

process of transforming the will of the people into legislation occur. In King's words, the

Liberals’ extra-parliamentary organization was not simply part of the party's efforts to gain and

hold political power. Rather it was “... a means to an end, it is an instrument which enables a

party to put into practice the principles and policies advocated by a majority of its members, and

which the majority of the people of the country believe as for the general good.”33 In his

remarks, King equated the will of his party's membership with the will of the Canadian people as

a whole. Such a rhetorical turn was necessary because the Liberals had not won a majority of the

popular vote in any election he had led the party. King, like his Conservative antagonists

Meighen and Bennett, also held power because the party he led controlled a majority of seats in

the Commons. Yet in the Liberals’ rhetoric, these two men were illegitimate leaders because they

lacked the support of the people. Consequently, King had to explain how he differed from the

Tories. His answer was that his party was the party of the people and so its leader necessarily

spoke for them. As an extension of this argument, creating and maintaining a party structure was

not only a sound electoral strategy but a critically important task for fostering Canadian

democracy, as only through a well-organized Liberal Party could the wishes of party members,

and by extension the Canadian people, be made manifest.

32 “Speech by Prime Minister King,” Report: 20th Century Liberal Clubs of Canada 2nd National Convention 1936, MG28 IV3, Vol.917, Conventions File, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 33 Ibid. 202

If the Liberal Party presented itself as embodying Canadians’ will, then their leader, by

virtue of his selection by the regular members of the party, was empowered to speak on behalf of

the party as a whole. It was this idea that King outlined in his speech to the NLF in 1936 and

echoed by his supporters in subsequent public appearances. The most notable example was

British Columbia MP and Minister of National Defence Ian Mackenzie. In 1938, he spoke to the

National Federation of Liberal Women in Canada at their annual meeting in Ottawa and

defended his party's leader. Mackenzie told the assembled delegates that:

I think it is only proper and fitting to assure our Prime Minister at this time that, although we hear rumblings of discontent and murmurings of disaffection from rebels and mutineers in the Liberal ranks – that never in the history of Canada – never since he received the endorsation [sic] of the great convention in 1919 – did he have behind him in such a splendid way the united forces of REAL Canadian Liberalism. We may have family differences – we may have family quarrels, but we all stand for the good of the family, the good of the party, and the good of the nation.34

As will be discussed in Chapter 6, by 1938, numerous Liberals were voicing their displeasure

over the centralizing reforms of the Liberal Party. Furthermore, three years into the Liberals’

term, outside observers were reporting on rumours of internal dissent within the party. Thus, it

was expected that a loyal King supporter like Mackenzie would publicly back his leader.

Furthermore, by invoking King's selection as leader at the 1919 convention, the minister

reinforced King's contention that party members conferred legitimacy on a leader. Finally, in

Mackenzie's argument, King had the party organization behind him, which meant that “REAL”

Liberals across Canada supported him. By elevating the role of the extra-parliamentary party,

34 Ian Mackenzie: Speech to National Federation of Liberal Women in Canada, Ottawa, 20 May 1938, MG27 III B5, Vol.6, File 3-39, Ian Mackenzie Fonds, Library and Archives Canada. 203

Mackenzie and other King supporters sought to neutralize any possible caucus revolt by

delegitimizing their power to make or unmake a leader.

Despite their best attempts, King and his allies could not simply ignore or suppress all

internal opposition to his leadership. A particular problem emerged in 1938 when the newly

empowered membership attempted to use the party's internal structures, designed to foster a

more democratic party, to criticize King. Disaffected members of various Twentieth Century

Liberal Clubs began organizing in late 1937 on a riding-by-riding level with the intention of

forcing King to resign. This group of dissidents’ chosen method of action was to get riding

associations to pass motions of no confidence in King's leadership. One of the best examples of

this process comes from the New Brunswick riding of Saint John-Albert in the summer of 1938.

A large group of young Liberals who were opposed to King ensured they had a sufficient number

of supporters at the riding’s annual general meeting to get their members elected to the riding

executive. Using their new positions of power, this faction then managed to use a variety of

procedural mechanisms to pass a vote of non-confidence in King's leadership.35 These incidents,

counter-intuitively, demonstrated how the internal party reforms strengthened the leader's

position. While mildly embarrassing for King, these votes were ultimately of little consequence.

By channeling discontent in these directions, dissatisfied members would have an avenue to

express their frustration but little practical recourse. Unless they changed how the MP of the

relevant riding behaved in the House, King's position was unassailable. Yet, they were the only

avenue dissidents had to pursue change within the party.

35 “In the Matter of a protest with reference to the so-called election of officers of the 20th Century Liberal Clubs of the City of Saint John: Petition.” 19 August 1938, MG32 C85, Vol.3, File 33 20th Century Liberal Clubs, Norman Lambert Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 204

While individuals dissatisfied with the Liberal leadership had few options to voice their

disdain except through the official channels created by the central party, in Ontario the Liberals

faced a different type of opposition. Premier Mitchell Hepburn, a former Liberal MP who had

left federal politics to lead the Ontario Liberals in 1932, was deeply opposed to King and was

willing to use the machinery of the Ontario Liberal Party to discredit the party leader. Hepburn, a

gifted orator, became Premier of Ontario in 1934 after defeating unpopular Conservative

incumbent George Henry on the back of an avowedly populist election campaign where, among

other pledges, he promised to sell government limousines and end alcohol prohibition. His

conflict with King began in earnest in 1937 when King refused to allow the Royal Canadian

Mounted Police (RCMP) to break a Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) strike at General

Motor's Oshawa plant. Hepburn, who had promised to resist all attempts by the CIO to establish

itself in Ontario, was furious, viewing King's refusal to authorize RCMP action as a personal

betrayal.36 Hepburn also opposed the Rowell-Sirois Commission on Dominion-Provincial

Relations called by King in 1937, seeing it as an attempt by Ottawa to justify usurping provincial

power. The outbreak of World War II only furthered Hepburn's animosity towards King,

culminating in the Ontario Liberals introducing a motion in the Ontario Provincial Parliament

condemning King's handling of the war effort.

Yet Hepburn's efforts were not limited to embarrassing the King government at Queen's

Park, they also extended to controlling the Liberals’ party machinery in the province. In a 1940

memorandum to King, NLF President and Liberal Senator Norman Lambert described the

36 See Irving Arbella, On Strike: Six Key Labour Struggles in Canada 1919-1949, (Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1974), 93-128, for details on the strike and Hepburn's role in confronting organized labour. 205

situation in Ontario as the Liberal Party's “chief problem.” Lambert told King that, “Until the

Liberals of Ontario are willing to take action in the calling of a province wide Convention to

form a representative association with duly elected officials, the situation will not be

satisfactory.” Lambert went on to explain that, “[The] complete unification of federal and

provincial Liberal interests under Hepburn's domination, do not suggest a satisfactory solution of

the problem referred to in the above paragraph.” In order to remedy the situation, Lambert

suggested to King that the party “Attempt to establish a representative and democratically

constituted Liberal organization in Ontario. Without such a reorganized unit to replace in the

federal chain the link which was removed by Hepburn, the NLF becomes a misnomer.”37

Lambert's comments revealed the limits of the NLF when it came to organizing on a riding-by-

riding level. The organization still relied on provincial party structures and parochial interests

hostile to the federal party could easily control these local institutions. In order to remedy this

situation, Lambert encouraged his party to create a parallel Liberal organization that was only

concerned with federal politics. For Lambert, it was also critical that this new organization be

representative and democratic. Having an open leadership structure within each riding

association meant that it was difficult for one faction of the party to dominate the organizational

structure. A riding association run by elected members would be harder to completely control as

the MP or MPP in the riding could simply appoint their supporters to positions of influence and

power within the organization. Such an approach did open up the possibility of factions opposed

to the current leadership taking control of the association, as happened in Saint John-Albert in

37 Norman Lambert, Memorandum to W.L. Mackenzie King re Ontario Liberals, 2 November 1940. MG32 C85, Vol.2 Prime Minister's Office 1940-1947, Norman Lambert Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 206

1938, but it would make it substantially more difficult for a premier hostile to the federal party to

turn the entire provincial organization against the prime minister. Democratic principles were not

only good politics; they provided a strong insurance policy for the Liberal elite.

Unfortunately, for the Liberals, their attempt to create a parallel organization in Ontario

to rival that of the Hepburn-controlled Ontario Liberal Association was largely ineffective. Two

years later in December of 1942, Norman Lambert again wrote to King insisting the party take

action to create a provincial organization in Ontario. The Liberals’ limited action on this matter

was not surprising given the ongoing war with Nazi Germany. Additionally, the shambolic state

of the party's main competition, the Conservative Party, created little sense of urgency. However,

Lambert argued that the only way to have an effective organization was to establish it “on a

permanent basis: and to be permanent, it must be fundamentally representative and democratic in

character.” Lambert went on to explain the problem with the current party practice of appointing

a person to act as an organizer for the Liberals in Ontario. He stated that:

The arbitrary appointment, or selection, of some individual as a Liberal Organizer for Ontario to open an office in Toronto for the purpose primarily of serving the material demands of candidates and their agents at election time, represents not only an unjustifiable extravagance at any time, but it is also an affront to all that democracy and liberalism in our party professions stand for.38

For Lambert, the purpose of the extra-parliamentary party was not to simply provide advice and

support during an election campaign. If it was, then the party could simply hire someone to

coordinate that work. The problem for Lambert was such an approach to party organization was

not only expensive but it would go against what he had always argued the Liberal Party should

38 Norman Lambert to Prime Minister King, 17 December 1942. MG32 C85, Vol.2 Prime Minister's Office 1940- 1947, Norman Lambert Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 207

stand for. A party that publicly proclaimed their support for democracy needed also to act democratically. Beyond principles, Lambert had a clear practical motivation for establishing democratic and representative provincial organizations. In order to ensure a permanent party structure, Lambert argued that the members of the party needed to be involved in its creation and maintenance while also having a stake in the organization. Representative institutions created an engaged membership who the party could call upon to work on behalf of the party during election campaigns. Simultaneously though, they also gave party members an avenue through which they could express their displeasure with the party leadership but without the membership actually having any real power to remove a leader or minister. Whereas previously, a backbench revolt could seriously threaten a leader's position, a membership revolt in the 1930s would simply result in a series of embarrassing but ultimately inconsequential resolutions.

5.3 The Conservative Party Experience

The Conservative Party during the same period failed to develop an effective extra- parliamentary apparatus despite various attempts to emulate the Liberals. Many of the Tories’ efforts to grant greater power to their members were driven by a desire to contest the Liberals’ claims to be the only party capable of protecting Canadian democracy. The result was often ad hoc arrangements made to deal with a specific issue rather than establishing an internal party culture that emphasized foundational principles of representation and democracy. In 1942 R.A.

Bell, former general secretary of the Conservative Party during R.B. Bennett’s tenure as leader, outlined previous attempts by the Conservative Party to create an extra-parliamentary organization. In a report prepared for Arthur Meighen, who was once again serving – albeit briefly – as the leader of the Conservative Party, Bell detailed the origins of the party’s extra-

208

parliamentary organization in 1924 during Meighen's previous stint as party leader. Referencing

Conservative MP and amateur historian John R. Nichol, Bell told Meighen that:

In his book entitled The National Liberal-Conservative Convention, Winnipeg, 1927, John R. Nichol states that, as a result of the widespread desire for a Convention expressed in resolutions passed by the Quebec Conservative Association, the Manitoba Conservative Association and the Ontario Conservative Association, a conference met in Toronto on 17 November 1924.39

The result of these meetings was the creation of a national convention committee, tasked with

organizing the party’s first convention. This committee was slow in acting and it was not until

Meighen resigned as leader after the Conservatives lost the 1926 federal election that the

Convention Committee was motivated to act. Their efforts were aided by Meighen's appointment

of Maj-Gen (ret.) Alexander McRae as head of the committee. McRae's energy and competence

ensured that the 1927 convention in Winnipeg was a success, selecting R.B. Bennett as the

party's new leader.

The 1927 Convention marked the first real attempt to establish a permanent federal

organization that would function separately from but in conjunction with the provincial riding

associations that formed the backbone of the Conservative Party. At the convention, the party's

newly formed Committee on Organization introduced a resolution calling for the creation of

Conservative Clubs across the country. The resolution, unanimously passed by the assembled

delegates, read:

Whereas it is highly desirable that the principles and the precepts of the Conservative Party be inculcated into the rising generation of young men and women of Canada, THEREFORE be it further resolved that this Committee on Organization strongly recommend that the convention endorse the formation of a Macdonald-Cartier Clubs and other Conservative Associations of young men and women and that it be

39 Correspondence between R.A. Bell and Rt. Hon. Arthur Meighen, 26 September 1942. MG32 C3, Vol.116, File 1178 Progressive Conservative Party, George Drew Fonds. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 209

recommended that the Provincial Riding and other regularly constituted Conservative Organizations give due recognition on their Executives to duly elected representatives of such Clubs.40

Much like the Liberals, a section of Conservative Party supporters recognized that beyond

providing valuable labour during election campaigns, party clubs across the country were also

the basis for inculcating supporters with party principles. The motion further demonstrated that

the Conservative Party faced similar problems to the Liberals at the riding level, as for both

parties, the provincial party was still the dominant entity on the ground. Thus, even while the

federal party insisted the executives of these new clubs be elected, the most that the federal party

could do was recommend that the representatives of these new clubs be granted decision-making

power.

As detailed in Chapter 4, Bennett's selection as leader, combined with an influx of funds

and the organizational talents of McRae, allowed the party to create a national organization,

centered in Ottawa. This National Liberal-Conservative Association’s activities were funded

through donations from Bennett and Montreal Gazette owner Hugh Graham. With a promise of

secure funding in exchange for relinquishing decision-making authority, the majority of

provincial Conservative associations had, by 1930, agreed to follow the national association's

lead during the federal election campaign. Yet despite the Conservatives’ success in the 1930

election, in 1931 Bennett disbanded the National Liberal-Conservative Association.41

Whether out of a desire to save money, a belief that he was the most important factor in

the election victory and McRae was expendable, or some other factor, Bennett let his party's

40 Resolution 1927 Convention, File 423: Conservative Party Convention, Vol.63, File 423 Conservative Party Convention, p.49370. William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 41 Levine, 156-158. 210

formidable electoral machine fall apart. Reflecting back a decade later, Bell detailed the result of

Bennett's decision, telling Meighen that:

I can find no record of the existence, during the years when Mr. Bennett was Prime Minister, of anybody known as either the Liberal-Conservative Association of Canada or the Dominion Conservative Association. In 1935, I was General Secretary of the Party and acted as Assistance Dominion Organizer during the election campaign of that year, and I can say that I personally never heard of any organization styled by either name.42

While Bennett, through the efforts of McRae and his deputies, was able to re-energize the party

and use his own personal fortune for its benefit during the 1930 campaign, money and personal

initiative did not equate to an enduring or organized national association. As Bell highlighted for

Meighen, when compared to the Liberals, the Conservatives’ only attempts at creating a national

party organization were direct responses to political challenges such as the resignation of a leader

or the imperative of an election campaign. When the immediate need passed, these temporary

structures also faded away.

Recognizing the ephemeral nature of the Conservative Party's infrastructure, some

Conservatives sought to address this problem directly. In a series of letters between R.C. Wood

and failed Ontario Conservative leadership candidate George Drew – who in the mid-1940s did

become both premier of the province and later leader of the federal Progressive Conservative

Party – the two discussed the importance of building up a national Conservative organization

free from the influence of the Ontario wing of the party. As Wood highlighted in his letter from

29 October 1937, it was integral that any federal organization have the financial resources to

operate independently. He told Drew that:

42 Correspondence between R.A. Bell and Rt. Hon. Arthur Meighen, 26 September 1942. MG32 C3, Vol.116, File 1178 Progressive Conservative Party, George Drew Fonds. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 211

A committee... with sufficient commercial and financial support could send organizers and speakers into any riding where the executive of the local association was suspected of padding the lists, packing the meetings and other devices for perpetuating their power to the prejudice of the Party, who would very soon organize another association large enough to demand recognition as official.43

While not explicitly couching his defence of party organization in democratic terms, according to

Wood, one of the benefits of a national federation was the ability for the Conservatives to

eliminate corrupt practices of local officials who used their riding association as a means of

challenging the central party. Much as Lambert had extolled the virtues of a democratic party for

the federal Liberals, Drew and Wood also adopted a similar position. The problem was how to

fund such an organization without relying on contributions from many of the same people whose

power it sought to limit. For this problem, neither Drew nor Wood had an answer.

