Conscription in Canada (12-2-44)

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The Pittsburgh Press (December 2, 1944)

Background of news –
Conscription in Canada

By Bertram Benedict

Prime Minister Mackenzie King has denied that the anti-conscription riots in the army of Canada can properly be called “mutinies.” Nevertheless, they are apt to reoccur, and to be reinforced by civilian demonstrations in Québec Province, if the government gets a vote of confidence in the Canadian House of Commons for its new policy of partial conscription for overseas service.

One of Mr. Mackenzie King’s weaknesses in the present conscription issue in Canada is a promise he made shortly before the war in Europe broke out. He declared on March 30, 1939, that his government would never conscript Canadians for overseas service.

Even after the outbreak of war, Canada shied away from conscription. It was applied only after the British disaster at Dunkerque, and then did not cover service overseas. The Canadian Conscription Act of June 1940 declares that no person shall be compelled to serve in the armed forces outside of Canada and its territorial waters.

By Nov. 1, 1944, 390,000 of the 450,000 in the Canadian Armed Forces were overseas. The remaining 60,000 could not be sent without their consent.

Released by referendum

On April 27, 1942, Canada held a referendum on releasing the government from its pledge not to apply conscription to overseas service. The government was so released, by vote of about 65 percent for the Dominion as a whole. Eight of the nine provinces voted Yea by 70-85 percent, but Québec was almost 75 percent in the negative.

In view of this opposition from Québec, the Mackenzie King government decided not to go ahead with overseas conscription. Now the government is asking, not for new powers, but for a vote of confidence in using the powers given it over two and a half years ago.

The people of French stock who make up most of the province of Québec are largely a law unto themselves. Their ancestors, most of whom hailed from Brittany and Normandy, were the original settlers of Canada, and their descendants still regard as interlopers the British stock which settled later in other parts of Canada. By the Treaty of 1763 under which France ceded Canada to England, the French Canadians were guaranteed their own laws.

The French who settled Québec left France before the French Revolution, and Québec today has little in common with Republican France.

Rioting during World War I

When conscription was applied in Canada in World War I, after a general election on the subject in December 1917, serious anti-conscription riots broke out in Montréal and other parts of Québec. Today a separatist movement is strong in Québec, and will be strengthened by any application of conscription to Québec’s young men and women against the will of Québec.

The political dilemma for the Liberal government of Mr. Mackenzie King is that most members of the Canadian Parliament from Québec are Liberals and have been supporters of the government. In provincial elections in Québec last August, the Liberals lost their majority and had their seats in the legislature cut almost in half.

The anti-conscription forces have their own political dilemma, for if the Mackenzie King government is overthrown, it will be succeeded by a Conservative government. The Conservatives are pledged to complete conscription for overseas service, whereas the present proposal of the King government is for only enough overseas conscription now to make needed replacements in the Canadian forces in Europe (A figure of 16,000 is used). And a general election is scheduled for Canada in 1945.

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Mackenzie King wasn’t eager to get Canada into WW2, while the opposition Conservatives were very eager. The PM was hoping that Canadian participation could be limited to economic and military supplies, air operations in support of the RAF, and naval operations between Canada (and Newfoundland, which was not part of Canada until 1949) and the British Isles. No politician in Canada could forget the trauma of the conscription crisis during the First World War which threatened the political stability of the nation, so doing almost anything to stay out of land operations made huge political sense. It also flew in the face of English-speaking Canadians’ desire to do at least as much in this war as the famous Canadian Corps had achieved in the last. To many Canadians, the sacrifice and service of the Canadian Corps at Vimy Ridge and the war-ending 100 Days campaign were a unifying experience and (in several senses) “created” Canada.

The government was unable to stand against 75% of the population’s demands for a more active part in the war, which eventually led to the second conscription crisis discussed here.

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I beg to differ a bit. Mackenzie-King’s “Limited War” policy vanished with the fall of France. The Wartine Tax Rental agreements, signed by all provinces including Quebec in 1942 gave the entire field of personal and corporate taxation to the Federal Government. It placed the Federal Government a total war footing. The “Limited War” position did not last long in the face of reality.

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Those that were conscripted were known as Zombies and caused great uproar throughout Canada. This was the first wide use of the word Zombie in mainstream media.

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True, but Mackenzie King was still not a war hawk at any point during the war. Canadian land combat was usually snuck in on him (Hong Kong, Dieppe, Sicily, Italy) as being a “cheap” way for Canadian troops to get some combat experience without risking the huge casualty rates of WW1 battles. It was the work of McNaughton and Crerar to create opportunities for the deployment of Canadian troops against the clear-but-not-explicit will of Mackenzie King, if not the government as a whole.

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The best summary of Mackenzie-King is that he never did anything by halves he could do by quarters.

He was also a master manipulator: he always created enough pluasible deniability so that he could appear to please everyone.

The bottom line was that if King was really opposed to war we wouldnt have been at war. If he didnt want the armed forces deployed, they would not have been deployed. That’s how power works.

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Now, on this point it’s my turn to beg to differ. Support for the war was sky-high in English-speaking Canada (and subterranean in Quebec). Mackenzie King for all that we might say about him must be acknowledged as a true master of politics. Politics is the art of the possible, and keeping Canada out of the war was not possible against that kind of public pressure (taken to an extreme, it might have allowed his government to be tossed out of power altogether).

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