This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Feb. 11, 1941. The Rowell-Sirois Report in 1940 recommended significant changes in the financial relationship between the federal and provincial governments. Many recommendations were not adopted, and some others were introduced piecemeal.
Democracy, like all growing things, has its periods of decline when the sap runs back into the roots and the blossoms fall. This figure of speech has its limitations, of course, for the plants in their resting time are not in danger but merely gathering strength for a fresh blooming, and there is nothing to be done about it.
However, when democracy pauses and trembles on the brink, it is a time of real danger when something must be done and done with decision.
We have been shocked to find that three of Canada’s premiers, without consulting their people, have been able to set aside, for the time at least, one of the most progressive projects of this decade, the implementing of the Rowell-Sirois Commission.
We thought the war had united us. We thought it had kindled all our heroic instincts and made us ready to sacrifice for freedom. We thought we were all Canadians now. Certainly our armed forces were drawn from the whole of Canada, city and country, east and west, French and British and many others. Even the German population in western Ontario and parts of Nova Scotia is represented on the fields of battle; and that thought of a united Canada in the face of the Nazi menace has heartened us and given us great comfort to Britain in her hour of need.
But now like an ugly snake lifting its head in a garden of flowers, comes up the old poisonous spites and phobias and provincialism. Of course, we always knew we had thin spots in our national garment — the industrial east and the agricultural west have many points of divergence, but surely in this hour of trial and testing we should be big enough to make the necessary adjustments and reconciliations, and that is just what has been put before us by the five well-qualified men, five of our finest citizens, who have patiently, laboriously collected evidence all across the country and considered every angle of Canada’s problems.
Surely such well-considered recommendations cannot be brushed aside by three men, clothed in a little brief authority.
As a resident now of British Columbia, I am disturbed and disappointed that the premier of this province should be one of the disrupters. British Columbia is a rich province, with lumber and mines, fish and fruit, mountains and rivers, two transcontinental railways and the sea at her door. Because of the mild climate, tourists come in large numbers from other parts of Canada as well as from other countries.
No province of the nine has profited as much from the money spent by the Dominion in tourist advertising as this one. People come here when they are through working, bring the money they earned in other provinces, so it is no wonder that British Columbia can balance her budget.
The mild weather, which is one of her great attractions, is a gift from heaven, and so are the beauties of garden and mountain and sea. British Columbia, of all provinces, remembering these blessings, should be glad to co-operate in a plan that is calculated to help the other provinces, and I believe the people of British Columbia, if they had a chance to speak, would say so.
When the premier said in Ottawa at the conference called by the prime minister to discuss the Sirois report, that he did not propose to have his province “ham-strung and hog-tied,” he was using exactly the same reasoning advanced by the countries that withdrew from the League of Nations — they were afraid they might lose something. Are we never going to learn that no country can live for itself alone?
The Detroit Quill at New Year’s carried a story that shows that this spirit of selfishness and isolation, by some evil power seems to be growing on this continent. It says the States of the Union are beginning to set up barriers at the boundaries in little outbreaks of self-interest. The fruit growers of one section try to gain an advantage by not allowing their neighbour’s fruit to come over the state line.
Those of us who are interested in trying to get cheaper freight rates between the prairie provinces and British Columbia to the advantage of these localities will remember that we met opposition by the short-sighted policy of some of those we were trying to help. There were people here in British Columbia who feared the shipping in of Alberta’s freed-grain would lower their market.
Naturally, we are alarmed to find our unity broken by three men, who by three different routes, arrived at the same decision, which was that they would not even discuss the recommendations of the Sirois report. They knew that these recommendations could be altered, amended, enlarged or curtailed. They knew that discussion would be free and uncensored, but they had their minds made up — they would not even consider them. And that three men could destroy the most important conference since Confederation reveals a weak spot in our constitution which should at once be remedied. The fence needs mending.
Much has been written about the Sirois report, much that I would like to repeat here, to show its fairness and the favourable comment it has received from all classes of people, but I am convinced the root of this trouble goes deeper than arguments or statistics. Canada will never be a nation until we are able to lay the old ghosts and forget the old enmities and that must be a work of grace. I feel that the breaking up of this conference puts us in a very bad light which we do not deserve.
The people of Canada, as I know them, are willing to “take risks in freedom’s cause.” I lifted this phrase from a speech of Herbert Morrison’s as recorded in a recent Listener. This is the quotation:
“Political schemers, sailing under all sorts of official sounding names, who seek to destroy our will to take risks in freedom’s cause are, whether they know it or not, playing Hitler’s game as their friends played it in the disintegration of Germany and France.”
These are strong words — biting words, but not too strong. Any appeal to sectionalism, or selfishness of class-hatred or religious antipathies, fits well into Hitler’s rule for domination, “Confuse! Divide! Conquer!”
But we are not going to accept this. The Rowell-Sirois report is still before us. The road does not end here. It is merely a detour.
I have been reading a book, written by an American doctor, Rosalie Slaughter Morton, about the country we used to call “Persia,” which is now called Iran. In 1906, she says, a crisis arose in the country and it looked as if parliament would not be able to stand out against the influence of Russia, and then occurred a phenomenon that is without parallel.
The women in the harems rose up in protest, resentful that the men should be unable to preserve the freedom of the country. At the peak of the excitement out they marched, 300 of them, with pistols in the folds of their sleeves, straight to the Mejlis (parliament) and demanded of the president that he admit them. What the grave deputies thought of this strange visit is not record … But the Mejlis, faced by the militant women, did not sell their country’s birthright.
And that was the women of Persia, in 1906.
