ELECTIONS IN CANADA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 8 June 1945, Page 4

ELECTIONS IN CANADA

IN the Ontario provincial election a farmer-labour party which, in 1943, had a meteoric rise from no parliamentary representation to 34 seats out of 90 in the Legislature, has met with a spectacular collapse. It now has only six seats and will give way as the official Opposition to the Liberals, whose representation has been reduced from 14 to 10. The leaders of both these parties succumbed at- the polls. On the other hand LieutenantColonel Drew’s Progressive Conservative Party, which has been a minority government for nearly two years, is sure of 66 seats as against 39 held in the last Legislature and will now be an administration in its own right. The outcome of the election was a surprise. Two interpretations placed on the result are, first, that public opinion in the Canadian province of Ontario has swung away from socialistic theories ; and secondly, that the people there prefer the two-party system with a Government which should not have to lean on the support of other parties for its existence. In the past Canadian provincial elections have often been straws in the wind giving some indication of the outcome of the Federal contest, which takes place on Monday. The state of parties in the Federal Parliament is very much diffierent from what it was in Ontario’s Legislature, Mr Mackenzie King’s Liberals holding well over 170 of the 245 seats. The Progressive Conservatives have 3,9 and the Socialists and Social Credit Party about 10 each. So far as it has reached this country the prevailing feeling is that Mr King will win again but that any change may be in the direction of whittling down his big majority, even to the extent of returning a Parliament containing a medley of parties, none of which might be able to form a strong and stable administration. That was the danger against which Ontario guarded.