Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
population increased by 5% due to the arrival of 10,000 seasonal unemployed
begging for care. With its capital dubbed the “mecca of the unemployed,” BC's
financial capacity was strained. In this context, King insisted on a balanced bud-
get approach, with proposals to freeze grants in aid to the previous year's level,
to limit up to 30% Ottawa's share of total relief costs, and to set a maximum
level of relief to be provided by the provinces. The proposal exacerbated ten-
sions with the provinces as well as within King's own government. In response,
the BC premier successfully forced Ottawa to pay for the relief expenditures
generated by these nonresident workers by closing the camps six weeks earlier
and cutting off relief for these workers. Transients had become, again, the most
visible symbol of the shared, nonlocal, nature of the unemployment problem.
In December 1937 the NEC issued another report calling for a policy shift
toward a national approach combining assistance and insurance. In response
to these demands, King's government put aside the balanced budget issue and
agreed to spend $40 million on unemployment relief expenditures. However,
no Unemployment Insurance Act was proposed as the Rowell-Siros report was
not yet concluded.
Concerns about the fiscal implications of relief, directly associated with the
magnitude of the flow of transients, and its potential implications for Canada's
macroeconomic stability, altered the position of Canadian employers. What
earlier in the process was a divided group became, by early 1938, an active
support for the centralization of social insurance in Canada. Expressions of
concern and support for the initiative were especially strong in those provinces,
like British Columbia, suffering the social consequences of the Depression with
greater intensity. A.E. Grauer, president of BC Power Corporation, and one of
the leading figures in BC's business community, conveys the new perspective
of employers forcefully (Finkel
1979
: 83):
Since the Great War, the Great Depression has been the chief stimulus to labour legis-
lation and social insurance. The note sounded has not been so much the idea of social
justice, as political and economic financial expediency. For instance, the shorter work-
ing week was favored in unexpected quarters not because it would give the workers
more leisure and possibilities for a fuller life but because it would spread work; and
the current singling of unemployment insurance for governmental attention in many
countries is dictated by the appalling costs of direct relief and hope that unemployment
insurance benefits will give some protection to public treasuries in future depressions
and will, by sustaining purchasing power, tend to mitigate these depressions . . .
Along similar lines, the Chamber of Commerce became a major force in support
of a centralized system of unemployment insurance:
The people of all the provinces will have an opportunity of passing on this social security
legislation through their representatives in the federal parliament and we cannot see the
necessity for hesitancy on the part of the provincial governments at the present time. The
unfortunate fetish of provincial 'rights' is ever with us but it is high time we learned that
progress can best be kept on the march by the centralization of government consistent
with 'individual' not 'provincial' freedom. [Finkel
1979
: 96]