After their defeat in 1935, the Conservatives’ struggled to maintain even the basic

apparatus of a central organization like a central office for the extra-parliamentary party. Prior to

the 1935 election Bennett had worked with Bell to establish a national office for the party. Yet

after the election, finding money to fund this office was increasingly difficult. The final blow

came in 1939. In a letter from 18 September 1939, Ottawa resident and future rector of The

University of Ottawa H.P. Hill told George Drew, then the leader of the Ontario Progressive

Conservative Party, that:

During the recent session of Parliament [Bob Manion] discussed the matter with his supporters in the House in caucus and it was all agreed, most regrettably, that it would be impossible to keep up the [national office] any longer, and that there was nothing else to do but to close the offices [in Ottawa].44

43 Correspondence between R.C. Wood and George Drew, 29 October 1937. MG32 C3, Vol.144, File 1553 R.C. Wood, George Drew Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 44 Correspondence between H.P. Hill of Ottawa and Lt. Col. George Drew, 18 September 1939. MG32 C3, Vol.70, File 642 Hammett P. Hill, George Drew Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 212

Later on in the letter, Hill revealed that maintaining the office would cost the party $13 000 a

month and that the Conservatives simply could not maintain the continuous cash flow required to

meet that expense.45 Ironically, it was the Tories’ organizational weakness and inability to

fundraise effectively that undermined their ability to organize the federal party. Part of the

Conservatives’ problem was that even when the Liberals were attempting to build their national

organization during their time in opposition supporters could reasonably expect the Liberals to

return to power in the near future and once again have access to patronage and government

contracts with which they could reward faithful supporters. Yet, after Bennett's defeat and

resignation, the same was not true for the Conservatives. The new leader was Robert “Bob”

Manion who, despite a long career in politics, was unable to inspire confidence in Conservative

donors that the party would return to power in the near future. As a result, the party remained

short of funds throughout the decade.

The Conservatives’ inability to secure stable financing continued to cause problems

leading into the 1940 federal election. Despite running in 1940 under the banner of a “National

Government” instead of the Conservative Party, the party did not manage to gain a single seat

while the Liberals increased their majority by six seats from 173 to 179 seats. The election also

marked the first time that the King-led Liberals had won over 50% of the popular vote, securing

51% compared to the Conservatives’ 29%. Conservative Leader Robert Manion, a former

minister of railways and canals in R.B. Bennett's government, also lost his own seat of London,

Ontario and subsequently resigned as party leader, sparking another national search for a leader.

45 Ibid. 213

The Conservatives’ humbling loss combined with Manion's resignation caused many

prominent figures in the party to engage in a detailed post-mortem and plan for the party's future.

Foremost among these were Drew and Grattan O'Leary, head editor of the Ottawa Journal and

confident of Arthur Meighen. In a series of letters between the two men over the course of the

month after election night, they emphasized how a revitalized and reorganized Conservative

Party was integral to Canadian democracy. According to O'Leary, one of the biggest

consequences of a weakened Conservative Party was that the Liberals dominated the newspaper

coverage of the campaign. O'Leary told Drew that:

Manion, except for two newspapers, had no press. The Liberal newspapers, including the powerful Winnipeg Free Press, The Toronto Star, and the Vancouver Sun rallied strongly for their party, but Conservative newspapers, except the Ottawa Journal and The Toronto Telegram, struck their flags, actually out of 100 daily newspapers in the country, not more than 20 took definite sides.46

O'Leary, as head editor of the Ottawa Journal, was obviously biased, but he did point to a

continuing problem of limited Conservative influence in print media, one that Bennett supporters

had also identified after the 1935 election.47 For O'Leary, the consequences of this imbalance in

press coverage did not simply weaken the Conservatives but Canadian democracy as a whole. He

told Drew that, “Today in this country there is practically no sustained discussion of public

questions. We speak of our democratic right to discuss and debate; we neither debate nor

discuss.”48 In the Canada of 1940, newspapers were the dominant media. Much as Bennett and

the Conservatives had found success in 1930 by dominating existing print media and producing

46 Correspondence between Grattan O'Leary and George Drew, 2 April 1940, MG32 C3, Vol.110, File 1077 Grattan O'Leary, George Drew Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 47 See Correspondence between O.E. Bowen and R.B. Bennett, 21 October 1935, MG26 K, Vol.206 Civil Service Vote File, pp.135174-135462, R.B. Bennett Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 48 Correspondence between Grattan O'Leary and George Drew, 2 April 1940, MG32 C3, Vol.110, File 1077 Grattan O'Leary, George Drew Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 214

their own, such as The Canadian, the Liberals by 1940 were able to capitalize on their increased

organizational capability to control the Canadian print media landscape.

Drew concurred with O'Leary's assessment of the Conservatives’ current struggles while

also proposing a solution. In his response to the 2 April letter, Drew argued that the Tories

needed to regenerate their party and the best way to do so was through hosting a truly

representative convention. Drew wrote:

It seems to me that the Conservative Party should begin immediately to get ready for the part of it may be called upon to play. It seems to me that there is a very real possibility of dissatisfaction within the Liberal Party itself. You know even better than I do that prior to the election there were many Liberals who were quite openly criticizing Mackenzie King's lack of effort... In any event, the Conservative Party should be ready for whatever happens, and the first step is to have a truly representative gathering of Conservatives in Ottawa to discuss the general situation and lay down some simple plan of action. We have a chance to get rid of the “old gang” and this time the job should be well done.49

As Drew correctly assessed, the Conservative Party needed to have a definitive plan of action to

revitalize the party. Only then, could it present a credible alternative to the Liberals and hope to

attract dissatisfied supporters away from the governing party. Yet, this reorganization process

needed input from people across the country and not “the old gang” of Toronto business leaders

who had used their previous dominant position in Ontario provincial politics to exert control over

the federal Conservative Party following Bennett’s departure. This group of Toronto elites had

failed to construct a competitive and functioning party and, according to Drew, the

Conservatives had to sideline them to advance as an organization. While Drew's personal

commitment to democratic principles is debatable, the Ontario Conservative Party leader

49 Correspondence between George Drew and Grattan O'Leary, 9 April 1940, MG32 C3, Vol.110, File 1077 Grattan O'Leary, George Drew Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 215

recognized that the Liberals’ public embrace of democratic rhetoric, combined with the benefits

of an empowered membership for the party itself, made a more representative party structure a

necessity for any party that wished to compete in federal elections.

Beyond creating a functioning extra-parliamentary party that could contest elections and

ensure equal media representation, O'Leary also argued that a revitalized Tory party was integral

for Canadian democracy. In particular, with the Liberals in government, the Conservatives as the

Official Opposition needed to keep the government in check and ensure that they presented

Canadians with the truth. O'Leary told Drew that:

As I understand it, democracy depends not merely upon the right of the people to express their voice by vote, but also upon the right of the people to know the facts upon which they will make their decision, Unless they are given the facts with absolute accuracy by representatives of the government, then democracy becomes meaningless no matter how free the franchise may be.50

O'Leary, working in print media in Ottawa, was well positioned to recognize the Liberals’

attempts to control information, particularly during wartime. He argued that it was only by

having an effective opposition party, both inside and outside of the House of Commons, which

they could hold the government to account. Unfortunately, for O'Leary and Drew, they did not

have any concrete plans beyond a representative convention to solve the deep-seated issues

facing the Tory party. Even Drew, who later became leader of the Progressive Conservative

Party in 1948, was unable to threaten the Liberals’ dominant position when handed the reins of

power.

50 Correspondence between George Drew and Grattan O'Leary, 18 October 1940, MG32 C3, Vol.110, File 1077 Grattan O'Leary, George Drew Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 216

5.4 Liberal Attacks

The Conservatives’ inability to effectively maintain a functioning extra-parliamentary organization that at least superficially appeared democratic not only hindered their ability to compete electorally, it also allowed the Liberals to compare themselves favourably to the

Conservatives and further advance their narrative that only the Liberal Party was truly democratic. As discussed in Chapter 4, the Liberals attacked Bennett for his supposedly dictatorial methods of governing when he was in power, arguing that only a Liberal government could be trusted to maintain Canadian democracy. Upon returning to government, it became much more difficult for the Liberal Party to contrast itself with other parties as the responsibility of governing meant that they could not simply criticize but had to offer constructive legislation.

As a result, the Liberal Party and their supporters turned their attention to the internal processes of the opposition parties, creating unfavourable comparisons between the governing party and the others.

A harbinger of this strategy came in the Liberals’ critiques of the newly formed

Reconstruction Party led by former Bennett cabinet minister H.H. Stevens. During the 1935 federal election campaign, the Liberals faced two right-of-centre parties in the incumbent

Bennett Conservatives and the breakaway populist Reconstruction Party. The Liberals thus needed to convince the public, and particularly conservative minded voters, that they were the only effective alternative to the governing Conservatives. Part of this strategy involved demonstrating to Canadians that King was committed to implementing democratic principles both in government and within his own party. In a publication entitled Mackenzie King: The

Obstinate Idealist, economist and Liberal partisan William Henry Moore wrote:

217

Mr. King stands aghast at Mr. Stevens' dictatorial methods of party organization and he must have been simply shocked when Mr. Steven's openly adopted the Fascist slogan, “One for all and all for one.” ... For King, the leader of the Liberal Party is its servant; let other parties be what they are, for King, Liberalism ceases to exist when the people are no longer free to think out policies for themselves. No one man is to subject the people to his will, not even in the case for reform.51

The fact that the Reconstruction Party was essentially a personal project of Stevens and had only

existed since July of 1935 was irrelevant to Moore and, by extension, to King. Given the lack of

organization and an established network of supporters and riding associations by default, Stevens

would be the dominant force behind his party. Yet, the Liberals wanted to portray Stevens,

despite his resignation from Bennett's cabinet, as simply imitating Bennett and his supposedly

fascist tendencies. In comparison, Moore presented the Liberal Party as a member driven

organization, where the people could decide on policies and the leader was simply the person

tasked with implementing them. The image the Liberals wanted to present was one of King as

being subject to the will of the people while the other federal leaders were subjecting the people

to their will.

After the Conservatives lost the 1935 federal election, Bennett remained leader for

eighteen more months and then resigned, leading the Conservative National Committee to call

the second national leadership convention. Given that the Liberals had only ever had one

leadership convention, nineteen years prior, and with no leadership race expected for the near

future, the party could easily compare the actual Conservative process with an idealized one

advocated by the Liberals. The editorial staff of The Globe and Mail, a Toronto paper with

51 William Henry Moore, Mackenzie King: The Obstinate Idealist, (Ottawa: National Liberal Federation, 1935). 218

Liberal sympathies, published an editorial on 7 May 1938 discussing the upcoming Conservative

Leadership Convention, telling their readers that:

The two party political system is the best yet devised for democratic government and that; accordingly, the strength of the two established and proven parties must be maintained. In each case, obviously this required the confidence of the supporting electorate, strength built from the bottom up... There may have been a time when voters followed the parties blindly, but it is not the case today. People are informed on public affairs. They understand the duties of government and demand that conditions affecting their welfare be recognized in party platforms. Those who wish to support one party or the other insist upon a voice in politics.52

While the editors of the papers wrote using theoretical generalities, their purpose was to establish

a standard of democratic legitimacy, which all parties should adhere too. Yet the Conservatives

were the only party who were actually selecting a new party leader. Over the summer of 1938, it

was not the Liberals who were the focus of intense public scrutiny, allowing the governing

party's media allies to set a high standard for membership involvement then condemn the

Conservatives for failing to meet them. In particular, the Globe and Mail presented the federal

party's decision to hold their leadership convention before the Ontario Conservative Party's

annual meeting as one example of the Tories’ failure to ensure proper representation of their

members. The editorial board wrote that:

The annual meeting of the Ontario Conservative Party … would provide an open forum for the Conservatives of the province and ensure that the delegates sent to the Ottawa Convention would be more fully representative of rank and file opinion than if selected with a reorganization. Why the National Committee should wish to silence the Ontario meeting until after the important proceedings at Ottawa are disposed of is not clear, unless it is feared the Ontario Conservatives would upset the loaded applecart?53

52 “Let Rank and File Speak,” Globe and Mail, 11 May 1938: 6 53 Ibid. 219

While not openly declaring that the Conservatives wished to silence members who dissented

from what the central party elites wanted, the papers’ editors were willing to hint at such dark

and authoritarian motivations. Conveniently, the Liberal Party did not need to hold a leadership

convention in the near future and thus, did not have an immediate need for themselves to adhere

to the standards their partisans pushed for the Conservatives.

New Conservative leader Robert Manion was a largely ineffective leader who failed to

inspire Conservative supporters or the Canadian electorate. During the 1940 federal election, the

sympathetic Liberal press continued to characterize the Conservative leadership as authoritarians

who ignored their members' wishes. In his endorsement of Norman Rogers for the riding of

Kingston, W.R. Givens, the head editor and publisher of the Kingston Standard, argued that the

Conservatives still suffered from the legacy of their former leader Bennett. He wrote that:

The first drift began under Premier Bennett, and will likely go down in history as the Oligarchical drift, since it was in this period that Premier Bennett, chosen as leader in Winnipeg, decided that the best kind of leadership was to ignore the party which he was to lead – its rank and file, its local leaders, its Parliamentary representatives, and even the cabinet ministers – and put on an amazing one man governing act, in which he and he only was at once party and leader, with all other but flies on the wheel.54

For Givens, the fact that Manion was the leader now was irrelevant. Bennett had indelibly

shaped the culture of the party. He had set the norm for how the party should operate and had

normalized excluding party members from major decisions. Unlike the Liberals whom, when

criticized, could point to party structures that engaged with members and nominally allowed

them to voice their opinion, the Conservatives could only point to a series of failed initiatives.

54 W.R. Givens, “Vote Rogers: Canada Needs Him! Kingston Needs Him!” Kingston Standard, 1940:4. 220

As discussed above, the 1940 federal election proved to be the only one that Manion

would contest as the leader of the Tories. His failure to increase the party's seat count beyond

thirty-nine, despite campaigning as a “National Government,” combined with losing his own seat

led Manion to resign shortly after the results were in. Once again, the Conservatives had to find a

new leader. In the interim, the party selected former Mayor of Fredericton, New Brunswick and

Minister of Trade and Commerce Richard Hanson, as their leader. The Tories tasked Hanson

with choosing the next leader whose candidacy the party would either accept or reject at the next

convention. Appointed to his position in May of 1940, Hanson took no clear action on the

question of the next Conservative leader during his first six months in charge of the party.

Hanson's first attempts to deal with the question of who would lead the party

demonstrated how the Canadian media would apply standards of democracy and transparency to

the process of selecting Manion’s permanent successor. In January of 1941, Norman McLeod,

O'Leary's replacement as editor of the Conservative leaning Ottawa Journal, authored a

sensational report stating that a select group of Conservative Party elites were planning a secret

meeting to choose the new leader of the party.55 In the article, which appeared in the paper on 30

January, McLeod wrote, “The new leader of Canada's Conservative Party may emerge from a

secret dinner meeting attended by thirty prominent Conservatives to be held behind the closed

doors of a political club.” McLeod went on to tell his readers that the decision to select the leader

behind closed doors was made “at another secret meeting in Montreal two weeks ago.” Beyond

the scandal of secret meetings, McLeod also stated that “except for Conservative Leader Hanson,

the Federal Parliamentary group has not participated in [these meetings] J.G. Diefenbaker of

55 Not to be confused with King’s personal secretary and later MP Normal McLeod Rogers. 221

Prince Albert was present only in his capacity as provincial leader in Saskatchewan, not as a

Federal MP.”56 Despite the Conservatives’ continuing instability in regards to their leadership,

the party deciding to forgo an open convention in favour of a closed-door meeting of party elites

was now inexcusable for many political observers, even ones who were ideologically aligned

with conservative values.

