at the Dominion -Provincial conference on 14 Jan 1941
But first - let’s answer three questions
- How does the BC Refederation Party know what the Premiers said in 1941 ?
- Did the federal government lie to the Premiers and the provinces ?
- Did the federal government admit that their tax invasion defied the constitution ?
The transcript of the Dominion-Provincial conference which met in the chamber of the House of Commons on 14 Jan 41 is available from the Queens Printer. The following quotes below are taken from it.
Note:
The BNA Act in 1867 gave the federal government no authority to levy income tax in a province, but in 1918 the central government invaded that exclusive provincial jurisdiction, insisting that it needed to tax the incomes of citizens in the provinces in order to cover the cost of the First World War. Did the federal government lie to the nation then?
PattulloBC’s Premier Patullo told the 1941 conference:
“In 1918 Sir Thomas White, then Minister of Finance, stood on the floor of this chamber and said that he regretted very much the necessity of taking such action. He said it was a temporary measure. I am sure that Sir Thomas White will not mind my saying that when I was talking to him on one occasion he told me that he was afraid that it would be a federal tax for good.”
So today we can see that the “temporary measure” story was a lie.
Premier Patullo’s opinion was that BC’s development has been stunted since 1918 by the illegal federal tax on income which stole BC revenue:
“… and that action precluded our province from developing in the way it should have developed… we were compelled to borrow money.”
Mr Ilsley, the federal Minister of Finance, had admitted that a federal tax on the incomes of citizens was an invasion of a jurisdiction not allowed to Ottawa in the constitution.
The Premier of Manitoba, Mr Bracken, recorded what Mr Ilsley had just told the conference:
“he [Mr Ilsley] said that the Dominion government would have to invade the provincial tax field…and take over a large part of our revenues.”
IlsleyMr Ilsley’s actual words recorded in the minutes were [are]:
“The Dominion will undoubtedly have to invade provincial taxfields…”
CampbellMr Campbell, Premier of PEI, mentioned that for many years Ottawa had refused to obey the constitution:
“In 1935, I think it was, the representatives of the provinces came to Ottawa and were practically unanimous in their insistence that the Dominion government should withdraw from the field of income tax collection as being properly an exclusive field of the province. The Dominion government declined to do this…”
BC’s Premier Patullo stated that strong provinces made a strong Canada:
“Those of us who have been trying to protect provincial rights, and trying to build up a strong province so that we may have a strong Dominion of Canada have actually been accused of being unpatriotic and insolent because we dared to say that the income tax should be maintained as a provincial tax.”
HepburnWhat did Premier Hepburn of Ontario think ? He and the Ontario delegation walked out of the 1941 Dominion-Provincial Conference. He refused to discuss the idea of Ottawa remaining in the provincial field of taxing the incomes of Ontario residents, and thereby empoverishing the Ontario Treasury. As he rose to leave back in 1941 he made this forecast, which we can see has unfortunately come true today:
“[At this conference] we are moving in a direction from which we may not be able to retrace our steps, and we shall be left in the hands of a bureaucracy to be established in Ottawa, a bureaucracy which is criticised from one end of the country to the other. I myself will not sell my province down the river for all time to come and allow our [provincial] social services to remain a victim of the dictatorial methods of a bureaucracy to be set up in Ottawa.”
BC Refed note:
It may be that today Premiers Patullo and Hepburn would both have been founding members of the BC Refederation Party, advocating that the provinces combine to strengthen provincial sovereignty at the expense of the huge Ottawa bureaucracy.
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