PREMIERS' REVOLT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22935, 13 January 1938, Page 17

PREMIERS' REVOLT

ONTAKIO AND QUEBEC RECENT BITTER OUTBURST BEWILDERMENT CAUSED [from ottr own correspondent] VANCOUVER, Dec. 22 The senior Provinces of Canada — Ontario and Quebec —through their militant Premiers, Messrs. Duplessis and Hepburn, have announced that they will no longer be "run" by the Dominion for the benefit of the junior Provinces of Western Canada, The proclamation defying the Federal Government was made jointly by the two leaders at a banquet, which concluded a conference called to challenge the right of the Dominion to control the export of electric power to the United States from Niagara and other resources. The outburst, heightened by bitter personal attacks on the Prime Minister, Mr. Mackenzie King, was further inflamed by ex parte deductions, gratuitously conceived by the two Premiers from the opening proceedings of the Royal Commission investigating the relations between the Dominion and the Provinces, with a view to revising the British North America Act, the Constitution of Canada, in line with present-day conditions. Strange Bedfellows The dispute brings together strange bedfellows. Mr. Hepburn is a traditional Liberal, who supported Mr. Mackenzie King while a member of the House of Commons and who, aided by the latter, captured the Ontario Provincial Government from the Conservatives, who were in power for a generation. Mr. Duplessis is a traditional Conservative, who captured Quebec with the aid of the dissident Liberal faction, which engineered the downfall of Mr. -Taschereau, whose regime lasted for 34 years. Water power, chief of the natural resources of the senior Provinces, has been a subject of bitter controversy for years. Mr. Hepburn's repudiation of contracts valued at £60,000,000, was nullified by the Supreme Court. Mr. Duplessis agrees with his Ontario colleague's contention that the Dominion's authority to control the export of power could be successfully challenged, except as a war emergency. Commission Embarrassed

A "Little Entente" has been conceived between them to achieve this end. When the smoke of battle has blown away, the status quo will not have been disturbed. The Dominion is the supreme authority on power and will not delegate it to an individual Province.

It is greatly to be regretted that the leaders of two Provinces containing half the population of the Dominion should have embarrassed the Royal Commission at the outset of its lengthy deliberations, in which only two of tho nine Provinces have yet been heard.

It, is almost an article of faith in the West and the Maritime Provinces that the two central Provinces, by Virtue of their geographical position, their immense primary resources and the vast manufacturing wealth of Ontario, have been able, in the past, to formulate and control the fiscal and economic policy of the Dominion. In the circumstances, the minority Provinces are bewildered at the unseemly breach of peace and goodwill by their elders.