CANADA AND THE COLD WAR
By J.L. Granatstein
To draft or not to draft? That question remained on the minds of military and political leaders following the Second World War
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onscription for overseas military service has been one of the most contentious issues in Canada’s history. In the Great War, Prime Minister Robert Borden’s Military Service Act divided Canadians sharply, prompted riots in Quebec, and saw more than 90 per cent of those called up across the country seek exemptions. Even so, conscripts kept the Canadian Corps up to strength in the last battles of the conflict. In the Second World War, the government of William Lyon Mackenzie King promised there would be no conscription for overseas service, but then took a series of steps toward reversing that promise as the war developed. First there was home-defence conscription, then a plebiscite on releasing the government from its no-conscription promise, then the use of conscripts anywhere in North America, and
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finally in the last months of the war, the overseas dispatch of “zombies,” as the conscripts were derisively called by volunteer soldiers. Conscription actually remained under consideration after the Second World War. Indeed, the first plan for universal military training emerged from the army’s planners in June 1945, even before the war with Japan had ended. Dubbed Plan G, it called for the induction of men 18½ to 19½ years of age for one year of training, with a goal of creating a regular force of some 56,000 and a militia of 177,000. Sixty per cent of Canadians favoured peacetime conscription, according to a 1944 opinion poll, so perhaps the planners believed they had the wind in their sails. But the army had forgotten one key factor. The King government had been re-elected in June 1945, and King relied on Quebec for his support. No government led by him was ever going to support peacetime compulsory
The Gazette/LAC/PA-107910
2017-05-26 11:15 AM
