For the first time in his political career, King led an undisputed Liberal majority government. Upon his return to office in October 1935, he demonstrated a commitment (like his American counterpart Roosevelt) to the underprivileged, speaking of a new era where "poverty and adversity, want and misery are the enemies which liberalism will seek to banish from the land". Once again, King appointed himself as
secretary of state for external affairs; he held this post until 1946.
Social programs King's government introduced the National Employment Commission in 1936. As for the unemployed, King was hostile to federal relief. However, the first compulsory national
unemployment insurance program was instituted in August 1940 under the King government after a constitutional amendment was agreed to by all of the Canadian provinces, to concede to the federal government legislative power over unemployment insurance. New Brunswick, Alberta and Quebec had held out against the federal government's desire to amend the constitution but ultimately acceded to its request, Alberta being the last to do so. The
British North America Act Section 91 was amended by adding in a heading designated Number 2A simply in the words "Unemployment Insurance". As far back as February 1933, the Liberals had committed themselves to introducing unemployment insurance; with a declaration by Mackenzie King that was endorsed by all members of the parliamentary party and the National Liberal Federation in which he called for such a system to be put in place. Over the next thirteen years, a wide range of reforms were realized during King's last period in office as prime minister. In 1937, the age for blind persons to qualify for old-age pensions was reduced to 40 in 1937, and later to 21 in 1947. In 1939, compulsory contributions for pensions for low-income widows and orphans were introduced (although these only covered the regularly employed) while depressed farmers were subsidized from that same year onwards. In 1944, family allowances were introduced. King had various arguments in favour of family allowances, one of which, as noted by one study, was that family allowances "would mean better food, clothing and medical and dental care for children in low-income families." These were approved after divisions in cabinet. From 1948 the federal government subsidized medical services in the provinces; a policy which led to developments in services such as dental care.
Spending management The provincial governments faced declining revenues and higher welfare costs. They needed federal grants and loans to reduce their deficits. In a December 1935 conference with the premiers, King announced that the federal grants would be increased until the spring of 1936. At this stage, King's main goal was to have a federal system in which each level of government would pay for its programs out of its own tax sources. The various provinces were assisted by the
Federal Unemployment and Agricultural Assistance Act of 1938 and the
Youth Training Act of 1939 to create training programs for young persons, while an amendment to the
Criminal Code in May 1939 provided against refusal to hire, or dismissal, "solely because of a person's membership in a lawful trade-union or association". The
Vocational Training Co-ordination Act of 1942 provided an impetus to the provinces to set up facilities for postsecondary vocational training. Further, in 1948, the
Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act was passed; this act safeguarded the rights of workers to join unions while requiring employers to recognize unions chosen by their employees. A Fisheries Price Support Act was also introduced with the aim of providing fishermen with similar safeguards to industrial workers covered by minimum wage legislation.
Housing The Federal Home Improvement Plan of 1937 provided subsidized rates of interest on rehabilitation loans to 66,900 homes, while the
National Housing Act of 1938 made provision for the building of low-rent housing. Another Housing Act was later passed in 1944 with the intention of providing federally guaranteed loans or mortgages to individuals who wished to repair or construct dwellings through their own initiative.
Agriculture While King opposed Bennett's
Canadian Wheat Board in 1935, he accepted its operation. However, by 1938, the board had sold its holdings and King proposed returning to the open market. This angered
Western Canadian farmers, who favoured a board that would give them a guaranteed minimum price, with the federal government covering any losses. Facing a public campaign to keep the board, King and his
minister of agriculture,
James Garfield Gardiner, reluctantly extended the board's life and offered a minimum price that would protect the farmers from further declines. Also, in 1945 a Farm Improvement Loans Act was introduced that provided for bank loans for purposes such as land improvement and the repair and construction of farm buildings.
