ALBERTA’S TROUBLES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 157, 4 June 1937, Page 6

ALBERTA’S TROUBLES.

Alberta’s Social Credit Government has not prospered as its strongest supporters hoped it would. When Mr Aberhart formed his Administration, the first of its type the world had known, Alberta was heavily in debt, unemployment was rife, and the farmers upon whom the brunt of the depression had fallen were desperate. The Social Credit aim was to end the paradox of “poverty amid plenty,” and nowhere was the paradox more obvious than in Canada’s rich wheat-grow-ing belt. Orthodox methods had failed to find a solution, but Mr Aberhart has also failed either by orthodox or unorthodox methods to restore prosperity to Alberta. Crisis after crisis has had to be met by his Administration, and his promised issue of five pounds a month to every adult citizen willing to work has been continually postponed and modified; a while ago the promise was reduced to one pound or two pounds a month of Albertan credit. More recently the eighteen months which Mr Aberhart originally said would be necessary before Social Credit could come into force having elapsed, the Premier was compelled to withdraw his Budget by his exasperated followers, and he was granted three months’ interim supply on undertaking to set up a Commission, over which Major Douglas would be invited to preside, to work out a “complete” Social Credit plan within two months. When Mr Aberhart put forward his Social Credit scheme to the electors he did not face the fact that actually it was out of his reach, as the control of currency, and credit is a Federal and not a provincial authority. The Federal Government has been willing to help Alberta, but on conditions Mr Aberhart has refused to accept. Last year he defaulted on the payments due to bondholders, and in September embarked on some curious experiments, of doubtful legality, in Alberta credit. A few days ago he asked the Dominion Government to supply funds to meet a loan due this month, but was refused. The Bank of Canada acted similarly, and Alberta’s Government has again defaulted, the third major one in three months. On various peals have been made to the Federal Government to interfere, but the Federal Ministers, a commentator observes, have been .reluctant to take any action, evidently in the belief that the more rope they give Mr Aberhart the sooner his followers will be disillusioned. That time must be quickly approaching.