TRIP TO AUSTRALIA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 17, 21 January 1939, Page 14

TRIP TO AUSTRALIA

PREMIER OF ONTARIO

FORCE IN CANADIAN AFFAIRS

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

VANCOUVER, January 4,

The stormy petrel of Canadian politics, the Hon. Mitchell Hepburn, Premier of Ontario, is going to Australia, to study the public finance system of the Commonwealth. For the past three years he has been at the head of the Ontario Liberal Government; for eight years previously he was a member of the House of Commons at Ottawa. He is 42 years old, and a successful farmer.

Ontario had been in ,the Conversative fold for thirty years when Mr. Hepburn resigned from the Dominion Parliament and swept the Tories from power in Ontario in 1935. He immediately set to work to undo much of what his predecessors had achieved. He repudiated contracts, valued at £60,000, which they had let for power. Power is a big issue in Ontario, and has led to an open break between Mr. Hepburn and the Canadian Prime Minister, Mr. Mackenzie King, because the latter will, not permit Ontario to sell power to the United States, and because Mr. Mackenzie King will not do Mr. Hepburn's bidding in regard to the Congress of Industrial Organisations headed by John L. Lewis. When Mr. Hepburn fought the C.1.0. in the; automobile strike, last year, Mr. Mackenzie King would not allow, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to be ] used in quelling the disturbances that resulted. REVOLT FROM HIS LEADER Three years .ago Mr. Hepburn stumped the country, from Atlantic to Pacific, in support of the Federal Prime Minister. Now he is associated with the Hon. Maurice Duplessis, Head of the Quebec Union Nationale Government, in open revolt against his former leader. He asserts that the "made in Washington" policy of the Dominion Government, "designed to force Ontario into supporting the St. Lawrence Waterways development scheme, was responsible for Ontario's inability to export power to the United States." He asserts also that an agreement existed between Ottawa and Washington that Ontario would not be allowed to divert more water at Niagara Falls until the province became a party to the Waterways scheme.

Mr. Mackenzie King, replying to the charge, said that any dispute over the export of power would be settled, "in accordance with British custom," on the floor of Parliament. M. Duplessis had also asked for the right ,to export power. The Prime Minister said that only the Dominion Parliament could give such authority. "If Ottawa wants a fight, it can have it," retorted M. Duplessis, to which Mr. Mackenzie King rejoined, "We prefer not to follow the practice of dictatorships."

Mr/ Hepburn dismissed two of his Ministers because they disagreed with his policy in regard to industrial disputes. They believed that the Government should not intervene,.-in advance in a dispute between employer and employee, and that working men had a right to form a union and make their own choice of affiliations.

After a series of heart attacks, complicated by bronchitis, the Ontario Premier announced, at the end of 1935, that he would retire. Recovering, he remained in public life. His health threatens to bring about his retirement again. "My doctor sent me- home on Thursday because my blood pressure is ( 230," he observed, recently. It is- believed that the voyage to Australia will benefit him greatly, and renew his vigour for the continuance of his most recent dispute with Mr. Mackenzie King, arising out of a statement by leading Conservatives that Mr. Hepburn and M. Duplessis were conspiring to wreck the Liberal Party and turn the Prime Minister out of politics.