Premiership of Maurice Duplessis

Radio-Canada, 1954 (36s), in French A speech

While as a backbencher, Duplessis was not necessarily a strong advocate for provincial autonomy, that issue was among the most important of his premiership.^[118] Duplessis was a nationalist, but he opposed separatism as the concept was both unpopular and frightening to the contemporary society of Quebec. At the same time, he also railed against all manifestations of assimilation of French Canadians into surrounding English-speaking cultures–a prospect very few French Canadians liked as well. In this atmosphere, advocacy for autonomy appeared as a good middle-ground position.^[119] This idea was not new in political circles, but he was the one to have made it a centerpiece of his politics;^[120] as Jonathan Livernois writes, it was his "bread-and-butter issue".^[121] Duplessis affirmed in 1939 that "so long as [he] breathe[d], no one [would] touch the autonomy of the province of Quebec";^[122] he was also known to say that no one "shall crucify the province of Quebec, even upon a cross of gold."^[123]

For the premier, the

However, since the Great Depression, the federal government was accumulating more powers. This was not popular in Quebec because it was seen as an attempt to assimilate French Canadians into surrounding English culture and customs.[126] Premier Adélard Godbout nevertheless ceded the province's power to regulate unemployment benefits and agreed to suspend the levying of two taxes in favour of the federal government, with the understanding that Quebec would have their taxes back once World War II was over.^[127] However, after the war they remained with the federal government, and as all other provinces eventually agreed to rent out some of their powers to the federal government, Quebec was at most times the only province actively fighting the expansion of the federal activities.^[126] Duplessis, angry at the centralization of powers, once demanded Ottawa to "return our loot".^[128]

Duplessis's resistance to what he estimated was an encroachment on provincial powers was particularly visible in fiscal issues. In 1954, the Legislative Assembly passed a law creating a new provincial

Quebec Blue Ensign, pre-1948

A Carillon banner with the Sacred Heart (Carillon-Sacré-Cœur flag), precursor of the current flag

Flag of Quebec (Carillon) as flown on 21 January – 2 February 1948

Flag of Quebec as flown in the times of Duplessis. The flag has changed little since then

Supplemental videos (in French)
Archive videos about the history of the flag of Quebec, Radio-Canada

Both Canada and Quebec had their own flags with the Union Jack, but neither was distinctive from other flags used in the Commonwealth, and the Quebec Blue Ensign was rarely used.^[141] Instead, until World War II, the French Canadians would often use the flag of France as a display of their distinctiveness (which, after a slight modification, stuck with the Acadians).^[142][143] At the same time, in the early 1900s, there was some heavy promotion of the Carillon-Sacré-Cœur flag, which proved a success among the people of the province.^[143]

René Chaloult, an independent MLA, was particularly angered by lack of changes to the Canadian Red Ensign that were proposed in mid-1940s. In his motion, he criticized it as a flag with colonial connotations and proposed to adopt a distinctive provincial flag. Duplessis initially hesitated, which André Laurendeau attributed to his fear that he would be seen as separatist.^[144] However, the premier then had some secret conversations with Lionel Groulx, who recognized that Duplessis wanted to be credited for its adoption. Groulx proposed that no coat of arms should appear, and that the fleur-de-lis that formerly pointed to the centre of the flag should be kept up straight.^[143] On 21 January 1948, when the Legislative Assembly was supposed to vote on Chaloult's motion, Duplessis's government used the opportunity to adopt the modified flag by an Order in Council.^[145][146] The Carillon flag flew for two weeks over the assembly until it was replaced by the version now known as the "Duplessis version".^[144] The premier used the occasion to rally the population over the popular new design in the 1948 election, which Duplessis won by a landslide, capturing 82 out of 92 seats.^[146]

The Catholic Church and religious minorities

Before 1960, English-language media would commonly refer to Quebec in a pejorative way as the "priest-ridden province", even though the government itself was always secular.^[147] Quebec of the time was overwhelmingly Catholic and the Church was omnipresent in the daily life of French Canadians in the province, with education, social services and healthcare still mostly managed by Catholic organisations.^[148] This allowed Duplessis to have low-paid nuns do the jobs of teachers and nurses, and as a result, minimize budgetary expenditures and keep taxes low.^[149]

