'' announces the CCF victory, 1944 Despite being a federal Member of Parliament and not yet an
MLA, Douglas was elected the leader of the
Saskatchewan CCF in 1942 after successfully challenging the incumbent leader,
George Hara Williams, but did not resign from the House of Commons until 1 June 1944. He led the CCF to power in 15 June
1944 provincial election, winning 47 of 52 seats in the
Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan, and thus forming the first social democratic government in not only Canada but all of North America. Most of his government's pioneering innovations came about during its first term, including: • the creation of the publicly owned
Saskatchewan Power Corporation, successor to the Saskatchewan Electrical Power Commission, which began a long program of extending electrical service to isolated farms and villages; • the creation of Canada's first publicly owned automotive insurance service, the
Saskatchewan Government Insurance Office; • the creation of a large number of
crown corporations, many of which competed with existing private sector interests; • legislation that allowed the unionization of the public service; • a program to offer taxpayer-funded hospital care to all citizens—the first in North America. • passage of the
Saskatchewan Bill of Rights, legislation that broke new ground as it protected both fundamental freedoms and equality rights against abuse not only by government actors but also on the part of powerful private institutions and persons. (
The Saskatchewan Bill of Rights preceded the adoption of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations by 18 months.) Douglas and the Saskatchewan CCF went on to win five straight majority victories in all subsequent Saskatchewan provincial elections up to 1960. As premier, Douglas attended the
coronation of Elizabeth II in June 1953. Douglas was the first head of any government in Canada to call for a constitutional bill of rights. Douglas did this at a federal-provincial conference in Quebec City in January 1950. No one in attendance at the conference supported him in this. Ten years later, Premier
Jean Lesage of Quebec joined with Douglas at a First Ministers' Conference in July 1960 in advocating for a constitutional bill of rights. Thus, respectable momentum was given to the idea that finally came to fruition, on 17 April 1982, with the proclamation of the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Thanks to a booming postwar economy and the prudent financial management of provincial treasurer
Clarence Fines, the Douglas government slowly paid off the huge
public debt left by the previous
Liberal government, and created a budget
surplus for the Saskatchewan government. Coupled with a federal government promise in 1959 to give even more tax money for medical care, this paved the way for Douglas's most notable achievement, the introduction of
universal health care legislation in 1961.
Medicare Douglas's number one concern was the creation of
Medicare. He introduced medical insurance reform in his first term, and gradually moved the province towards universal medicare near the end of his last term. In the summer of 1962, Saskatchewan became the centre of a hard-fought struggle between the provincial government, the North American medical establishment, and the province's physicians, who brought things to a halt with the 1962
Saskatchewan doctors' strike. The doctors complained their best interests were not being met and feared a significant loss of income as well as government interference in medical care decisions even though Douglas had agreed that his government would pay the going rate for service that doctors charged. The medical establishment claimed that Douglas would import foreign doctors to make his plan work and used racist images to try to scare the public. Douglas is widely known as the father of Medicare, but the Saskatchewan universal program was finally launched by his successor,
Woodrow Lloyd, in 1962. Douglas stepped down as premier and as a member of the legislature the previous year, to lead the newly formed federal successor to the CCF, the
New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP). The success of the province's public health care program was not lost on the federal government. Another Saskatchewan politician, newly elected Prime Minister
John Diefenbaker, decreed in 1958 that any province seeking to introduce a hospital plan would receive 50 cents on the
dollar from the federal government. In 1962, Diefenbaker appointed
Justice Emmett Hall—also of Saskatchewan, a noted jurist and
Supreme Court Justice—to Chair a
Royal Commission on the national health system—the Royal Commission on Health Services. In 1964, Justice Hall recommended a nationwide adoption of Saskatchewan's model of public health insurance. In 1966, the Liberal minority government of
Lester B. Pearson created such a program, with the federal government paying 50% of the province's costs. The adoption of public health care across Canada ended up being the work of three men with diverse political ideals – Douglas of the CCF, Diefenbaker of the
Progressive Conservatives, and Pearson of the
Liberals. ==Federal NDP leader==