Crown corporations In 1937, King's government established the
Trans-Canada Air Lines (the precursor to
Air Canada), as a subsidiary of the
crown corporation,
Canadian National Railways. It was created to provide air service to all regions of Canada. In 1938, King's government
nationalized the
Bank of Canada into a crown corporation.
Media reforms In 1936, the
Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) became the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), a
crown corporation. The CBC had a better organizational structure, more secure funding through the use of a licence fee on receiving sets (initially set at $2.50), and less vulnerability to political pressure. When Bennett's Conservatives were governing and the Liberals were in Opposition, the Liberals accused the network of being biased towards the Conservatives. During the 1935 election campaign, the CRBC broadcast a series of 15 minutes soap operas called
Mr. Sage which were critical of King and the Liberal Party. Decried as political propaganda, the incident was one factor in King's decision to replace the CRBC. In 1938, King's government invited British documentary maker
John Grierson to study the situation of the government's film production (which at that time was the responsibility of the
Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau). King believed that
Canadian cinema deserved an increased presence in Canadian theatres. This report prompted the
National Film Act, which created the
National Film Board of Canada in 1939. It was created to produce and distribute films serving the national interest and was intended specifically to make Canada better known both domestically and internationally. Gierson was appointed the first film commissioner in October 1939.
Relationship with provinces After 1936, the prime minister lost patience when
Western Canadians preferred radical alternatives such as the CCF (
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) and
Social Credit to his middle-of-the-road liberalism. Indeed, he came close to writing off the region with his comment that the prairie dust bowl was "part of the U.S. desert area. I doubt if it will be of any real use again." In 1937,
Maurice Duplessis, the
conservative Union Nationale premier of Quebec, passed the
Padlock Law (the
Act to Protect the Province Against Communistic Propaganda), which intimidated labour leaders by threatening to lock up their offices for any alleged communist activities. King's government, which had already repealed the section of the
Criminal Code banning unlawful associations, considered disallowing this bill. However, King's cabinet minister,
Ernest Lapointe, believed this would harm the Liberal Party's electoral chances in Quebec. King and his English-Canadian ministers accepted Lapointe's view; as King wrote in his diary in July 1938, "we were prepared to accept what really should not, in the name of liberalism, be tolerated for one moment." In June 1937, during an
Imperial Conference in London of the prime ministers of every dominion, King informed Britain's prime minister
Neville Chamberlain that Canada would only go to war if Britain were directly attacked, and that if the British were to become involved in a continental war then Chamberlain was not to expect Canadian support. , 1937 In 1937, King visited
Nazi Germany and met with
Adolf Hitler. Possessing a religious yearning for direct insight into the hidden mysteries of life and the universe, and strongly influenced by the operas of
Richard Wagner (who was also Hitler's favourite composer), King decided Hitler was akin to mythical
Wagnerian heroes within whom good and evil were struggling. He thought that good would eventually triumph and Hitler would redeem his people and lead them to a harmonious, uplifting future. These spiritual attitudes not only guided Canada's relations with Hitler but gave the prime minister the comforting sense of a higher mission, that of helping to lead Hitler to peace. King commented in his journal that "he is really one who truly loves his fellow-men, and his country, and would make any sacrifice for their good". King forecast that: In late 1938, during the great crisis in Europe over
Czechoslovakia that culminated in the
Munich Agreement, Canadians were divided. Francophones insisted on neutrality, as did some top advisers like
Oscar D. Skelton. Anglophones stood behind Britain and were willing to fight Germany. King, who served as his own secretary of state for external affairs (foreign minister), said privately that if he had to choose he would not be neutral, but he made no public statement. All of Canada was relieved that the Munich Agreement, while sacrificing the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia, seemed to bring peace. Under King's administration, the Canadian government, responding to strong public opinion, especially in Quebec, refused to expand immigration opportunities for
Jewish refugees from Europe. In June 1939 Canada, along with
Cuba and the United States, refused to allow entry for the 900 Jewish refugees aboard the passenger ship . King's government was widely criticized for its antisemitic policies and refusal to admit Jewish refugees. Most famously, when
Frederick Blair, an immigration official in King's party, was asked how many Jewish refugees Canada would admit after
World War II, he replied "None is too many". This policy was wholly supported by King and his political allies.
