Union government in Canada

On 12 October 1917 it was announced in Ottawa that the Prime Minister, Robert Borden, after several months of effort, had formed a “Union” government, that is a coalition of his Conservatives with the part of the Liberals who supported conscription. The official statement said that the delays had been unavoidable, because the difficulties had been “incomparably greater” than in forming a single-party government. According to the Canadian Annual Review, the new ministers were to be sworn in the following day. On 13 October a proclamation was also issued of the first call-up under the Military Service Act. A British chronology of the war puts both events under 12 October: the formation of the Canadian war cabinet and the coming into force of compulsory military service.

The road to coalition

Borden had offered a joint government to the Liberal leader, Wilfrid Laurier, as early as May 1917, when he announced conscription. At the beginning of June Laurier refused. His party had its strongest base in Quebec, where compulsory service overseas was extremely unpopular, and he feared that agreeing would hand the province to the nationalists. In the summer the House of Commons passed the conscription bill with the votes of the Conservatives and many Liberals from the English-speaking provinces, and on 29 August the act came into force. The term of Parliament, extended because of the war, was coming to an end, however, and an election was unavoidable.

The government prepared for it with two acts. The Military Voters Act gave the vote to all soldiers of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, including those serving overseas. The Wartime Elections Act, passed on 20 September, took the vote away from citizens naturalised after 1902 who had been born in enemy countries, and granted it to the wives, mothers, widows, sisters and daughters of soldiers. For the first time, therefore, some Canadian women could vote in a federal election. Opponents regarded both acts as a blatant attempt to secure victory. On 6 October Parliament was dissolved.

The talks with the Liberals were also settled at that time. As early as 3 October the first two were sworn in: the MP Hugh Guthrie as Solicitor General and the Montreal industrialist Charles Ballantyne as Minister of Public Works. On 8 October three leading Liberals from the West talked with Borden: the Premier of Alberta, Arthur Sifton, James Calder of Saskatchewan, and Thomas Crerar, president of the farmers’ great grain cooperative in Winnipeg. In those days Laurier went to Toronto and managed to keep some of the waverers with him. According to the Canadian Annual Review, by 11 October 19 Liberal politicians from all over the country had gathered in Ottawa, and the government side in the negotiations was represented by the minister Arthur Meighen.

The new cabinet

The Liberals received important portfolios. The Ontario Liberal leader Newton Rowell became President of the Privy Council, Frank Carvell of New Brunswick Minister of Public Works, and Ballantyne moved to the Ministry of Marine and Fisheries and the Naval Service. General Sydney Mewburn became Minister of Militia and Defence, Sifton took Customs, Crerar Agriculture and Calder Immigration and Colonisation. The Conservatives kept the premiership, Finance (Thomas White), the Interior (Meighen) and Trade and Commerce (George Foster). The Conservative senator Gideon Robertson also joined the cabinet as a representative of labour. According to the most commonly given breakdown, the government consisted of twelve Conservatives, nine Liberals and independents, and one labour representative.

There was not a single Liberal from French Canada in the new government. Borden talked with three French-Canadian Liberals, but none of them joined the cabinet. Quebec was represented only by two Conservatives, Pierre-Édouard Blondin and Albert Sévigny. Most Liberals, including William Lyon Mackenzie King, stayed with Laurier. The Conservative press praised the Prime Minister’s patience, and the Toronto News even compared him to Abraham Lincoln. The Liberal Edmonton Bulletin called the Liberals’ move into the government a betrayal of principles held for a lifetime.

The first call-up

The proclamation of 13 October called up the first of the six classes provided for in the act: men aged from 20 to 34 who on 6 July 1917 had been bachelors or childless widowers. By 10 November they were to report for service or apply for exemption. The applications were to be heard by more than 1,250 local tribunals, set up in September. Canada needed reinforcements for the Canadian Corps, which in August had again suffered heavy losses in the fighting for Hill 70, and there were still too few volunteers.

On 18 October Borden announced the government’s programme. In first place he put the vigorous prosecution of the war, the maintenance of Canada’s war effort by providing reinforcements, and the immediate enforcement of the conscription act. He also promised civil service reform and votes for women. On 22 October the membership of the cabinet’s war committee was announced, chaired by Borden with Rowell as his deputy. The first results of conscription were disappointing: by 10 November 21,568 men had reported for service, and 310,376, or 57 per cent, had applied for exemption. The election of 17 December 1917 gave the Unionists 153 seats out of 235. Laurier’s Liberals won 82, 62 of them in Quebec. The dispute over conscription divided Canada along linguistic lines for years.