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Tom Monto

Referendums and Prohibition

The story of temperance and moral reform is also the story of referendums. When governments refused to bring in Prohibition, moral reformers pushed for referendums to allow the people to choose, over the heads of the politicians. Sometimes referendum shifted governments to do something. Other times, if the government was dead set against prohibition, the government still refused to do anything. Dead set is right - many of those recalcitrant governments were turfed out in the next elections, replaced by governments more amenable to listening to the people.


There were strong temperance feeling in Canada in the 1890s.


Such was their strength in Ontario that the government could not continue to simply ignore their cries but instead held a referendum in 1894 on the question:

"Are you in favour of the immediate prohibition by law of the importation, manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage?"


A majority voted in favour.


The government though saw the referendum as non-binding, and anyways the courts determined that a province could not prohibit importation across provincial borders. So the result was disregarded.


In 1898 the federal government was pushed to hold a federal referendum on Prohibition. A majority voted in favour. But PM Laurier shrugged off the result, saying it would be unfair to force Quebec to adopt Prohibition when it was opposed to it. He was evidently looking for a majority in each province before passing the law.


But the issue was not allowed to rest there.


The North-West Territories were dry but with province-hood granted Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905 the issue became of more importance in that corner of the former NWT.


The Alberta Temperance and Moral Reform League was formed in 1907, at a meeting in Red Deer. The group had the goal of "ultimately abolishing the liquor traffic."


The League pushed the Liberal government, under Premier Rutherford and then under Premier Alfred Sifton to take action. It refused.


The temperance workers then decided, as many Canadians had before, to ask the government to hold referendums on the question. The government refused.


So the temperance workers joined with labour and other reform groups to fight for Direct Legislation.


Direct Legislation basically in Canadian history meant Initiative where a group, if it collected enough signatures, could force the government to either pass certain legislation or put it to a referendum and abide by the majority decision. (The two other parts of Direct Legislation were referendum, where enough signatures could force a government to repeal certain legislation, and recall, where a certain number of signatures could force an MLA to resign. Neither of those two were ever used to effect in Canadian history.)


The reformers pushed and pushed, and at the time of the 1913 election Sifton granted Initiative. Yes it was an election-year vote-buying ploy. (At least back then a government did good things to get re-elected. Nowadays politics has sunk to such a point that governments merely promise to do good things after the election if they are re-elected. And then may or may not do them.)


With the power of Direct Legislation in their hands, in 1914 temperance workers collected 23,656 signatures, many more than required to force the government to either bring in Prohibition or hold a referendum. The government scheduled a referendum for July 21, 1915.


A majority of voters - all male in those day - female suffrage was just a year away though - a majority of voters voted to ban the sale of liquor.


And almost a year later, on July 1, 1916, the government brought in its form of Prohibition. The law was not outright Prohibition as many temperance workers desired. Sale of liquor was banned, except for sale by pharmacists and for the use in certain healing occupations such as veterinarians. In fact, the regulations were loosened and liquor more readily available during the flu epidemic of 1918.


Against the temperance campaigners' desires, bars selling low-alcohol beer (3.9 percent) were allowed to stay in business. As well, mail-order deliveries of booze from out-of-province sellers was allowed. This situation lasted until 1923.


A wrinkle was introduced, when the federal government brought in WWI country-wide Prohibition. This did ban inter-provincial mail orders of liquor. Then the war over and the ban was lifted. Liquor flooded across provincial borders.


The federal government belatedly realized it had allowed the liquor business to re-emerge from its WWI extinguishing. The federal government allowed each province to hold a referendum on banning imports of liquor. By the time Alberta voters - in favour by the way - had voted and the federal government re-imposed the importation ban, quantities of liquor had been so sufficiently stockpiled by bootleggers that the lid was off.


Illegal bootlegging flourished. This was about when Crowsnest Pass bootlegger Picarello and his moll, Florence Lessandro, were involved in killing a policeman trying to enforce the liquor law. They were hanged, Florence being one of the last women hanged in Canada.


In 1921, the United Farmers government had replaced the Liberal one. Although elected by generally-sober WASP farmers, the new government, like others across Canada, was under great pressure from corporate liquor interests. As well, now that the war was over and general social mores were changing, more everyday drinkers wanted to drink in public.


But by then temperance workers were pressing to go further and to close even low-test- beer bars, which they suspected of being outlets for bootleggers.


The government held a referendum. This time the government combined three yes/no questions - prohibition yes or no; bars yes or no; government sale of liquor yes or no - into four options. And in line with the government's interest in bringing in ranked voting (STV) for provincial elections, it held the referendum using ranked voting. This fancy framework was not necessary as it turned out.


A majority chose government sale of liquor and bars. So no elimination of the least popular options and subsequent vote transfers was necessary.


And the United Farmers government abided by the decision. It seems the chosen option suited the government interests anyway. It relieved the police and courts of the many Prohibition-related charges. (Charges for drunken driving and public drunken-ness of course would eventually replace them.)


Government control of the sale of liquor meant that there would be no profit incentive to encourage excessive imbibing.


Bars while allowed to operate and sell full-strength beer would be tightly regulated and much of the enjoyment of drinking squeezed out. Single women - those without an escort - were denied entrance to bars. It was a compromise that was to be in effect for more than 40 years.


And it was one created by referendum.


Thus we see that referendums are only as effective as the governments that stand behind them - or don't, as the case may be. And that is why careful, fair election of governments - through proportional representation - is as important, if not more so, than demonstrations of public sentiment such as referendums.


Thanks for reading.


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