Voting on Conscription
The nature of Canada’s 1942 plebiscite has been examined by scholars for its significance in Canadian public affairs and cited by referendum critics for “causing deep and emotional divisions” in Canadian society. Earlier chapters examined certain aspects of 1942’s ballot question in terms of theory and practice of issue-voting in Canada. To round that out, this brief chapter focuses on the political imperatives of people voting in wartime, because events can only be understood in context.
In a sense, Canada’s entry into the Second World War bore little resemblance to our commitment of forces in the First World War. In 1914 Britain’s colonies, intrinsic parts of the empire, were dragged into war by the Mother Country, but by 1939 the country was more independent. Prime Minister Borden had insisted Canada be a signatory in our own right to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, not be subsumed as a colony under Britain’s signature. In 1931 the Statute of Westminster had granted self-governing colonies such as the Dominion of Canada full legal freedom. And realism had vaporized the romantic war lust of British-minded Canadians that had propelled all-out support for the empire’s earlier wars.
In another sense, however, entering the Second World War was the same — in the way that most generals prepare for the next war by studying the prior one. Prime Minister Mackenzie King, acutely mindful of the politically disastrous impact on Canada of the 1914–18 war, thought only about avoiding its perils. He even deluded himself when trying to discern a path forward. King had been impressed in 1938 by Adolf Hitler, attired not in military uniform but business suit when meeting Canada’s PM, as “a good leader.” The prime minister’s initial assessment of risk convinced him a limited war commitment was possible. And who, really, wouldn’t want that? The searing scars of conscripting men for overseas “battles” that were nothing more than slaughtering fields galvanized many Canadians to vow “never again” would we re-enact that murderous fiasco.
The prime minister deliberately waited a week after Britain’s entry into the war, to symbolize that independence within the empire meant something. Yet, on September 10, 1939, Parliament in Ottawa voted for war on Germany.
Some said it was essential to get a mandate from the people before taking the country into war. Others, remembering how 1917’s bitter wartime election had been fought over conscription, opposed that idea, arguing it would be divisive. Prime Minister King told Opposition Leader John Bracken there would be no election for the war’s duration in order to sideline partisanship and unite all Canadians against a common external threat. Relying on that, the dutiful Conservatives closed party headquarters, ceased fundraising, and stopped organizing to concentrate exclusively on supporting King’s war efforts.
After six months pondering how to achieve an optimal balancing point, the PM called a general election for March 26, 1940. Quebec’s Liberals had just ousted the Union Nationale provincial government with an ironclad campaign commitment to oppose conscription, and King saw the opportunity to do the same — codifying his policy on conscription as an electoral mandate while consolidating his grip on power to steer Canada with his plan to wage a “limited liability” war. Throughout the campaign, King removed the fractious conscription issue by solemnly promising Canadian voters there would be “no conscription for overseas military service.”
Most voters remained haunted by the nightmarish agony of the war in Europe two decades earlier, with its relentless sacrificing of human lives and consumption of everything else Canada could supply. King’s intent was to co-operate with Britain and its allies, but have military involvement subordinated to economic assistance, agricultural products, and industrial support. French-speaking Canadians, persuaded to support going to war on the prime minister’s pledge of “participation without conscription,” voted heavily to re-elect King’s Liberals across Quebec.
The government implemented its “limited-liability” effort by placing Canada’s war footing on industrial manufacturing, food production, the Commonwealth air training program, and merchant marine transport to resupply Britain with soldiers, food, medicine, and war matériel. But this wasn’t the 1914 war when entire armies got bogged down in trenches for years and hundreds of thousands died to gain a hill or a kilometre of enemy territory. The aggressive lethal military force of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan was leading to the rapid and extensive territorial expansion of enemies on whom Canada had declared war. The prime minister received reports that more soldiers would be needed, that Canada itself was vulnerable to occupation. He became obsessed contemplating how to change his solemn promise on conscription because it was the cornerstone of his strong March 26, 1940, electoral mandate from Canadians. The prime minister and his candidates had been explicit and unconditional in their repeated commitment that a Liberal government wouldn’t force men into military service for overseas battle.
By late 1941, the war’s outcome was in grave doubt. If the Allies hoped to turn the tide, more sacrifice and more soldiers were needed. But after the first wave of young men and women keen to enlist had signed up in the war’s early months, recruitment for overseas service had slowed to a trickle.
