World War Two

With the onset of another world war in 1939, a new host of human rights issues came to the fore. According to historian Ramsay Cook, the Defence of Canada Regulations “represented the most serious restrictions upon the civil liberties of Canadians since Confederation.” An entire apparatus designed to protect national security was expanding under the pretext of how best to fight the war. Loyalty to the state was paramount. To question the prevailing orthodoxy was to risk becoming the target of police surveillance, losing a government job, being purged from a trade union, or facing deportation proceedings. In the rush to protect the nation from various threats identified by the popular media, RCMP, and political leaders, it did not take long for minorities and controversial groups to become targets.

The Liberal government in World War Two was far more repressive than the Conservative government had been in World War One. King and his cabinet were responsible for censoring 325 newspapers and periodicals in the first years of the war (compared to a total of 184 under Borden). Wartime propaganda was promoted through the National Film Board and the Wartime Information Board. More than thirty political, social, religious and ethnic organizations were banned and internment camps housed approximately 2 423 Canadians during the war. Habeas corpus and many of the rights designed to protect citizens from arbitrary state action were suspended.

Using the War Measures Act, the federal government gave itself extraordinary powers that affected all aspects of Canadians' lives: "[Regulation 21] had been the most contentious issue when the bureaucrats were creating the regulations just before the war, for it gave the minister of justice the power not only to prohibit actions ‘prejudicial to the public safety or the safety of the State’ but also to detain any person engaged in, or suspected of planning to engage in, such activity. This was not, technically, a punishment for a crime, but a detention to prevent possible future crimes against the state. It did not require a trial and conviction in a regular court of law – and civil libertarians therefore sometimes referred to it as the ‘Star Chamber’ approach, a reference to the special court of Charles II which the king had used to punish his critics. Moreover, the authorities were under no obligation to provide the ‘accused’ with specific details of his or her alleged offence, the normal protection of habeas corpus was suspended (for there were to be no appeals to the courts), and over time it became apparent that internees were often held incommunicado, without relatives or friends knowing anything about their fate. In addition, the regulations interfered with property rights and the right of association. The police could search premises without warrants, and the government could seize and confiscate property even if a person had not been sent to trial. Then, in January 1940, Ottawa added another order-in-council (PC 37) which defined a subversive organization as one whose members had spoken, published, or acted in any way prejudicial to the war effort; a judge could declare such an organization illegal, and individuals could be prosecuted for membership or even for defending the principles of such an organization. ... Street level conversations were also inhibited by the enforcement of the DOCR. ... Not only did the DOCR severely limit free speech, but they also limited the right of freedom of association by allowing the banning of certain groups."[Lambertson, Repression and Resistance]

One of the most notable legacies of the war was the forcible relocation of 22 000 men, women and children of Japanese descent from the Pacific coast to the interior.

As Ross Lambertson notes, the national government was not alone is abusing rights during the war:

"The provincial governments also succumbed to the hysteria. The premier of British Columbia, Duff Pattullo, warned CCF members of the Legislative Assembly that to oppose the sending of a Canadian expeditionary force to France was an offence under section 39 of the DOCR. The Manitoba government passed legislation that removed from office any member of the provincial legislature, municipal council, or local school board if that person had been convicted or even detained under the DOCR; one of the major targets of this law was the highly effective Winnipeg city councillor, Jacob Penner, interned for almost two years. In Ontario, meanwhile, Premier Mitchell Hepburn had attacked the government of Mackenzie King for not pursuing the war effort with all possible vigour, and banned a film called March of Time, not because he saw it as subversive but because it was not sufficiently critical of the federal Liberals. However, it was his attorney general, George Conant, who became a hero of the authoritarian right. He demanded that Ottawa take action against what he called the ‘slimy, subversive elements’ that opposed the war, he exhorted mayors, local police, and crown attorneys to do their best in suppressing any manifestations of subversion, and at one point he called for the suspension of the traditional principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

Municipal authorities, too, were often eager to suppress dissent. Toronto Chief Constable Dennis Draper, a traditional nemesis of the radical left, asked the local Police Commission to prohibit public meetings of the allegedly Communist Ukrainian Labor Farmer Temple Association (ULFTA) as well as the local Lithuanian Society. But one of the most extreme cases of the hysteria virus infected the municipality of Hamilton, Ontario. Its board of control demanded legislation ‘which would disfranchise all citizens found to be members of or associated with, any club, group, society or organization, which has objects considered prejudicial to the good government of Canada and the prosecution of the war.’ One of the board members noted that, in his mind at least, the resolution was intended to include not just Communists and Nazis but also the advocates of ‘pacifism, disarmament and brotherly love.’ Fortunately, not even the Ontario government of Hepburn and Conant was willing to go that far, but the city of Toronto did purge itself of any employees suspected of ‘subversive tendencies.’ When a former CCF secretary appealed his treatment, one city councillor demonstrated an appalling lack of logic and compassion by pointing out that ‘if you were in Germany today, you would be in an internment camp or more likely you would have been lined up and shot.’

Sometimes minority rights were lost in a fog of jingoism. In September 1940 a number of Jehovah’s Witness children were sent home from school in Hamilton because they refused to sing the national anthem or salute the flag. (Both practices were seen by members of the sect as a form of heresy, placing allegiance to the state above allegiance to God.) Although the children promised to stand respectfully at attention during the singing of the anthem, they were not permitted to return to classes. Over the course of the next few years, the issue of religious freedom versus patriotic conformity was fought out at the judicial and political level in a number of provinces, and although the Witnesses were finally successful, it was a series of conditional wins, based upon fairly narrow legal technicalities. By the fall of 1940, over 1,500 people had been interned under the DOCR. In retrospect, this was the stuff of Orwellian nightmares. [Lambertson, Repression and Resistance]

Soon after the war, Igor Gouzenko defected from the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, which initiated a series of events that results in one of the worst abuses of civil liberties in Canadian history.