Second World War ,
Queen Elizabeth, and Prime Minister Mackenzie King in
Banff, Alberta, 1939 King accompanied the Royal Couple—King
George VI and Queen Elizabeth—throughout their 1939 cross-Canada tour, as well as on their American visit, a few months before the start of World War II. , Governor General
the Earl of Athlone and
Winston Churchill during the
Quebec Conference in 1943 ,
Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Winston Churchill at the
Octagon Conference, Quebec City, September 1944 and Mackenzie King, 1944
Declaration of war According to historian
Norman Hillmer, as British prime minister
Neville Chamberlain "negotiated in Munich with Adolf Hitler in September 1938, Mackenzie King, Canada's Prime Minister, grew agitated." King realized the likelihood of
World War II and began mobilizing on August 25, 1939, with full mobilization on September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland. In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, Canada had been at war by virtue of King
George V's declaration, issued solely on the advice of the British government. In 1939, King asserted Canada's autonomy and convened the House of Commons on September 7, nearly a month ahead of schedule, to discuss the government's intention to enter the war. King affirmed Canadian autonomy by saying that the Canadian Parliament would make the final decision on the issue of going to war. He reassured the pro-British Canadians that Parliament would surely decide that Canada would be at Britain's side if Great Britain was drawn into a major war. At the same time, he reassured those who were suspicious of British influence in Canada by promising that Canada would not participate in British colonial wars. His
Quebec lieutenant,
Ernest Lapointe, promised French Canadians that the government would not introduce conscription for overseas service; individual participation would be voluntary. These promises made it possible for Parliament to agree almost unanimously to
declare war on September 9. On September 10, King, through his high commissioner in London, issued a request to King George VI, asking him, in his capacity as King of Canada, to declare Canada at war against Germany.
Foreign policy To re-arm Canada, King built the
Royal Canadian Air Force as a viable military power, while at the same time keeping it separate from Britain's
Royal Air Force. He was instrumental in obtaining the
British Commonwealth Air Training Plan Agreement, which was signed in Ottawa in December 1939, binding Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Australia to a program that eventually trained half the airmen from those four nations in the Second World War. King—and Canada—were largely ignored by
British prime minister Winston Churchill, despite Canada's major role in supplying food, raw materials, munitions, and money to the hard-pressed British economy,
training airmen for the Commonwealth, guarding the western half of the
North Atlantic Ocean against German
U-boats, and providing combat troops for the invasions of Italy, France and Germany in 1943–45. King proved highly successful in mobilizing the economy for war, with impressive results in industrial and agricultural output. The depression ended, prosperity returned, and Canada's economy expanded significantly. During the war, Canada rapidly expanded its diplomatic missions abroad. While Canada hosted two major Allied conferences in Quebec in 1943 and 1944, neither King nor his senior generals and admirals were invited to take part in any of the discussions.