On May 7, 1941, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies spoke in our House of Commons. Australia’s army was engaged on five continents, and he was touring its locations when he stopped over in Ottawa. “It is not for me to say to honourable members of this House what your duty is…. There has never yet been a parliament in a free British county which did not do its duty.” He put in personal terms how he was “so utterly convinced that I must put into this task everything I have, that I will fail in no effort, that I will never spare myself in whatever may be necessary to achieve victory.” He added, “Nothing else matters except that when this war is over we should live in a free world.”
King’s government risked a defenceless Canada, unable to maintain the ranks once heavy fighting produced its inevitable casualties.
The country was operating under the National Resources Mobilization Act of 1940, enacted shortly after Germany’s swift conquest of France in June 1940. Section 3 empowered the government to impose compulsory duty for home defence only, explicitly not “to serve in the military outside of Canada and the territorial waters thereof.” Throughout the autumn of 1941, as King’s cabinet discussed full conscription, Quebec cabinet ministers constantly shored up King’s anti-conscription predisposition. By November 14, King suggested a plebiscite on conscription might help extricate the Liberals from part of their dilemma.
On December 30, 1941, Winston Churchill, Britain’s defiant wartime prime minister, delivered a galvanizing speech in our House of Commons, the first live broadcast from Parliament, heard by Canadians on CBC Radio and others around the globe through the BBC’s world service. He described Canada’s contribution to the war effort “in troops, in ships, in aircraft, in food, and in finance” as “magnificent.” He sketched the year ahead, advising “the Canadian Army may be engaged in one of the most frightful battles the world has ever seen.” He stirred deep emotion: “I think it extremely unlikely this war will end without the Canadian Army coming to close quarters with the Germans as their fathers did at Ypres, on the Somme, or on the Vimy Ridge.” The packed House and public galleries felt the dire urgency in Churchill’s public message, as did listeners across Canada. In private, Churchill impressed upon Prime Minister King the even graver threat that awaited.
The Conservative Opposition, devastated in 1940’s surprise election, which by design had found the party utterly unprepared, had changed leaders, replacing a dispirited Robert Manion with Arthur Meighen, former prime minister and now in the Senate, who vowed to implement conscription “over the whole field of war.”
In January 1942, Australia reversed its policy and implemented full conscription. Taking his cue from that, King decided that a similar course of action was necessary for Canada. However, always the careful politician, he decided that he needed to protect his government from the potential risks associated with such an action. On January 22, 1942, the speech from the throne stunned listeners. The Liberal government would “seek from the people, by means of a plebiscite, release from any obligation arising out of any past commitments restricting the methods of raising men for military service.”
King had divined his path forward. Because Canada had no general enabling statute for direct voting, the Dominion Plebiscite Act, 1942, was introduced in the House of Commons. The bill, envisaging a ballot question on releasing the government from its election promise, implied, but didn’t stipulate, that conscription would follow an affirmative vote. During February 1942’s parliamentary exchanges, the House of Commons Debates would once again record evaluations of the risks and rewards of forcing choice by ballot.
Leading the Official Opposition in the Commons, R.B. Hanson admonished King, saying, “We cannot win this war by plebiscite. Germany does not carry on war by plebiscite. Let this government rise to the level of its duty! Let it not be afraid to lead! A plebiscite is not a policy! It is the negation, the avoidance, of a policy. It is a declaration of impotence!” Channelling the ardent voices of Canadian conscriptionists, Hanson next raised the spectre of future possibilities:
What will the government do if the plebiscite is indecisive; if the majority is too small? Will it say that, expediency having failed, we shall try another course? And what if the plebiscite is rejected by the people of Canada? Will the government resign? Or will the Prime Minister endeavour to carry on, cabin’d, cribb’d, confined, by a self-imposed vow which renders it impossible to carry out his pledge to the people of Canada that he will meet total war with total effort?
King, responding that his government needed freedom from past commitments, as the shift from limited to total war was under way, said, “Three methods exist by which this release could be obtained.” The first would be a general election. “In a general election at this time the issue of conscription for overseas service would become one of the issues and, in existing circumstances,” he told the Commons, “would almost certainly be the main issue.” The second would be “a referendum solely with reference to the question of conscription for overseas service.” The third would be a plebiscite, “not to obtain a decision with respect to conscription, but solely with the object of releasing the Government” from its existing obligation.
