Edward Island came in. The original Act for establishing the province of
Manitoba provided for a Lieutenant-governor, a Legislative Council, and
an elected Legislative Assembly. In 1876 Manitoba abolished the Council,
and the government took its present form of a Lieutenant-governor and
one Assembly. By subsequent legislation of the Dominion the district
of Keewatin was created out of the eastern portion of the north-west
territory, under the jurisdiction of the Lieutenant-governor of
Manitoba, ex officio. The Territories of Assiniboin, Alberta, and
Saskatchewan have been organized into a Territory called the North-west
Territory, with a Lieutenant-governor and Council, and a representative
in Parliament, the capital being Regina. Outside of this Territory,
to the northward, lies Athabasca, of which the Lieutenant-governor at
Regina is ex officio ruler. Newfoundland still remains independent,
although negotiations for union were revived in 1888. Some years ago
overtures were made for taking in Jamaica to the union, and a delegation
from that island visited Ottawa; but nothing came of the proposal. It
was said that the Jamaica delegates thought the Dominion debt too large.
The Dominion of Canada, therefore, has a central government at Ottawa,
and is composed of the provinces of Nova Scotia (including Cape Breton),
New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, British
Columbia, and the North-west Territory.
It has been necessary to speak in this brief detail of the manner of the
formation of the union in order to understand the politics of Canada.
For there are radicals in the Liberal party who still regard the union
as forced and artificial, and say that the provinces outside of Ontario
and Quebec were brought in only by the promise of local railways and the
payment of large subsidies. And this idea more or less influences the
opposition to the “strong government” at Ottawa. I do not say that the
Liberals oppose the formation of a “nation”; but they are critics of its
methods, and array themselves for provincial rights as against federal
consolidation.
The Federal Government consists of the Queen, the Senate, and the House
of Commons. The Queen is represented by the Governor-general, who is
paid by Canada a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year. He has his
personal staff, and is aided and advised by a council, called the
Queen’s Privy Council of Canada, thirteen members, constituting the
ministry, who must be sustained by a Parliamentary majority. The English
model is exactly followed. The Governor has nominally the power of veto,
but his use of it is as much in abeyance as is the Queen’s prerogative
in regard to Acts of Parliament. The premier is in fact the ruler, but
his power depends upon possessing a majority in the House of Commons.
This responsible government, therefore, more quickly responds to popular
action than ours. The Senators are chosen for life, and are in fact
appointed by the premier in power. The House of Commons is elected for
five years, unless Parliament is sooner dissolved, and according to a
ratio of population to correspond with the province of Quebec, which has
always the fixed number of sixty-five members. The voter for members
of Parliament must have certain property qualifications, as owner or
tenant, or, if in a city or town, as earning three hundred dollars a
year—qualifications so low as practically to exclude no one who is
not an idler and a waif; the Indian may vote (though not in the
Territories), but the Mongolian or Chinese is excluded. Members of
the House may be returned by any constituency in the Dominion without
reference to residence. All bills affecting taxation or revenue must
originate in the House, and be recommended by a message from the
Governor-general. The Government introduces bills, and takes the
responsibility of them. The premier is leader of the House; there is
also a recognized leader of the Opposition. In case the Government
cannot command a majority it resigns, and the Governor-general forms
a new cabinet. In theory, also, if the Crown (represented by the
Governor-general) should resort to the extreme exercise of its
prerogative in refusing the advice of its ministers, the ministers must
submit, or resign and give place to others.
The Federal Government has all powers not granted expressly to the
provinces. In practice its jurisdiction extends over the public debt,
expenditure, and public loans; treaties; customs and excise duties;
trade and commerce; navigation, shipping, and fisheries; light-houses
and harbors; the postal, naval, and military services; public
statistics; monetary institutions, banks, banking, currency, coining
(but all coining is done in England); insolvency; criminal law; marriage
and divorce; public works, railways, and canals.
The provinces have no militia; that all belongs to the Dominion.
Marriage is solemnized according to provincial regulations, but the
power of divorce exists in Canada in the Federal Parliament only, except
in the province of New Brunswick. This province has a court of
divorce and matrimonial causes, with a single judge, a survival of
pre-confederation times, which grants divorces a vinculo for scriptural
causes, and a mensa et thoro for desertion or cruelty, with right of
appeal to the Supreme Court of the province and to the Privy Council of
the Dominion. Criminal law is one all over the Dominion, but there is
no law against adultery or incest. The British Act contains no provision
analogous to that in the Constitution of the United States which forbids
any State to pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts—a serious
defect.
