Foreign News: Bill’s Bills

A painful dilemma was faced last week by the representative of King George VI in the Province of Alberta, Lieut.-Governor J. C. Bowen. He was expected by Premier William (“Bible Bill”) Aberhart to sign, as a formality, three bills just passed by the Legislature and designed to save the now economically shaky “Social Credit” regime in Alberta which pious radiorating Mr. Aberhart set up two years ago with promises to pay every citizen a monthly “dividend” of $25 (TIME, Sept. 2, 1935 et seq.). The first bill would force Alberta newspapers to give as much as one full page to presentation of the Government’s views verbatim at any time upon demand, is entitled An Act Ensuring Publication of Accurate News and Information. The second would arbitrarily increase taxation of Alberta banks $2,000,000 per annum, and the third makes this possible by classifying “banks” as “credit institutions,” thus making them liable to measures which under Dominion law could not be applied to them as banks. All three were so extraordinary that the King’s Lieutenant-Governor refused to sign and sent the bills to Lord Tweedsmuir, the Governor General who in legal fiction is “the Person of the King in Canada.”

Obvious purpose of the three bills is to evade the North America Act, Canada’s Constitution, and make Premier Aberhart the Dictator of Alberta. There were enough debt ridden farmers and pious adherents of his prophetic Bible Institute in Alberta so that last week even enemies of “Bible Bill” were afraid that if forced to go to the polls he might win again.

In Toronto this week Lord Tweedsmuir called Dominion Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King into conference, and those two were expected to work out some robust Dominion scheme of cracking down on Premier Aberhart. One way would be simply to stall around until the collapse of Bible Bill’s Social Credit regime which has gravely unbalanced the budget of the Province without ever paying a single $25 dividend.