The PM suggested pursuing whichever method “would occasion the least interference with the war effort of the country.” Ruling out a general election, King stated his belief that the Liberal government still possessed “the confidence of the country” and that it wouldn’t be “in the interest of the people themselves, in the existing crisis, to leave the country without a Parliament for the time it would take to hold a general election.” Differentiating a general election from direct voting on a single question, he rightly noted how in an election “other issues enter in, so it would not be possible to say that the verdict of the people, whatever it might be, had related solely to the issue of the application of conscription for overseas service.”
He also discounted a binding referendum, because “far from being left in the hands of the government, it would be a specific request to the people to make a decision with respect to conscription.” Specific decisions should be debated in Parliament, so on this issue, the government should not be bound by a referendum but rather “should be given a free hand to take, subject to its responsibility to Parliament, any course of action which it may believe to be necessary at a time of war.”
King reiterated that he didn’t believe it would be “fair to the people to ask them to make military decisions.” In consulting the people by plebiscite, “the Government is not throwing on the people the responsibility of making a military decision. It is asking the people to give the Government full power and full responsibility to take whatever military decisions the Government, in the light of all its knowledge, believes to be necessary. In consulting the people, therefore, we are not shirking responsibility, we are asking for full responsibility.”
The Commons debated all over again, from January 23 to March 4, the fundamentals of a people’s mandate. Some MPs worked up fresh speeches; others cribbed ideas and phrases from Hansard reports of 1898’s debate on the prohibition plebiscite. The only new dimension was the reservation that elected representatives had about the advisability of plebiscite voting during war. They had all just come through a wartime general election.
Speaking again on January 26, the prime minister himself recalled that 1940 election to make his new case. The question of conscription for overseas service had been submitted to the people of Canada in that general election, which he also noted had been held in wartime. During the campaign, leaders of all parties made their statements to the electorate. At its end the people of Canada decided against conscription for overseas service. “So far as I am concerned,” stated King, “without any consultation of the people on that subject, I do not intend to take the responsibility of supporting any policy of conscription for service overseas.”
Explaining how conscription had been viewed in 1940 by people remembering vividly the conscription crisis of 1917, King then reviewed the changed circumstances of the Second World War that made reconsidering the conscription policy necessary, but only in consultation with the people. Looking forward, if the government had to be free to act in accordance with its judgment and subject only to its responsibility to Parliament, “it is clear that means must be found of releasing the Government from any obligation arising out of any past commitments restricting the methods of raising men for military service,” he told MPs.
In Quebec response to holding a plebiscite on military service was outrage. Critics charged that 1940’s election promise against conscription had been given specifically to Quebecers.1 This interpretation made complete sense because the pledge had been King’s effort to avoid a recurrence of the toxic conscription crisis of 1917, which centred on French-speaking Canadians, and that caused him to make his 1940 “no-conscription” election promise. But with that election over and the Liberals secure in power, Quebecers protested, all Canadians would be asked to free the government from its pledge to French Canadians.2 It wasn’t a plebiscite that created high emotion. It was, first, the broken election promise, and second, the fact that a majority electorate favouring conscription would now join the voting to sanctify King’s betrayal.
The intense feelings of betrayal in Quebec led to the formation of La Ligue pour la défense du Canada (LPDC), the war’s most politically effective civic group. The LPDC, an umbrella organization bringing together labour union representatives, farmers, commercial travellers, and members of local service clubs, campaigned for a Non vote in the plebiscite. The organization proclaimed that its French-Canadian supporters would defend Canada from invasion but resist forced recruitment for overseas military service. André Laurendeau, journalist and organizer, who later was editor of Le Devoir, a Bloc populaire Canadien member of Quebec’s legislature, and co-chair of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, led the potent organization, which had among its younger members future prime minister Pierre Trudeau and future Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau.
The LPDC had little money. Except for Le Devoir, virtually all French-language newspapers were supporting the government. The CBC refused Non representatives access to the public airwaves, while Yes supporters benefited from extensive national network time. In surmounting these hurdles, the LPDC relied upon superb campaign organization. Fuelled by passionate resolve, its supporters distributed the anti-conscription message to every potential voter. The message hit home to a nervous, frightened, and profoundly offended French Canada.
