LIBERALS DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 116, 12 November 1935, Page 12

LIBERALS DAY

CANADIAN ELECTION

A SWEEPING VICTORY

CABINET WIPED OUT

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, October 23. For the third time in fourteen years, the Canadian electorate has entrusted its destinies to the Liberal Party, each time with Mr. Mackenzie King as its leader. The General Election resulted in the greatest ""landslide" since Confederation, and with the widest variety of parties ever known. The new Parliament will be constituted thus:— Liberal 173 Conservative 42 Social Credit 17 Labour 3 Independent 5 ' 245 The Conservative Government lost 95 seats; Liberals gained 85; Social Credit, entering the Federal arena for the first time, gained 17; and Labour, known as Commonwealth Co-operative Federation, or C.C.F., gained five seats. Twelve members of the Bennett Cabinet were defeated. Ten of the former Mackenzie King Cabinet were elected. The new party, led by Mr. Stevens, who resigned from Mr. Bennett's Cabinet, got one seat only, that of its leader, although it put 174 candidates in the field. There were 894 candidates, the greatest number on record; 342 lost their deposit of 200 dollars. GLANCE AT THE PROVINCES. The Maritime Provinces returned 25 Liberals and one Conservative, a Liberal gain of 19 seats. Quebec, for 36 years a stronghold of Liberalism, returned 60 Liberals and five Conservatives, restoring 16 of the 21 seats Mr. Bennett won from them five years ago. Thirty Conservatives lost their seats in Ontario. In the Prairie Provinces, the Liberal Party gained only eight seats from the Conservatives, who, however, lost heavily to the Social Credit Party, which captured 15 of Alberta's 17 seats, and two seats in Saskatchewan. British Columbia is the only province which made little change in its representation, returning five of each of the major parties, four Labour, one Independent, and Mr. Stevens. The most notable defeat in the election is that of Henri Bourassa, who entered the House in 1896. resigned 11 years later to enter the Quebec Legislature, where he remained for eighteen years, returning to the House of Commons ten years ago. His defeat removes a bitter critic of British Government policy. NEW PREMIER'S INTENTIONS. Liberalism is now in power in the Federal Parliament, and in eight of the nine provinces, in two of which there is no official Opposition. The way is therefore paved for the most homogeneous legislative period in the country's history. Mr. Mackenzie King says his first step will be to endeavour to end poverty in Canada, to reduce the tariff, to revise the Empire trade agreements, and to restore to the provinces rights he asserts Mr. Bennett usurped in minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and marketing legislation. "The election is a victory for democracy," says the new Prime Minister. "It constitutes • release from one-man government. It is a protest against dictatorship and endless, dangerous experiments. The people, under the iron heel of the Bennett Government, have been intimidated, through fear, the bogey of Communism, and of the undermining of our industrial standards by unrestricted Oriental and other foreign competition. There can no longer be any doubt as to what they think of the Ottawa Trade Agreements and of Mft Bennett's methods of their negotiation. The election is a verdict in favour of a reciprocal agreement with the United States, and the restoration of trade with Japan on a mutually beneficial basis. It is an overwhelming condemnation of the policies of economic nationalism, -economic isolation, and economic Imperialism."