Decisions on Deal

Like the U. S., Canada is a confederation. Its constitution, the British North America Act, 1867, apportions governing authority between the Federal and Provincial Governments. During Depression, Canada was also given a New Deal, hastily fabricated in 1934-35 by Canada's Conservative Prime Minister Richard Bedford Bennett in a last-minute attempt to escape the tag of "Canada's Hoover," stand forth as "Canada's Roosevelt." This attempt failed. Prime Minister Bennett thereupon ignored his own New Deal legislation, lost last October's elections and gave way to Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.

Also like the U. S., Canada has a Supreme Court. Last week when the Court tested the constitutionality of eight of Bennett's ten New Deal laws, the Liberal Government of Premier King found itself in the curious position of fighting for its vanquished rivals' abandoned legislative program.

In one important respect the British North America Act differs radically from the U. S. Constitution: it awards all un-delegated powers to the central government. Nonetheless, the "States' Rights" issue which has proved so mortal to Franklin Roosevelt's legislative program was one with which Canada's six Supreme Court Justices (the seventh lately died) found themselves primarily concerned as they waded through 500,000 words of testimony. On the basis of provincial rights 25% of the legislative foundation of Canada's New Deal went by the board. Score: two laws constitutional, one partly constitutional, two unconstitutional. On three measures the Court split squarely.

Sitting in Ottawa's condemned Old Court Building, the five scarlet-robed Justices and Liberal Chief Justice Sir Lyman Poore Duff approved (4-to-2) an amendment to the criminal code providing criminal prosecution for unfair business practices such as the granting of discriminatory discounts, rebates, allowances. They also unanimously approved the Farmers' Creditors' Arrangement Act, providing machinery for negotiating reductions in rural debts and interest rates.

To the Dominion Trade & Industry Commission Act the Court gave piecemeal approval. Unanimously it held invalid the Commission's right to exempt from prosecution combines in restraint of trade, the issuance of a Canadian trademark to signify a product's compliance with Commission standards. The section of the Commission's functions which the Court held valid was again concerned with the prevention of unfair trade practices.

Unanimously the Justices turned thumbs down on the Natural Products Marketing Act, an NRA for primary producers. And (4-to-2) the Court also held ultra vires the Employment & Social Insurance Act, proposing a compulsory contributory employment insurance system planned on the British pattern.

Three-to-three the Justices deadlocked on acts establishing minimum wage machinery, 48-hr, week, compulsory one-day's-rest-in-seven.

The Government planned to appeal the Supreme Court decisions to the court of last resort, the Judicial Committee of His Majesty's Most Honorable Privy Council in London; for Canada's Supreme Court is not supreme.

The Privy Council's Judicial Committee is composed of only two dozen of the Council's unwieldy assembly of some 300 British big-and-little-wigs. Presiding over the final judicial decision on Canada's New Deal will be Lord High Chancellor the Rt. Hon. Viscount Hailsham. Eligible to sit with him are the Lord President of the Council (the Rt. Hon. J. Ramsay MacDonald), onetime Lord Chancellor Viscount Sankey, India's onetime Chief Justice of the High Court of Lahore the Rt. Hon. Sir Shadi Lai and the Canadian Supreme Court's own Chief Justice Sir Lyman Poore Duff.

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