By contrast, the Yes campaign, for all its advantages, was a bust — especially where it mattered most — in Quebec. The government information office was drumming up support for the war effort, even though the plebiscite was meant by King not to heighten bellicose resolve but to determine whether he might revoke his promise and still retain Quebecers’ favour. No public funds were allocated to reach voters, so “patriotic” distilleries and breweries funded advertising for the Yes campaign.3 Across Canada speeches by politicians of all parties filled the airwaves and literature poured forth, but in Quebec few were willing to speak out against the clear will of the people.
Voting took place on April 27, 1942. Canadians were asked, Are you in favour of releasing the government from any obligation arising out of any past commitments restricting the methods of raising men for military service? The results showed that 2.95 million Canadians would release the government from its no-conscription pledge, and that 1.65 million refused to do so. Voters in eight of the nine provinces reversed the government’s mandate. Ontario’s 82.3 percent Yes vote was just slightly below the level garnered in Prince Edward Island. The lowest Yes votes were Alberta’s 70.4 percent, and New Brunswick’s 69.1. Other provinces, except for one, placed in between.
The one was Quebec, where 78.9 percent of electors refused to release the Liberals from their election-winning commitment. Every constituency with a francophone majority registered a strong Non verdict. This anti-conscription sentiment and resentment of the federal Liberals, however, wasn’t only confined to Quebec; it also found expression in farming and non-British sections of Manitoba, Ontario, and New Brunswick. Vegreville riding in Alberta and Rosthern constituency in Saskatchewan, both with large Ukrainian and German populations, also voted No.
It had been a foregone conclusion that Canada as a whole would release King from his promise of 1940, but it wasn’t Canada as a whole that had sought the promise in the first place. “It had been exacted specifically by and made specifically to Quebec,” notes historian Ralph Allen. “It was King’s earnest hope that Quebec would release him from it, too, or at least give him enough votes to remove part of the sting of race and sectionalism from the country’s thorniest issue.”4
Turning to the plebiscite so voters themselves could revisit their electoral mandate helped King reduce the Liberals’ dilemma, but at the price of Minister of Transport P.J.A. Cardin’s resignation, and ongoing threats of other cabinet ministers from Quebec departing as well.
On May 8, 1942, the prime minister told the Commons he would introduce legislation repealing Section 3 of the Mobilization Act and described his government’s policy as “Not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary.” On July 7, the House voted second reading and the bill carried by 158 to 54.
Although, as noted, critics of direct democracy claim 1942’s vote was “divisive,” implying that the process created a division between English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians, a clear-eyed interpretation is that, first, the plebiscite reflected long-existing divisions in Canada, and second, the gulf measured by Yes and No votes wasn’t simplistically between Canada’s two most domination linguistic communities but rather wove together a complex range of beliefs, values, and memories across Canada, including who was prepared, or not, to excuse a government for reversing the campaign pledge that led to its election.
Ironically, one could better argue that the plebiscite actually promoted national unity because the voting results helped King keep the country together through the military manpower crisis. The ballot counts unequivocally demonstrated to everybody how strongly Canadian views differed. There was no point, as King said, “winning the war and losing the country.”5 Despite antipathy toward the PM for his mincing ways — and the anti-French hostility in a substantial Anglo quarter summed up by its aggressive slogan “Make the frogs fight!” — grudging political acceptance accompanied King’s conduct of the war, especially when his idea of “limited” engagement was transformed by conditions beyond the control of Canadians, and as it became clear the Second World War was utterly different from the First.
Directly because of the plebiscite results, the King government managed to successfully delay introducing conscription for overseas service another twenty-six months. Meanwhile, both the people and the government prosecuted the general war effort with increasing success. Canada transformed itself into a significant world player, with naval power, air force strength, wide-scale manufacturing of munitions and weaponry, ever-increasing supplies of food and clothing and medicines for those closer to battle overseas, and a closer partnership of our scientists and engineers with those of Britain and the United States to invent the atomic bomb.
In 1944, when conscription for overseas action finally took effect more than two years after the plebiscite, Canadians earlier conscripted for Home Defence were transported to Europe as well-trained soldiers.
The plebiscite, by offering an outlet for intense feelings of desperation over national survival and of bitterness about electoral betrayal, averted an even uglier conscription eruption, like the searing one of 1917, by helping King buy time to diffuse the crisis. In the bargain, the PM clarified for everyone the constructive role of direct voting, the supreme importance of the people’s mandate, and the relationship between Canadians and parliamentarians. Historian Ralph Allen calls King’s 1942 national ballot question “perhaps the most ingenious of all his compromises.”6