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Chapter
3
Frank Oliver's appointment as Minister of the Interior and Superintendent General of Indian Affairs on 8 April 1905 heralded significant changes in Canadian immigration policy. Although Oliver (18531933) and Clifford Sifton were both Liberals and newspapermen adept at using the press to publicize their views, they differed markedly in their approach to immigration. Oliver had in fact been one of the sharpest critics of Sifton's policies, at one time denouncing Slavic immigrants as a "millstone" around the necks of western Canadians. Like Sifton, Oliver was a transplanted easterner who had headed west as a young man. Born of Irish and English origins in Peel County, Canada West, in 1853, he left high school to pursue a career in the printing trade. This took him first to Toronto, where he worked for the Toronto Globe, and then to Winnipeg, where he had a stint at the Manitoba Free Press. In 1876, he struck out by ox brigade from Winnipeg to Fort Edmonton, an isolated settlement on the upper reaches of the North Saskatchewan River. Edmonton became Oliver's home and it was here that the future parliamentarian founded the fiery Bulletin, his personal mouthpiece and Alberta's first newspaper. Between 1883 and 1896 Frank Oliver attacked the establishment as an independent Liberal, first in the Northwest Territories Council and then in its successor, the territorial legislature. Elected to the House of Commons in 1896, he became Minister of the Interior in 1905. He was appointed to this portfolio on the recommendation of Sifton himself, who, despite his personal dislike of the prairie pioneer, cited Oliver's "long service and capacity" when he suggested his name for the post. Frank Oliver favoured a vigorous immigration policy, believing that Canada would benefit from a strong flow of immigrants. At the same time, the MP wanted to see the West settled by newcomers who shared the values and aspirations of established Canadians. Addressing the House on Commons on the subject before he joined Wilfrid Laurier's cabinet, he said:
In Oliver's hierarchy of desirable settlers for the West, newcomers from eastern Canada, "our own people," occupied the top rung. British immigrants, who arrived as "ready-made citizens," ranked next, closely followed by Americans. Whether British immigrants came from rural Britain or from Britain's teeming towns and cities was of little consequence to Frank Oliver, who did not share Sifton's prejudice against immigrants from urban centres. Indeed, Oliver preferred Britons from the towns and cities to agriculturalists from central and eastern Europe. Canada could tolerate Britons who were not agriculturalists, but those "stalwart peasants in sheepskin coats" who violated the prevailing social mores were, for Oliver, altogether another matter. No sooner had Frank Oliver become Minister of the Interior than he set about making immigration policy more restrictive. Two Acts capped his legislative program, the first being the Immigration Act of 1906 and the second being the Immigration Act of 1910. Besides defining "an immigrant," this Act barred a broad spectrum of individuals and increased the government's power to deport certain classes of immigrants. It also decreed the amount of "landing money" immigrants needed to have in their possession on arrival and provided for the establishment of controls along the CanadaUnited States border. There had been laws since 1869 prohibiting certain kinds of immigration and since 1889 allowing designated classes of immigrants to be returned whence they came. The 1906 Act differed in degree, significantly increasing the number of categories of prohibited immigrants and officially sanctioning the deportation of undesirable newcomers. The proposed Act inspired considerable debate in the House of Commons, much of it concerning the definition of an immigrant and the provision for a head tax on immigrants: a tax to be paid by each immigrant on being admitted to Canada. Sweeping aside all the technicalities, though, we find that this parliamentary discussion revealed two basic views about the general direction that immigration should take.
