CANADIAN LEADERSHIP

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23221, 19 June 1937, Page 13

CANADIAN LEADERSHIP

PROVINCIAL PREMIERS RIFT WITH PRIME MINISTER VANCOUVER, June 11. While Canada’s Prime Minister, Mr Mackenzie King, is in London at the Imperial Conference, his hold on the leadership is very much disturbed by the insurrection of two leading Liberal provincial Premiers of the Dominion. In a calculated radio announcement, Mr M. Hepburn, Premier of Ontario, said: “I am no longer supporting Mr Mackenzie King or his Government and I want all the world to know.” Then he launched into praise for Mr Maurice Duplessis, Quebec’s young Nationalist Premier, in his recent open defiance of the Prime Minister.

It is admitted that by joining forces these two politicians may cause severe embarrassment to the Federal authorities. Their position is that Quebec and Ontario, populous and wealthy, have been contributing 75 per cent, of the revenue of all Canada, while the Central Government, for reasons more political than economic, has been spending huge sums trying to retrieve the starving populations of Sasketchewan and Alberta from crop losses during the lean wheat years. The immediate cause of Mr Hepburn's upheaval is the failure of Mr Mackenzie King to give him support in his endeavour to expel the Lewis Labour forces when they recently invaded the Canadian motor car plants. Just before Mr Mackenzie King left for London, Mr Duplessis engaged him in a violent altercation. The Federal Government was making considerable public works relief grants in Quebec, and claimed the right to supervise the Provincial Government’s expenditure of these funds. Mr Duplessis hotly repudiated this right, and some Quebec Nationalist leaders reached the point where they were discussing the secession of Quebec from the rest of Canada.