The reasons why Duplessis was close to the Catholic Church officials and the degree of closeness are disputed. Robert Rumilly, Conrad Black and Bernard Saint-Aubin, the main biographers of Duplessis, as well as Richard Jones^[150] and Yves Vaillancourt [fr]^[151] all maintain that, with the possible exception of Archbishop Joseph Charbonneau of Montreal (1940–50), the clergy was in such friendly relations with Duplessis that the premier was rumoured to say that "the clergy eats out of my hand".^[152][o] Different authors provide various explanations for this: for Rumilly, it was the approval of Duplessis's defence of French-Canadian traditions and conservative values, while Black and Dion^[154] suggest that Duplessis led to the fall of importance of the Church by subjecting it to his dependence, but the Church still remained loyal to the premier and was generally ideologically aligned with Duplessis.^[152] Jones adds that Duplessis and the Catholic Church needed each other: the Church wanted more funds to operate and expand, which made it dependent on the government, but at the same time it saved much money for Duplessis with its low-paid nuns.^[150]

Alexandre Dumas, a historian of early 20th-century Quebec, presents a different outlook. His book on the Catholic Church agrees with Conrad Black that the Church's role was shrinking in Duplessis's years, but argues that it had been a general trend since 1935.^[155] Duplessis's attitude towards Church officials was in fact paternalistic, and the most he offered to the Church were numerous symbolic gestures. Duplessis mainly used religion for electoral benefit: on the one hand, he would often hint that his ideas were supported by his religious convictions or the clergy itself (even if not always true), while on the other, he would use the church officials' still numerous endorsements to rally support for his ideas.^[152] However, the rank-and-file clergy was not a monolith and its demands were not always satisfied. Many clergymen, unlike Duplessis, supported Asbestos strike participants in 1949. In 1956, two priests criticized Duplessis's electoral practices in a Catholic Church publication, Ad usum sacerdotum,^[156] and in 1960, just after Duplessis's death, Brother Jean-Paul Desbiens wrote Les insolences du Frère Untel, a scathing critique of the contemporary state of Quebec.^[157]

The cordial relations with the Church did not extend to other religions. The

The court cases involving the legal harassment of Jehovah's Witnesses in Quebec resulted in a series of landmark Supreme Court of Canada cases in the domain of freedom of speech (R. v Boucher, Saumur v Quebec (City of), Lamb v Benoit) and administrative law (Roncarelli v Duplessis), which were all decided in the Witnesses' favour.^[83] In Roncarelli, Duplessis was fined over $30,000 (about $360000 in 2021 dollars) for his abuse of power.^[160]

Relations with the Anglophone minority

Under Duplessis, the Anglophones of Quebec retained their privileged and autonomous position within the province. Duplessis strictly respected the local arrangements that English speakers in the province had with respect to education, healthcare and municipal affairs.^[163] This, he hoped, would make him look good in front of English-speaking businessmen and potential investors in the province; Conrad Black also argued that Duplessis's genuine dislike of discrimination against minorities played a role.^[164] However, at the time, French Canadians were de facto discriminated against by Anglophone Quebeckers in the economic sphere: lower-class Anglophones were receiving higher wages for the same work compared to the majority French-speaking population, while upper-class Anglophones dominated the business world and almost all middle-to-high income jobs.^[165] In 1961, even though 30% of the population of Canada was French Canadian, it controlled less than 10% of Canadian companies.^[166]

Despite such favourable treatment, support of the Union Nationale among the English-speaking Quebeckers was limited to newspapers and to business interests. The press switched from being constantly critical of the Quebec government to a conciliatory attitude towards Duplessis.^[167] The business interests appreciated his anti-Communism, fiscal conservatism, opposition to the welfare state, the fight against the trade unions and his opposition to federal centralization.^[24] In rural areas, support among the English-speaking population was also fairly strong but that was more related to an alignment with the interests of rural French Canadians.^[168] However, the Anglophones living on the West Island of Montreal were deeply dissatisfied with the Union Nationale, not only because of its French Canadian nationalism, but also due to its perceived backwardness and resistance to progress. The Anglophone community of Montreal therefore remained one of the few strongholds of the provincial Liberal Party in the 1950s.^[138]

