History 2201E Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Winnipeg Free Press, Canadian Citizenship Act 1946, United Nations Charter
2 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
March 6, 2018
Postwar Change Part I: Canada’s Entry into the “Age of Rights”
The chancing concept of democracy
- New theories about race
o Increasingly impossible to justify the inclusion of racial minorities from full
participation in political life
o The impact of WWII
▪ Helped to slowly change Canadian issues
▪ Discrimination based on race associated as something anti-democratic
• What Nazi Germany had done during the holocaust
• Reflecting on their actions in the home front
o Moving away from majoritarian democracy
▪ It is the will of the people to pass certain policies
▪ Canada a rights democracy, not majoritarian
▪ Each individual had inalienable rights to be respected
o Out with ‘British liberties’, in with ‘human rights’
▪ Canada becoming sincere about racial equality
▪ British liberties in the 1940s: formal, legal equality of the rule of law
• Everyone is equal before the law
• Not true, Anglo-Saxon superiority existed
- Quote by Vincent Massey
Changes on paper (how we got to human rights)
- Atlantic Charter (1941)
o Roosevelt and Churchill
o War declaration on support of rights
o Major powers attesting that human rights and equality are important
- United Nations Charter (1945)
o Everyone entitled to basic rights because they are human beings, not about being
citizens
- Canadian Citizenship Act, 1946
o Respect of human rights for all without respect to race, language, sex or religion
o All Canadians should share equally, no distinctions can be made
▪ A canadian is a canadian
Universality: everyone should be accorded opportunity, regardless of who you are, regardless of
background
- As a result of egalitarian and equality; looked at our society and the big problems
Names: President Roosevelt; Prime Minister Winston Churchill
The emerging human rights community
- A response to the Great Depression and WW2
o Focused attention of different canadians
o Fostered creation of organizations
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o CCJC, 1946: arguing against expatriation of japanese canadians, supported by
human rights committee, appealed to Canadian public
▪ Was able to verturn it but before 6000 canadians were sent to Japan
o CRCIA: act in 1923
- Compromised if: minority ethnic (Chinese, Japanese, black, Jewish) and religious groups;
outside interests; labour and trade unions (during interwar, WW1 & WW2, labour was
supressed); respectable Canadians (those who support egalitarian rights, upper middle
class or elite professionals) ; social gospel/radical Christianity(belief in creating heaven
on earth, largely protestant movement); the new reform elite (necessary for them to make
a difference in society, people in Canadian society with liberal beliefs); liberal and liberal
press journals – had slogans (Vancouver Sun, Winnipeg Free Press - freedom of trade,
liberty of religion, equality of civil rights - , Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen)
Names and terms: CCJC, CRCIA, CCL, LSR, Fellowship of Reconciliation; Treaty of
Westminster (1931); ACLU
The State of the ‘Rights’ Community in 1945
- No national civil liberties organization yet
o Organized around specific issues
- Welfare state a new development
o Therefore notion that state is responsible for citizens and basic human rights was
becoming developed in the minds of Canadians
▪ But not entrenched
- No organizing principle (e.g. bill of rights)
o Looked south to U.S.
▪ Had the ability to appeal to the Bill of rights
o No law to indicate who is equal or unequal
- Internecine political struggles
o Provinces govern over certain civil rights
o Rights culture varies from province to province
- Lack of resources
o Goes back that we have no organizing principle or nation civil liberties
o Today, federal gov’t support civil right and human rights through grants
▪ Not remotely around in the 1940s
▪ Qould have had to fundraise yourself
- ‘human rights’ an ambiguous concept in 1945
o How uch liverty does gov’t has to sacrifice for the sake of equality
o Redistribtuon of social benefits and wealth
▪ Would have to happen to ensure everyone is treated equally
Human Rights Case Studies
CRCIA
- The Membership: prominent Canadians, Chinese, and non-Chinese, the ‘usual suspect’
support from the media, CCF, etc.
o Most male
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