HOW ABERHART WON POWER IN ALBERTA

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27407, 21 July 1954, Page 10

HOW ABERHART WON POWER IN ALBERTA

THE HOME OF SOCIAL CREDIT

[Specially written for “ The Press,” by HAROLD G. LONG, General Manager of tne “ Lethbridge Herald,” Lethbridge, Alberta]

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Alberta is a province (staje) in the Canadian Federation. It was established as a province with its own government in 1905, having been carved out of part of the North-west Territories of Canada when its population had'grown to just over 100,000. It is 750 miles north and south, with its southern border a part of the United States-Canada border. It covers 255,285 square miles, and passed the 1,000,000 mark in populatidn in the autumn of 1953. Canada became a federation of four provinces in 1867. Since then, six have been added. A great part of northern Canada is still known as the North-west Territories, reaching north from the northern boundaries of Alberta. Saskatchewan, and Manitoba to the Arctic, and from Yukon Twritory on the west to the Hudson Bay on the east. Being unorganised as to local government, it is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government at Ottawa.

Each province has its own provincial government, and it is responsible for its domestic affairs. Municipalities derive their governmental powers from charters granted by the provincial government. Over-all it is the national or federal government at Ottawa which is responsible for national defence, trade and commerce, including banking, insurance, and other financial matters, and all those matters which are not strictly the jurisdiction of the provinces. Provincial elections are held usually about every four years and cannot be postponed past the fifth year. The Legislature in Alberta covers some 56 seats, and from the majority party in the Legislature the government of the day is chosen.

Radio Evangelist In common with the rest of the world, Canada plunged into the worst depression in history in the late fall of 1929. At that time Alberta had a farmer government, something after the nature of the Country Party in Australia. It was what could be called a class government, with the United Farmers of Alberta a political party dominating the Legislature. In the midst of the depression in 1935, William Aberhart, a Calgary high school teacher, launched the Social Credit Party- No-one in Alberta had ever heard of social credit, which was a political ideology which had been dreamed up in the mind of a Major Douglas, of Scotland, who was an engineer and chartered accountant. The Douglas theory was that production of goods and the money to purchase them should be controlled and kept in balance. Money would be provided by the government against the resources of the country, which would, in some way, £e capitalised. With control of the money supply and control over the production of goods and of prices. Douglas held that there should be no such thing as want, and no such thing as surpluses. * Aberhart, besides being a school teacher, was an evangelical lay preacher. He had broken with two orthodox churches in Calgary, and had set up his own church, which he called the Prophetic Bible Institute. He was very strong on applying Bible prophecies to the problems of the day. Each Sunday afternoon he preached over the radio from his Prophetic Bible Institute, and, with people in a frame, of mind to listen to almost anything because of unemployment, very low prices for whe<t, cattle, and other Alberta products, he caught their fancy.

Then someone gave . him Major Douglas’s book on Social Credit to read. Here was the solution of all problems. There need be no more unemployment, no more surpluses of goods while people were in want to the extent of being unable to buy available goods, thus suffering a low standard of living. Mr Aberhart exhorted Albertans over the radio with missionary zeal about what social credit could do for them. He visioned Alberta’s more than 100,000,000 acres of arable land, its 47,000.000,000 tons of coal, its natural gas, timber, and other resources, and said these should be capitalised and

money issued against these asset resources as needed. Why, he said, it should be possible for Alberta to give every man and woman oyer the age of 16, 25 dollars a month so that they could buy the goods they could make, put everybody to work, and re-establish a high standard of living. That 25 dollars a month for nothing drew supporters like flies around a honey pail. The unthinking did not try to reason where such a scheme of printing press money would lead. They were not afraid of inflation. All they wanted was enough money to buy their wants, and Mr Aberhart said it was theirs for the taking. Political Landslide It was pointed out that Alberta being a province, had no jurisdiction over money and finance, nor over banking, and none over trade and commerce. Mr Aberhart said that, if elected, he would declare Alberta a sovereign state with all the controls necessary. The election was held in August, 1935, and the Farmer Government was swept out of power without holding a single seat in the House. Mr Aberhart thereupon became the Provincial Premier and undertook to put social credit, as he had explained it and promised, into force. He called two disciples of Major Douglas from the United Kingdom to help him do this At that time, Alberta had about 750,000 people, and the largest provincial government budget of the preceding Farmer Government had been 16,500,000 dollars. This money was raised largely by taxes on gasoline and oil used in motor traffic and in farm machinery, taxes on liquor (distribution of which was made through government liquor stores), licences on motor vehicles, some direct taxes on land, and from a small subsidy of about 2,000,000 dollars a year, based on population figures, from the Federal Government. That budget figure was a long way from the 25 dollars a month promised to about 400,000 eligible Albertans over 16 years of age. If it could have been paid this would have cost 120,000,000 dollars a year. The Legislature and the Government proceeded to z pass laws to give effect to the theories of social credit Some of these laws assumed sovereignty for Alberta in money and trade matters. They were either denied by the Governor-General-in-Council at Ottawa or by the Lieutenant-Government at Edmonton, on the advice of the Ottawa Cabinet Repudiation A Social Credit Act was passed to give the Alberta .Government the money-issuing powers it wanted. This was declared ultra vires of provincial powers. Then the Legislature passed an act giving a wide measure of control over the branches of the chartered banks in Alberta. That also was thrown out. Stung by the opposition of the press of Alberta to these efforts, an Alberta Press Cqntrol Act wai passed, which would have forced the newspapers in Alberta to print any statement issued by the government in answer to press criticisms. This ran foul of the freedom of the press in the Canadian Constitution. But one thing the Social Credit Government did do. It repudiated Alberta bonds to the extent of cutting by half the interest rate on some 157.000,000 dollars of outstanding bonds. No rate higher than 3 per cent, could be paid. A lot of the bonds were fours and fives; and the rate was cut to 2 and 2J per , cent, on these on the ground that the • province simply could not pay the higher rates—and that, anyway, interest on public debt was blood money. The result was that Alberta bonds dropped from 100 cents on the dollar to 50 or 60; and many small bondholders depending on the interest were badly hit. It was not until after the war broke out, and after the Federal and Provincial governments made what was called a tax agreement whereby the provinces would get a percentage tf personal income and corporation ’ collected by the Federal government that Alberta rewrote its provincial debt and became an honest woman again. A lot of the repudiated interest has never been paid. (To be Concluded.)