Hanson was aware of the potential fallout of McLeod’s exclusive report and quickly

issued a denial in the next day's Ottawa Journal. While Hanson admitted that he had been

meeting with various stakeholders, he stated that such meetings were, “held only in the normal

course of his regular activities as a party leader. No decisions have been reached which are in

any way binding upon the party.” Hanson went on to assure party supporters that “When a new

leader is to be chosen his choice will be made in a democratic manner and in accordance with the

best traditions of the party.”57 Critically though, Hanson did not specify how exactly the next

Conservative leader would be selected, as he had not decided. Yet he insisted such a selection

would conform to the democratic ideals he assured voters were guiding his party's conduct.

Regardless of the specific mechanism for choosing a leader, what was clear from Hanson's

statement was that party members from across the country demanded a role in determining their

new leader. Yet, within the Westminster system, a party leader needed the support of their

caucus to remain in their position, meaning the Conservatives could well have selected their

leader in a secret meeting in a smoky backroom somewhere. However, as the events of January

1941 demonstrated, even supporters like McLeod would roundly criticize such a decision. The

56 Norman McLeod, “Secret Dinner May Decide Tory Leader,” Ottawa Evening Journal, 30 January 1941. 57 “No Secret Meeting Held says Hanson,” Ottawa Morning Journal, 31 January 1941. 222

now dominant standard of legitimacy served to devalue the opinions of private members and

party elites while elevating the party's regular members in the name of democratic legitimacy.

Ultimately, Hanson and the party decided to host a national convention in November of

1941. Instead of organizing a leadership race, though, Hanson and his advisors pressured

Conservative Senator and former party leader Arthur Meighen to return to lead the party, which

he agreed to, having his leadership confirmed by party delegates at the convention.58 Yet, within

a year, the same process of forcing a leader on a reluctant party would play out again. Meighen,

after accepting the leadership, resigned from the Senate on 16 January 1942 and ran in a by-

election in the Toronto-area riding of York South, a safe Tory seat that no other party had won

since its creation in 1904. Despite the Liberal Party not fielding a candidate, as was tradition

when a party leader attempted to enter Parliament, on 9 February 1942 Meighen lost to CCF

candidate Joseph Noseworthy. Meighen still retained the party leadership throughout the summer

but announced in September that the party would have a convention in Winnipeg in December of

1942 to “broaden out” the party's appeal.

Despite Meighen's announcement of a national convention, most high profile

Conservatives, even those who were involved with the National Conference, had no idea how the

party would select its new leader. Meighen refused to declare that the Winnipeg Convention was

a leadership convention, meaning potential candidates could not formally campaign. Instead of

initiating a leadership race, Meighen began negotiating with Manitoba Premier John Bracken to

have him assume leadership of the Conservative Party. The largest obstacle to Meighen's plan

was that Bracken was emphatically not a Conservative. He entered politics as a United Farmer

58 “The Conservative Leadership,” Toronto Star, 4 November 1941. 223

and had governed Manitoba since 1922 at the head of the Progressive Party of Manitoba. In

following the Progressive Party's anti-party ideology, Bracken had attempted to form a non-

partisan ministry and, because of his overtures, the Progressive Party merged with the Manitoba

Liberals in 1931. In 1940, he formed a unity ministry for the duration of the war that included

members from the CCF, Progressive Party and Conservative Party. Bracken's willingness to

reach across partisan lines, combined with his record of electoral success in Manitoba, made him

an appealing leadership candidate for Meighen as Bracken would certainly “broaden out” the

party. Yet many Tories were deeply opposed to Bracken’s leadership and rightfully suspicious of

the Manitoba Premier’s conservative credentials.

Many established Conservatives in various provincial associations were opposed to

Bracken’s candidacy as they saw Bracken as Meighen’s candidate and not a leader who reflected

the desires of the party’s regular members. Saskatchewan Conservative Party leader H.E. “Bart”

Keown and George Drew were two of the most staunchly opposed of establishment

Conservatives who objected to Meighen's plan to install Bracken at the 1942 convention. In a

letter to Drew from 30 November 1942, Keown outlined his objections, writing that:

The next [option] is Bracken and Meighen is trying to foist him on us for some unknown reason. I think we must take into consideration the fact whether or not we desire a Conservative Party. I am quite agreeable to taking any person into the party who would support our policy and principles; but I do not like the idea of going out on the hi-ways and bi-ways on a fishing expedition.59

For Keown, Bracken did not represent the party and its principles, rather, he was an outsider who

some in the party were turning to out of desperation. Later in his letter, Keown advocated for

59 Correspondence between H.E. Keown and George Drew, 30 November 1942, MG32 C3, Vol.80, Major H.E. Keown file, George Drew Fonds, Library and Archives Canada. 224

Saskatchewan MP John Diefenbaker as an alternative to Bracken, for Diefenbaker was

representative of prairie Conservatism. However, without a leadership campaign, Meighen was

able to essentially pick his successor and present it to the party membership as a fait accompli.

What would happen at the December convention remained unknown to many prominent

Conservatives, even into early December. Former secretary of state under R.B. Bennett and

failed 1937 leadership candidate Charles H. Cahan wrote to Drew on 3 December 1942 asking,

“Is the rumour authentic that [Meighen] is working to place Bracken in the position of Leader of

the Conservative Party?” As Cahan outlined in the body of his letter, the problem with Bracken

was that he was not a conservative in either his ideological or partisan affiliation. Cahan told

Drew that:

I like Bracken very well as a man, but I cannot regard him as a prospective leader of the Conservative Party. He does not think our thoughts, nor express our political views. It would be all very well for Meighen, as Prime Minister, to ask him to be Minister of Agriculture in his proposed cabinet; but I cannot conceive that Meighen will support him for the Leadership. I hear many ugly terms used to characterize such a proceeding. Mr. Meighen cannot expect the industrial and financial interests of [Toronto] to approve of such a course of action.60

For Cahan, selecting Bracken as leader would be a massive problem for the party. Even if it

managed to maintain unity behind their new leader, “Bracken’s selection as leader is the end,

temporarily, at least, of the Dominion Conservative Party.”61

Much like the Saskatchewan Conservative Party leader, Cahan was deeply concerned that

bringing in an outsider who did not share the party’s core values would undermine the party and

alienate a large number of supporters. Drew, in his response to Cahan, also echoed these

60 Correspondence between C.H. Cahan and Colonel George Drew, 3 December 1942, MG32 C3, Vol.24 File 198, George Drew Fond. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 61 Ibid. 225

concerns, writing that, “I am fearful of immature ideas and attempts to go so far that it may leave

the impression that our policies are more dictated by the hope of pleasing everyone than by any

clear principles or design.”62 Rather than presenting a coherent vision to the Canadian public,

Drew worried that selecting Bracken would simply be a cynical act of desperation Canadians

would see through. Yet, despite Drew's concerns, Meighen nominated Bracken as the next leader

of the party at the Winnipeg Convention and delegates voted to confirm him as leader. In order

to convince Bracken to resign as premier of Manitoba and take up the post of federal leader, the

party agreed to change its name to the Progressive Conservative Party. Even after assuming the

leadership, Bracken decided not to seek a seat in the House of Commons until the 1945 federal

election when he won the rural seat of Neepawa in Manitoba, the riding containing Riding

Mountain National Park. Despite winning an additional 29 seats, the Progressive Conservative

Party still lost to the Liberals and remained in opposition. Finally, in 1948, frustrated by their

leader, many of the party's eastern elites successfully pushed Bracken to resign and at the

subsequent leadership convention replaced him with now Ontario Premier George Drew. Drew

would be no more successful than Bracken as leader. It took the Conservatives finally turning to

John Diefenbaker, fourteen years after Keown recommended him, to return to power.

5.5 Conclusion

Creating an extra-parliamentary party apparatus was a costly endeavour in both financial

and human resources. Furthermore, as the last chapter demonstrated, it also created the

possibility of conflict between MPs, whose responsibilities party bureaucrats had usurped, and a

62 Correspondence between George Drew and C.H. Cahan, 5 December 1942, MG32 C3, Vol.24 File 198, George Drew Fond. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 226

newly empowered membership. The response from the Liberal Party’s elite was to counter claims of disempowerment by private members by arguing that they had instead empowered individual party members from across the country, thus making their party more democratic. For

King and other Liberals, the extra-parliamentary national party organization they helped create became the gold standard for judging other parties’ actions regarding structure and decision- making. Yet, while the Liberal Party's internal conflicts in Ontario demonstrate that the federal party was not entirely successful in creating a truly independent national organization, the success of the NLF gave the Liberal Party after 1935 a tremendous advantage during election campaigns over their Tory rivals.

Beyond conferring a clear advantage when competing for votes and attracting donations, through creating a permanent mechanism for member participation in party affairs, the Liberal

Party was able to articulate a standard of democratic practice that they could apply to the

Conservatives and find them wanting. Throughout the second half of the 1930s and early 1940s, a number of prominent Conservatives, George Drew foremost among them, were increasingly aware of their party's competitive disadvantage compared to the Liberals and tentatively took action to resolve the problem. Yet, the party leadership structure was so diffuse and limited that the Conservatives were unable to unite in positive action and even suffered the ignominy of having to close their national party headquarters in Ottawa because of a lack of funds. The result of the Conservatives’ dysfunction was a series of temporary and ineffective leaders who failed to challenge King and the Liberals’ dominance. Each successive leadership failure only prompted the party to take further hasty action that limited members’ involvement but also alienated many members of caucus and voters. Thus, by the end of World War II, the Conservatives had largely

227

shed their earlier image as the party of authoritarians only to have it replaced in the public mind as the party of incompetents.

The entire process of presenting modern party organization as democratic originated with the Liberals. What was particularly significant about this development was not only the material benefits the NLF brought to the party, but also the way it changed the Liberal Party's intellectual foundations. While initially relying on the rhetoric of democratic reform to justify limiting private members' power, how well opposition parties adhered to these new standards propagated by the Liberals became the measure of a party's commitment to preserving Canadian democracy.

Democracy was the standard, which the Liberals could measure all other actions against and find wanting. Yet this vision of democracy was the same as that articulated by the Liberal Party.

Functionally in the game of politics, the Liberals had made the rules and appointed themselves the referee. The fact that they subsequently enjoyed long stretches in power while the

Conservatives failed to mount a coherent opposition is, thus, not surprising.

228

Chapter 6: Limiting the Power of Private Members

Throughout the interwar years, the Liberals portrayed the Tories as either devious authoritarians or incompetents when compared to their own party, which they publicly presented as the sole protector of the key democratic values. Central to this vision was the idea of cabinet governance and the Liberals’ pledge to Canadians to protect responsible government from those on the right and the left who would use the Great Depression to justify centralizing power in a dictator or unaccountable economic planners. Yet, by emphasizing the importance of cabinet, or “The Men behind Mackenzie King” as their campaign literature referred to them, the public face of the party was narrowed down to a few prominent individuals. Furthermore, over the course of the

1930s these select few ministers’ garnered tremendous decision–making power, allowing them to control the party. Combined with the creation of the NLF in 1933 and the increasing influence of extra–parliamentary party officials, Liberal private members saw their influence over party affairs and government decision making substantially reduced. No longer did MPs have control over distributing patronage and government contracts in their ridings, nor were they able to criticize publicly their own party, as the Liberal leadership enforced a strict definition of party solidarity.

This combined loss of public prestige and influence did not go uncontested. In an internal memo written to Prime Minister and Liberal Leader William Lyon Mackenzie King prior to the

1940 Federal Election, the anonymous authors told King of brewing discontent in the Liberal ranks, stating that, “Members of Parliament believe that they are being ignored in all considerations of policy and in the explanations of these policies. In matters of recommendation they further believe that they are treated almost like moral lepers.” While restive backbenchers was certainly not a new phenomenon for either the Liberals or the Conservatives, the party's 229

recommendations to King in how to deal with the issue was. Rather than suggesting to King that

he investigate the substance of these claims or take meaningful action to address them, the

authors instead told their leader that the party should send, “Regular letters to the members

dealing with points of public controversy, explaining clearly the government's position and

indicating the answers they could give to critics in their own constituencies.”1 In short, the party

elites’ new message was that the individual MPs’ powers were permanently curtailed and their

new role was to act essentially as government spokespeople within their local riding, not to make

decisions of consequence.

When analyzing the ways successive governments rewarded their followers, scholars in

history and political science predominantly focus on patronage appointments, or the process of

appointing people to positions within the federal government and civil service. In particular,

most of their works highlight the centrality of patronage to nineteenth century partisan politics

and party formation. For historians such as H.B. Neatby and Alan Gordon, patronage was

essential tool for uniting a political party, be it the Liberals or Conservatives, as well as

connecting disparate groups with the central government.2 As Gordon argues in his work,

patronage was also an integral aspect of Canadian state formation and was part of a broader

modernizing process occurring in North American and Western Europe during the late

nineteenth and early twentieth century. Other scholars have also developed this theme,

demonstrating the important role patronage played, in its either embrace or rejection, in shaping

1 “Memorandum for the Prime Minister” [N.D.] MG 26 J4, Vol. 303, File 3128 Liberal Politics, p.209568, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 2 See H.B. Neatby, Laurier and a Liberal Quebec: A Study in Political Management, (Toronto: McClelland &Stewart 1973), S.J.R. Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers: Ontario Society and Politics, 1791–1896, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1990), and Alan Gordon, “Patronage, etiquette, and the science of connection: Edmund Bristol and political management, 1911–21,” The Canadian Historical Review, Vol.80, No.1 (March 1999): 1–31. 230

the modern Canadian state.3 Patrice Dutil has also expanded on these conclusions by arguing that

the administration of patronage was key to expanding the power of the prime minister in the late

nineteenth and early twentieth century.4 With the exception of some provincial studies, the vast

majority of this literature is rooted in the nineteenth century, as most scholars see the Civil

Service Acts of 1908 and 1918 respectively as effectively limiting politicians control over

patronage appointments.

In spite of the reforms introduced by the government of Robert Borden, patronage and

more broadly the distribution of benefits along partisan lines, continued to be a central

responsibility of the governing party. While particular scandals of the interwar period, such as

the Beauharnois affair, have been dissected by historians such T.D. Regehr, there are few

comprehensive studies of how these networks functioned after World War I.5 A notable

exception is the work of political scientist Reginald Whitaker. Whitaker focuses on the

organization and structure of the Liberal Party between 1930 and 1957 and argues that,

beginning in the 1930s, the Liberals created a patron–client relationship between the party

leadership and the Canadian corporate elite to ensure a steady source of funds to finance the

growth of the extra–parliamentary party. The result was that the party's relationship with

individual citizens and its backbench members became increasingly impersonal and

3 According to John English in his work The Decline of Politics, the prevalence of patronage was one of Prime Minister Robert Borden's main reasons for campaigning for bureaucratic modernization. Similarly, Robert A.J. McDonald develops this idea in relation to British Columbia in his work “The Quest for ‘Modern Administration’: British Columbia’s Civil Service, 1870s to 1940s,” BC Studies, No.161 (Spring 2009): 22. David Banoub also examines the culture of patronage in Victorian Canada and argues that discussions about patronage helped to shape ideas regarding concepts of merit and rationality which influenced subsequent civil service reform efforts. See David Banoub, “The Patronage Effect: Civil Service Reforms, Job Seeking, and State Formation in Victorian Canada,” PhD Diss, (Carleton University 2013). 4 Dutil, 159–197. 5 See Regehr, The Beauharnois Scandal. 231

bureaucratic.6 Whitaker presents a number of compelling reasons for these changes in party

policy and action but his primary interest is in detailing the development and structure of these

relationships between the party and donors.

