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J.L. Granatstein
was clearly to the great general strike in Winnipeg, and the Minister
referred at one point to a letter he had received from that city “urging
that the Government should have a permanent force that can deal
with the situation there.”
The Opposition response was not enthusiastic. Pius Michaud, a
Liberal from New Brunswick, said simply that “I do not see that the
country should be asked to pay for a larger force than that which we
had before the war.”
12
Andrew McMaster, another Liberal from Brome,
Quebec, was more explicit and more eloquent. The requested increase,
he said, “is due not to apprehension of outside danger but to the fear
of domestic trouble. ... I say to this House that force is no remedy; that
it is not necessary that the Canadian people should be overawed by
an increase of 100 percent in our military establishment.” Surely the
government could trust the people of Canada? “Trust the people; the
heart of the Canadian people is as sound as our No. 1 Hard Manitoba
wheat.”
13
To the Minister’s defence—in a manner of speaking—came
the Radical M.P. for Springfield, Manitoba, R.L. Richardson. Richard-
son had talked with senior officers in Winnipeg during the late dis-
turbances, he said, and he had been informed that demobilized men
did not want to join the militia to keep order. The returned men “did
not manifest any willingness to organize again,—they had been de-
mobilized, were sick of the job, and did not wish to participate in mil-
itary service again immediately.” The only source of recruits had been
businessmen, Richardson said. The defence of their businesses had
produced a patriotic fervour that apparently the war had not, although
Richardson did not draw that conclusion. The M.P. did note, however,
that there were dangers loose in Canada:
Hon. Members should bear in mind the heterogeneous nature of
the population in this far western country. ... Hundreds of thou-
sands of these people do not understand our constitution, many
thousands of them are not even familiar with our language; and
until they are assimilated with our own people it would be wise
to have a very considerable permanent force.
14
W.F.Cockshutt, the wealthy plowmanufacturer who represented the
Unionist interest in Brantford, Ontario, gave the hard-pressed General
Mewburn still more assistance of a kind when he said that a force of
25,000 would not have been too much. “Ten thousand men is the very
minimum for a permanent force in this country.” Causes of unrest in
Canada would not be increased “by having a kind of respectable police
force. Even Toronto ‘the good’ has never been able to abolish its police
force, and I do not believe it will in our time.”
15
Despite theassistance
