Corruption In Canada

At the turn of the century, Canada had just been a country for 37 years. In those years it had seen no wars and their only threat seemed to be the United States, with who they had been at peace for a century. Since 1896, the Laurier government had succeeded in building a new Canada that was more industrialized, more urban, more diversified in its ethnic composition and in the values of various interest groups. Unfortunately, Laurier’s success waned when the compromises he was making no longer satisfied both the English and the French of Canada. This paper is an examination of how the Naval Crisis, Reciprocity and the corruption imbedded in the Laurier government eliminated the chances of Laurier winning the 1911 Canadian election.

In the early 19th century, tensions rose between

It is on the 26 on January, 1911, after one year of discussions that the Canadian government presented to the parliament the terms of the agreement of what would essentially be a renewed Reciprocity Treaty. This agreement “allowed Canadian natural products free entry into American markets in exchange for letting American manufactured goods into Canada at a lower tariff rate.” The Conservatives could not dispute the agreement because it seemed very favourable for Canada. The opposition came from with Laurier’s own government in the form of protest from a cabinet minister by the name of Clifford Sifton. Sifton, as well as eighteen other Liberals from the Toronto region “breached cabinet solidarity and violently denounced reciprocity” due to the fact that banks and industrial societies benefitted from the tariffs which were formerly in