Conscription Crisis of 1944

Throughout the years there have been many debates on weather or there should or should not be conscription , but on April 27,1942 is when the discussion about this manner really started to heat up again. Prime minister Mackenzie King thought he was going to hold a vote asking the people to release the government of he anti-conscription promises that had been made. It turned out that 72.9% of Quebec’s residents had voted “No” while 80% of other provinces voted “Yes”. This was then known as Bill80, bill80 allowed for conscription overseas if it was necessary, but even after this was all decided Quebec never gave up on hope that they could fight against conscription.

Ernest Lapointe had reassured Canadians that there would be no conscription when yet he was wrong. Mackenzie King had been hesitant to immediately proceed with conscription but only because of the outcome in WWI which would have lead Ernest Lapointe into thinking this. It was finally in autumn of 1944 conscription was brought into action, J.L Ralston was the minister of national  defense and he knew that they were going to need more soldiers because of the amount of casualties on the front.

Through this whole thing King did not want to involve conscription he tried to do as much as he could to avoid it, however on November 22,1944 he noticed the open proconscription of some of his English ministers, so King decided to reverse his decision to try and save his government so he decided that he was going to announce that conscription will be sent overseas.

Conscription was not justified, the government sent a bunch of young single men off to the war with out there say. The men who were conscripted received a letter in the mail ordering them to go defend there country and they couldn’t do anything to stop it. the reason why it wasn’t justified is because they still have a family, even though they were married or didn’t have a girlfriend they still may of had a family back home that cared about them. Instead of forcing it on them the government  could of just had a center open that would have let them men volunteer instead of forcing them. At this time there were a bunch of people who had died on the front and more troops were needed, but the forced so many men at once to go and fight instead of spacing the amount out a little bit.

Continuity and change didn’t really come into play there wasn’t that much of a change from ww1 to ww2. They still conscripted a bunch of people and took them away from there family’s. The only major difference would be that King wanted to hold off on the conscription a little longer because of the outcome from ww1, so there was more discussion going around at the time.