"Government Intoxication"

An unexciting Canadian with many of Herbert Hoover's virtues is Conservative Premier Richard Bedford Bennett who, knowing that a fate like the U. S. ex-President's probably awaits him at Canada's next general election this year, has excitedly improvised a species of New Deal (TIME, Jan. 14). Last week in the Province of New Brunswick came a preliminary test. If the Conservative Premier's New Deal was catching on with Canada's masses, Mr. Bennett could hope that when New Brunswick elected its provincial legislature Conservative New Brunswick Premier Leonard Percy de Wolfe Tilley would win enough votes to carry on as Hooverish Mr. Bennett hopes to carry on.

Enigmatically New Brunswick's masses marched to the polls. When their ballots were counted glum Conservative Tilley was forced to resign and in as Premier breezed Liberal Allison A. Dysart. This made New Brunswick the fifth of Canada's nine provinces to "turn the Conservatives out." Only the smallest province, Prince Edward Island, which will vote this month, remains Conservative. In Ottawa discouragement among Conservatives was so acute that within the Party there was talk that Mr. Bennett might abruptly retire and put in the field some other Conservative whom Canada's mob had not become accustomed to blame personally for everything from Depression to moths in the clothes closet.

Meanwhile, the mobsters in Canada's relief camps, who have proved to be among the ugliest customers ever supported at their fellow citizens' expense, pressed on with their plans to "march" on Ottawa in motor trucks. Premier Bennett issued appeals to all Canadians of goodwill to oppose this mass trek to demand still more of Canada's taxpayers.

So upset by all this was Maclean's famed Saturday Evening Post of Canada, that its editorial on the Glorious First (Queen Victoria established the Dominion on July 1, 1867) was devoted not to the usual fanfare of Canadians pointing with pride to Canada but to a full page of viewing with alarm these and other Canadian troubles. Cried Maclean's:

"A circle of sixty-eight years since Confederation finds the General Government baulked again & again in its efforts toward desirable Dominion-wide legislation by the 'rights' of the provinces. Upon them has been bestowed so much self-rule that Professor Stephen Leacock has grounds for wondering whether America eventually will have a group of 'Balkans' to the North. . . . Last year, collectively, our ten governments and nearly 4,000 municipalities collected approximately $690,000,000 in taxes. Did they spend it all? Did they! All of it, and a combined deficit of something like $200,000,000. . .

"In rotation cometh prophet after prophet, bribing the popular vote with promises of new outpourings of government largesse.

"The result is that on this First Day of July, the sixty-eighth anniversary of the proclamation of a united Canada as a Dominion, we find on the record:

"Province after province appealing to the Central Government to pull them out of the financial morass into which they have themselves plunged.

"Alberta seemingly on the verge of an experiment in living on self-created credit.

"Ontario with most of the 170 towns that have defaulted on their bonded indebtedness.

"Vancouver appealing to Ottawa to control disturbances gone beyond local control.

"Montreal wrestling with a frantic system of taxation.

"The depression cannot be blamed for all this.

"Our plight is due largely to govern-ment intoxication.

"Ten million people. And ten major governments.

"Ten million people mesmerized by the phrase, 'The Government will pay.'

"Ten million people, totally oblivious to the fact that THEY pay."

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