Economy

General description

Unlike in the first years of the Duplessis's premiership, post-war Quebec was operating in a very favourable economic environment caused by the post-war economic expansion. In a large degree, the growth was caused by a boom in natural resources extraction and in the manufacturing sector, which were further enhanced by increases in productivity and efficiency.^[169] Maurice Duplessis was economically a supporter of classical liberalism, particularly of laissez-faire economics. For Duplessis, private investment was generally the only way forward for the province, which he argued was the case as "the government [couldn't] do everything because the moment it [did], liberty [would] disappear".^[170] If there was any role for the provincial government, it was rather to provide infrastructure necessary for the growth of businesses and the regulatory framework to keep the cost of business low.^[171]

There is considerable dispute about whether Quebec grew stronger than its neighbours during this time. Vincent Geloso argues that the post-war era was the age of "The Great Catch-Up" and is attributable to Duplessis's policies. He cites higher growth than in the United States and a relative increase of Quebeckers' incomes compared to Ontario, British Columbia, Canada in general, or the United States.^[172] Reviewers of the book were more skeptical of the claims. Pierre Fortin pointed to the fact that most of the income growth happened immediately after the war and opined that the rest may be attributed to lower population growth, which explains the relatively faster per capita growth of Quebec's incomes.^[173] Emery Herb stated that similar phenomenons were occurring in Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, which had governments with different ideological and economical attitudes from Duplessis's, and suggested that the favourable concentration of wartime industries in Quebec was the reason behind the apparent faster growth.^[149] Michel Sarra-Bournet suggested that the growth in 1947–1957 was slower than the Canadian average and lagged behind Ontario's, which could be attributed to the shifting patterns of industrialization that left Quebec on the periphery of economic activity, then centered on the Great Lakes.^[166] Richard Jones wrote that the Ontario-Quebec gap persisted, but without specifying its dynamics during Duplessis's term.^[174]

Regardless of this debate, the overall performance of Quebec's economy was generally strong. Average real GDP growth of Quebec was positive throughout Duplessis's post-war terms.^[172] Recessions in Quebec were shorter than elsewhere and mostly caused by external factors. A substantial part of the growth during Duplessis's era came from foreign investments in the Quebec economy, propelled by the demand for natural resources that were abundant in the province.^[175] Jean-Luc Migué estimates that industrial growth from 1935 to 1955 was faster than either Canada's or Ontario's and was just above 10% per annum.^[176] Quebec's economy enjoyed almost full employment for a decade, having total unemployment rates of around 3% - only slightly higher than in Canada or Ontario - and any appreciable structural unemployment only started to appear after 1955.^[177][178] While the situation became gradually worse by the end of 1950s as the economy slowed, with 9% unemployment by 1960,^[179] the real growth trend province-wide remained positive. Wages and salaries were increasing slightly faster than in the rest of Canada.^[180]

In the long term, the government's revenues were almost equal to its expenditures and more years saw surpluses than deficits.

Development remained regionally unequal. Most of the investment, as well as population and financial growth, came to the financial capital of Canada of the time, Montreal, which enjoyed a fairly high standard of life, comparable to Ontario. On the other hand, the rest of Quebec was lagging far behind and, in terms of prosperity, was about equal to the much poorer Maritimes.^[183] Duplessis's years saw a rural exodus towards larger cities, particularly to Montreal, where suburbanization had begun. The premier's ideological commitment to the countryside, however, meant that he still enacted policies favourable for these areas, such as government-sponsored programs to install drainage and sewage facilities, the province-wide prohibition on margarine to protect dairy interests, and more cheap rural loans.^[184] These farmers could also reap benefits from electrification provided by the Office of Rural Electrification [fr], a Quebec government organization, as well as new machinery to increase productivity.^[185]

Industry and infrastructure

Duplessis welcomed any investments that came into Quebec, including from American or Anglo-Canadian entrepreneurs, and made few state-based investments in the mining, logging, or manufacturing industry.^[186] The premier actively lobbied Americans to spend their money in the province and regularly held personal negotiations with representatives of big American companies.^[187] The government pursued an approach of low taxation and generally imposed few conditions on the functioning of the natural resources sector, which was among the fastest-growing in the province.^[188] The fact that Duplessis's enforcement of labour laws was to the greatest extent accommodating for the employers, or not enforced if that was to mean benefits for the trade unions, also helped gain favour in these circles.^[189]

