The LeBel Royal Commission was an Ontario
Royal Commission set up on 28 May 1945 to look into charges made against the province's premier
George A. Drew
George Alexander Drew (May 7, 1894 – January 4, 1973) was a Canadian politician. He served as the 14th premier of Ontario from 1943 to 1948 and founded a Progressive Conservative dynasty that would last 42 years. He later served as leade ...
that he was operating a secret political police. The charges came from Ontario's Official Opposition Leader
Edward Bigelow (Ted) Jolliffe, during the
1945 Ontario general election
The 1945 Ontario general election was held on June 4, 1945, to elect the 90 members of the 22nd Legislative Assembly of Ontario (Members of Provincial Parliament, or "MPPs") of the Province of Ontario.
The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, ...
campaign. He made these allegations during a campaign radio speech on 24 May 1945. Drew announced in a radio speech on 26 May that he would call an inquiry, and appointed Mr. Justice A. M. LeBel to lead the commission on 28 May. Jolliffe, and Liberal leader
Mitchell Hepburn
Mitchell Frederick Hepburn (August 12, 1896 – January 5, 1953) was the 11th premier of Ontario, from 1934 to 1942. He was the youngest premier in Ontario history, appointed at age 37. He was the only Ontario Liberal Party leader in the 20th cent ...
made offers to withhold from electioneering and have the commission report before the election. Drew refused to either postpone the election, or speed up the commission process. The commission began hearings on 20 June 1945, and heard final arguments on 20 July 1945. The report was issued on 11 October 1945, with LeBel agreeing with much of what Jolliffe charged, but ultimately ruled that the Premier did not have a secret political police reporting to him, mainly due to the lack of direct documented evidence. In the late 1970s, that documented evidence was found, but the provincial government at the time considered the case closed.
Background
During the spring
1945 Ontario election, Premier George Drew ran an
anti-Semitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
, union bashing,
Red-baiting
Red-baiting, also known as ''reductio ad Stalinum'' () and red-tagging (in the Philippines), is an intention to discredit the validity of a political opponent and the opponent's logical argument by accusing, denouncing, attacking, or persecuting ...
campaign against the
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF; french: Fédération du Commonwealth Coopératif, FCC); from 1955 the Social Democratic Party of Canada (''french: Parti social démocratique du Canada''), was a federal democratic socialism, democra ...
's Ontario section (CCF).
[MacDonald, p.291-297] The previous two-years of anti-socialist attacks by the Conservatives and their supporters, like Gladstone Murray and Montague A. Sanderson, were devastatingly effective against the previously popular CCF. Much of the source material for the anti-CCF campaign came from the
Ontario Provincial Police
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) is the provincial police service of Ontario, Canada. Under its provincial mandate, the OPP patrols provincial highways and waterways, protects provincial government buildings and officials, patrols unincorpo ...
(OPP)'s Special Investigation Branch's agent D-208: Captain William J. Osbourne-Dempster.
His office was supposed to be investigating war-time
5th column
A fifth column is any group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation. According to Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz, "fifth columns" are “domestic actors who work to un ...
saboteurs. Instead, starting in November 1943, he was investigating, almost exclusively, Ontario opposition MPPs, mainly focusing on the CCF
caucus
A caucus is a meeting of supporters or members of a specific political party or movement. The exact definition varies between different countries and political cultures.
The term originated in the United States, where it can refer to a meeting ...
. The fact that Jolliffe knew about these 'secret' investigations as early as February 1944 led to one of the most infamous incidents in 20th-century Canadian politics.
[Caplan (1973), p. 168]
As can be discerned from the previous description, the 1945 campaign was anything but genteel and polite. Jolliffe replied by giving a radio speech (written with the assistance of
Lister Sinclair
Lister Sheddon Sinclair, OC (January 9, 1921 – October 16, 2006) was a Canadian broadcaster, playwright and polymath.
Early life
Sinclair was born in Bombay, India, to Scottish parents. His father, William Sheddon Sinclair, was a chemical eng ...
)
[Caplan (1973), p. 179] that accused Drew of running a political
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
in Ontario.
In the speech excerpt below, Jolliffe alleged that a secret department of the
Ontario Provincial Police
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) is the provincial police service of Ontario, Canada. Under its provincial mandate, the OPP patrols provincial highways and waterways, protects provincial government buildings and officials, patrols unincorpo ...
was acting as a political police – spying on the opposition and the media.
Commission hearings
Jolliffe's inflammatory speech became the main issue of the campaign, and dominated coverage in the media for the rest of the election.
[Caplan (1973), p. 170] Drew, and his
Attorney-General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
Leslie Blackwell
Leslie Egerton Blackwell (9 November 1897 – 20 October 1959) was a Canadian politician, soldier, lawyer, and land developer.
