Reform and Politics in Canada

Abstract

EHE economic crisis has led everywhere to a re-examination of the principles underlying the structure of the body politic. Reforms are the order of the day. They vary in each country with its peculiar problems and characteristics, and with the nature and outlook of the men in possession of political power. They share in common some departure from the economic liberalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whether it is the Deal in America, recent legislation in Great Britain, or reforms in Canada, the break with the past is significant. In Canada, social and economic reform has been long delayed. A young country, it was constantly assured that it would inevitably parallel the growth and progress of its southern neighbor, the United States. It did not feel that it required the social legislation which a country in as advanced a stage of industrialization as Great Britain had introduced. Optimism-the optimism of pioneers-and a faith in laissezfaire ruled. There was state intervention of course. Governments had built railways directly and had guaranteed the bonds of private railway companies. Parliament had erected a high tariff wall for the development and the protection of industries. Tariff protection was, in fact, the principal point of difference between the two major political parties. The Conservatives had enacted the National Policy of protection in I879 and favored its maintenance and extension; the Liberals advocated moderate tariffs and reciprocity in trade. Their respective attitudes on other national problems were not based on any essential difference as to the duties and functions of government. The party situation was similar to that in the United States. New social and industrial problems arose in Canada, as elsewhere, in the aftermath of the World War. They required an extension of the activities of the state. This trend conflicted with the Constitution, the British North America Act, which was passed by the British Parliament in I867, in the heyday of laissez-faire: it did not foresee the regulation of social and economic life by governments. It created a Federal Constitution; and divided the powers of government between the Dominion