Political affairs King's government made an unprecedented intervention in the
1939 Quebec general election to defeat anti-war Premier Maurice Duplessis's Union Nationale and ensure victory for the pro-war
Quebec Liberals under
Adélard Godbout. Three of King's Cabinet ministers from Quebec (Ernest Lapointe,
Arthur Cardin, and
Charles Gavan Power) threatened to resign if Duplessis won re-election, claiming that no one would be left to stand up for Quebec in the Cabinet if conscription become an issue again. In his diary, King called Duplessis "diabolic" and a "little Hitler", believing Duplessis's aim was to provoke such a crisis between
French Canada and
English Canada that Quebec would leave Confederation. King used the powers of censorship under the
War Measures Act to keep Duplessis from speaking on the radio. The Quebec Liberals won a landslide victory. King rejected any notion of a
government of national unity like the Unionist Government during World War I. When the
Legislative Assembly of Ontario passed a resolution criticizing King's government for not fighting the war "in the vigorous manner the people of Canada desire to see", King dissolved
the federal parliament, triggering
a federal election for March 26, 1940. He held it despite the ongoing war, unlike Britain, which formed a government of national unity and did not hold a wartime election. King won a second consecutive landslide victory, winning 179 seats 6 more than in 1935. This was the Liberals' most successful result (in terms of proportion of seats). The
Official Opposition party, the Conservatives, won the same number of seats as R. B. Bennett did in the 1935 election. King's relationship with
Liberal Ontario Premier
Mitchell Hepburn was damaged due to Hepburn spearheading the resolution criticizing the war effort. King promoted engineer and businessman
C. D. Howe to senior cabinet positions during the war. King also suffered two cabinet setbacks; his
defence minister,
Norman McLeod Rogers, died in 1940 and his Quebec lieutenant and
minister of justice and attorney general, Ernest Lapointe, died in 1941. King successfully sought out the reluctant
Louis St. Laurent, a leading Quebec lawyer, to enter the House of Commons and to take over Lapointe's role. St. Laurent became King's right-hand man.
Wartime expenditure On June 24, 1940, King's government presented the first $1 billion budget in Canadian history. It included $700 million in war expenses compared to $126 million in the 1939–1940 fiscal year; however, due to the war, the overall economy was the strongest in Canadian history.
Internment of Japanese-Canadians Following the
attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japanese Canadians were categorized by Canada as enemy aliens under the
War Measures Act, which began to remove their personal rights. Starting on December 8, 1941, 1,200 Japanese-Canadian-owned fishing vessels were impounded as a "defence measure." On January 14, 1942, the federal government passed an order calling for the removal of male Japanese nationals between 18 and 45 years of age from a designated protected area of 100 miles inland from the British Columbia coast, enacted a ban against Japanese-Canadian fishing during the war, banned shortwave radios and controlled the sale of gasoline and dynamite to Japanese Canadians. Japanese nationals removed from the coast after the January 14 order were sent to road camps around
Jasper, Alberta. Three weeks later, on February 19, 1942, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed
Executive Order 9066, which called for the removal of
110,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the American coastline. A historian of internment, Ann Sunahara, argues that "the American action sealed the fate of Japanese Canadians." On February 24, the federal government passed order-in-council PC 1468 which allowed for the
removal of "all persons of Japanese origin" This order-in-council allowed the
Minister of Justice the broad powers of removing people from any protected area in Canada, but was meant for Japanese Canadians on the Pacific coast in particular. On February 25, the federal government announced that Japanese Canadians were being moved for reasons of national security. In all, some 27,000 people were detained without charge or trial, and their property confiscated. Others were deported to Japan. King and his Cabinet received conflicting intelligence reports about the potential threat from the Japanese. Major General
Ken Stuart told Ottawa, "I cannot see that the Japanese Canadians constitute the slightest menace to national security." In contrast, BC's attorney general,
Gordon Sylvester Wismer reported that, while he had "the greatest respect for" and "hesitated to disagree with" the RCMP, "every law enforcement agency in this province, including ... the military officials charged with local internal security, are unanimous that a grave menace exists."
Expansion of scientific research King's government greatly expanded the role of the
National Research Council of Canada during the war, moving into full-scale research in nuclear physics and commercial use of
nuclear power in the following years. King, with
C. D. Howe acting as point man, moved the nuclear group from
Montreal to
Chalk River, Ontario in 1944, with the establishment of
Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories and the residential town of
Deep River, Ontario. Canada became a world leader in this field, with the
NRX reactor becoming operational in 1947; at the time, NRX was the only operational nuclear reactor outside the United States.