The Federal Government has a Supreme Court, consisting of a
chief-justice and five puisne judges, which has original jurisdiction in
civil suits involving the validity of Dominion and provincial acts, and
appellate in appeals from the provincial courts. The Federal Government
appoints and pays the judges of the Superior, District, and County
courts of the provinces; but the provinces may constitute, maintain, and
organize provincial courts, civil and criminal, including procedure in
civil matters in those courts. But as the provinces cannot appoint any
judicial officer above the rank of magistrate, it may happen that a
constituted court may be inoperative for want of a judge. This is one of
the points of friction between the federal and provincial authorities,
and in the fall of 1888 it led to the trouble in Quebec, when the Ottawa
cabinet disallowed the appointment of two provincial judges made by the
Quebec premier.
The Dominion has another power unknown to our Constitution; that is,
disallowance or veto of provincial acts. This power is regarded with
great jealousy by the provinces. It is claimed by one party that it
should only be exercised on the ground of unconstitutionality; by
the other, that it may be exercised in the interest of the Dominion
generally. As a matter of fact it has been sometimes exercised in cases
that the special province felt to be an interference with its rights.
Another cause of friction, aggravated by the power of disallowance, has
arisen from conflict in jurisdiction as to railways. Both the Dominion
and the provinces may charter and build railways. But the British Act
forbids the province to legislate as to lines of steam or other ships,
railways, canals, and telegraphs connecting the province with any other
province, or extending beyond its limits, or any such work actually
within the limits which the Canadian Parliament may declare for the
general advantage of Canada; that is, declare it to be a Dominion work.
A promoter, therefore, cannot tell with any certainty what a charter is
worth, or who will have jurisdiction over it. The trouble in Manitoba
in the fall of 1888 between the province and the Canadian Pacific road
(which is a Dominion road in the meaning of the Act) could scarcely
have arisen if the definition of Dominion and provincial rights had been
clearer.
But a more serious cause of weakness to the provinces and embarrassment
to the Dominion is in the provincial subsidies. When the present
confederation was formed the Dominion took on the provincial debts up
to a certain amount. It also agreed to pay annually to each province, in
half-yearly payments, a subsidy. By the British Act this annual payment
was $80,000 to Ontario, $70,000 to Quebec, $60,000 to Nova Scotia,
$50,000 to New Brunswick, with something additional to the last two. In
1886-87 the subsidies paid to all the provinces amounted to $4,169,341.
This is as if the United States should undertake to raise a fixed
revenue to distribute among the States—a proceeding alien to our ideas
of the true function of the General Government, and certain to lead to
State demoralization, and tending directly to undermine its self-support
and dignity. It is an idea quite foreign to the conception of political
economy that it is best for people to earn what they spend, and only
spend what they earn. This subsidy under the Act was a grant equal to
eighty cents a head of the population. Besides this there is given
to each province an annual allowance for government; also an annual
allowance of interest on the amount of debt allowed where the province
has not reached the limit of the authorized debt. It is the theory of
the Federal Government that in taking on these pecuniary burdens of the
provinces they will individually feel them less, and that if money is to
be raised the Dominion can procure it on more favorable terms than the
provinces. The system, nevertheless, seems vicious to our apprehension,
for nothing is clearer to us than that neither the State nor the general
welfare would be promoted if the States were pensioners of the General
Government.
The provinces are miniature copies of the Dominion Government. Each has
a Lieutenant-governor, who is appointed by the Ottawa Governor-general
and ministry (that is, in fact, by the premier), whose salary is paid by
the Dominion Parliament. In theory he represents the Crown, and is
above parties. He forms his cabinet out of the party in majority in the
elective Assembly. Each province has an elective Assembly, and most of
them have two Houses, one of which is a Senate appointed for life. The
provincial cabinet has a premier, who is the leader of the House, and
the Opposition is represented by a recognized leader. The Government
is as responsible as the Federal Government. This organization of
recognized and responsible leaders greatly facilitates the despatch
of public business. Affairs are brought to a direct issue; and if
the Government cannot carry its measures, or a dead-lock occurs,
the ministry is changed, or an appeal is had to the people. Canadian
statesmen point to the want of responsibility in the conduct of public
business in our House, and the dead-lock between the Senate and the
House, as a state of things that needs a remedy.
The provinces retain possession of the public lands belonging to them at
the time of confederation; Manitoba, which had none when it was created
a province out of north-west territory, has since had a gift of swamp
lands from the Dominion. Emigration and immigration are subjects of
both federal and provincial legislation, but provincial laws must not
conflict with federal laws.