Among the important new production capacities built during Duplessis's tenure were the paper plants of the Canadian International Paper Company in Gatineau, another paper facility in Baie-Comeau (now owned by Resolute Forest Products) and Johns Manville's asbestos mines. However, the largest new natural resources project was related to iron ore deposits in central Labrador Peninsula.^[190] As much as 3,900 sq mi (10,000 km²) of territory was granted for exploration to Hollinger North Shore Exploration Co. That company leased the rights to the Iron Ore Company of Canada, which developed the resources, promoted the construction of the city of Schefferville around the mines and built a railway specifically to transport the ore to the shore, at Sept-Îles.^[170] The terms of the lease attracted much controversy, with the opposition decrying them as selling the ore "for a cent per tonne" (un sou la tonne), though scholars are unable to agree if this slogan is factually correct.^{[191][192][193]} The Liberals further despised the fact that the profits went to American and English-Canadian shareholders, rather than to French Canadians.^[170] While proposals were made to create smelting factories on the Côte-Nord, there was no political will to do that in Duplessis's times,^[194] and it is unclear whether Duplessis could actually succeed in ordering local ore processing.^[193]

The only major state investments under Duplessis related to industry were into infrastructure.

While Duplessis was courting big corporations to invest in Quebec, his attitude towards trade unions was far from amicable. Conrad Black writes that Duplessis supported the working class so long as it was not unionized–for Duplessis, unions were unnecessary as labour was already in plentiful supply but capital to develop industries was not.^[199] Jacques Rouillard adds that Duplessis did not oppose unionization per se, but due to his strong attachment to law and order, he resented any confrontations between workers and their employers. His government was the only one at the time in Canada to be actively suppressing trade unions.^[200]

Some worker protections were passed in the first term. For example, the practice where the employers fired employees only to return them to work with a lower salary was banned.^[201] The policy, however, was ineffective, as companies increasingly stopped negotiating with the workers and were bypassing the trade unions while asking for government's intervention during strikes.^[202] This was the case with the Dominion Textile strike in August 1937 and another one in a shipyard in Sorel. Duplessis described the latter dispute as "unfortunate and unjustified"^[12] and ordered employees to return to work before starting negotiations.^[203] Trade unions were disadvantaged: closed shop and union shop arrangements were banned, the government sued unions that it did not recognize and, perhaps most importantly, a law was passed that granted the government the right to unilaterally amend any collective bargaining agreements already in force.^[204]

The anti-union activities further continued during his second term. The Padlock Law, enacted in 1937, was now increasingly used against trade union activists rather than the original target of suspected communists. Also, since 1949, the Worker Relations Commission (CRO) was instructed to deny recognition to any trade union that allowed communists or their sympathisers as members. The CRO itself had a consistent pro-business bias under Duplessis and was actively using its powers to deny recognition to new trade unions and rescind certification to existing organizations, often without justification and as a punishment for the union's excessive activism.^[204] Duplessis also banned unionization and collective bargaining for public sector employees, sabotaged efforts to pass amendments that could prevent employer abuse of the labour laws and allowed municipalities to effectively prohibit soliciting for strike action.^[205]

When strikes did occur, the provincial police would often help employers by escorting strikebreakers to the workplace, forcing their way through strikers' blockades and intimidating the strikers by their massive presence.^[206] Among the most important strikes of the era was the widely publicised Asbestos strike, which Duplessis, as Attorney General, ordered the protesters to be forcibly and violently dispersed.^[207] Even though the strike largely ended in failure for the unions, it is ingrained in the collective memory of Quebeckers as "the finest hour for the organized labour movement", or even as a victory for it, in a large degree thanks to a 1956 publication edited by Pierre Trudeau, future prime minister of Canada. This work depicts the conflict as a struggle between an autocratic and repressive government with a pro-business bias on one side, and workers demanding basic rights on the other. The Asbestos strike is often considered a turning point in the history of Quebec.^[208]

Social services

Duplessis decried the federal government's efforts to expand the

The government itself did not appear to have a coherent social policy, and any intervention it pursued was situational, discretionary and even arbitrary, rather than systematic.[60] Due to the limited capacity of charity, the sick, the unemployed and the poor were often left without any assistance.^[210] As had been done previously, most services were provided by the Catholic Church (both contracted by the government and on charity);^[149] there were few professional social service workers employed by the government.^[213]

Education and culture

Supplemental video (in French)
A speech by Maurice Duplessis about education, Radio-Canada , 1959 (53s)