Building on Whitaker's work, this chapter demonstrates that the progressive

marginalization of individual Liberal MPs is most concretely demonstrated in how the party

managed the distribution of government benefits, ranging from patronage positions to

government contracts and tenders to access to influential ministers. Yet, as the memo to King

highlights, many members resisted these changes. This chapter focuses first, on how the Liberals

centralized decision–making authority and why, before subsequently demonstrating how those

resistant to the Liberal agenda deployed the language of British liberties and democratic

principles to advance their own cause. Overall, from 1921 through to 1941, the Liberal Party

systematically centralized the process for doling out benefits to party supporters in the office of

select influential cabinet ministers and the extra–parliamentary party's leadership. Individual

private members’ ability to reward local supporters became increasingly dependent on their

ability to convince higher–ups in the party as to the merits of individual proposals. Despite their

public defence of a collection of rights and liberties that the Liberals told the electorate were

critical to a functioning democracy, concerning distributing government benefits, the party's

central decision makers were willing to override or ignore invocations of these rights by their

own MPs in the service of advancing the interest of the Liberal Party.

In order to demonstrate these arguments, the chapter will first outline the history of

patronage in post–Confederation Canada to 1921. It will then move on to document how once

6 Whitaker, The Government Party. 232

the Liberals returned to power in 1921 the party had to rely on established methods for

dispensing patronage, as they did not have the organizational ability to centralize the process.

Rather, it was only in the late 1920s when King and his cabinet were able to exert central control

over key portfolios through the creation of numerous expert panels. After the Liberals returned to

power in 1935 the party accelerated the entire process of building its organizational capacity. An

aspect of these changes was how they distributed government benefits. In particular, the newly

formed NLF and its president, Norman Lambert, took on a much larger role. Yet these changes

were also resisted by those whose power and influence were the most reduced, riding association

executives and backbench MPs. These people now sought to use the rhetoric of protecting

democratic rights that their party had employed so successfully to attack the Conservatives and

turn it against their own leaders. Yet, without any practical way to challenge the power of King

and his cabinet allies, all the dissidents could do was protest. Finally, this chapter will

demonstrate how World War II represented the final blow to older systems of distributing

patronage and government tenders and entrenched the Liberals’ new model.

6.1 Patronage in a Canadian Context

Conventionally, the main benefit that governments rewarded their supporters with was a

job. With the governing party controlling every appointment, from who was hired as the local

postmaster all the way to Senate seats, any new government had thousands of positions to fill.

This practice of rewarding supporters with jobs is known as patronage and was endemic to post–

Confederation politics.7 Rewards for party loyalty and service were not limited to jobs but also

7 Albert Breton, “Patronage and Corruption in Hierarchies,” Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol.22, No.2 (1987): 19– 33. 233

included contracts for government work, as well as providing goods and supplies for government

buildings and projects. Beyond these direct monetary rewards, the governing party also offered

the promise of access to political decision makers for supporters. Combined, these three broad

categories of benefits, patronage appointments, government contracts, and political favours, were

all ways a victorious party could reward its followers.

Given their importance in ensuring electoral success, the distribution of government

largess was always centralized to a degree. Since before Confederation, important partisan

duties, foremost among them the dispensation of patronage on a macro level for positions of

national importance was administered from the office of the party leader. As an early biographer

of Liberal Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier explained, Laurier kept close control over patronage

appointments, relying on a small cadre of advisers to make decisions regarding hundreds, if not

thousands of government jobs.8 Furthermore, as John English demonstrates in his work on party

politics during the first twenty years of the twentieth century, a small number of party officials

worked closely with the party leader to decide on policy, patronage appointments and

organizational decisions.9 However, regarding the thousands of local patronage decisions a

government had to make, individual MPs or defeated candidates in ridings not held by the party

had tremendous leeway concerning rewarding supporters. As Kenneth Carty argues in his work

on the Liberal Party, smaller decisions regarding patronage took place on the local level,

resulting in “a network of intense relationships between local partisans and the politicians who

exploited their command of government offices in order to provide them.”10 Thus, while a

8 Oscar D. Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier Vol. II (reprint ed.), (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1965), 270–271. 9 English, 14–15. 10 Carty, Big Tent Politics, 47. 234

Liberal MP would have little influence on who the party appointed to head Crown Corporations,

they could reasonably expect to have the final say on who would be postmasters in their riding

and what company would get the contract to supply the coal that heated government buildings in

their hometown.

This system was untenable in the long run as calls from across the political spectrum for a

merit based civil service grew louder and louder during the latter half of the nineteenth and early

twentieth century. Demands for reform led to two pieces of legislation, one in 1868 and the

second in 1882, both titled The Civil Service Act. These bills, introduced by Conservative Prime

Minister John A. Macdonald, created a nominally independent Civil Service Board of

Examinations who administered a basic qualifying exam for potential civil servants. However, a

combination of an exceptionally basic exam and lack of ministerial co–operation meant these

reforms had little effect on the practice or politics of patronage. The first effective action to limit

partisan appointments to the civil service came from the Liberal government of Laurier in the

lead–up to the 1908 federal election. Responding to Conservative Leader Robert Borden's

criticisms that the Liberal government was corrupt and abused the Crown prerogative of making

government appointments for their own gain, Laurier and the Liberals introduced two acts, The

Elections Act (1907) and The Civil Service Act (1908). Among other reforms, these two acts

limited corporate donations during federal elections and created the Civil Service Commission

(CSC), which had jurisdiction over appointments to the “Inside Service” or bureaucrats

employed by the Federal Government in the City of Ottawa.11 The Civil Service Act (1918) and

11 Luc Juillet and Ken Rasmussen, Defending a Contested Ideal: Merit and the PSC of Canada, 1908–2008, (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2008), 40. 235

subsequent 1919 amendments passed in the last days of the Borden Administration served to

further reinforce the norm of a merit–based public service by greatly enhancing the power of the

CSC and expanding its power to regulate both the Inside and External Service. The new CSC

would now have three members who were Officers of Parliament with ten–year terms, meaning

Parliament and not ministers of the crown confirmed appointees. In practice, the prime minister

would nominate members who would then need to be confirmed by a vote in the Commons.

Once selected, these commissioners had control over all public service appointments, as well as

the ability to administer entrance exam and create eligibility list for hiring.12 The result of these

reforms was that the governing party had a much smaller number of positions it could reward

supporters with, making each position more valuable. Consequently, by the late 1920s the

Liberals were realizing that any decision regarding patronage was simply too important to the

party's electoral fortunes to be left to the discretion of individual MPs.

Debates over patronage were theoretically significant because they were intimately linked

with both the concept and practical operation of responsible government. All appointments to the

civil service and the various Crown Commissions were officially the purview of the Crown.

With the achievement of responsible government, the Crown was required to follow the advice

of its ministers on appointments and these ministers were required to have the support of the

legislature. In establishing this precedent, the ruling monarch or their representative in the

colonies could no longer use patronage appointments as a means of influencing how members of

the legislature voted. Rather, cabinet now practically had the power to build a coalition of

12 Public Service Commission of Canada, 100 Years of the Public Service Commission of Canada, 1908–2008, (Ottawa: Public Service Commission of Canada, 2008). 236

supporters by offering tangible rewards for supporting the government. Thus, ministerial control

over government appointments was one of the central tenets of responsible government.

Subsequently, each time a government introduced legislation empowering the CSC, a minority of

private members from both sides of the aisle invariably opposed the measure. They argued that

by creating a separate body independent from cabinet, the legislation undermined the

constitutional concept of responsible government, as the three Civil Service Commissioners

would not be responsible to Parliament after it confirmed their appointment. Unlike in other

countries using Westminster systems, such as the United Kingdom, the CSC in Canada was not

created by an order in council but rather through an act of Parliament, meaning that Parliament

was effectively empowering another body to usurp the Crown's appointment prerogative.13 In

reality, critics overstated their concerns; civil service reform did not undermine this precept of

responsible government because the Crown still made appointments on the advice of their

ministers. The only aspect that changed was how ministers decided upon what candidates to

recommend to the Crown for appointment. The creation of the CSC simply meant that rather

than taking into account partisan service, a candidate's merit, based on the assessment of the

CSC, was now theoretically the primary metric. Ultimately, cabinet could still limit the power of

the CSC to make appointments if they chose to do so, as they did during World War II.14

6.2 Patronage after World War I

When the Liberals came to power in 1921, the CSC’s ability to control government

appointments was limited by its meager resources, perceived lack of legitimacy by the public,

13 Juillet and Rasmussen, 64–66. 14 Ibid. 237

and the absence of an established practice of ministerial deference to the CSC. With only three

commissioners and a limited staff to oversee thousands of appointments, CSC oversight was

mostly a formality. Consequently, the Liberals in the early 1920s essentially ignored the CSC

while nominating their own partisans to sit as members to ensure its compliance. Requiring only

a majority vote in Parliament to confirm a commissioner, the Liberals were easily able to

appointments of their own partisans. As a result, throughout King's first term the Liberal Party

continued to grant substantial leeway to its individual members regarding distributing

government resources. The Party had spent ten years out of power and after the split in 1917 over

conscription, most patronage networks in English Canada had withered. Consequently, the

Liberals had no choice but to rely on local MPs to administer the numerous appointments the

government had to make. After the Liberals returned to power in 1921, the National Liberal

Organizing Committee (NLOC) highlighted the sheer number of requests the committee had

received from across Canada for both government jobs and “information as to patronage” for

local Liberal officials. Despite the volume of requests the committee received, they argued that

such decisions were not their responsibility. Rather, the NLOC stated in their annual report for

1921 that:

It is conceived that patronage belongs to the members of the Administration through Members of Parliament or where there are no Liberal Members, then through defeated candidates or officers of Riding Associations as the case may be. The question is certainly not one for the national office and apart from furnishing what information it can, this office ought not to be otherwise concerned.15

15 National Liberal Organizing Committee, “Annual Report of the General Secretary,” 31 December 1921, MG26 J4, Vol.114, File 817 Liberal Party, p.84297, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 238

While the national office could provide information to local officials tasked with distributing

government jobs and resources in their riding, patronage was a riding–level responsibility.

Significantly, the NLOC emphasized not that patronage decisions should be made at this level

for reasons of efficiency or capacity, but rather because control of these appointments “belong”

to individual Members of Parliament. MPs were the elected representatives of the government in

the riding and because of the mandate given to them by voters, as well as their local knowledge,

they were the ideal locus for such appointments.

Liberal Party organizers also highlighted the message that local decisions should be made

at the riding level during the first half of the 1920s. When meeting with a delegation from the

riding association for Brantford, Ontario in January of 1925, this delegation told Mackenzie King

along with Saskatchewan MP and Agricultural Minister William R. Motherwell about the

necessity of local control over patronage to ensure a strong and loyal Liberal constituency in the

riding. The president of the association also voiced his displeasure at the fact that the contract for

supplying coal to public buildings in Brantford had been awarded to a Hamilton based business

and not a local one.16 While reflecting the traditional political logic that patronage appointments

were a necessary tool to ensure electoral success, these local Liberal organizers also emphasized

their riding should benefit from all government business conducted in the area. Hence, even if

the Liberal Party had a strong rationale for awarding coal contracts to a Hamilton business, it

was illegitimate because Brantford residents should benefit materially from federal money spent

in their area. This meeting from the winter of 1925 further demonstrated that while many in the

16 “Brantford Liberal Delegation, Received by W.L.M. King and Hon. W.R. Motherwell.” 15 January 1925, MG26 J4, Reel C2719, p.92807, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 239

Liberal Party recognized the importance of patronage as a political tool, this rhetoric was mixed

with the idea that local control of these networks was the right of local MPs and not the

governing party as a whole.

The governing party could not ignore the CSC forever though, and throughout the

decade, the commissioners began to exercise the powers granted to them by legislation, thus

creating additional challenges for the Liberals by reducing the number of patronage

appointments available for partisans. The CSC took an increasingly active role after the 1925

federal election in asserting its exclusive authority over numerous government appointments. As

a result, each remaining patronage appointment took on greater importance. As former Manitoba

Liberal MP Albert Hudson emphasized when discussing the subject in the aftermath of the 1926

federal election, “Government patronage has been kept down to a minimum by the establishment

of the Civil Service Commission, yet what remains becomes all the more important.”17

Particularly in a province as tightly contested as Manitoba, the Liberals needed to closely

integrated patronage policy into their strategic decision making and the party could ill–afford to

leave it to locals. As Winnipeg Liberal Thomas Taylor highlighted in his report on the political

situation in Manitoba to Senator Andrew Haydon, “Everyone [in Manitoba] is dissatisfied with

the distribution of patronage.” In particular, Taylor highlighted how the Manitoba Liberal

Association demanded that all patronage and communication with Ottawa and the power brokers

of the National Liberal Party should go through their association. Haydon had even gone so far

as to write to every cabinet minister in King's government immediately after their appointment at

17 Correspondence between Albert B. Hudson and Hon. Robert Forke, 4 October 1926, R4653, Vol.2 Negotiations between the Liberal Party and the Progressives, Albert Hudson Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario Canada. 240

the end of September 1926 and request that, “all communications which concern the Province

should be sent to [The NLOC] executive.”18 By centralizing power in the Manitoba Liberal

Association, the party could implement a province–wide strategy to help ensure electoral success

in the next election. It also created a simplified chain of decision making where the provincial

federations could consult with the region's cabinet minister to make a decision. In many ways,

these changes pointed towards the more advanced regional lieutenant system that the Liberals

would develop in the 1930s. This reorganization in Manitoba was one of the first steps towards

the general bureaucratization of the patronage process and placing limits on individual initiative.

Increasing control over patronage appointments was not the only way that central party

elites attempted to expand their influence at the expense of private members. The creation and

celebration of multiple, supposedly non–partisan, decision–making boards served to increase the

number of high–profile appointments available to the prime minister. All the while, these newly

formed boards allowed the Liberals to argue they were elevating experience, rational discussion

and the interests of the people as a whole over parochial political considerations. The best

example of this trend is how the Liberals celebrated creating the Advisory Board on Tariffs and

Taxation (ABTT) in 1926 and calling the Royal Commission on Customs and Excise, which

reported in 1927. According to the Liberals’ campaign rhetoric, the new advisory board limited

politicians’ ability to influence tariff policy by leaving these decisions to experts. On 10 June

1930, King devoted an entire speech to the issue of the ABTT. He told his audience that because

of the Liberal Party, “The consideration of Canadian tariffs has been removed from the political

18 Thomas Taylor, Report on Manitoba: Memorandum for Senator Andrew Haydon, July 1927, MG26 J4, Vol.114, File 817 Liberal Party, p.84297, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 241

football field, from the whispered campaigns on the part of interests, and elevated to scientific

study in open judicial court.” King went on to ask rhetorically, “Is not that a better and saner way

of treating tariff revisions than the old slip–shod fashion in other days? Tariffs no longer are built

in dark places; whispering campaigns for industries are ended.”19 King articulated a false

dichotomy between the old models of setting tariffs, where the minister of finance included them

in the budget and the new, supposedly scientific method. Since the budget was a confidence

matter, the minister needed to ensure that their party's members would support it, meaning that

the process of tariff setting was, to an important degree, consultative, albeit private, as debate

happened within caucus. Under the new model, the finance minister referred questions to the

board and then acted on their recommendations, which, given that members of the board were

Liberal appointees, would reflect the priorities of the prime minister and his inner circle. While

the final budget was still an issue of confidence, the Liberal leadership presented private

members with a final budget document that they could choose to accept or reject. Hence, the

creation of the Tariff Board was one way of increasing the power of the prime minister both by

undermining private members' ability to contest tariff decisions while giving the PM another

source of high–profile patronage appointments free from CSC control.

The Liberals also adopted a similar approach when dealing with the matter of soldiers'

pensions. In a NLF pamphlet from the 1930 election campaign entitled “Justice for War

Veterans”, the Liberals campaigned on the idea that they had placed issues of veteran

compensation beyond “the wrangling of partisan controversy.” To reinforce the party's point, the

19 “The Tariff Board,” Number 11, June 1930. MG28 IV 3, Vol.1215, General Election 1930 Pamphlets file, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 242

pamphlet quoted King telling the House of Commons in 1928 that, “Our desire... is to get this

matter [of soldiers' pensions] as far removed as possible from political control, and our

discussions in the House also as far removed from political controversy as possible.”20 In

contrast, King attacked the Conservatives’ “spectacular and utterly impracticable schemes for

purposes that were plainly political and nothing more, that were designed for no other end but to

embarrass the government.”21 Consequently, the Liberals argued the solution was to remove the

issue from Parliament’s control completely. While declining to provide specific details, the

general idea was to rely on a board of appointed experts to rule on pension claims rather than

leaving these issues to the discretion of elected members. Doing so curtailed criticism over the

Liberal Party’s inability to address soldiers' pension issues during their nine years in power but

also further limited the ability of Liberal private members to address issues facing a number of

their constituents. Under the new model, individual MPs were forced to direct veterans to an

ostensibly apolitical panel of experts to adjudicate their claim. Yet the government would

appoint this board, providing an additional source of patronage appointments for the party’s

senior leadership.

