WI: 1911 trade reciprocity treaty between the U.S. and Canada is ratified?
- Thread starter Wendell
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You could potentially butterfly away the Conscription Crisis, which was caused by the policies of the Conservative government elected in 1911, which would affect the future of Quebec's relationship with the rest of Canada.
Western Canada would be developed a lot faster. Central Canadian industry would not be able to compete with American firms. Canada's move towards America's orbit would be accelerated and this may lead to an earlier Statute of Westminster.
In order to ratify the Reciprocity Treaty, you need to keep Wilfred Laurier's Liberal government alive in Canada. This is quite easy to do, as Laurier called the 1911 election as an early election, with two years left in his mandate. The reason he called the election early was to make it a referendum on Reciprocity, as his advisers had told him that if he ran on free trade he could win an easy majority. However, his advisers were all pro-Reciprocity political insiders, who were evidently not that clued in on the public's attitudes at the time.
If Laurier doesn't call an early election for whatever reason, he would pass Reciprocity (and his government would last until at least 1913).
If Laurier doesn't call an early election for whatever reason, he would pass Reciprocity (and his government would last until at least 1913).
Hmmm. What month in 1913? Even if the treaty turns out unpopular, and results in a Liberal defeat in the 1913 elections, a slim enough Conservative majority might push any major repeal/reform onto a slow track. This could push any substantive action into mid-1914...when everything goes silly-bugger. It would be interesting to see any treaty debates against this background.
With the maximum length of a term in Canada being five years at the time, I believe the very latest an election could've been called for would be October 26, 1913.
So, once a Tory government is conceivably seated, the war is coming a knocking, and with it, the potential for the OTL riots preoccupying the government and further hindering its ability to revise the treaty. I wonder what ratifying this might mean for the 1912 election in the United States.
When the Conservatives were elected in Canada in 1911, it was a big hit for President William Taft in the United States. Taft blamed the Democrats for causing fears of American annexation (Speaker of the House Champ Clark, a Democrat, infamously supported Reciprocity as a means of eventually annexing Canada), while the Democrats blamed Taft for not moving fast enough to get it through Congress to put pressure on the Canadian parliament (Taft had to convince the Republican protectionist old guard to support the treaty).
While in 1911 many newspapers were reporting that the failure of Reciprocity would be the big campaign issue of 1912, it turned out to be rather inconsequential. However, with the boost in prestige in passing Reciprocity, Champ Clark may be able to get the Democratic nomination rather than Woodrow Wilson. While Clark had a similar progressive agenda to Wilson, he was opposed to American entry into the First World War and the creation of the Federal Reserve, and supported amending the Constitution so that the president would serve one six-year term.
Now that's a TL I want to see: how a free trade treaty with Canada stifled the Fed in its cradle, kept the Yanks out of Europe and changed the Presidency forever.....
On the Canadian side, with Reciprocity being seen as a fait accompli, there is a possibility (though an unlikely possibility) of the Liberals winning again in 1913. If the Liberals do win and Laurier stays on as Prime Minister, there would likely be a caucus mutiny over Laurier's refusal to implement conscription, with someone like Minister of Finance William Stevens Fielding taking over as Liberal leader and Prime Minister. Fielding's credentials as the chief negotiator of Reciprocity and a staunch supporter of conscription and the war effort would make him the seemingly ideal leader of a Unionist grand coalition. However, unlike Canada's Unionst government IOTL, the Conservatives would be playing second fiddle, and would have been out of power for twenty-two years by the time of the scheduled election of October 1918, about a month before the war ends.
The next question naturally follows: would Robert Borden stand as the Conservative leader for 1918? Historically, he remained Prime Minister until 1920, but he might be inclined to retire sooner if he's going to have to theoretically govern until 1923. His historical successor, Arthur Meighen, would be out his strongest campaign position of returning Canada to how it was before the war, since, ITTL, Canada was Liberal before the war. The anti-Reciprocity Liberal-turned-Conservative William Thomas White is an option, but he wasn't interested in being Prime Minister. That leaves the Conservatives with scant few options, especially since they don't have the fresh blood of pro-conscription Liberals that joined up IOTL. Minister of Justice Charles Doherty, maybe? If they wanted to go full Red Scare, then Minister of Labour Gideon Robertson is an option. If they were really desperate, they could go with the scandal-prone imperialist (and OTL Acting Prime Minister) George Eulas Foster.
All of those possibilities are interesting. Thank you. What consequences do you see for Quebec in this timeline?
We might get someone who is president for two days if Champ Clark gets two terms, as he died two days before he would have left office historically, March 2, 1921.
If I were to hazard a guess, the best case scenario would be fairly similar to OTL, with Laurier splitting off to form his own Liberal Party and riots and protests being dispersed by the wartime government. If things get nastier, the Quebecois could feel betrayed enough by the Liberal Party to abandon them completely. If that's the case, and the Unionist government holds without a Liberal splinter faction, then Henry Bourassa might become the Opposition Leader and form some sort of 'National Party.' It would likely reflect Bourassa's personal values: a classical liberal party with tendencies of anti-imperialism, Anglophone-Francophone bi-culturalism, moral reformism, ultramontanism, and separation of church and state. In other words, a small government that focuses on French and English cultural protections, with separate private institutions handling most social ills.
The third only stopped because Wilson explicitly told some of his close allies in the House of Representatives to torpedo it, because he disliked the 6-year term. The Senate actually passed a resolution for the amendment. It's actually more likely than keeping the Yanks out of Europe (Wilson was originally anti-war, after all!). Clark opposed the Federal Reserve in the form it was enacted; there were several competing variants. There almost certainly would have been some kind of central bank enacted.
But by the same token of oddball proposals, how would Laurier staying in have affected the Canadian Navy? Obviously, Borden's Naval Aid bill wouldn't have gotten even less farther than it did OTL; would Laurier have managed to get any additional vessels by 1914?
The Canadian Navy probably would've been larger under Laurier than under Borden's slashing budget cuts IOTL, but not that much larger; he was still beholden to the anti-imperialist faction of Francophones and Quebec MPs in the Liberal Party. The Royal Navy suggested Canada build four or five light cruisers and six destroyers. Laurier probably would've been content to stop there, at least until the start of the First World War, when he would've had to invest in anti-submarine picket ships.