Canada at War: THE DOMINION: The Best-Laid Plans

Canada’s reconstruction plans were last week well mixed up with an issue familiar in the U.S.: States’ rights.

Eight months ago Ontario’s Premier George Alexander Drew suggested, and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King quickly agreed to, a conference between the federal Government and the nine provinces. Purpose: to chart postwar taxation. For war purposes the Dominion Government had taken over provincial income and corporation taxes. Once peace returns, Canada’s 77-year-old constitution requires the return of the provinces’ taxing power.

Whose Money? Mr. King’s Liberal Government went right ahead with a series of sweeping measures to ease the transition from war to peace. Where the money was coming from to finance the plans, Mr. King did not say. Obviously he was counting on keeping the Dominion’s taxes high. That meant that the provinces’ postwar taxes would have to be low.

Premier Drew became more & more restless. As a Tory, he suspected Liberal King of making political hay for the Liberal Party. As a provincial premier, he thought the federal Government was milking rich Ontario. Then, a fortnight ago Quebec voted in the Quebec-first Union Nationale Party (TIME, Aug. 21). This means that the two provinces which have roughly two-thirds of Canada’s wealth and people are now controlled by staunch States’-rights partisans.

Politics First. Shrewd Politician King now saw that he had no chance of getting what he wanted from a Dominion-provincial conference. He waited until an eleventh hour before Parliament adjourned, then let off his bombshell—there would be no conference. He blamed “the attitude of the Premier of Ontario.” Cried flabbergasted Mr. Drew: “An alltime high in pure unadulterated hypocrisy.”

Canadians now wondered whether they could adjourn politics and unite as a nation long enough to work out an effective postwar program.