The provinces appoint all officers for the administration of justice
except judges, and are charged with the general administration of
justice and the maintenance of civil and criminal courts; they control
jails, prisons, and reformatories, but not the penitentiaries, to which
convicts sentenced for over two years must be committed. They control
also asylums and charitable institutions, all strictly municipal
institutions, local works, the solemnization of marriage, property and
civil rights, and shop, tavern, and other licenses. In regard to the
latter, a conflict of jurisdiction arose on the passage in 1878 by the
Canadian Parliament of a temperance Act. The result of judicial and
Privy Council decisions on this was to sustain the right of the Dominion
to legislate on temperance, but to give to the provincial legislatures
the right to deal with the subject of licenses for the sale of liquors.
In the Territories prohibition prevails under the federal statutes,
modified by the right of the Lieutenant-governor to grant special
permits. The effect of the general law has been most salutary in
excluding liquor from the Indians.
But the most important subject left to the provinces is education, over
which they have exclusive control. What this means we shall see when we
come to consider the provinces of Quebec and Ontario as illustrations.
Broadly stated, Canada has representative government by ministers
responsible to the people, a federal government charged with the
general good of the whole, and provincial governments attending to local
interests. It differs widely from the English Government in subjects
remitted to the provincial legislatures and in the freedom of the
municipalities, so that Canada has self-government comparable to that
in the United States. Two striking limitations are that the provinces
cannot keep a militia force, and that the provinces have no power of
final legislation, every Act being subject to Dominion revision and
veto.
The two parties are arranged on general lines that we might expect
from the organization of the central and the local governments. The
Conservative, which calls itself Liberal-Conservative, inclines to the
consolidation and increase of federal power; the Liberal (styled the
“Grits”) is what we would call a State-rights party. Curiously enough,
while the Ottawa Government is Conservative, and the ministry of
Sir John A. Macdonald is sustained by a handsome majority, all the
provincial governments are at present Liberal. The Conservatives say
that this is because the opinion of the country sustains the general
Conservative policy for the development of the Dominion, so that the
same constituency will elect a Conservative member to the Dominion House
and a Liberal member to the provincial House. The Liberals say that this
result in some cases is brought about by the manner in which the central
Government has arranged the voting districts for the central Parliament,
which do not coincide with the provincial districts. There is no doubt
some truth in this, but I believe that at present the sentiment of
nationality is what sustains the Conservative majority in the Ottawa
Government.
The general policy of the Conservative Government may fairly be
described as one for the rapid development of the country. This leads
it to desire more federal power, and there are some leading spirits
who, although content with the present Constitution, would not oppose a
legislative union of all the provinces. The policy of “development” led
the party to adopt the present moderate protective tariff. It led it to
the building of railways, to the granting of subsidies, in money and in
land, to railways, to the subsidizing of steamship lines, to the active
stimulation of immigration by offering extraordinary inducements
to settlers. Having a vast domain, sparsely settled, but capable of
sustaining a population not less dense than that in the northern parts
of Europe, the ambition of the Conservative statesmen has been to open
up the resources of the country and to plant a powerful nation. The
Liberal criticism of this programme I shall speak of later. At present
it is sufficient to say that the tariff did stimulate and build
up manufactories in cotton, leather, iron, including implements of
agriculture, to the extent that they were more than able to supply the
Canadian market. As an item, after the abrogation of the reciprocity
treaty, the factories of Ontario were able successfully to compete with
the United States in the supply of agricultural implements to the great
North-west, and in fact to take the market. I think it cannot be denied
that the protective tariff did not only build up home industries,
but did give an extraordinary stimulus to the general business of the
Dominion.
Under this policy of development and subsidies the Dominion has been
accumulating a debt, which now reaches something over $200,000,000.
Before estimating the comparative size of this debt, the statistician
wants to see whether this debt and the provincial debts together equal,
per capita, the federal and State debts together of the United States.
It is estimated by one authority that the public lands of the Dominion
could pay the debt, and it is noted that it has mainly been made for
railways, canals, and other permanent improvements, and not in offensive
or defensive wars. The statistical record of 1887 estimates that the
provincial debts added to the public debt give a per capita of $48.88.
The same year the united debts of States and general government in the
United States gave a per capita of $32, but, the municipal and county
debts added, the per capita would be $55. If the unreported municipal
debts in Canada were added, I suppose the per capita would somewhat
exceed that in the United States.
