Rejection by the Canadian Senate, 1913

Abstract

The Upper House of Canada, the Senate, had its own role in the process of parliamentary decision-making for Canada and its structures and procedures were neither exactly the same as the House of Lords in Great Britain or the Senate in the USA. In 1913, the Conservative party had a minority of seats in the Canadian Senate due to the fact that Senators were appointed for life and chosen by the political party in government at the time. The long tenure for Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal Government of fifteen years meant the Senate was dominated by Liberal party supporters. Oscar Douglas Skelton in his biography of Laurier, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, posits the view that this Liberal advantage did not dramatically reduce the optimism of the Conservative Government over the Naval Aid Bill.2 Skelton suggests the Conservatives believed the Senate would avoid being reckless and anti-imperialist and ‘unpatriotic’.3KeywordsLiberal PartyConservative PartyGerman NewspaperNaval ServiceBritish ShipThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.