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 William Aberhart’s challenge of the
British North America Act after the Mackenzie King federal government
withheld assent to three contentious bills brought the issue to the Supreme
Court of Canada.
While this was not the only time provincial bills had been
rejected—since the passing of the BNA Act in 1867, more than
 100 bills had
been disallowed—this was the first time the BNA Act had been challenged by a
province on the grounds that the terminology of the Act must be changed to
cover constitutional evolution. In the case of Alberta, this was more a case
of constitutional “revolution” than “evolution,” given the sweeping economic
reforms envisioned by Aberhart and his Social Credit party.
 The bills in question dealt with credit regulation, bank
taxes and newspapers, and the Supreme Court found that the challenges would
not hold and deemed all three bills unconstitutional. This March 4, 1938 Supreme Court decision was considered
a blow to Social Credit in Alberta, and even party adherents saw the
limitations of both the Social Credit philosophy and William Aberhart. In
the following 1940 provincial election, the party won only 35 seats, holding
just a majority of nine; this was in contrast to its overwhelming 1935
victory in which it secured 56 of the 63 seats in the Alberta legislature.
Aberhart died in office of liver disease in 1943,
and none of his major Social Credit policies were ever implemented. As
Calgary author Aritha van Herk writes in Mavericks: An Incorrigible
History of Alberta, “Of the 12 specifically Social Credit acts
introduced in 1933 and 1937, none came into operation, and all their
efforts at economic reform were constitutionally disallowed.”1
 Additional fallout from the events saw the Alberta press,
the target of the Aberhart’s contentious Accurate News and Information Act,
honoured by the New York-based Pulitzer Prize committee. On May 2, 1938, the
Edmonton Journal was presented with a bronze plaque from the
committee “for its leadership in the defence of the freedom of the press in
the province of Alberta.” The plaque is on display at the newspaper’s
offices in downtown Edmonton. It should be mentioned here that this was not
the Pulitzer Prize, as is often claimed by the Journal and in popular
histories; the Pulitzer Prize is reserved for American newspapers only.
As well, five other Alberta dailies—the Edmonton
Bulletin, Calgary Herald, Calgary Albertan, Lethbridge Herald and
Medicine Hat News—and 90 weekly newspapers were presented with engraved
certificates.
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Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King cast a
watchful eye over the Social Credit “experiment” in Alberta, and was
outspoken on the issue of press controls. “I am for freedom of the press,”
he said, as reported in the Calgary Albertan on Oct. 6, 1937. “I believe
in the maintenance of all fundamental liberties.”2
“Newspapers sell news, and opinions. That is their
business. The opinions are not accepted by the people any more as gospel.
Editorial pages do not convince in this generation, but if they stimulate
thought they serve a purpose. If the news is false, untrue, or coloured
the people have a happy faculty of discovering the poison … A newspaper
which sells false news will eventually come to the end of the trail, just
as surely as any merchant who sells bad goods …The freedom of the press
entails also the freedom of readers to judge the press, and any government
can safely leave that freedom as it is.”
—Calgary Albertan, Oct. 4, 19373
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Heritage Community Foundation Presents
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