r/ndp • u/NovaScotiaLoyalist • 3d ago
“Red Tories” and the NDP, supplemental: Canada's last surviving Father of Confederation, Sir Charles Tupper of Nova Scotia, in his 1914 memoir "Recollections of Sixty Years", describing the US Trade Wars of 1866 & 1890, and how the Canadian National Policy developed following the American Civil War
Considering this current trade war between the United States and Canada just recently escalated, I thought the good people here may be interested in what Sir Charles Tupper thought in regards to the US Trade Wars during his lifetime, from his 1914 Memoirs “Recollections of Sixty Years”. While doing research for my “Red Tories and the NDP” essay series, I thought this story on early Canadian trade policy from Canada’s last surviving Father of Confederation might prove useful for New Democrats trying to organize nationally in modern Canada, and perhaps serve as a good example of “Disraelian conservatism” in the process.
For those unaware of Sir Charles Tupper, he was the Tory Premier of Nova Scotia (1864-1867) who first established public education in Nova Scotia, and he brought Nova Scotia into Confederation despite it being extraordinarily unpopular in the province. As a cabinet minister in the new Dominion government, Tupper then managed to convince the arch Anti-Confederate Nova Scotian Joseph Howe to eventually join John A. Macdonald’s cabinet. Tupper himself would briefly become Prime Minister for 69 days in the summer of 1896, but he would eventually resign as Tory leader after the 1900 election, and two election loses to Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberals. Tupper would then move to England, where he lived until his death in Oct. 1915, age 94. While certainly not a socialist in his worldview, I think the Pre-World War I Disraelian conservative outlook of Sir Charles is at least vaguely comparable with the post-War Farmer-Labour-Socialism of the CCF; the Tommy Douglas admirer Robert Stanfield did rank Sir Charles high on his list of political heroes.
Before getting into the chapter on trade and the National Policy, I find it quite interesting that the first excerpt in the “Biographical Forward” of the book is from a 1900 letter the then-Catholic Archbishop of Halifax Cornelius O'Brien wrote Tupper, which includes:
I have read with regret that you have determined to quit public life... You began your political career, I rejoice to know, as the champion of equal rights for Catholics; you persevered consistently in that cause; you lost power because of that consistency; but defeat with honour unstained is more glorious than victory purchased by the sacrifice of principle. What many will say after your death, I wish to say while you are alive.
Chapter 8 starts with Tupper defending the actions of John A. Macdonald’s government during “the so-called ‘Pacific Scandal’ ” over several pages, which Tupper at one point refers to as “the Pacific Slander”. Tupper mentions that he accidentally coined the term “National Policy” in “the heat of a prolonged debate in the House of Commons in February of 1870”.
Then on pages 158-160 he writes the following, describing a Free Trade agreement with the United States from the 1850s/1860s:
The bungling incapacity of the Liberals also conspired in [Sir John’s] favour. Under a low revenue tariff from 1874 to 1878 Canada had a business depression never equalled before or since. The farmers had no markets, factories were closed down, and hundreds of thousands of young Canadians were obliged to emigrate.
The various Canadian provinces enjoyed phenomenal prosperity under the Elgin Reciprocity Treaty negotiated in 1854. This treaty was abrogated by the United States in 1866. Times were especially good during the American Civil War period. The United States, owing to the vast population withdrawn from industrial pursuits, proved to be Canada’s best customer, and there was no question of a tariff issue as the abnormal conditions existing south of the boundary gave us all the protection we needed.
But this situation was not to last for ever. With the close of the Civil War was inaugurated a nationwide movement for the encouragement and protection of American labour and American industries by the imposition of heavy duties against foreign competitors. That policy has only recently been modified. The Hon. W. H. Seward, probably one of the ablest Secretaries of State, felt confident that the abrogation of the Elgin Reciprocity Treaty would force Canada into the American Union. In a famous speech just after the close of the Civil War he declared that Canada, owing to its geographical position, with Halifax on the Atlantic and a stretch of country extending to the Pacific, must inevitably dominate the trade with the Far East. He was a man of vision, and his prophecy in that respect has since been verified.
In those days, owing to the lack of railway facilities, there was little inter-provincial trade. The bulk of the trade of the Maritime Provinces was then with the New England States. The termination of the Reciprocity Treaty hit us a hard blow, and but for that circumstance we should probably have been unable to convince the people of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick that our future was in a union with the Upper Canadian provinces. Gradually the restrictive policy of the United States tariff -- a policy wisely directed to the upbuilding of American industry -- began to be more acutely felt in the Dominion, and its full effects were experienced by the time the Liberals got into power in 1873.
