When millions of people lose their jobs, whose job is it to help them? In 1930 most Canadian politicians believed relief was mainly the responsibility of families, charities, towns and provinces, and that governments should balance their budgets and wait for the economy to recover. By the end of the decade that belief had cracked. Angry voters, desperate protesters and brand-new political parties pushed governments toward a much bigger role in the economy, laying foundations for the social programs Canadians rely on today.
King, Bennett and the first responses
In April 1930, Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King told the House of Commons that he would not give a "five-cent piece" to provincial governments run by his Conservative opponents for unemployment relief. The remark made him look indifferent to suffering, and in the election of July 28, 1930, the Conservatives under R. B. Bennett won a majority. Bennett promised action: he raised Canadian tariffs to protect jobs and to pressure other countries into trade deals, hosted the Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa in 1932 to win better access to British markets, and gave the provinces emergency relief grants. None of this ended the Depression.
Relief camps and the On-to-Ottawa Trek
Single, homeless unemployed men worried the government most; officials feared they could be drawn to communism. From October 1932, the Bennett government set up relief camps run by the Department of National Defence in remote areas. Men cleared bush, built roads and planted trees for bunkhouse beds, three meals, work clothes and 20 cents a day, which led them to call themselves the "Royal Twenty Centers". The camps had no wages worth the name, no vote for workers and no end date, and many men felt they had been sent away to be forgotten.
- April 1935: relief camp workers in British Columbia, organized by the Relief Camp Workers' Union, go on strike and gather in Vancouver.
- June 3, 1935: led by Arthur "Slim" Evans, more than 800 strikers climb aboard freight trains heading east to take their demands to Ottawa: the On-to-Ottawa Trek.
- June 1935: the trek grows to about 2,000 men by the time it reaches Regina, where the federal government stops it. A small delegation goes on to Ottawa, but its meeting with Bennett ends in a shouting match.
- July 1, 1935 (Dominion Day): police move in to arrest the trek leaders at a public meeting in Regina's Market Square. The Regina Riot lasts for hours; a city police detective is killed, a trekker later dies of his injuries, and dozens of people are injured.
- 1936: the relief camps are closed by the next government in June 1936.
Bennett's New Deal
With an election coming, Bennett surprised the country. In five radio broadcasts in January 1935 he announced a program soon called Bennett's New Deal, after US President Franklin Roosevelt's reforms. It promised unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, limits on working hours, fairer treatment of farmers and controls on business practices. Many Canadians doubted a leader who had resisted such ideas for five years. Voters chose King's Liberals in October 1935, and in 1937 the courts (the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Britain, then Canada's highest court of appeal) struck down most of the New Deal laws because they intruded on provincial powers.
New parties, new ideas
| Party | Founded and leader | Main ideas | Where it was strongest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) | Founded in Calgary in 1932; led by J. S. Woodsworth; program set out in the Regina Manifesto (1933) | Democratic socialism: public ownership of key industries and banks, economic planning, social programs such as health insurance and pensions, change through elections | The Prairies (especially Saskatchewan), British Columbia, some industrial cities |
| Social Credit | Led in Alberta by William Aberhart, a Calgary school principal and popular radio broadcaster; won the Alberta election of August 22, 1935 | Argued the economy failed because people lacked purchasing power; promised to put money in citizens' hands through monthly dividends | Alberta, later British Columbia |
| Union Nationale | Led by Maurice Duplessis; won the Quebec election of August 17, 1936 | Quebec nationalism, rural and traditional values, strong opposition to communism and to federal interference | Quebec |
The new parties reflected regional frustration as much as ideology. Westerners felt the old parties served central Canadian banks and railways; many Quebecers wanted their province to control its own affairs. Not every new movement respected rights: Duplessis's Padlock Act (1937) let the Quebec government lock buildings used to spread communism, a vague term that was used against unions and other critics. Ordinary people also organized themselves. In Nova Scotia, the Antigonish movement led by Moses Coady helped fishers, farmers and miners form co-operatives and credit unions, and in 1932 academics founded the League for Social Reconstruction, which helped shape the CCF's ideas.
New institutions that lasted
- Bank of Canada (began operating March 11, 1935): a central bank to manage the money supply and interest rates and issue the national currency, instead of leaving this to private banks.
- Canadian Wheat Board (1935): a federal agency to market Prairie wheat and support farm prices.
- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) (November 2, 1936): a public radio network to connect Canadians from coast to coast and offer Canadian programs as American radio spread north.
- Trans-Canada Air Lines (1937) and the National Film Board (1939): publicly owned bodies to link the country and tell Canadian stories.
- Royal Commission on Dominion–Provincial Relations (Rowell–Sirois, 1937–1940): studied which level of government should pay for social programs; its report shaped later federal–provincial deals.
- Unemployment insurance (1940): after the provinces agreed to a constitutional amendment, Ottawa created a national unemployment insurance program.