Among those who felt that immigration barriers should be raised was the provincial chief of the Conservatives, Frederick Monk, who thought that Canada should emulate the example of the United States and impose a head tax on immigrants. The son of an English Canadian father and a French Canadian mother, but a man more French than English in outlook, Monk said:
By contrast, W.M. German, the Liberal member from Welland, lobbied for an open-door policy:
Not surprisingly, German's stance on immigration found favour with Canadian industrialists, who lobbied for a continuous stream of immigrants willing to work long hours for low pay. The ebullient Sir William Van Horne, archetypal capitalist and Canadian Pacific Railway president (18881899) was one such industrialist. Voicing chagrin over the new direction taken by Canadian immigration policy, Sir William stated bluntly:
The second milestone in restrictive immigration legislation was reached in 1910. The Immigration Act of 1910, unlike the 1906 Act, conferred on the Cabinet the authority to exclude "immigrants belonging to any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada." The Act also strengthened the government's power to deport individuals, such as anarchists, on the grounds of political and moral instability. Although its exclusionary provisions were drastic and the discretionary powers it conferred on the Cabinet virtually unlimited, the Act of 1910 did not provoke a heated and prolonged debate in the House. While the Act inspired more discussion (some of the discussion focussed on the conspicuous failure of the government to address the immigration needs of the Maritime provinces) than had its predecessor, there was no major disagreement with its principles. As William Scott, Superintendent of Immigration from 1908 to 1924, later observed,
Following passage of the Act in 1910, a $500 head tax was imposed on immigrants of Asiatic origin, a formidable sum for those days when it is realized that the average production worker in Canadian manufacturing took home only $417 in annual wages in 1910. An Order in Council in the same year levied a tax on all immigrants, the figure varying according to the season of the year. This last tax ignited a storm of protest in Great Britain because it required that each immigrant, male or female, have $25 in addition to the ticket or funds that he or she would need in order to travel to a predetermined destination in Canada.
When details of the government's secret agreement with the North Atlantic Trading Company were revealed in Parliament in 1905 (a payment to the company for each agriculturalist it directed to Canada: see chapter 2), the Conservatives bitterly condemned the scheme. The opposition's attack and his own desire to trim the number of newcomers from continental Europe persuaded Frank Oliver to cancel the agreement the following year. Although he was prepared to be less selective about British immigration, the minister wanted to move in the opposite direction where continental European immigration was concerned. In the future, if "Sifton's pets" wanted to emigrate to Canada, they would have to do so on their own initiative. Organized labour, of course, welcomed this attempt to curb immigration from southern, central, and eastern Europe. Fearing the impact of surplus workers on unionization and Canadian wage levels, the labour movement had routinely denounced contract labour schemes and government-assisted immigration. There was more involved, however, than the desire to protect jobs. In these years, workers of British descent harboured a deep dislike of newcomers from eastern, central, and southern Europe, a dislike that they shared with a majority of middle-class Canadians. This hostility was no more graphically expressed than in the pages of the Toronto Tribune, a trade-union publication of the day. In 1906, the paper reacted to the arrival of thousands of central and southern Europeans that year with a stinging observation: "The commonest London loafer has more decency and instincts of citizenship than the Sicilian, Neapolitan, Croat or Magyar." Echoes of these sentiments would later find expression in the fulminations of labour leader S.R. Berry, who in 1910 protested to Frank Oliver about "the sudden influx of immigrants whose habits of life and moral characteristics are repugnant to Canadian ideals." Although the North Atlantic Trading Company contract was consigned to the garbage heap of history in 1906, Oliver continued to apply Sifton's policy of paying booking agents to recruit suitable immigrants. In fact, he not only retained the policy, but extended it. Less than four months after the agreement was cancelled, the Department of the Interior began to pay selected European booking agents a bonus for farmers, gardeners, carters, railway surfacemen, navvies, and miners. In the wake of the cancellation of the North Atlantic Trading Company contract, Frank Oliver took steps to bolster British immigration. Canada, he claimed, had to reinforce its British heritage if it was to become one of the world's great civilizations. Accordingly, the minister raised the bonus paid to British booking agents who sold tickets to British farmers, farm labourers, and domestics, and had new immigration offices opened in Exeter, York, and Aberdeen. The following year, 1907, the Immigration Branch adopted an even more aggressive approach to immigrant recruitment, appointing 100 government agents and paying each one a two-dollar bonus for every British agricultural labourer recruited and placed in Ontario or Quebec. Immigration from the British Isles soared from 86,796 in the fiscal year ended 31 March 1906 to 142,622 in the fiscal year ended 31 March 1914. Although there is no conclusive evidence, one can probably attribute part of this increase to the bonuses awarded British shipping and Canadian government agents. The immigration figures disclose, for instance, that while the United States received over four times as many British immigrants as did Canada in 19001, the United States admitted approximately 7,000 fewer immigrants than did the Dominion in 19067.
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