Politics in Alberta
OWEN, JOHN E.
Politics in Alberta Western Canada's prosperity has strengthened the dominant Social Credit party By John E. Owen Alberta This year, the Province of Alberta celebrated its 50th anniversary....
...For this reason, Western Canada, being economically dependent on the world wheat market, has never been as isolationist as the American Midwest...
...Only if the Social Credit party can hold office on a national level can its earlier policies be adopted, and this is most unlikely...
...Prosperity is not conducive to political controversy...
...Alberta's prosperous economic base should, however, be sufficient to nullify the Liberal party threat to future Social Credit dominance in the province...
...Fifty years ago, with large-scale prairie settlements, politics in Eastern Canada centered around the tariff and the encouragement of manufacturing...
...Nor is there any Communist problem...
...Granted that some of Alberta's roads are unspeakably bad, schools are overcrowded, new suburban residents in Edmonton have to wait two years for a telephone, and it takes money to lick the severe winter climate, these are small matters compared with the open-ended view of their future that most Albertans hold...
...It was also in part a revolt against England, in that Ontario was and is the most pro-British element in Canada, whereas the West was settled not by Britishers alone but also by other immigrants and a sizable number of American settlers who came north from Minnesota and other border states...
...All of Canada, from the fishing villages of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to the thriving lumber camps of British Columbia, is experiencing a period of unique growth...
...Social Crediters received less than 50 per cent of the popular vote, and their representation in the House fell from 51 to 37, lower than at any time in twenty years...
...In 1935, Aberhart and his new party swept the province, and it has been in office without a break ever since...
...The opposition parties are small...
...Town-send and technocracy...
...The summer elections gave Social Credit another five years in office, but the victory came hard...
...Since 1947, vast amounts of oil have been discovered in the Edmonton and Calgary areas, and scores of companies have arisen, including many independents as well as the major corporations...
...To realize the continent's agricultural and industrial potential, many new immigrants will be needed...
...there is only one labor union, in the mining industry...
...The CCF is now strongest in neighboring Saskatchewan, with Social Credit powerful in Alberta and British Columbia...
...Four land deals were investigated...
...Each arose as a party of regional revolt against the financial interests of the East-particularly Toronto and Montreal-against the Eastern mortgage holders, profiteering grain dealers, tariff-protected manufacturers, and finally against the Depression, which hit Western Canada harder than any other section of the country...
...the CCF is socialist...
...Newcomers sense it equally in the expanding Eaton's (Canada's Macy's) and Hudson's Bay Company stores and in the faces of second-generation Ukrainians...
...Manning, who began life as a Saskatchewan farmboy, had been converted to Aberhart's evangelical gospel, studied at his Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute, and became in every sense Aberhart's disciple...
...They were held unconstitutional by the Federal courts...
...The Social Crediters went into office in 1935 on a promise to pay citizens $25 a month in "social dividends," a plan reminiscent of both Dr...
...The opposition alleged irregularities and abuse of office by Social Credit, and the consequent defamation suits amounted to more than $7 million...
...The Ukrainians are Alberta's largest immigrant group, second only to the early Britishers, and the present Mayor of Edmonton, popular William Hawrelak, is the son of Ukrainian immigrants...
...He later had to welcome them back into the party...
...The Conservative party came to be thought of as a sectional party, interested in Ontario and Quebec at the expense of the West...
...But this policy, popular in the East, had no attraction for Westerners, who had to sell their agricultural, mining and timber products to an overseas market...
...Each regards the other as an enemy...
...In addition, many young people from England have emigrated since 1945 to find a new life in this prairie province, and the University of Alberta, with its 4,000 students, is an interesting case of a British institution adapting itself to the needs of a new dominion with pressing postwar agricultural and commercial demands...
...Despite similar origins, Social Credit and the CCF are now at opposite political extremes...
...Social Credit, consisting of unorthodox fiscal policies enunciated by Major C. H. Douglas, a British engineer, came to the attention of William Aberhart, a successful Calgary evangelist and radio preacher...
...John E. Owen, who formerly taught sociology at Helsinki University, has made a detailed study of the boom taking place in Canada's West...
...With the development of great natural resources and the arrival of outside capital, the wheel has come full circle, and the old fiscal policies and prairie radicalism have been relegated to the past...
...Though Social Credit still controls the provincial House, the Liberals won 9 seats in the 61-seat provincial Parliament as against their earlier 4. Three Social Credit Cabinet ministers were defeated, but two party members who had rented a building to the Government and were forced to resign in the spring were re-elected, though Manning had repudiated them a few hours before the voting...
...This trend led to the formation of "protest parties," such as the United Farmers of Alberta, the Canadian Commonwealth Federation, the Progressives, and Social Credit...
...The political picture in Alberta, dominated by the Social Credit party, is best understood in the light of recent Canadian history...
...The most recent elections, held early last summer, centered on attacks on the personal finances of Premier Manning and his officials...
...None of the other parties had a remedy for the Depression, and a change for the bankrupt farmers was long overdue...
...Conservatism is perhaps more widespread in the Canadian West than ever before...
...In fact, in 1955 there are no outstanding political issues in the province...
...Although even today Alberta is in many respects frontier country, the progress made since its founding has been remarkable...
...Alberta is not alone in its prosperity and activity...
...The newer immigrants likewise are usually conservative in their political orientation...
...When the final returns were in, the extent of damage done by Liberal campaign charges of graft and abuse of office, plus the questions asked by the influential Calgary Herald, was made apparent...
...Its ethos is that of the pioneer West-aggressive, invigorating, forward-looking, confident...
...The same feeling arose later toward the Liberals, who ruled Alberta from 1905 to 1921...
...Aberhart made it part of his social gospel and plan of salvation, and gave to Douglas's monetary theories a moral prestige and religious aura that greatly enhanced its political potential...
...A system of social welfare is in operation, but the party's main support comes from well-to-do farmers and large business interests, including the new oil concerns...
...Manning was obliged to explain how he came to acquire his farm, and how his colleagues obtained Government bank loans...
...hence, issues have to be manufactured...
...The free-wheeling financial policies of Social Credit, however, presupposed a control of the banking system which would have changed the entire economic order of Alberta...
...When Aberhart died in 1943, the party caucus at once chose Ernest Manning to succeed him as Premier of Alberta...
...Manning, the dominant personality of Social Credit, has adroitly combined religious fundamentalism and political conservatism to win a large personal following...
...Politics follows economics, and neither the older agricultural settlers with memories of the bleak 1930s nor the younger immigrants from an austerity-ridden Britain or a war-scarred Continent are likely to turn against the present party in power...
...Social Credit is acceptable to Big Business in a marked degree...
...From its early origins as a party of radical revolt, Social Credit has now become essentially conservative and receives large support from Alberta farmers, who as a group are prosperous, settled and free from debt...
...Probably few Americans realize that the pioneer epoch in Canada came later than our own, and that it is still going on...
...and the national population, now at 16 million, is generally expected to double within the next 25 or 30 years...
...His Sunday radio sermons draw a listening audience estimated at two million...
...In addition to its thriving wheat and cattle-raising, Alberta has become an Oklahoma of oil...
...Manning, an astute politician, continued in office on a platform of efficient, competent government and belief in free enterprise...
...After the Liberals, the remaining 15 seats were divided between the other parties (Progressive-Conservative, Liberal-Progressive-Conservative, Coalition, Independent, and CCF...
...The provincial capital, Edmonton, with a postwar expansion to almost a quarter-million people, has become a boom-town, with a thousand new residents every month...
Vol. 38 • December 1955 • No. 51