The Liberals presented initiatives like the ABTT to the Canadian public as a way of

ensuring that the will of the people as a whole was elevated over the parochial interests of

individual politicians. In party publications from the 1930 election campaign the Liberals

referred to their plan as “King's Way”. The clearest expression of this idea came in a pamphlet

written by economist William Henry Moore emphasizing the connection between an expert

20 “Justice for War Veterans,” National Liberal Federation Pamphlet Number 12, June 1930. MG28 IV 3, Vol.1215, General Election 1930 Pamphlets file, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 21 Ibid. 243

advisory board and a certain vision of how democratic governments should act. In “Mackenzie

King and the Wage Earner” Moore explained to readers how expert–led decision making

processes benefited everyone by ensuring the tariff setting process was predictable and stable,

Moore stated that, “When the judgment of the people has been passed, you have the best basis of

security; without it, you must always have a suspicion that breeds discontent. I say King's Way,

because it was Mackenzie King who insisted that people should have the widest possible

knowledge about tariff matters.”22 By requiring Parliament to approve many of these positions,

they had an air of greater legitimacy but with the Liberals holding a majority in the House of

Commons, such confirmations were merely a formality. The Liberals argued that having

important decisions made by appointed officials was more democratic because it allowed the

people to understand and observe the process, unlike the backroom dealings of caucus and

cabinet meetings. Comparatively, the party argued that allowing tariff decisions to be determined

as part of the political process courted instability and discontent as parliamentarians only

advocated for short–term and specific demands. What is significant about the Liberals’ position

was they stated that only by removing agency from elected representatives could the government

act in the interest of the people. In this equation, appointees represented the country as a whole,

while individual members only served the parochial and limited interests of their constituents.

This template of downplaying the role of parliamentarians in favour of Liberal appointees had

begun in earnest by the end of the 1920s and provided a precursor for how the Liberals would act

when they returned to power in 1935.

22 William Henry Moore, Mackenzie King and the Wage Earner, (Ottawa: National Liberal Federation, 1930), MG28 IV 3, Vol.1215, General Election 1930 Pamphlets file, Liberal Party of Canada Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 244

Despite a clear trend towards centralization, King was keen to reinforce to the voting

public just how little influence he as prime minister had over dispensing government resources

and jobs during this period. Commenting in 1931 during his only sustained stint as leader of the

opposition, King wrote that as party leader in the early part of the decade, “...had I wished to

participate in this part of the party's work I fail to see how I could possibly have done so, with

the exactions of the office of a Prime Minister what they are.”23 The political priorities of 1931

dictated that King was less concerned with giving an accurate account of his duties in the early

1920s but rather in defending himself from accusations of corruption related to the Beauharnois

Scandal. King deflected these attacks and instead used his administration's supposed separation

of the leader from partisan decision making to condemn the Bennett regime and the perceived

anti–democratic centralization of partisan and governmental power in the Prime Minister's Office

(PMO). Beyond his immediate political agenda, King also revealed how he wanted voters to

perceive his role as party leader and prime minister. In this presentation of Parliamentary

democracy, partisan activities such as patronage distribution would not be the responsibility of

the prime minister; their job was to govern the country. As will be discussed below, after the

political challenges of the 1925–26 King–Byng Crisis, King and a small cadre of party elites

became increasingly involved in distributing patronage appointments and government contracts

to politically useful party supporters. His remarks from 1931 demonstrate that even though this

process had accelerated by the time King and the Liberals lost power in 1930, the Liberal leader

23 William Lyon Mackenzie King, “Re. Party Organization The Liberal Party,” October 1931,” MG26 J4, Vol.115, File 825 Liberal Party, p.84526, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 245

recognized how important it was politically for the prime minister to present himself to the voting public as removed from these decisions.

6.3 Patronage during the Great Depression

For a variety of reasons discussed in Chapter 4, the R.B. Bennett–led Conservatives won a majority government in the 1930 federal election. The Conservatives’ victory meant that for the next five years the Liberals could not reward supporters with government jobs or contracts.

As well, many of the individual members whose advice the Liberal government had relied on when making appointments lost their seats in that election. This combination of a loss of expertise and the necessity of rebuilding the party's patronage networks when it did return to power resulted in a wholesale overhaul of the Liberals’ approach to distributing government largess. In particular, the process of centralizing decision making in a few individuals, along with elevating expertise and non–partisanship as the most important characteristics now became the dominant approach for the Liberals when managing government appointments and contracts.

The substantial changes in how the Liberal Party managed patronage after returning to power at the end of 1935 is best demonstrated by the work of Norman Platt Lambert. Lambert began his career as a staff writer at the Toronto Globe where he worked until 1918. After serving as editor of the Grain Growers' Guide following Thomas Crerar's entry into politics as the leader of the Progressive Party, Lambert became general manager of Manitoba Maple Leaf Milling

Company in Winnipeg. He returned to The Globe in 1930 for two years before accepting the role of General Secretary and Chief Organizer of the newly formed NLF. After serving in this role for a little under four years, Lambert replaced Vincent Massey as president in 1936, a role he served in until 1941. In 1938, two years into his term as party president, King appointed Lambert to the

246

Senate, which enabled Lambert to manage party affairs while drawing a salary from the Senate

of Canada. Lambert’s job as party president was to act as a liaison between key donors and his

organization. His most important duty in this role was to ensure that he distributed government

benefits in such a way as to benefit the Liberal Party's long–term interests. Broadly speaking,

these benefits fell into the three main categories outlined in the introduction to this chapter:

awarding government contracts, supporting local projects and patronage appointments. As will

be demonstrated below, Lambert was adept at deploying these tools for the benefit of his party.

In 1940, Lambert provided the clearest statement regarding his role in distributing

government contracts when responding to a critical letter from Frank Mackenzie Ross. Ross was

a shipbuilding executive from Saint John, New Brunswick who was responsible for procuring

supplies in North America for the British Admiralty during World War II. His stated purpose in

writing to Lambert was to inform him of claims by unnamed individuals accusing Lambert of

personal corruption when awarding government contracts for provisions. Lambert responded,

stating:

My record since this government took office in 1935, as a liaison man between business and government would show under an impartial examination that obligations existed elsewhere than with me. I shall be only too happy to make this undeniably plain and clear to any of the host of nameless friends to which your letter refers, if you will enlighten me to their identity.24

While rebutting a clear attack on his character, Lambert also alluded to his role in the Liberal

Party. Given the private nature of his correspondence with Ross, Lambert willingly admitted that

he was responsible for fostering positive relations between the Liberal government and industry.

24 Correspondence between Norman Lambert and Frank M. Ross, 8 August 1940, MG32 C85, Vol.4, Request for Assistance: General file, Norman Lambert Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 247

He also emphasized that his obligation was not self–promotion but rather partisan benefit.

Lambert did not act on his own but rather was accountable to others, in his case to Liberal leader

King, who had both supported Lambert's bid for NLF president and had appointed him to the

Senate. Lambert and the Federation were not rogue actors but rather were enmeshed in a system

of organized party politics that operated under the direction of the party's leader but outside of

Parliament and the oversight of private members.

Lambert's position at the center of Liberal Party brokerage networks gave him easy

access to members of cabinet and important decision makers within the civil service. As a result,

many municipal politicians seeking federal approval for various projects contacted Lambert to

enlist his help is fast–tracking approval. On 20 May 1936 C.J. Bennett, a town councillor for the

town of New Toronto wrote to Lambert requesting his help. The town had applied to the Federal

Railway Board for permission to build a rail underpass on Nineteenth Avenue with the aim of

ensuring that road traffic would not be disrupted whenever a train crossed the street. Yet the

Railway Board was slow in considering this proposal, prompting Bennett to write to Lambert,

requesting he intervene with the board to speed up approval of the project.25 This incident was

one of many where municipal politicians sympathetic to the Liberals requested Lambert's aid.26

Whereas previously municipal politicians would have lobbied the government through their local

MP, Lambert now acted as the liaison between the bureaucracy and other levels of government.

Municipal leaders did still have to follow correct procedures for their various projects but if they

25 Correspondence between C.J. Bennett, Councillor of Town of New Toronto, and Norman Lambert, 20 May 1936, MG32 C85, Vol.4, Requests for Assistance, Ontario A–C file, Norman Lambert Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 26 See MG32 C85 Volume 4: Requests for Assistance in Norman Lambert Fonds at Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada for further examples of requests from municipal politicians. 248

supported the Liberals, they would also have access to high–level political decision makers who

operated outside of the electoral system and could influence the course of proceedings.

Beyond awarding contracts and influencing civil service decisions, Lambert was also

responsible for ensuring that prominent Liberal supporters received patronage appointments. A

key aspect of this role was mediating between the Liberal Party and the CSC. Since the Liberals

were previously in power, the Conservative government had introduced substantial changes in

how the CSC managed government appointments. The most significant was in 1932 the Treasury

Board, a committee of cabinet that oversees financial, personnel and administrative management,

gained oversight duties for the CSC. Partially this move was in response to criticisms about the

lack of accountability for the CSC, but it also granted the commissioners the authority to

overrule senior government officials on matters such as the number of staff necessary to carry

out government work in a certain department. It also brought a degree of partisan oversight back

to the CSC's activities.27 For Lambert, these new administrative structures meant that much of

his job was dependent on his ability to cultivate personal relationships and leverage these

connections for partisan gain.

Lambert's role as facilitator of patronage for the Liberal government is best demonstrated

in his exchanges with Herbert P. Fird, a Hamilton area businessperson and Liberal partisan.

While the two men discussed numerous issues pertaining to the Liberal government throughout

1939, their discussions in July of that year provide an excellent case study for how patronage

functioned during the late 1930s. On 7 July 1939, Fird wrote to Lambert, telling him that:

Our friend [James Bowes] Bogus Coyne was in to see me the other day and he has his application into the Civil Service Commission for the position of Counsel to the

27 Public Service Commission of Canada, 100. 249

Board of Transport. Bogus tells me he has all the qualifications that will be required by the Commission to fill this position, and four years railway law experience.... I do not know just what needs to be done in this regard, i.e. Should I write McLarty, Hugh Wardrope or anyone else? As stated above, this looks like an ideal job for him, and I am sure that he could handle it to the Queen's taste. Will you write me back and let me know regarding this... I will have another three or four [candidates] ready for you about the end of next week.28

In addition to informing Lambert that he would forward along other worthy candidates for civil

service jobs, Fird highlighted the specific case of James “Bogus” Coyne, a lawyer and Liberal

partisan from Manitoba.29 Given the prolonged economic stagnation of the 1930s, Coyne, like

many professionals, had to rely on government appointments to maintain financial stability. By

leveraging his personal contacts within the Liberal Party, Coyne sought reward for what he saw

as his loyalty to the party.

The Liberals were also interested in encouraging prominent professionals to support the

party. Consequently, four days later on 11 July 1939 Lambert responded positively to Fird,

outlining what he would do to ensure Coyne's appointment. Lambert stated that, “I am going to

speak to the minister about Coyne's application to the [CSC]. I am also going to contract

[Commissioner] Hugh Wardrope, as I think he should be in a position to help very materially. I

should also like to see Coyne get this job too.”30 Lambert's promise to contact the minister

responsible as well as Wardrope illustrate the interconnected nature of the Liberal government,

the CSC, and Lambert's role as mediator between the two. The responsible minister was C.D.

Howe from Port Arthur, ON. (Now Thunder Bay) who in 1936 was appointed as the first ever

28 Correspondence between Herbert P Fird of Hamilton and Norman Lambert, 7 July 1939, MG32 C85, Vol.4, Request for Assistance: General file, Norman Lambert Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 29 Readers may be familiar with Coyne’s grandson, journalist and opinion columnist Andrew Coyne. 30 Correspondence between Norman Lambert and Herbert P Fird, 11 July 1939. MG32 C85, Vol.4, Request for Assistance: General file, Norman Lambert Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 250

minister of transportation. Despite only entering the House in 1935, King had specifically recruited Howe to run in 1935 and he quickly become one of the King's most trusted ministers.

Wardrope was a Hamilton based lawyer who had previously run unsuccessfully for the Liberals in 1908 before being appointed to a judgeship. Later, the Liberal government nominated

Wardrope as a Civil Service Commissioner and shepherded his appointment through Parliament.

While the CSC was supposed to act as a non–partisan arbiter for civil service hiring, the fact that the governing party controlled a majority of votes in Parliament meant that they were able to ensure their supporters’ confirmation as members. Lambert was responsible for coordinating the activities of government ministers, party supporters, and the CSC to ensure maximum partisan gain for each appointment. The entire process of hiring Coyne demonstrated how decision– making power was centralized in Ottawa and only those with the appropriate connections and political influence could influence the hiring process. Individual MPs simply did not have the ability to compete with increasingly powerful party officials regarding access and trust from elite level decision makers. As a result, private members became increasingly irrelevant in the process. Importantly, these changes to how the Liberal Party managed patronage and government tenders were not an incidental product of broader changes in the civil service but rather the result of conscious decisions by King and other party elites.

Beyond party officials such as Lambert, hiring power rested with a few key ministers from different regions of the country. After winning power in 1935, many Liberals from across the country wrote to King, as they had after 1921, seeking to influence the appointment process for various positions. In April of 1936 the president of the Nelson and District Liberal

Association, Duncan Daniel MacLean wrote to the PMO requesting King ensure Liberal– friendly businesses in Nelson, BC won government tenders for that region. MacLean was 251

particularly keen to ensure his party supported businesses in his riding, as in the 1935 election he

had run for the Liberals and finished third behind the victorious Conservative MP and the CCF

candidate. Unfortunately, for MacLean, on 7 April 1936, H.R.L. Henry, the private secretary for

Mackenzie King, responded to in the negative. He told MacLean that:

Mr. King has found it necessary to adopt the policy of referring to his Ministers not only the subjects dealt with by their departments, but also the many matters of a local nature, which arise from time to time. In keeping with this practice, Mr. King has asked me to suggest that you communicate with the Honourable Ian Mackenzie, Minister of National Defence, who deals more particularly with questions of the kind affecting the province of BC.31

While it was entirely possible that the Liberal Party would support either MacLean or another

candidate in Kootenay West, it was a decision the minister responsible for BC, Ian Mackenzie

would make. Such a policy was a clear deviation from the previous course of action of

consulting the defeated candidate in a riding when distributing government resources. MacLean

now had to lobby Mackenzie on behalf of his local supporters. Cabinet ministers had always had

the power to make appointments but generally, it was only within their department. The Liberals’

innovative procedure was to grant specific individual ministers broad power of appointment in

their geographic region of the country. However, not all ministers were entrusted with such far–

reaching power and many junior members of cabinet had their appointment prerogatives usurped

by powerful regional lieutenants aided by the NLF.

31 Correspondence between H.R.L. Henry and D.D. McLean, President of Nelson and District Liberal Association, 7 April 1936, MG26 J2, Vol.277, File P–150, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 252

6.4 Opposition to Centralization

Not all Liberal backbenchers passively accepted this reduction in their influence and

decision–making power. The CSC was particularly aware of brewing discontent among many

MPs and at least one member of the CSC highlighted the situation in his communications with

Prime Minister King and his Cabinet. In March of 1937, Commissioner J.H. Stitt of Selkirk,

Manitoba wrote to King to discuss a hiring controversy in the Ministry of Marine and Fisheries.