Before glancing at the development and condition of Canada in
confederation we will complete the official outline by a reference
to the civil service and to the militia. The British Government has
withdrawn all the imperial troops from Canada except a small garrison at
Halifax, and a naval establishment there and at Victoria. The Queen is
commander-in-chief of all the military and naval forces in Canada, but
the control of the same is in the Dominion Parliament. The general of
the military force is a British officer. There are permanent corps and
schools of instruction in various places, amounting in all to about 950
men, exclusive of officers, and the number is limited to 1000. There is
a royal military school at Kingston, with about 80 cadets. The active
militia, December 31, 1887, in all the provinces, the whole being under
Dominion control, amounted to 38,152. The military expenditure that year
was $1,281,255. The diminishing military pensions of that year amounted
to $35,100. The reserve militia includes all the male inhabitants of the
age of eighteen and under sixty. In 1887 the total active cavalry was
under 2000.
The members of the civil service are nearly all Canadians. In the
Federal Government and in the provinces there is an organized system;
the federal system has been constantly amended, and is not yet free
of recognized defects. The main points of excellence, more or less
perfectly attained, may be stated to be a decent entrance examination
for all, a special, strict, and particular examination for some who
are to undertake technical duties, and a secure tenure of office. The
federal Act of 1886, which has since been amended in details, was not
arrived at without many experiments and the accumulation of testimonies
and diverse reports; and it did not follow exactly the majority report
of 1881, but leaned too much, in the judgment of many, to the English
system, the working of which has not been satisfactory. The main
features of the Act, omitting details, are these: The service has two
divisions—first, deputy heads of departments and employés in the Ottawa
departments; second, others than those employed in Ottawa departments,
including customs officials, inland revenue officials, post-office
inspectors, railway mail clerks, city postmasters, their assistants,
clerks, and carriers, and inspector of penitentiaries. A board of three
examiners is appointed by the Governor in council. All appointments
shall be “during pleasure,” and no persons shall be appointed or
promoted to any place below that of deputy head unless he has passed the
requisite examination and served the probationary term of six months;
he must not be over thirty-five years old for appointment in Ottawa
departments (this limit is not fixed for the “outside” appointments),
nor under fifteen in a lower grade than third-class clerk, nor under
eighteen in other cases. Appointees must be sound in health and of good
character. Women are not appointed. A deputy head may be removed “on
pleasure,” but the reasons for the removal must be laid before both
Houses of Parliament. Appointments may be made without reference to
age on the report of the deputy head, on account of technical or
professional qualifications or the public interest. City postmasters,
and such officers as inspectors and collectors, may be appointed without
examination or reference to the rules for promotion. Examinations are
dispensed with in other special cases. Removals may be made by the
Governor in council. Reports of all examinations and of the entire civil
service list must be laid before Parliament each session. Amendments
have been made to the law in the direction of relieving from examination
on their promotion men who have been long in the service, and an
amendment of last session omitted some examinations altogether.
It must be stated also that the service is not free from favoritism, and
that influence is used, if not always necessary, to get in and to get
on in it. The law has been gone around by means of the plea of “special
qualifications,” and this evasion has sometimes been considered a
political necessity on account of service to a minister or to the party
generally. I suppose that the party in power favors its own adherents.
The competitive system of England has a mischievous effect in the
encouragement of the examinations to direct studies towards a service
which nine in ten of the applicants will never reach. This evil, of
numbers qualified but not appointed, has grown so great in Canada that
it has lately been ordered that there shall be only one examination in
each year.
The federal pension system cannot be considered settled. A man may be
superannuated at any time, but by custom, not law, he retires at the
full age of sixty. While in service he pays a superannuation allowance
of two and a half per cent, on his salary for thirty-five years; after
that, no more. If he is superannuated after ten years’ service, say, he
gets one-fiftieth of his salary for each year. If he is not in fault in
any way, Government may add ten years more to his service, so as to give
him a larger allowance. If a man serves the full term of thirty-five
years he gets thirty-five fiftieths of his salary in pension. This
pension system, recognized as essential to a good civil service, has
this weakness: A man pays two and a half per cent, of his salary for
twenty years. If the salary is $3000, his payments would have amounted
to $1200, with interest, in that time. If he then dies, his widow gets
only two months’ salary as a solatium; all the rest is lost to her,
and goes to the superannuation fund of the treasury. Or, a man is
superannuated after thirty-five years; he has paid perhaps $2100, with
interest; he draws, say, one year’s superannuative allowance, and then
dies. His family get nothing at all, not even the two months’ salary
they would have had if he had died in service. This is illogical and
unjust. If the two and a half per cent, had been put into a life policy,
the insurance being undertaken by the Government, a decent sum would
have been realized at death.
A civil service is also established in the provinces. That in Quebec is
better organized than the federal; the Government adds to the pension
fund one-fourth of that retained from the salaries, and half pensions
are extended to widows and children.