CANADA IN FERMENT

...CCF's Growing Strength This party is the CCF (Cooperative Commonwealth Federation) and its history, program, tactics, and personalities will be described in two subsequent articles...

...There was an obvious and dangerous split along national lines on this question...

...King probably feels that he has successfully steered past a dangerous political reef...

...The Dominion is Hooded with American films and American magazines...

...Outside of Ontario, where a Conservative provincial government is in office, there is little sign of Conservative strength throughout the country...

...With over 760,000 men and women in uniform, Canada has raised an armed force only slightly smaller, in relation to population, than the United States, although there is no conscription for overseas service and the attitude of predominantly French-speaking Quebec toward the war is, with some exceptions, lukewarm...

...The war economies of the two countries are also quite similar, allowing for a few local and regional differences...

...It is clear from this list of expenditures that there is no great confidence in governmental circles in the ability of private enterprise, unaided, to meet the general demand for full employment of men and resources after the war...

...A law authorizing conscription for overseas service was passed, but was never put into effect...

...King, in the Federal election which will most probably take place in the coming Winter or Spring, cannot count on the comfortable nest-egg of 65 Quebec seats (in a House of Representatives of 245 members) which the Liberal Party formerly possessed...

...Why The Left Trend...

...The CCF is so strong in British Columbia that the two old parties have been obliged to form a coalition to keep it out of power...

...Wage and price controls have been clamped down and held down more sternly...

...100,000,000 for an industrial development bank which is to provide credit for small industries, $200,000,000 as an annual charge for children's allowances...

...A provincial election held in Quebec in August led to the defeat of the Liberal Government, headed by Adelard Godbout, and the return to power of Maurice Duplessis, head of the Union Nationale, which is an amalgam of former Conservatives, dissident Liberals, and French nationalists...

...There are a number of par-tie...

...Before it adjourned in August the Canadian Parliament passed legislation looking to expenditures of $750,-000,000 for war service gratuities, $300,000,000 for export credits, $275,000,000 for the financing of housing projects, $200,000,000 for supporting farm prices...

...It provides for monthly payments of five to eight dollars for children between the ages of five and 16...

...Mackenzie King's Status At the same time the popular support which gave the politically astute Liberal Prime Minister of Canada, Mackenzie King, an overwhelming majority in the national election of 1940, has been visibly ebbing in almost all parts of the country...

...Some of the Republican local gains in the United States may be attributed to discontent with war regimentation, which was easily identified with the general idea of government regulation...

...As a result there were serious riots in Quebec City and many French Canadians took tx the woods, where it was not healthy for recruiting officers to pursue them...

...But the many surface similarities between the United States and Canada cannot obscure the very important fact that the two countries, politically and economically, are headed in opposite directions...

...The Liberals may be the strongest single group in the next Parliament...

...Changing its name to Progressive-Conservative (popularly shortened to Pro-Con) was a face-lifting operation that seems to have carried little popular conviction...

...In the Spring of 1942 a little more than three-fifths of the Canadians voted "Yes" in a plebiscite on the question whether the Government should be released from its previous pledges not to apply conscription for overseas service...

...As a fusion with the Conservatives is not probable they may be compelled to seek an arrangement with the CCF, in order to be able to carry on the government...

...Alleged sacrifice of the autonomous rights of Quebec Province to the Federal Government has also been charged and intransigent French Canadians reckon bitterly how much could have been done for Canada with the sums which were voted under Mutual Aid for subsidies to Great Britain...

...So Mr...

...But in Canada discontent with war controls seems to have operated politically against Mackenzie King and in favor of the CCF...

...But the negative vote in the French-speaking counties was overwhelming...

...The Tory Premier of Ontario, George A. Drew, injected elements of racial and provincial friction into the situation when he declared that richer Ontario would have to pay disproportionately for the large French Canadian families of Quebec, adding some disparaging remarks on Quebec's attitude toward the war...

...More recently the midwestern prairie province of Saskatchewan went CCF by an overwhelming majority...

...America Right, Canada Left Canada's Mutual Aid, consisting of a free supply of munitions, goods, and services to Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and other United Nations, is similar in purpose and not very different in proportionate amount from American Lend-Lease...

...it is traditional economic ideas...

...French Canadians accuse him of applying conscription surreptitiously, of tolerating undue pressure on men who are called up for home service to volunteer for service overseas...

...With the war apparently approaching a victorious conclusion, Mr...

...The contrast in Canada is obvious and striking...

...The Conservative Party has been in the political doldrums for many years...

...In the United States the two-party system still holds good for the 1944 election...