In 1936, the deputy minister for the department temporarily hired his son to fill the vacant

position of assistant in oyster culture for Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. When it came to

deciding on the criteria for hiring a full–time replacement though, the deputy minister tailored

the job posting to ensure that his son would be the only suitable candidate. In summarizing the

situation, the CSC told King that they were, “of the opinion that under the present circumstances,

in fact in any circumstances, there can now be no fair competition in this case.”32 In the process

of updating King about ongoing developments regarding this incident, Stitt anticipated the

possible political fallout stemming from the deputy minister's actions. He wrote to King, telling

him, “I can well imagine what the hue and cry will be by the members of Parliament if they ever

ascertain that a deputy minister through maneuvering secured an appointment for his own son

when the whole civil service act is designed to prevent such patronage.”33 Given cabinet's

extensive involvement in resolving the situation, King was likely cognizant of the political

fallout from such an appointment. Stitt, who was a Conservative appointee to the Commission,

32 Correspondence between Civil Service Commission Memorandum and Department of Fisheries, 10 May 1938, MG26 J4, Vol.155, File 1371 Civil Service Patronage, p.111592, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 33 Correspondence between J.H. Stitt of the Civil Service Commission, Memorandum to Hon. Mackenzie King, 18 March 1937, MG26 J4, Vol.155, File 1371 Civil Service Patronage, p.111592, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 253

was also well aware of the problems facing the Liberals if this incident became public. MPs

would be furious if a bureaucrat was able to influence hiring decisions to such a blatant degree

without repercussions when their own party leaders had removed the same power from them.

The opposition parties were also aware of the potential for discontent among Liberal

backbenchers given the party's centralization agenda. H.H. Stevens, former Minister of Trade

and Commerce in Bennett’s government and now the leader and only MP for the ill–fated

Reconstruction Party, was keen to highlight to others what he saw as brewing discontent in the

Liberal ranks. In a letter to A.E. Grassby, president of the Manitoba Branch of the Retail

Merchants Association, Stevens outlined his perspective on the state of the Liberal Party and the

party's decision–making process. He wrote:

It is very definitely true that there is great dissatisfaction in the ranks of the Liberal Party due to the fact that Mr. King and Mr. Dunning, and Mr. Lapointe, who are virtually the whole government, are distinctly and decidedly “St. James Street” reactionaries and the rank and file of the party are gradually becoming aware of that fact. Yesterday, two Liberals, distinct and separate one from the other (one of them very high in the ranks of the Party, and the other a very young Member) told me that there were from forty to fifty Liberal Members who were almost ready to bolt because of the situation mentioned.34

Stevens' analysis of the Liberal Party was most likely coloured by his position as the leader of a

minor party sitting in opposition benches. Although correct in assessing how the party

concentrated power in the hands of a few prominent ministers, he underestimated the role of two

key ministers: Charles Gavan Power of Quebec and Ian Mackenzie of British Columbia.

Furthermore, how accurate Stevens' anonymous sources were is unclear. Regardless of whether

there were forty to fifty Liberal MPs actually ready to leave the party, Stevens' letter

34 Correspondence between H.H. Stevens and A.E. Grassby, 8 April 1936, MG27 III B9, Vol.61, File 71 Correspondence 1935–36, H.H. Stevens Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 254

demonstrated that opposition parties were aware of the Liberals’ internal reforms and recognized

that these changes had alienated certain sections of the party. This perception was only

reinforced by Grassby who subsequently wrote to other Conservative supporters in Manitoba

informing them that he had “heard on good authority” the Liberal Party would shortly split

between progressive and conservative wings.35 While opponents such as Stevens overstated the

degree of unrest, they were correct in identifying an internal power struggle within the party. In

order to advance their position, Liberal private members articulated a view of representative

government that drew on a conception of the MP as the representative of their local riding's

interests at the national level. King and his supporters marginalized their view by articulating a

concept of government that left little room for local representation.

Not only private members but also failed candidates in ridings won by other parties

expressed their dissatisfaction with the new method of operation for the Liberal Party. With the

Liberals’ victory in 1935 federal election, many partisans who had remained loyal to the party

throughout five years of opposition now expected to reap the benefits of their party returning to

power. In particular, Liberals in ridings that were staunchly Conservative believed they were

entitled to rewards for their years of service, despite no realistic hope of the Liberals ever

winning their riding. This view is best demonstrated in a letter sent from the Lincoln County

Federal Liberal Association to the prime minister. The riding of Lincoln, located on the Niagara

Peninsula in Southern Ontario, had been held by the Conservative Party since 1878 and would

not be won again by the Liberals until 1949. As the riding association president explained in the

35 Correspondence between A.E. Grassby and W. Peterson, President of Farm and Ranch Review, 25 April 1936, MG27 III B9, Vol.61, File 71 Correspondence 1935–36, H.H. Stevens Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 255

group letter to King, in Lincoln, “every office was filled by Conservatives and the Liberals were

pushed into the background.” For those in Lincoln, the Liberals’ victory was an opportunity for

party loyalists to benefit from their years of labour. Yet, as the letter from the riding association

dated June of 1936 details, local partisans were unhappy with the situation regarding

administering patronage. In their letter, the Association spelled out their grievances:

Before the election, the Conservative workers and even their Candidate told their friends that they might as well work for the Conservative Party, as they would not lose their jobs if the Liberals did win... Today they are openly defying the Liberals to remove them. The effect is such that scores of Liberals are not only disappointed but are openly declaring that they will not support the Liberal Party against unless the Liberal government permits such steps to be taken here as will serve to rectify evils which were committed during the last regime. This can only be done by displaying greater rigour in the administration of patronage... Liberals should surely be given the opportunity to exercise rights which the honestly won.36

For party supporters at the riding level, the established norms of patronage meant the governing

party would reward their followers with government jobs and contracts when in power.

According to these norms, when the government changed, those who held appointed position

should lose their jobs in favour of the other party's partisans, yet the Liberals were over six

months into their term and in the letter writer's eyes, had disavowed this norm. The result was

that many Liberals who had been denied access to government resources during Bennett's term

continued to be shut out, prompting many to question their allegiance to the party.

For members of the Liberal Party in Lincoln County, the stakes were higher than simply

ensuring access to government jobs and tenders. For these partisans, by virtue of forming

government their party had won the right to control government resources. Yet these party

36 Correspondence between Lincoln County Federal Liberal Association: St. Patrick's Ward and Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King, 4 June 1936. MG26 J2, Vol.277, File P–150 Confidential Political Patronage, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 256

supporters believed it was critical that the Liberals exercised this right on behalf of all Liberal partisans, as it was due to the regular members’ efforts that they had won this right.

Traditionally, the defeated Liberal candidate in Lincoln, Albert E. Coombs, would have had the right to provide the relevant minister with recommendations regarding patronage, yet after 1935 the party leadership chose not to allow local representatives to exercise what had traditionally been their rights and privileges. Since they only customary privileges with no legal or constitutional protection, King and his supporters could easily ignore these claims. The only recourse for the Lincoln Liberals was to appeal directly to the prime minister and ask that he rectify “this evil.” King refused to, leaving the Lincoln Liberals to accept the new situation or defect to a weakened Tory Party.

Even in ridings where the Liberals’ candidate had defeated the incumbent Conservative, local businesses resorted to appealing to King when seeking government contracts. Dauphin,

Manitoba was one of these ridings where the issue was particularly important because of the newly constructed Riding Mountain National Park located within its boundaries. Conservative

James Bowman had won the riding in 1930 but Bowman had lost his seat in 1935 to the Liberal

William John Ward, who had previously held Dauphin for the Progressive Party. While originally proposed in the 1920s, the Canadian government only officially created the park in

1933, with the vast majority of its infrastructure built using workers from Depression Relief

Camps created by the Conservative government through the Relief Acts discussed in the previous chapter. The park was a Conservative Party creation and so their supporters received the bulk of contracts for supplying materials related to the park’s construction and maintenance.

Hence, many Liberals believed that by winning the seat back, they would now be in line for a windfall. The September 1936 correspondence between King and W.G. Brown, a Manitoba 257

businessperson from the Dauphin area demonstrates that the local Liberals had not received the

rewards they expected. Brown wrote to King that:

During the last few years of the Conservative Administration, while the Riding Mountain National Park was being built up a large quantity of material in my line was required and I was not asked to even tender on one–dollar’ worth of material as I was not in line politically. I trust that in future greater consideration will be given those who have constantly stood by the party.37

Much like the Lincoln Liberals, Brown’s only option was to appeal directly to King as Dauphin

MP William Ward had little influence in Liberal circles and had only joined them following the

demise of the Progressive Party. In both the Lincoln and Dauphin case, weak or non–existent

Liberal Party patronage networks made it easy for the central Liberal leadership to impose itself

concerning decisions for these areas, much to consternation of the party's local supporters.

Without a practical way to challenge the central decision makers, the riding associations made

direct and ultimately ineffective appeals to the very same leadership.

In many cases, the Liberal MP and the local riding association cooperated to resist the

process of centralization. In the Ontario riding of Frontenac–Addington, the Liberal member, a

farmer named Angus McCallum, had held the seat since winning it in a by–election in 1937. He

replaced the previous Liberal, who had resigned to run provincially for the Mitch Hepburn–led

Ontario wing of the party. Liberal Norman Rogers held the neighboring riding of Kingston City.

As seen in Chapter 2, Rogers had served as the Prime Minister's private political secretary before

entering politics in 1935 and was now the minister of labour in King's cabinet. Rogers was part

of King's inner circle of advisers and consequently, had substantial influence over distributing

37 Correspondence between W.G. Brown and William Lyon Mackenzie, 2 September 1936, MG26 J2, Vol.277, File P–150 Confidential Political Patronage, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 258

government resources and rewards throughout Eastern Ontario, much to the consternation of

Liberals in adjacent ridings. On 15 March 1939, Frontenac–Addington Riding Association

President James Garvin wrote directly to King to protest Roger's conduct regarding the

appointment of the Official Receiver under The Farmers’ Creditors Arrangement Act. The

appointee in this case was responsible for receiving restructuring plans from farmers in Eastern

Ontario who had defaulted on their debt and were looking to secure a court–mandated agreement

for refinancing.38 Garvin told King, “a special meeting was held, at which representatives

traveled at least 100 miles and, after two hours of discussion, a recommendation was made and

forwarded to Ottawa, naming Mr. Samuel Jamieson, of Battersea, Ontario.” However, shortly

after this meeting, Rogers intervened in the process. Garvin wrote that:

Notwithstanding this recommendation, Mr. Rogers saw fit to name another appointee, namely Mr. A. E. Weller. Mr. Weller happened to be on the executive of the [Frontenac County Riding Association] and no one had any personal objection to his appointment but every member of the executive had felt that Rogers had gone beyond his jurisdiction in assuming to make the recommendation. Since that time, Mr. Rogers or his office has constantly continued to assert their right to make recommendations in the electoral districts of Frontenac–Addington.39

For Garvin, McCallum and the rest of the association, the problem was not that Rogers had made

an objectionable choice, but he had overstepped his authority by interfering in what they saw as

an exclusively local matter. Rogers, with the support of King, viewed matters differently. As

Garvin's letter highlighted, the minister asserted that given his position as senior cabinet

38 For a detailed description of this law see the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Reference re legislative jurisdiction of Parliament of Canada to enact the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act, 1934, as amended by the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act Amendment Act, 1935, [1936] S.C.R. 384 available at https://scc– csc.lexum.com/scc–csc/scc–csc/en/item/8632/index.do 39 Correspondence between James B. Garvin of Kingston and Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King, 15 March 1939, MG26 J2, Vol.277, File P–150 Confidential Political Patronage, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 259

representative for Eastern Ontario, it was his right to control patronage administration in the broader region. In this dispute, both sides relied on the language of rights, appealing to their respective positions either as the riding level representation or as the senior government representative in the region. Ultimately, given Rogers' close relationship with King, the PM was always going to uphold Rogers’ role as a regional authority tasked with dispensing patronage.

Much like the Liberal members in the riding of Lincoln, the rights they claimed were only customary practice, subject to oversight by the party leader. Once again riding association officials had to appeal to King who, despite defending the rights of privileges of parliamentarians in his public remarks, was more than willing to assert a different set of rights for his regional lieutenants.

Protestations from Liberal members and supporters were not isolated to rural Ontario and

Manitoba. The strongest and most vocal resistance came from the Liberals’ Quebec wing, particularly the members for Quebec City, Lévis and Chicoutimi. These members were the main source of internal resistance to the Liberal Party leadership because if the government followed the previous practice of consulting with local representatives, their ridings stood to benefit substantially from renewed military spending. Most prominent among this cohort of Quebec

Liberals was Wilfrid Lacroix, the Liberal MP for the riding of Quebec–Montmorency. Lacroix, an accomplished architect from Quebec City who won the seat in the 1935 election, believed that since his riding contained the military base of Valcartier, he should be the one responsible for awarding all contracts for supplying the base. In correspondence with Liberal ministers he repeatedly advanced this point of view and protested when Defence Minister Ian Mackenzie, as well as King's Quebec Lieutenants Charles Gavan Power and Ernest Lapointe, refused to recognize what Lacroix saw as his right as the region's elected representative to Parliament. 260

Lacroix directed his first protest at the newly appointed minister of national defence,

British Columbia MP Ian Mackenzie, demanding that all supplies purchased for Valcartier come

from suppliers recommended by Lacroix. Mackenzie's response was to refuse this request but the

inter–party discussions prior to informing Lacroix that his request had been denied demonstrated

how decisions regarding distributing government resources were increasingly centralized. Since

Valcartier was close to Quebec City, not only did Mackenzie, the minister legally responsible for

the provisioning of military bases have to approve any decision, but partisan approval was also

needed from the Liberal minister responsible for that region. In this specific case, Quebec South

MP Charles Gavan Power, despite officially serving as the minister of pensions and health,

would grant final approval. Power supported Mackenzie's initial decision to deny Lacroix and

wrote to explain his rational, stating that, “Whilst I am prepared to give every latitude possible to

Mr. Lacroix, I cannot agree that the buying of supplies for Valcartier Camp should be restricted

to the persons recommended by the Member for the County of Quebec.” Power recognized that

Lacroix played an important role as the MP for Valcartier but the sheer amount of supplies

required made the contracts too valuable to limit awarding them to businesses in only one riding.

Power emphasized this point, telling Mackenzie:

I would very much appreciate if you would continue to receive names of firms recommended by the Honourable Ernest Lapointe and myself and to allow these firms to have the opportunity of tendering for any of your requirements. Besides, I do not believe that the efficiency of the Service would be maintained if Valcartier Camp was regarded as the exclusive preserve of any one Constituency.40

40 Correspondence between Charles Gavan Power and Ian Mackenzie, Minister of national defence, 15 November 1935, MG27 III B10, Vol.31, File 128 Patronage, Ernest Lapointe Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 261

In theory, military matters fell within the purview of Mackenzie who, as minister of national

defence, was ultimately responsible to the House of Commons for activity within his ministry.

Yet partisan logic dictated that the senior party figure who was most attuned to the situation in

the relevant region should be the ultimate arbiter. If Mackenzie disagreed with Power's decision,

he certainly could ignore it, for Power had no legal authority to decide on matters outside of his

portfolio as minister of pensions and health. Rather, the party's internal decision–making process

was not a result of compulsion but instead a voluntary acceptance of a certain process that gave

primacy to the interests of the Liberal Party. Furthermore, as Power's letters demonstrate, there

was no role for any individual MP beyond making requests to the party's leadership. Lacroix was

now just one more interest group pressing for government largess.

Lacroix was not willing to accept the role designated for him by his party’s leadership

and he continued to push for local control over purchasing decisions, even for massive national

projects like the Valcartier military base. Rather than write to Mackenzie, Lacroix in December

of 1936 approached Minister of Justice and prominent Quebec MP Ernest Lapointe regarding

Department of Militia contracts in the Chicoutimi area. Lacroix's primary issue was that

Montreal area construction firms had received the bulk of the contracts rather than companies

from Quebec City or Saguenay Lac–Saint–Jean region.41 Much like Mackenzie and Power,

Lacroix's complaint did not convince Lapointe that Quebec City Liberals had not received

enough of a reward for faithfully re–electing a Liberal. According to Lacroix, the number of jobs

that fell outside of the purview of “Le Commission du Service Civil” was extensive and included

41 Correspondence between Wilfrid Lacroix and Ernest Lapointe, 18 December 1936, MG27 III B10, Vol.31 File 128 Patronage, Ernest Lapointe Fonds. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 262

contracts associated with Valcartier and other Department of National Defence contracts as well

as jobs with La Commission des Havres and La Commission des Champs de Bataille Nationaux.

