William Lyon Mackenzie King - Prime Minister: Fourth Parliament

Prime Minister: Fourth Parliament

In 1935 the Liberals used the slogan "King or Chaos" to win a landslide in the 1935 election. Promising a much-desired trade treaty with the U.S., the King government passed the 1935 Reciprocal Trade Agreement. It marked the turning point in Canadian-American economic relations, reversing the disastrous trade war of 1930-31, lowering tariffs, and yielding a dramatic increase in trade. More subtly, it revealed to the prime minister and President Roosevelt that they could work together well.

The worst of the Depression had passed by 1935, and King implemented relief programs such as the National Housing Act and National Employment Commission. His government also made the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation a crown corporation in 1936, created Trans-Canada Airlines (the precursor to Air Canada) in 1937, and formed the National Film Board of Canada in 1939. In 1938, he transformed the Bank of Canada from a private entity to a crown corporation.

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." Instead he paid more attention to the industrial regions and the needs of Ontario and Quebec, particularly with respect to the proposed St. Lawrence Seaway project with the United States. As for the unemployed, he was hostile to federal relief, and only reluctantly accepted a Keynesian solution that involved federal deficit spending, tax cuts and subsidies to the housing market.

Read more about this topic:  William Lyon Mackenzie King

Famous quotes containing the words prime, fourth and/or parliament:

    Baltimore lay very near the immense protein factory of Chesapeake Bay, and out of the bay it ate divinely. I well recall the time when prime hard crabs of the channel species, blue in color, at least eight inches in length along the shell, and with snow-white meat almost as firm as soap, were hawked in Hollins Street of Summer mornings at ten cents a dozen.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    ‘Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it.
    Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)

    He felt that it would be dull times in Dublin, when they should have no usurping government to abuse, no Saxon Parliament to upbraid, no English laws to ridicule, and no Established Church to curse.
    Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)