...Occasional flurries of violence between men in uniform and French Canadians and the shooting by Federal police of a young French Canadian named Gue-nette fanned the flame of French Canadian dissatisfaction...

...The Conservatives were the largest group, the CCF a close second, the Liberals a had third in this Ontario election...

...Canada has taken the bitter medicine of high direct taxation with more docility than the United States...

...One gets the same ironical picture of an all-out enterprise in total destruction creating the full employment that was non-existent in time of peace...

...I asked a prominent Government financial official whether Canada would gain any advantage from its economic virtue and he expressed the opinion that high taxes and severe controls had held inflation at bay and given Canada some competitive advantage, as against the United States, in foreign trade after the war, since the Canadian price level would be lower...

...But they will almost certainly not possess a clear majority...

...On the other hand, he is more pinched as to his supply of sugar, liquor, and chocolate...

...King has laid himself open to attack from two sides...

...It is not only the old parties that are on trial...

...No large orinfluential group in American politics is committed to the idea of large scale nationalization of industry...

...There was a time when Liberals and Conservatives alternated in office very much like Republicans and Democrats in the United States...

...Your Canadian businessman rotates with the Rotarians and roars with the Lions...

...There are the same bottlenecks in service and distributive industries, the same inconveniences associated with rationing and controls, although serious hardship is not to be found on any large scale among civilians in either country...

...But in Parliament even the Conservatives voted for the bill...

...This next Canadian election will bear close watching...

...King has avoided these drastic measures...

...A considerable section of English Canadian opinion attacks him for not prosecuting the war vigorously enough, for not enforcing conscription for overseas service...

...One familiar answer was that Canada, which never had an equivalent for the United States New Deal, was making up for lost time...

...Personal income tax rates, while not precisely comparable (the Provinces have ceased to levy income taxes for the duration) seem to be about 30 per cent higher than is the case in this country...

...Moreover, the steady drain of Canadian migration to the United States may suggest that Canadians have not done as well under private enterprise as Americans and are more willing to give a new system a trial...

...The Canadian gets more gasoline than the American and...

...The gains of the CCF in provincial elections have certainly been a factor inducing the Liberal Government to enact a good deal of legislation providing for government spending for social needs on a scale that would have been considered unthinkable a few years ago...

...As the Canadian national income is approximately one-fifteenth of the American the following figures must be multiplied by 15 in order to see them in perspective...

...For the first time in the political experience of North America a party that advocates nationalization of banks and industries which are natural monopolies, along with far-reaching measures of social security, is a serious contender for governmental power...

...Observers who are not in the CCF camp consider, on the basis of provincial elections and Canadian Gallup polls, that a third of the seats in the next Canadian Parliament may well go to the CCF, as against the modest dozen which that party won in the election of 1940 and in subsequent special elections...

...A strong CCF representation at Ottawa, with possibilities of becoming an absolute majority at some future election, will put Canada very much in the political and economic news...

...Along with this maintenance of the two-party system goes a very general profession of faith in what is perhaps controversially called the free enterprise system...

...Al that time conscription was put into effect against the will of the French...

...The French Canadians of Quebec and other parts of Canada have been implacably opposed to conscription for overseas service, both in the last war and in the present conflict King handled this question more cautiously than his Conservative predecessor, Borden, in the last war...

...New Deal," and the general character of legislation in Congress...

...It is sometimes hard to know whether one is north or south of the almost invisible border...

...Finally, one must reckon with the patient agitation and organization spadework of the CCF, and with the ability of its leaders to put their appeal in grass-roots language that the average Canadian understands, and to avoid foreign doctrinaire "isms...

...and groups, national and state, outside the Republican and Democratic ranks...

...But, as sometimes happens with a middle-of-the-road course in time of war, Mr...

...This last measure may become an apple of discord...

...It is an interesting question why the trend in Canada seems to be toward the left, while the United States seems to be moving in the opposite direction, if one may judge from the dropping of Wallace, the discarding of-"Dr...

...But it is a safe prediction that an overwhelming majority of the Representatives and Senators who will be elected in November will bear one of the old party labels...

...Ontario, the most populous and richest of Canada's nine provinces, turned out a Liberal provincial government in the Summer of 1943...

...Mackenzie King's hold on Quebec has also been severely shaken, if not irretrievably lost...

...I put this question to a number of Canadians...

...This election gives prospect of being one of the most interesting in Canadian history...

...Exciting Election Ahead Probably apprehending a resumption of the riots and violence that were associated with this issue in 1917 and 1918, the Prime Minister did not use the power which he obtained as a result of the plebiscite...

...if he desires, can eat more meat, as meat rationing has been abolished...