However, just as Mackenzie and Power had done earlier, Lapointe also denied Lacroix, telling

him, “D'ailleurs, il serait impossible que les employés d'un service gouvernemental situés dans

un comté soient recrutés seulement parmi les résidents de ce comté.”42 For Lapointe and the

Liberal Party elite, geographic proximity was no longer a factor in determining access to

government resources. Lacroix's insistence that it was his right to control how the government

distributed contracts and jobs in his riding and adjacent areas was an antiquated view. Instead, as

the involvement of Mackenzie, Power and Lapointe demonstrated, these decisions about

patronage were now made by a select group of Liberals and involved multiple stakeholders. Only

ministers at a national level had the required knowledge, experience and national perspective to

broker between these competing interests. In this view, Lacroix's parochial demands should be

ignored for they undermined the national interest.

Lacroix was not the only Quebec Liberal whose assertions of local rights Lapointe and

Power rejected in their role as Quebec lieutenants. Power in particular presented his role as a

member of cabinet as conferring an extra duty to take into account the greater needs of the

country as a whole, even if it meant alienating some of his own constituents. Power clearly

articulated his view in a letter to King from 2 March 1936. Power wrote to King to inform the

prime minister of his interaction with J. Edgar Guay, the son of Pierre Guay, the longtime

Liberal MP for Levis, Quebec. In March of 1936, Guay had complained to Power that contracts

42 Correspondence between Hon. Ernest Lapointe and Wilfrid Lacroix, MP for Quebec–Montmorency, 21 October 1938, MG27 III B10, Vol.31 File 128 Patronage, Ernest Lapointe Fonds. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 263

for government work in his riding were being awarded to firms from across Quebec and not

exclusively to local businesses. Anticipating possible political backlash from the well–connected

Guay, Power defended his actions to King in a memo, writing:

I have always been of the opinion that Minister should not take advantage of whatever prestige they acquire through being Members of the Government in order to obtain special favours for their own people, and have endeavoured to put this principle into practice. Many positions, which formerly went to Quebec South County, have been given up to satisfy Members from other counties, to such an extent that I have aroused discontent among many of my own electors.43

Power, as a key regional lieutenant in King's government, was responsible for not only his riding

of Quebec South but along with cabinet colleague Ernest Lapointe, all of Quebec. In his letter,

Power outlined the sacrifices he had made because of his duties to the party, as well as

highlighting the possible electoral consequences of him placing the long–term interests of the

party over the short–term material ones of his constituents. Power detailed his conception of how

a minister should act to draw a comparison between his approach to politics and Guay's,

essentially arguing that all Liberals needed to overlook short–term benefits for the long–term

benefit of the party. The idea that the duty of a government minister was to distribute benefits to

supporters and use patronage as a tool of party building was not new, as former Liberal Leader

Wilfrid Laurier had practiced a similar approach. What was new about Power's method was that

it severed the link between local members and the government. No longer did individual

members represent their constituents' demands in Ottawa, rather a select few party leaders would

make these decisions in the interest of the party and purportedly the country as a whole.

43 Correspondence between Charles G. Power and Mackenzie King, 2 March 1936, MG26 J2, Vol.277, File P–150 Confidential Political Patronage, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 264

In contrast to Lacroix and Guay, this central group of Liberal decision–makers actively

defended the interests of party members who cooperated with their centralizing agenda. The case

of Julien–Édouard–Alfred Dubuc provides the best example of Lapointe, and by extension

King's, willingness to support allies against local challenges. Dubuc was born in Saint–Hugues in

Southwest Quebec and moved to Chicoutimi in 1892 where he became an extremely successful

entrepreneur, establishing numerous businesses in the city and surrounding region. In 1925, he

decided to enter politics and ran successfully as an Independent Liberal after losing the party

nomination to Louis–Joseph Lévesque of Bagotville. In the subsequent 1926 federal election, he

again ran as an independent, but the Liberals chose not to field a candidate opposed to him. By

the 1930 federal election, Dubuc had joined the Liberal Party, received King’s personal

endorsement, and successfully retained his seat. Despite King's support, the local riding

association in Chicoutimi sought to oust Dubuc as the Liberal candidate for the 1935 election in

favour of their own candidate, Georges–Aimé Gagnon. One of the key factors in turning Dubuc's

riding association against him was his apparent inability to deliver the expected rewards to the

riding for electing a Liberal MP, leading to accusations of disloyalty. Association President J.E.

Dufour demonstrated this in his 29 February letter to Lapointe. Dufour told Lapointe that:

Je ne puis croire que c'est là de l'intégrité et de la sincérité envers les chefs du parti; s'il avait même un peu [de] solidarité envers les chefs il empêcherait le journal le Progrès du Saguenay qu'il contrôle politiquement de dénaturer vos actes comme vos paroles et de vous traiter de traitre à la race à chaque fois qu'il a l'occasion de le faire de manière à atteindre son but.44

44 J.E. Dufour, Président de l'association Libérale de Chicoutimi à Ernest Lapointe, 29 février 1939, MG27 III B10, Vol.30, File 126 Patri Nationiste 1936–1941, Ernest Lapointe Fonds, Library and Archives Canada. 265

As evidence of disloyalty, Dufour presented the case of the newspaper Progrès du Saguenay.

Despite the fact that Dubuc owned the paper, it continued to run editorials criticizing Lapointe

for allegedly betraying French Canadian interests, a clear indication to Dufour of Dubuc's

duplicity. If Dubuc could not even ensure his paper took a partisan Liberal editorial line, how

could the Liberals trust him with the responsibility to administer patronage?

When Dubuc managed to retain the nomination, members of the Liberal Riding

Association, including President, J.E. Dufour, supported Gagnon's run as an independent in the

1935 federal election. In spite of this opposition, Dubuc still managed to win his seat for the

Liberals in 1935 but his local opponents did not give up their efforts to unseat him. Leading up to

the expected 1940 federal election, key members of the Chicoutimi Liberal Riding Association

again planned to deny Dubuc the nomination and this time try to replace him with Eudore

Boivin, a local businessperson. To ensure Boivin's nomination, the riding association lobbied

Ernest Lapointe, and by extension, the Liberal leadership, to renounce Dubuc for his supposed

disloyalty. In late January of 1939 Antonio Savard, the secretary for Liberal Riding Association

wrote to Lapointe and on 3 February 1939 the justice minister responded with a strong defence

of Dubuc, telling Savard that:

Vous pouvez être assuré que j'ai à cœur, plus que tout autre, les intérêts du parti et ceux de tous nos partisans; cependant, je dois vous informer que la seule façon pour un ministère de communiquer avec les électeurs de chaque comté est par l'entremise de leur député. Nous avons pleinement confiance en l'intégrité de monsieur Dubuc et en sa sincérité à l'égard des chefs du parti.45

45 Correspondance between Ernest Lapointe and Monsieur Antonio Savard, Secrétaire Association Libérale de Chicoutimi, 3 février 1939. MG27 III B10, Vol.30, File 126 Patri Nationiste 1936–1941, Ernest Lapointe Fonds, Library and Archives Canada. 266

In his response, Lapointe clearly outlined the Liberals’ vision of how an MP should relate to the central party and their constituents. According to Lapointe, Dubuc, as the MP, should be the main conduit for communicating with electors in their riding. In other words, the elected member represents the government's point of view to individual voters. Furthermore, as Lapointe highlighted, his chief concern was the overall interest of the party and all its supporters, not only those in Chicoutimi and the surrounding regions. Since Dubuc remained loyal to King, the

Liberal leadership, and their conception of how the party should function, the party elite would protect him as best they could. This approach was anathema to the local association and they hoped to reverse the trend by supporting their own candidate, yet they failed to understand that regardless of which Liberal was elected, patronage was too important a file to be left to individuals anymore and King's Quebec lieutenants would command its distribution in Quebec regardless of who represented Chicoutimi. The previous system of patronage distribution was gone and not coming back regardless of who ran for the Liberals in Chicoutimi.

Ultimately, the best summary of backbench Liberals’ opposition to their party's centralizing strategy came from Allan G. McAvity, a Saint John, New Brunswick merchant and engineer who had served as the MP for Saint John–Albert since February of 1938. Similar to

Liberals in Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec, McAvity objected to his marginalization in the process of distributing patronage and wrote to his party's leader in December of 1939. McAvity told King that:

It seems to me more a question of principle than a “matter of patronage”: the vital principle of Liberalism, Democracy, and Representative Government; that the elected representatives should be listened to on matters pertaining to his constituency. Unless your colleagues will listen to the voice of McAvity rather than

267

to the voice of Machiavelli the coming session may be the end of my political career.46

In his letter, McAvity explicitly stated the arguments that many Liberals implied in their

protestations to King throughout the late 1930s. For McAvity and others like him, representative

government was based on empowered local representation in the House of Commons. Only with

effective elected representatives could democracy function. Thus, party leaders need to respect

the rights and liberties of each MP, yet as McAvity asserted to King, the Liberals consistently

refused to do so, despite telling the public they were the party of Canadian democracy. Beyond

making a clever play of words by invoking the fifteenth century Florentine writer Machiavelli,

McAvity implied that the only reason the Liberals overruled local representatives was for crass

political gain. In this sense, he was not wrong. The Liberal Party had centralized the process of

awarding patronage because it was a valuable political tool. However, when connected with

King's broader arguments regarding the role of a political party within a democracy, as well as

his public pronouncements that the Canadians had elected him as prime minister, it was clear that

in King and the Liberals’ version of democracy, there was little room for local representatives to

deviate from the central authority. Rather, as Lapointe had explained to the Chicoutimi Liberal

Riding Association, the MP's role was to connect the central government with the people.

6.5 Patronage in Wartime

The outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939 only served to consolidate the

process of centralizing government hiring and purchasing which had been ongoing since 1930.

46 Correspondence between Allan G. McAvity, MP for Saint John, NB and W.L. Mackenzie King, 21 December 1939. MG26 J2, Vol.277, File P–150 Confidential Political Patronage, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 268

The Liberals under King were keen on avoiding the public scandals that had plagued the

Conservative government of Robert Borden during the early years of World War I. Upon the

outbreak of war in 1914, responsibility for provisioning the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF)

fell to the Minister of Militia Sam Hughes.47 Hughes insisted on giving contracts to well–

connected political allies rather than purchasing tried and true equipment from internationally

recognized suppliers. Consequently, numerous pieces of equipment were ineffective or faulty.

The most prominent examples were the Ross Rifle manufactured by Conservative supporter Sir

Charles Ross, which jammed when exposed to the mud of the Western Front, and the

MacAdam's Shield Shovel, an invention Hughes held the patent on but that functioned poorly as

either a shield or a shovel. By 1915, Borden and his Finance Minister Thomas White responded

to mounting criticisms from both CEF officers and the public by removing purchasing decisions

from Hughes and creating the Wartime Purchasing Board to oversee provisioning.48 For King

and his senior ministers, the Conservatives’ experience in 1914–15 was a clear warning of the

consequences of granting too much power to individuals.

Given that individual members' ability to influence the tendering process was already

limited, it was a simple step for the Liberals to issue directions to a relatively small cadre of

people who already had responsibility for awarding almost all government contracts. Even

before Canada officially declared war on Germany on 10 September 1939, King and his staff

drafted a strong condemnation of partisan patronage that he would deliver in the House after

Canada was officially at war. A committee including Power and Rogers wrote the first draft of

47 In 1923 responsibility for the militia was given to the newly formed minister of national defence. 48 Ronald G. Haycock, Sam Hughes: The Public Career of a Controversial Canadian 1885–1916, (Waterloo, ON.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986), 250–255. 269

King’s future speech on 8 September 1939. The speech, which remained almost unchanged when

it was delivered by King three days later, clearly outlined how the Liberals’ wanted the voting

public to view their approach to wartime purchasing. It stated that:

May I say this to my own following in the House of Commons: If any of you desire to have persons given positions, in connection with this war, simply because they are favourites of yours; if primarily for such a reason you want to have any one given some special post, keep away from me, for I will never listen to you. I say the same to every honourable member of this house, and I say it not only on my behalf, but on behalf of the government. We want no favouritism in this war. We want the name of this government and this country to be honourably sustained, and the man who seeks to profit indirectly by having his relatives and friends gain this contract or get that commission simply because they are among his favourites is no true friend of this administration.49

While this speech was the most strident denunciation of overtly partisan hiring King had made, it

actually marked a very small change in how the Liberal Party actually controlled the distribution

of patronage. Over the previous four years in power, the party had systematically limited the

influence of individual members and placed greater decision–making power in the hands of party

officials such as Lambert, as well as a select few regional leaders who served in cabinet. With

only a few men effectively in charge of the government's hiring and tendering practices, King's

prepared remarks to the House was largely for show. It had been years since MPs had the ability

to reward favourites in the manner King described. The PM was now simply using the war as a

reason to entrench further an already existing practice. All the war changed was that it made the

justification of advancing the national interest that much more compelling.

49 William Lyon Mackenzie King, “Speech on Patronage,” 8 September 1939, Collection 2150 Box 80 Subject Files, Charles Gavan Power Fonds, Queens University Archives, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. 270

King's public position on patronage did not change how his ministers administered

patronage but it did provide them with effective justifications for refusing to grant decision–

making powers to individual members. On 17 October 1939, Rogers wrote to King to relay the

substance of a discussion he had with Matthew McLean, the Liberal MP for Cape Breton North

and Victoria in Nova Scotia. Rogers stated that:

It has not been possible for me to issue that type of instructions which Mr. Matthew Maclean, Member for Cape Breton–North and Victoria, had asked me to issue, namely, that officers of this Department are to consult him in the matter of employment, hiring of trucks, etcetera. This would be contrary to the policy as announced by you in the House of Commons and as explained carefully to all Members of Parliament in my circular letter of October 3rd.50

In all the important details, Rogers' response to Maclean is identical to his actions towards the

Frontenac–Addington Riding Association in 1939 and Power and Lapointe's approach towards

Lacroix throughout 1936–37. Yet, now the capacity for any one individual MP or riding

association to complain was further limited by the rhetoric of wartime necessity. Furthermore, a

minister like Rogers now had clearly stated party policy that he could point to when responding

to his critics.

The 1940 federal election represented the culmination of the Liberals’ centralization

initiatives. On 1 February 1940, just prior to the start of the federal election campaign, the NLF

sent a memorandum to the cabinet, outlining how the Party would conduct the election

campaign. For the NLF, the major theme of the campaign would be “The Men behind Mackenzie

King”. The memo explained that, “In our job of building up the ‘men behind Mackenzie King,’

as well as the prime minister himself, we shall emphasize the personal characteristics and

50 Correspondence between Norman Rogers and Mackenzie King, 17 October 1939, MG26 J2, Vol.277, File P–150 Confidential Political Patronage, William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 271

administrative records of each man.”51 This approach to the campaign recognized how important

King's team of trusted ministers, such as Power, Lapointe, Mackenzie, Rogers, and Finance

Minister Charles Dunning of Saskatchewan, were to both the functioning of government but also

to the Liberals’ relationship with voters across the country. While an effective approach to the

campaign, especially given the Liberals’ strength in their front bench compared to the

inexperienced Conservatives under Robert J. Manion, the NLF's strategy also reflected the

changed nature of politics in the country. These “Men behind Mackenzie King” were as well

known to voters in individual ridings as their individual MP and certainly were far more

influential. A campaign focused on local representation would only serve to empower individual

members by emphasizing their importance in the government. Yet, by highlighting the key cadre

of elites who effectively ran the government, the party could further relegate private members to

sales people for the Liberals in each riding, a process largely complete by the time World War II

started.