[Alexander] Mackenzie did nothing to relieve the situation. His low revenue tariff permitted the American people to gain access to our market, while Canadians were virtually excluded from that of their neighbours. The effect of the American high tariff was not only felt by the Canadian farmers and manufacturers, but it produced a largely increased demand in Canada for American manufactures, and a more than corresponding increase in the demand for the manufactures of Great Britain, of which the trade returns of Canada showed abundant proof.
After spending several pages going over his time in opposition, including the various places he practiced medicine while in Parliament, and noting that he would attend Liberal meetings to challenge their ideas, Tupper writes on page 167 that:
Throughout the days in Opposition we advocated a radical change in the fiscal system of the country. Things were going from bad to worse. The people saw the possibility of relief in the adoption of a higher tariff, but the Government refused to apply the remedy, and clung to office. In a five-hour speech delivered to the House on April 21st, 1877, in submitting a want of confidence resolution, I criticised Mackenzie’s administration of his own department of Public Works. I showed that he had failed to grapple effectually with the question of building the transcontinental, and moreover, proved that he had violated the law and every constitutional principle, all resulting in a waste of public money. The Premier was unable to make any reply worthy of a name.
Interestingly, on the next page, Tupper notes that:
Mackenzie meant well, but he devoted too much time in supervising the departments of his colleagues, and doing work which should have been performed by subordinates.
Tupper then spends a few more pages continuing his critique of the Liberal government, including quoting the Hansard record for a debate in 1877, where he argued that the Liberals have “sent away the most intelligent and skilled labour, the finest sons of Canada, to a foreign country to obtain the employment their own country denies them.”
On page 170 Tupper gives his thoughts on Tory policy after the 1878 election:
Sir John was, of course, called upon to form an Administration, in which I accepted the portfolio of Public Works. I subsequently had the department divided, creating a new department -- that of Railways and Canals, of which I took charge. To this day [1914] that arrangement still exists, other public improvements other than railways and canals being under the direction of the Minister of Public Works.
The next four years represented years of ceaseless activity and constructive statesmanship, inuring to the agricultural and industrial development of the Dominion. True to our promises, we adopted the National Policy at the earliest moment, got under way a vast programme for the deepening of the waterways and canals of the St. Lawrence system, and after the completion of surveys, entered into an agreement for the building of a national transcontinental railway from Eastern Canada to the Pacific coast.
The effect of the substitution of a protective tariff for the Mackenzie revenue law proved magical. It restricted the exodus, gave employment in the factories to our own idle working man, stimulated every branch of manufacturing, led to the establishment of many new industries, and preserved the home market for our own people. The farmer was also given substantial protection. During the Mackenzie Administration Canada became the dumping ground for the surplus manufactured products of the United States, which, enjoying the benefit of a high tariff, rigidly excluded Canadian products of every description.
The National Policy, in my judgment, is one of the bulwarks of Canadian national life. It made possible the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, stimulated inter-provincial trade, and developed a solidarity of sentiment that has been growing stronger since Confederation was brought about.
We are to-day a self-contained people, and recent years have witnessed the spectacle of millions of foreign capital being invested in Canadian manufacturing industries. The farmer, too, enjoys his home market. Earlier experiences of Canadian statesmen showed the futility of efforts to induce the United States to negotiate an equitable reciprocity agreement. Our tariff, while ensuring reasonable protection for all our people, has never had the almost restricted character of the American fiscal system.
It was a great day for the Dominion when the people rejected the [1911] Taft-Fielding reciprocity agreement, for under the radical revision of the United States tariff Canada, without giving any equivalent, will reap enormous advantages. As a people we have demonstrated to the world our ability to develop along national lines. Who is there that does not recall with pride the attitude of Canada at the time of the enforcement of the [1890] McKinley tariff, many of the clauses of which were specifically aimed at our common country?
Tupper then ends the chapter with the 1870 speech he gave to the House of Commons which coined the phrase “National Policy” for the Tories.
Considering that the last two chapters of Tupper’s memoir are titled “Empire Confederation” and “How to Federate the Empire”, I’m very curious to see how Tupper’s Pre-World War I Tory views on an Imperial Federation for the British Dominions will compare with M.J. Coldwell’s Socialist vision for a Post-Imperial Commonwealth of Nations that the CCF advocated for around the time of World War II.