It cannot be said that Duplessis did not act at all in the social sphere, and this is most evident within the educational domain. However, for ideological reasons, the role of the state was intentionally limited. The government was only there to aid the educational process rather than to implement it. The role of the parent in education was considered the most important of all, while the actual in-school teaching was performed by the Catholic Church using state funds. Cultural development was treated as an extension of education and, in policy considerations, they were considered inseparable from each other. Therefore, it was often a subject of disputes between Duplessis and the federal government as education policy remained a provincial matter.^[214]

The government created the Ministry of Social Welfare and Youth in 1946, in part to prepare the growing baby-boom generation for the industrial needs of post-war Quebec and in part as an assertion of provincial autonomy, though the Provincial Secretariat retained control over most of the educational functions. Expenditures for schools and the youth skyrocketed from $21.4 million in the 1946–47 budget to over $200 million in the budget of 1959–60. The funding prioritized professional education in technical subjects and scholarships to foreign universities, though substantial funds were also poured into art schools, conservatories and in support of crafts. More than 4,000 schools were built under his tenure, mostly those that substituted the one-room schools with more modern buildings, or those in the countryside.^[214] Enrolment increased and in 1956 the school curriculum was reformed to create public secondary schools.^[215]

Still, serious problems remained within education throughout Duplessis's tenure. Teachers' salaries still were very low. The system was complex, disorganized, often unsuited to the challenges of the post-war era and struggling to cope with the ever-increasing stream of baby boomers. School districts, which were reliant on property taxes for funding, were often underfunded and in deep debt.^[215] Crucially, despite the fact that the laws of the time mandated primary school participation, they were weakly enforced by the Duplessis government.^[216] In 1958, 37% of French Canadian students who began primary school never finished it and only 13% finished full secondary education (as opposed to 36% of Protestant, or Anglophone, population).^[215] The problem of inadequate school enrolment was a long-term one, but despite Duplessis's attempts to resolve it with increased funding, the issue only disappeared with the reforms of the 1960s.^[214] Efforts to support the French language or to reach out to other Francophone cultures were rather insignificant.^[214] Low-quality French was so commonly spoken at the time that it became subject of a 1959 editorial by André Laurendeau, which popularized the term "joual",^[217] as well as one of the themes of Les Insolences du Frère Untel.^[218]

Access to education was also different depending on language and was much easier in English than in French. While the Anglophone population (under the Protestant school commission) was generally able to attend university straight after 11 years of public schooling, for the majority Francophone population, the only way to get to a university was through a classical college, which provided only general education in the humanities and neglected technical sciences. Colleges were not free and were not available to women.

Healthcare, just like education, was generally not considered to be a major area of government intervention. The onus to provide healthcare was often on charity and philanthropy, and emphasis was made on the individual to resolve their health issues. There was no government interest in providing universal healthcare coverage.

The government achieved much progress in treating tuberculosis by deploying mobile units to far-flung places, whose employees provided basic hygiene advice to the general population and treated newborn children.^[224] The units proved very efficient, but they remained underfunded.^[225] Another achievement was the reduction of the difference between the life expectancy of Quebeckers and Canadians: while in 1944, men and women in Quebec were expected to live 2.7 and 3.2 fewer years than the Canadian average, respectively, this decreased to 1.2 and 1.5 years in 1959. Most of the reduction happened immediately after World War II.^[226] That said, by the end of Duplessis's rule, the healthcare system remained ineffective and chaotic, and it lagged behind the other provinces.^[227]

The Duplessis years saw a rapid increase of healthcare funding: in 1948–1956, the average rate of healthcare expenditure increases was 23.3% per year.^[225] A portion of the new funds was invested in building new or enlarging existing hospitals. Quebec experienced a dire shortage of hospital beds due to the fact that previous governments neglected investments in this domain, but these massive construction projects only modestly increased hospital bed availability as the province's population was booming. In 1954, the availability still remained the worst among all provinces. Most of the money went to finance an ever-increasing burden set by the Public Charities Act of 1921 (Loi de l'assistance publique), which allowed people considered indigent to receive limited free healthcare.^[q] The subsidies proved insufficient as hospitals could not keep up with the escalating expenses since charity funding, which contributed to 13.3% of the total healthcare expenditure, was drying up. Healthcare workers were overburdened and worked on low salaries.^[230]

Primarily under the second premiership of Duplessis, multiple hospitals run by the Catholic Church deliberately

Notes

References

Books used

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