6.6 Conclusion

A Liberal MP elected in 1921 had far more power within their riding than the same MP

elected in 1940. For a Liberal backbencher in 1921, while still subject to party discipline and

whipped votes in the House of Commons, within their own riding they, in conjunction with their

local riding association, were largely responsible for distributing the benefits of government,

from patronage appointments, provisioning contracts and support for local projects, to their

constituents. Given the weakness of the central Liberal Party in the early 1920s, the party had no

51 Memorandum Re: 1940 Election Campaign, 1 February 1940, Collection 2150 Box 80 Subject Files, Charles Gavan Power Fonds, Queens University Archives, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. 272

other realistic option but to continue to defer to the judgment of local representatives. Starting after the 1926 federal election though, the party was able to entrench its dominance in the House of Commons and begin to centralize decision–making power in the offices of a select few party elites.

The first step involved removing certain issues such as tariff policy and military pensions from Parliament’s overt control and assigning them to appointed boards of experts. This step limited input from private members on key issues while also creating another source of patronage controlled by the central party leadership. The creation of the NLF also gave another avenue for the party to manage government benefits without involving the prime minister directly. Norman Lambert, as the federation's second president served effectively as the conduit between those seeking political favours from the Liberal government and the people in positions to grant said requests. No longer did individual members have the power and influence within the party to serve as the liaison between government and citizens.

Not all Liberal MPs and local riding associations accepted the new party structures.

Having very little practical ability to resist decrees from the higher–ups in Ottawa, the dissidents turned to moral suasion. Along with riding level officials and defeated Liberal candidates, private members argued that by denying them control over patronage and government tenders,

King and his supporters were undermining the rights of elected representatives, which were essential to the functioning of a liberal democratic government. Furthermore, they stated that the duty of distributing benefits on a riding–by–riding level belonged to the individual MP and should not be usurped by the party's leadership. Yet, in spite of basing their attacks on the

Conservatives on similar arguments regarding protecting the basic rights underpinning Canadian

273

democracy, the Liberal Party leadership was willing to ignore them when restated by a segment of its own membership.

Ultimately, the rights that the dissatisfied Liberals were claiming had no legal force; they were simply customs and traditions, which, while significant, could be disregarded without legal consequences. Furthermore, unlike the other political conflicts examined in this dissertation, the fight between the central party leadership and its backbenchers was mostly a private one conducted through letters, memos and closed meetings, King and his allies such as Lapointe,

Power and Mackenzie could act without overt concern for how voters would react. Hence, they felt free to reject the same arguments about protecting British traditions essential to democracy that they themselves had used. While the ultimate judge on any party decision would indeed be the voters, the ability to effectively create and manage national patronage networks far outweighed fidelity to what King and his allies saw as a dated concept that hindered effective political maneuvering.

274

Chapter 7: Conclusion

Nineteen Forty Five saw the end of World War II with the Allies’ defeat of Nazi Germany in

May and Imperial Japan in August of that year. Domestically, the Liberal Party once again won a

majority government headed by William Lyon Mackenzie King, granting him and his party a

third consecutive majority government and a fifth overall. The Conservatives once again

switched leaders, this time selecting former Ontario Premier George Drew who proved equally

as unsuccessful at defeating the Liberals, as everyone not named R.B. Bennett. For some civil

society groups though, even those sympathetic to the Liberals, storm clouds still gathered on the

metaphorical horizon. The victory over the Axis Powers had removed one threat to Canadian

democracy only to be replaced in the new post–war global environment by multiple new ones.

Beyond the dangers of Joseph Stalin's totalitarian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR),

groups like The Canadian Association for Adult Education (CAAE) saw the increase in

migration to Canada of people from outside of the British Empire and the United States as a

threat to the established political practices, norms and beliefs of post–war Canada. In particular,

the influx of migrants from Southern and Eastern European countries where the fascist

governments of the 1930s and early 1940s had been replaced with communist ones after the

war’s end deeply concerned a large number of Canadian “gatekeepers”.1

In response to these perceived threats, the CAAE revamped and reissued a series of

pamphlets originally distributed in 1943. These publications intended to provide a factual and

non–partisan outline of Canada's political institutions, practices and culture. The title of the

1 For a detailed examination of this concept see Francesca Iacovetta, Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada, (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2006). 275

entire series, The Democratic Way, clearly demonstrated the principle this group held up as

central to Canadian politics. In case there was any ambiguity in the group's belief that democratic

ideals were foundational to Canada, the pamphlet I'm Free to Choose states that, “Our political

democracy – the right of every man and woman to vote and share in the choosing of the

government that shall rule them – is something that must be preserved at all costs.”2 While the

various issues also celebrated Canada's British heritage as part of the soon to be British

Commonwealth, this collection of literature was intended to leaves little doubt in the reader's

mind that a commitment to democracy was the defining characteristic of Canada's political

system.

Yet simply proclaiming a commitment to democracy was not sufficient for the CAAE.

After all, in a few short years the USSR–backed East Germany government would declare itself

the German Democratic Republic while copying the political institutions and practices of the

totalitarian USSR. Rather, the version of democracy advanced by the CAAE involved adhering

to a series of practices and norms that governed everything from civic participation to the

conduct of political parties. In this articulation of democracy, the role of competing political

parties was particularly important. In the same pamphlet quoted above, the author tells the reader

that, “Party government is in fact the secret of free government. In a democratic community,

government is carried on in accordance with public opinion... Parties come into existence to

educate and organize the electorate.”3 The role of political parties is not outlined in the Canadian

Constitution and the norms governing parties developed slowly over Canada's seventy–nine year

2 Canadian Association of Adult Education, I am Free to Choose, (Ottawa: Self–Published, 1946), 3, MG28 I85, Vol.41 Canadian Citizenship Act, Canadian Citizenship Council Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 3 Ibid, 5. 276

history to date. However, the CAAE reproduced discourses that placed parties and their conduct

at the centre of Canadian's democratic practices.

Critically, for the CAAE the simple existence of multiple parties was not sufficient.

Rather to be truly democratic, they argued that Canada had to have a two party system. In My

Share and Yours, the author tells readers that, “The two–party system as it exists in English–

speaking democracies seems to have evolved to meet a need and experience has shown that it

can be made to work satisfactorily.”4 In clear reference to the proliferation of parties during the

1920s and 30s, the author next went on to outline the problems associated with too many parties:

If there are too many parties it means that people are too insistent on having their exact feelings expressed. They do not want a party that fits them in a rough sort of way, but want their party to be a perfect fit, and not to have a single idea with which they are out of agreement. This means that government is likely to blunder along, first in one direction then another. It cannot keep a steady course because it does not have enough support in Parliament and so must try and please first one party then another.5

In what was a seemingly ironic message given their concern about immigrants from communist

states, the CAAE argued that voters' willingness to suppress their individual needs for the benefit

of a collective organization was a laudable, and even necessary, characteristic of a functioning

democracy. The group also repeated the message that citizens should work for political change

within one of the two established political parties in another pamphlet simply entitled

Democracy and the Political Party.6 These discourses depicted parties as not only the most

4 Canadian Association of Adult Education, My Share and Yours, (Ottawa: Self–Published, 1946), 12, MG28 I85, Vol.41 Canadian Citizenship Act, Canadian Citizenship Council Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 5 Ibid, 15. 6 Canadian Association of Adult Education, Democracy and the Political Party, (Ottawa: Self–published, 1946), MG28 I85, Vol.41 Canadian Citizenship Act, Canadian Citizenship Council Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 277

appropriate avenue for political action, but as essential to the health of Canada's democracy as a whole. The CAAE's message was that without a strong Liberal and Conservative Party, Canada would not be a functioning democracy.

This group of democratic discourses propagated by adult education organizations like the

CAAE are almost identical to those employed by the Liberal Party between the years 1920 and

1940. Yet, there was not an official link with the Liberal Party, nor any overt cooperation between the two organizations. The CAAE throughout the 1940s continued to identify itself as a non–partisan and apolitical organization dedicated solely to adult education. The purpose of their publications was not to explicitly advance a specific set of discourses associated with any one party but rather to ostensibly present neutral information to new Canadians, which is what makes these pamphlets such an intriguing historical source. They represent how over the course of twenty five years from the end of the World War I to the end of the World War II, what began as explicitly partisan discourses designed to advance the electoral fortunes of the Liberal Party became normalized as just ‘how the system works.’ The degree of change in perception of democratic discourses was such that an adult–education organization could reprint material that would have been at home in a stump speech from a Liberal candidate in the 1925 Federal

Election and present it as neutral fact in 1946.

Fundamentally, this collection of popular democratic discourses reflect how Canadians continue to view their political system. The major focus of this dissertation is tracking how political parties, particularly the Liberal Party of Canada invoked this set of discourses for partisan gain. It certainly is not a surprise that the turbulent decades of the 1920s and 30s, combined with the mass mobilization of the Canadian population for World War II would result

278

in Canadians embracing democratic ideals, yet how parties would use these ideas in the milieu of partisan politics was unknown.

Ultimately, this dissertation argues that between World War I and II, a small cadre of men clustering around new Liberal Party leader William Lyon Mackenzie King, reproduced popular democratic discourses within Canada to justify both centralizing power in the person of the party leader and creating a centralized extra–parliamentary party designed to support the legislative agenda of the party elite. This particular articulation of how Canada's political system should operate had four key aspects. First was that only by receiving a mandate to govern from the Canadian people through a federal election could a party and prime minister assume and exercise power legitimately. Second, was to reject all other means of justifying the exercise of political power as anti–democratic and dangerous to Canada as a free country. Third was the idea that only a political party that incorporated the views of all Canadians across the socio–economic spectrum could legitimately exercise legislative power. Fourth and finally, this party of all

Canadians must employ democratic mechanisms for internal decision making, on matters ranging from party policy to the selection of their leader. Together, these ideas made up a totalizing vision of party politics within Canada during this time and brokered no alternative.

Of course, the Liberals were not the only, nor were they the first, party to utilize democratic rhetoric to advance their own partisan interests. Yet, it was the particular cluster of ideas articulated by the Liberal Party in response to partisan challenges the party faced that voters came to view as a factual description of the Canadian political system. Other parties, such as the Progressives, which invoked democratic rhetoric to argue for reforming the House of

Commons along occupational lines, to the Conservatives, who steadfastly defended the traditions and norms of the Westminster system, and the CCF promoting their brand of democratic 279

socialism, all proved either unable or unwilling to fashion an appealing alternative for voters and thus consigned themselves to years of Liberal rule.

While not always successful at winning elections, the Liberal Party's propagation of certain democratic ideals outlined a vision of a democratic Canada that continues to have an enduring appeal. Thus, when Canadians bemoan their country's alleged democratic deficit, the standards they use to asses Canadian democracy are those also invoked by the Liberals during the interwar years. Hence, calls for electoral reform are generally call to reinforcing the basic principles espoused by King and his party through institutional reform. Measures such as proportional representation or recall for members of Parliament only serve to limit the freedom of individual MPs while furthering the perception that politicians gain the legitimacy to rule through a mandate from the Canadian people. Such principles are not reflective of the organization of power outlined in the Canadian constitution but do reflect a seductive vision of democratic government that provided a power discursive tool for political actors seeking an alternative source of authority other than the constitution

Determining whether the Liberals were actually able to convince voters by appealing to a newly manufactured standard of legitimacy or whether another combination of factors kept the party and King in power for most of the interwar years is beyond the scope of this project. What is clear though is the Liberals and their leader believed that the root of their appeal to Canadian voters was a professed commitment to popular democratic ideals, going so far as to call their victory in the 1935 federal election a “victory for democracy.” Consequently, they repeated and refined these discourses to apply to the specific electoral situation the Liberals found themselves in during the federal elections of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. By winning elections, the Liberals were able to remain in power and repeat their message about how political parties should be 280

organized, and act. Other parties had to either adapt to this standard or attempt to construct a counter–narrative. The Conservatives’ inability to do the same has to be considered one of the key reasons why they remained on opposition benches for such a prolonged stretch of time.

Assessing the consequences of this shift in how Canadians talk about their political system is much harder and strays beyond the confines of historical scholarship. Regardless, it is possible to draw some important conclusions based on a detailed study of the interwar years.

First, it is true that one of the consequences of this process was that since 1919 individual parliamentarians have seen a significant decline in their influence over party and governmental decision-making. High–ranking officials in a party's extra–parliamentary organization now hold tremendous decision–making power, a situation that was almost unheard of in the years immediately following World War I. Furthermore, a class of party supporters registered and mobilized by parties as “members” have gained direct influence over key decisions such as party policy and leader selection. While these members hold a tremendous amount of theoretical power, the diffuse nature of modern political parties combined with the sheer size of their membership – often measured in the tens or hundreds of thousands – means that their power to function as a check on the leader in the same way members of caucus could, is much more limited.

The result has been that a leader whose party wins a majority of seats in the House of

Commons now possesses almost unlimited power. Certainly, by the standards of other western liberal democracies, the Canadian PM has power that their peers in other countries could never attain through valid constitutional means. Furthermore, by utilizing the language of a democratic mandate these leaders can justify their tremendous power by arguing that the Canadian people have granted it directly to them. Thus, to oppose the leader and the governing party is to oppose 281

the Canadian people themselves. While most leaders do not go so far as to argue that any attempt to remove the government from power through valid constitutional means is a “coup d’etat” as

Conservative Minister Blackburn did during the coalition crisis, many modern Canadian PMs have made similar, if less overt hints about the undemocratic intentions of the opposition parties.

The other major result of these changes has been to distort Canadians understanding of their political system. From the idea of a mandate for change through to opposing coalition governments as “anti–democratic” the vast majority of voters are willing to accept these as valid concepts when not only do they not have a root in the Westminster system, but are often fundamentally incompatible with said system. To take the example of the mandate, there is no mechanism in Canada for establishing whether a leader has won one. The only plausible mechanism draws on popular national vote totals but these do not influence which party holds power as it does in proportional representation systems like Israel or Italy. The result is, beginning with Mackenzie King, parties and their leaders have claimed a mandate to govern based on 40% of the popular vote or less. Consequently, critics of those claiming a mandate based on such a limited vote total rightfully call into question their validity. Yet, so influential is the idea of mandate politics now that rather than rejecting it outright, many Canadians now argue that electoral reform is necessary to create a system that more concretely connects popular vote totals to which party can exercise legislative and executive power.

As any historian of Canadian politics, the present author included, will state, reforming

Canada's political institutions is incredibly difficult. Yet due to the pervasiveness of the democratic ideals and practices advanced by the Liberal Party during the 1920s and 30s and subsequently other parties over the preceding seventy years, many Canadians now see institutional reform as the only possible mechanism for reconciling the difference between 282

standards for legitimacy and the structure of the present political system.7 However, the

persistent failure of any party or leader to enact such reforms has caused many people to view

the present system as outdated, illegitimate and even undemocratic. Many also have become

alienated from the political process as the static nature of Canadian institutions gives the

impression that it is impossible to reconcile democratic ideals with existing institutional

structures. Hence, Canadians get editorials from national newspapers bemoaning Canada's

democratic deficit and low voter participation rates.

The proceeding five chapters should also provide hope for advocates of political reform

as they demonstrate that institutional reform is not the only means of shifting political practice.

The fact remains that Canada's institutions are almost unchanged from 1919 yet how people

interact with them and how they operate has shifted dramatically. The important shift happened

not on a structural level but on a discursive, and by extension, an intellectual level. To put it

another way, people's ideas shifted and that shift changed the entire political system for, at a very

basic level, ideas matter. As historian Michael Braddick's points out, “ideas therefore outline the

limits of actions to what can be justified with reference to particular values.”8 Canadians' ideas

about democracy can limit the possibility of reform. However, it also demonstrates that sustained

engagement with political ideas can result in transformative change, and perhaps encouraging

Canadians interested in their political system and the future of their country to engage with these

ideas in a meaningful manner.

7 See the opening three paragraphs in the introduction of this dissertation for examples and citations for specific statistics. 8 Michael Braddick, “Réflexions sur l’État en Angleterre (XVIe–XVIIe siècle),” Histoire, Économie et Société 24(2005): 42. « Les idées sont donc contraignantes parce qu'elles sont des limites à la sphère de l'action qui peut avec vraisemblance être justifiée en référence à certaines valeurs particulières » 283

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