CANADIAN LEADERSHIP.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 176, 26 June 1937, Page 16

CANADIAN LEADERSHIP.

RIFT WITH PRIME MINISTER

While Canada’s Prime Minister, Mr Mackenzie King, is in London at the Imperial Conference, his hold on the leadership is very much disturbed by the insurrection of two leading Liberal provincial Premiers of the Dominion, says a Vancouver report dated June 11. In a calculated radio announcement, Mr Ml. Hepburn, Premier of Ontario, said : “I am no longer supporting Mr Mackenzie King or his Government and I want a.ll the world to know.” Then he launched into praise for Mr Maurice Duplessis, Quebec’s young Nationalist Premier, in his recent open defiance of the Prime Minister. It is admitted that by joining forces these two politicians may cause severe embarrassment to the Federal authori-

ties. Their position is that Quebec and Ontario, populous a.nd wealthy, have been contributing 75 per cent, of the revenue of all Canada, while the Central Government, for reasons more political than economic, has been spending huge sums trying to retrieve the starving populations of Saskatchewan and Alberta from crop losses during the lean wheat years. The immediate cause of Mr Hepburn’s upheaval is the failure of Mr Mackenzie King to give him support in his endeavour to expel the Lewis Labour forces when they recently iuvaded the Canadian motor car plants. Just before Mr Mackenzie King left for London, Mr Duplessis engaged him in a violent altercation. The Federal Government was making considerable public works relief grants in Quebec, and claimed the right to supervise. the Provincial Government’s expenditure of these funds. Mr Duplessis hotly repudiated this right, and some Quebec Nationalist leaders reached the point where they were discussing the secession of the Province of Quebec from the rest ol Canada.