Conscription King's promise not to impose conscription contributed to the defeat of
Maurice Duplessis's
Union Nationale Quebec provincial government in 1939 and the Liberals' re-election in the 1940 election. But after the fall of France in 1940, Canada introduced conscription for home service (conscription meant for the defence of Canada only). Only volunteers were to be sent overseas. King wanted to avoid a repeat of the
Conscription Crisis of 1917. By 1942, the military was pressing King hard to send conscripts to Europe. In 1942, King held
a national plebiscite on the issue, asking the nation to relieve him of the commitment he had made during the election campaign. In the House of Commons on June 10, 1942, he said that his policy was "not necessarily conscription but conscription if necessary". French Canadians voted against conscription, with over 70 percent opposed, but an overwhelming majority – over 80 percent – of English Canadians supported it. French and English conscripts were sent to fight in the
Aleutian Islands in 1943 – technically North American soil and therefore not "overseas" – but the mix of Canadian volunteers and draftees found that the Japanese troops had fled before their arrival. Otherwise, King continued with a campaign to recruit volunteers, hoping to address the problem with the shortage of troops caused by heavy losses in the
Dieppe Raid in 1942, in Italy in 1943, and after the
Battle of Normandy in 1944. In November 1944, the government decided it was necessary to send conscripts for the war. This led to a brief political crisis (see
Conscription Crisis of 1944) and
a mutiny by conscripts posted in British Columbia, but the war ended a few months later. In all, 12,908 conscripts were sent to fight abroad, though only 2,463 saw combat.
Post-war Canada 1945 election With the war winding down, King called
a federal election for June 11, 1945. The Liberals' election campaign was centered on a broad program of
social security. Although King was hesitant for his government to expand its role in the economy and run
deficits, he accepted it as these measures aligned with his concern for people struggling financially. There were political motives too; the Liberals needed to compete with the rising
socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) for votes. The Liberals were knocked down from a massive
majority government to a
minority government. However, they were able to govern with a working majority with the support of eight "Independent Liberal" MPs (most of whom did not run as official Liberals because of their opposition to conscription). The Liberals' decline in support was partly attributed to the introduction of conscription, which was unpopular in many parts of Canada. As King was defeated in his own riding of
Prince Albert, fellow Liberal
William MacDiarmid, who was re-elected in the
safe seat of
Glengarry, resigned so that an August 6 by-election could be held, which was subsequently won by King. Though he conceded that
major powers such as the United States and the United Kingdom would dominate the organization, King argued that
middle powers such as Canada should be given an influence on the UN based on their contributions to the settlement of disputes. St. Laurent succeeded King as external affairs minister in September 1946. , from
Chief Justice Thibaudeau Rinfret, in the
Supreme Court, January 3, 1947 King's government introduced the
Canadian Citizenship Act in 1946, which officially created the notion of "
Canadian citizens". Prior to this, Canadians were considered
British subjects living in Canada. On January 3, 1947, King received Canadian citizenship certificate number 0001. King also laid the groundwork for the
Dominion of Newfoundland's later entry into
Canadian Confederation, stating, "Newfoundlanders are no strangers to Canada, nor are Canadians strangers to Newfoundland." Pro-Confederation Newfoundlanders
Frederick Gordon Bradley and
Joey Smallwood argued that joining Canada would raise the
standard of living for Newfoundlanders; Britain also favoured Confederation.
A runoff vote was held on July 22, 1948, and 52.3 percent of voters decided that Newfoundland should enter Canada. After, Smallwood negotiated the terms of entry with King. Newfoundland entered Confederation on March 31, 1949, becoming Canada's tenth province.
Retirement , August 7, 1948 With his health declining, King declared in May 1948 that he would not be Liberal leader going in the next election. Three months later, on November 15, King retired after years as prime minister. King was the longest-serving prime minister in Canadian history; he also served in the most parliaments (six, in three non-consecutive periods) as prime minister. == Retirement and death (1948–1950) ==