The Politics of Combines Policy: Liberals and the Stevens Commission

Abstract

This paper is not designed primarily as a contribution to the theory of political decision-making. Nor is it an economic analysis of the problems studied by the Royal Commission on Price Spreads and Mass Buying. Rather, it is an attempt to show how the opposition Liberal party developed a strategy to deal with the important issues of economic policy raised by the investigation and how it developed an alternative policy position.On February 2, 1934, the Prime Minister, R. B. Bennett, moved that a Select Committee of the House of Commons be established to inquire into the causes of price spreads and a variety of related problems in the areas of distribution, inter-firm relations, and labour conditions. From the beginning, H. H. Stevens, the chairman and Minister of Trade and Commerce in the Bennett administration, dominated the Committee's hearings—selecting witnesses, scheduling proceedings, and stretching the Committee's already elastic terms of reference in search of new abuses and new sensations. He denounced unfair trade practices and what he felt were flagrant abuses of economic power by department stores, meat packers, and other mass buyers, economic power which he charged was used to squeeze the small retailer, supplier, and producer and destroy decent working conditions. The public interest in the hearings was high and the press coverage was extensive and full, particularly when the Chairman had angry exchanges with the presidents of Canada Packers and the Imperial Tobacco Company.