New Deal Cancelled

The supreme court of the British Commonwealth of Nations is in London and is called the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The entire Privy Council consists of some 300 British statesmen in all by parts their of the sovereign globe who with the have rank been of "P. C." honored (Privy Councilor). Thus there is a broad Commonwealth flavor about the Judicial Committee. It smacks faintly of Union Jacks on which the sun never sets, and yet is definitely Mother Country. Last week in an historic session the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council held to be null and void the Dominion of Canada's legislative measures for unemployment insurance, minimum wages, limitation of working hours and regulation of marketing: the "Canadian New Deal." These measures were originally introduced by Canada's unpopular Old Dealer Richard Bedford Bennett in his vain effort to escape disaster at the polls by hastily copying New Deal notions from Washington (TIME, June 29 et ante).

Victor of the 1935 election was Canada's present Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King who has beat about a good many New Deal bushes, doing little and talking loudly about what he will do for the splendid people of the Dominion of Canada. According to himself, Prime Minister King has been willing to do every good thing the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council should decide was "constitutional" under the British North America Act, which is the Constitution of the Dominion. Last week it did not break his heart that in London nearly the whole New Deal was voided.

Typical was the cold shoulder given to Canadian unemployment insurance last week in these decisive words of the Privy Council: "Assuming the Dominion has collected a fund through taxation, it by no means follows that any legislation disposing of it is necessarily within Dominion competence."

In general, the London decisions took from the Canadian Federal Government and wished onto the provincial governments of the Dominion many a charge and responsibility so heavy that Prime Minister King will have to find new legislative means of having the Dominion bear them anyhow. In Ottawa the Privy Council decisions were called of "utmost importance," confirming as they did the Canadian Supreme Court which gave Canada's "New Deal" a tentative scrapping last spring (TIME, June 29). As was then stressed, Canada's unconstitutional NPMA (Natural Products Marketing Act) was similar but less inclusive than the unconstitutional NRA south of the border; but Canada's unconstitutional ESIA (Employment & Social Insurance Act) was not so much an imitation of Washington's Social Security as of the (in England) perfectly constitutional "Dole." The Canadian Supreme Court last summer and the Privy Council last week both held constitutional and valid the FCAA (Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act). The uncertain character was shown by such cautious references last week as that of the Montreal Star which said it "provided a means by which a farmer and his creditors might be brought together for a settlement of debts along bankruptcy lines but without actual recourse to the Bankruptcy Court."

In short, Canadian statesmen have never yet grappled hard with New Deal actualities, as did President Roosevelt, his Johnsons, Wallaces, Tugwells and Ickeses--partly because it was an Old Dealer who dealt their New Deal, partly because they have been waiting for the Privy Council to tell them where they stood.

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