the Secretary of State for External Affairs and communicated to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations under the provisions which permit a federal country to inform the League of “action taken" in lieu of ratification. Even if all the provinces had legislation conforming to a given decision, it might prove impossible for the federal government to ratify the convention for them. Dr. Riddell has indicated that the provinces would have to agree with the Dominion not to change the law while the convention was in force, and "this would appear to amount to a conventional derogation from a fundamental law . . . and as such would be void "; and further that it is highly improbable that conventions within provincial jurisdiction and accepted by the provinces can be held as obligations within the Dominion's treaty-making power.1

This legal situation makes it difficult for Canada to legislate from a national viewpoint. The will of a majority of the population in a majority of the provinces, favoring the enactment of legislation embodying certain of the decisions of the International Labor Organization may be frustrated while a minority in one or two provinces refuse to pass such legislation and thereby place themselves at a competitive advantage. This problem of the tardy minority may have been anticipated at Confederation for the British North America Act in section 94 authorizes the Dominion Parliament “to make provision for the uniformity of all or any of the laws relative to property and civil rights." But it was stated that any act for this purpose should not become effective in any province until enacted as a provincial statute by its legislature.

The method of conference may be used to promote uniformity and something has been done in this direction. On

1 W. A. Riddell, “Effective Participation of Canada in the International Labour Organization," Social Welfare, March, 1925, p. 114.

the recommendation of the Council of the Canadian Bar Association the provincial governments appointed commissioners, who met in 1918 in interprovincial conference and annually since that year for the promotion of uniformity in legislation. The commissioners have endeavored to harmonize the laws on workmen's compensation and mechanics' liens.' The Association of Workmen's Compensation Boards of Canada, which holds annual meetings, has as one of its main objects greater uniformity in the various workmen's compensation acts.

The Royal Commission on Industrial Relations, appointed in April, 1919, recommended the calling of a National Industrial Conference and suggested, among the subjects for consideration, unification and coordination of Dominion and provincial labor laws. One of the resolutions of the Conference, which met in September, 1919, stressed the advantages of uniformity and suggested that the matter should be referred to a commission of which the Dominion and each of the provinces should appoint three members, representing respectively the government, employers and employees. The commission was appointed and its report of May, 1920, proposed a number of standard provisions for laws on workmen's compensation, minimum wages for women and girls, industrial disputes and for legislation regulating labor conditions in factories and mines.

The Employment Service Council is an example of conference. This body, representing the Dominion and provincial governments and various organizations of employers and employees, is charged with the duty of advising the Minister of Labor in the administration of the Employment Offices Coordination Act. Its annual meetings have promoted a high degree of uniformity in the operation of public employment offices and a considerable measure of

1Labour Gazette, vol. xxii, p. 844.

agreement on a policy of abolishing fee-charging employment agencies.

In 1922 and 1923 conferences of representatives of the Dominion and the provinces were held in Ottawa to consider decisions of the International Labor Organization and reached agreement on several resolutions recommending action to the competent authorities on various conventions. While these conferences give promise of effecting a larger uniformity in labor legislation the Dominion could go further. It should be possible in these annual meetings to agree on model laws embodying not only the decisions of the International Labor Organization but provisions adapted to Canada's peculiar requirements. The Dominion could then use its undisputed powers to apply these proposals to its own works and undertakings and so establish standards to which provincial legislation would tend to conform. The United States Congress passed in 1916 a new accident compensation law for its employees, which in many respects is a model for the state legislatures. The Dominion law1 merely applies to each federal employee the legislation of the province in which he resides, with the result that federal civil servants suffering the same disability but living on opposite sides of the line dividing Ontario and Quebec receive widely differing sums in compensation. On some subjects, clearly within provincial jurisdiction, it might be possible by the method of subventions to win adherence to a national program as has already been done with regard to road-building, housing, agricultural education, vocational education and employment offices. This method might be used in immigration, for example, or indeed in any other field of labor legislation involving the provinces in administrative expense.

Publication of the results of research in the various fields of labor legislation would also promote uniformity, and the

1 1 1918, c. 15, as amended by 1919, c. 14, s. I.

Department of Labor has made no small contribution in this regard through the Labour Gazette, the annual and quinquennial reports on the labor laws of Canada and the special enquiries of the Department. Doubtless Canada's new part in promoting the internationalization of labor legislation will lead to expansion of this work.

CHAPTER III

THE CANADIAN LABOR MOVEMENT AND LABOR

LEGISLATION

"The sacredness of human personality is more important than all other considerations. Without infinite regard for individual life, however obscure or deformed, expressions of social values are meaningless. Estimates of national power, pride in industrial growth, forecasts of world expansion-any and all of these which reckon material gains apart from the human losses they involve, mistake for Life itself the coarse texture of but a part of the garment of Life." (Industry and Humanity, W. L. Mackenzie King.)

It was not until the early seventies that the trade unions of Canada exerted any important influence in legislation. There were organizations of printers, shoemakers, stonecutters and coopers in Toronto, Montreal and Quebec as early as the thirties and forties and in the fifties and sixties there were shipwrights and caulkers at Kingston, Victoria and Halifax, sailmakers at Quebec and longshoremen at St. John. The shoemakers' union, the Knights of St. Crispin, which had a rapid growth in the United States during the Civil War, organized a number of lodges in Canada in the years 1867-70 in such places as Montreal, Toronto, St. Johns, Quebec, Guelph, Hamilton and Windsor. But the organization lost ground as a result of the cessation of government orders and economic depression after the war and the Canadian lodges were disbanded. There were various other local labor organizations but in the pre-Confederation

1 R. H. Coats, "The Labour Movement in Canada," Canada and Its Provinces, vol. ix, pp. 292-3.

2

* Don D. Lescohier, The Knights of St. Crispin, p. 7.