The Daily News TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 1935. “NEW DEAL” IN CANADA.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 April 1935, Page 4

The Daily News

TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 1935. “NEW DEAL” IN CANADA.

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The report of the Canadian Federal Commission of Inquiry into trade and industry is likely to have many political repercussions. It affords proof that the somewhat dramatic utterance given by the Prime Minister, Mr. R. B. Bennett, as a New Year message to the nation, betokened a considerable change, in State policy and in Mr. Bennett’s economic views. He stated then that Canada was at the. parting of the ways. Individualism had brought her to conditions of great wealth for the few, a diminishing amount of comfort for the majority, and unemployment for nearly ten per cent, of the Dominion’s population. Mr. Bennett declared-that such conditions could not continue, and he proposed to *have inquiry made that would show the Government what steps should be taken to prevent the Canadian people from the anomaly of hardship in the midst'of overbounteous primary production. The appointment of a Royal Commission followed the Premier’s announcement, and its report has now been issued. Its chief industrial proposal is the establishment of a minimum wage and a universal 44-hour week. To New Zealanders there is nothing in either of those proposals to frighten Capital or to promise a new Utopia to Labour. Those industrial conditions are largely in operation in New Zealand, but they have not prevented similar difficulties •to those Canada is trying to overcome. Canadian commission, however, makes proposals for wide State control of the Dominion’s commercial life. It suggests a new authority of five members with “wide powers for supervision, regulation, arbitration and investigation,” and from references to redundancy in the flourmilling industry it appears that the supervision may be quite as authoritative as in the case of the “New Deal” in the United States. The commission was not unanimous, a minority report urging lowered tariffs and less rather than more “Government interference in business.” The political effect of the commission’s report will, of course, depend upon how many of its recommendations Mr. Ben r nett and . his Cabinet are prepared to adopt and take as the platform for the appeal to the electorate which must be made within a few months. The Conservative party won the last election on the cry of “Canada for Canadians first.” Mr. Bennett stood for high tariffs, little interference with “big business,” and the general application of the “survival of the fittest” doctrine in the industrial economy of the Dominion. Unfortunately, Canada found that no nation can be a seller only of commodities obtainable by her customers from other sources, and the “donothing” policy brought industrial affairs near to chaos, with over 1,000,000 unemployed. Byelections made it only too clear that the confidence of the electorate was being lost, and the Liberal leader appeared likely to win the next election, not because of an attractive policy, but because of the Government’s failure to prevent an economic crisis. Apparently Mr. Bennett’s New Year utterance is to alter all that. If the Royal Commission’s report is to become the foundation of the Government’s policy the Liberal leader must substitute for that policy one that is more likely to appeal. Mr. Bennett appears to contemplate throwing overboard financial and commercial interests froYu which his party has hitherto drawn much support. He sacrificed a Minister last year whose criticism of commercial methods had proved offensive to a powerful section of the Conservatives whose chief plea was for non-interference in business by the State. It may be that Mr. Bennett can convince industrialists, whether employers or wage-earners, that a new era has begun in which community regulation must succeed individual control of industrial enterprise, and that it may be wiser to accept its introduction from a Ministry known to be cautious rather than from one that will go much further in the direction of State regimentation. If this conviction gains ground,the Conservatives may win the forthcoming election. In any case Mr. Bennett seems, to have forced his political opponents into stating publicly their remedy for conditions they must face if returned to power. He has therefore won the first move in the electoral contest.