Background
He was born in Lindsay, Ontario in 1897, but moved to Toronto when he was young. He grew up and was educat ...
vehemently denied Jolliffe's accusations, but the public outcry was too much for them to abate. On 26 May 1945 during his own radio speech, Drew announced that he would be appointing a Royal Commission to investigate these charges.
Jolliffe's CCF and
Mitchell Hepburn
Mitchell Frederick Hepburn (August 12, 1896 – January 5, 1953) was the 11th premier of Ontario, from 1934 to 1942. He was the youngest premier in Ontario history, appointed at age 37. He was the only Ontario Liberal Party leader in the 20th cent ...
's Ontario Liberal party wanted the election suspended until the Commission tabled its report, with Hepburn going as far as sending Drew a personal telegram stating he would stop campaigning if the commission were held immediately.
Drew ignored these requests and continued to hold the election on its original date, despite it being many months before the Commission's findings would be made available.
Jolliffe's CCF went from 34 seats to 8, and he even lost his own seat in
York South
York South was an electoral district (or "riding") in Ontario, Canada, that was represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1904 to 1979.
The riding is notable for the 1942 federal by-election in which newly elected Conservative leader Ar ...
[Caplan (1973), p. 191] Drew, with his attack campaign, successfully drove the voter turn-out up, thereby driving the CCF's percentage and seat totals down.
Drew appointed Justice A.M. LeBel as the
Royal Commissioner on 28 May 1945. His terms of reference were restricted to the question of whether Drew was personally responsible for the establishment of "a secret political police organization, for the purpose of collecting, by secret spying, material to be used in attempt to keep him in power. Wider questions like why the OPP, Ontario Civil Servants, were keeping files on MPPs were not allowed.
The hearings began on 20 June 1945, at Toronto's City Hall's third-floor courtroom.
[ Jolliffe would act as his own counsel throughout the commission, but was assisted by fellow CCF lawyer, ]Andrew Brewin
Francis Andrew Brewin (September 3, 1907 – September 21, 1983) was a lawyer and Canadian politician and Member of Parliament. He was the grandson of Liberal cabinet minister Andrew George Blair. His son John Brewin also served in the House ...
. The crown prosecutor was Joseph Sedgwick.[
Over the next month, both Jolliffe and Brewin were able to establish, from several eyewitnesses, that agent D-208, Dempster, was spying on the CCF.] What they could not prove, because they did not have access to the information in 1945, that Drew was directly in written correspondence with his supporter M.A. (Bugsy) Sanderson suggesting that he would finance any lawsuits or other charges stemming from the information provided by Dempster in his advertisements. Sanderson was, in late 1943 to 1945, along with Gladstone Murray, leading the libelous advertisement campaigns against the CCF in newspapers and bill-boards, with information gleaned from Dempster's briefings.[Caplan (1973), pp. 172-188] Jolliffe presented several witnesses that claimed to have seen these documents. But Jolliffe could not produce the actual letter, and Drew would deny ever writing it. Justice LeBel heard final arguments on 20 July and began writing his report.[
]
Commission report
On 11 October 1945 Justice LeBel issued his report that essentially exonerated Drew and Blackwell. Due to Jolliffe presenting only circumstantial evidence that linked Drew to Dempster, Murray and Sanderson, the Commissioner found the information unconvincing, even though LeBel believed Dempster's interaction with Sanderson and Murray was inappropriate.
Aftermath
Jolliffe's motives regarding his accusations, as well as his choice of words, would be questioned for many years afterwards.[Young (1969), p. 118] That would change. In the late 1970s, when David Lewis was doing research for his ''Memoirs'' he came across archival evidence proving the charge. Due to Lewis's discovery, Drew's son Edward, placed extremely restrictive conditions on his father's papers housed in the Public Archives of Canada that continue as of 2013.
As Lewis pointed out in his memoirs, "We found that Premier Drew and Gladstone Murray did not disclose all information to the Lebel Commission; indeed, they deliberately prevaricated throughout. The head of the Government of Ontario
The government of Ontario (french: Gouvernement de l'Ontario) is the body responsible for the administration of the Canadian province of Ontario. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown—represented in the province by the lieutenant governor†...
had given false witness under testimony.... The perpetrator of Ontario's Watergate
The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual ...
got away with it."[Lewis (1981), pp. 276, 287] Former Ontario CCF and Ontario NDP leader, Donald C. MacDonald
Donald Cameron MacDonald (December 7, 1913 – March 8, 2008) was a Canadian politician. Referred to in the media as the "best premier Ontario never had," he represented the provincial riding of York South in the Legislative Assembly of O ...
attempted to get the report reopened when the new evidence became public in 1981.[ He was still a member of the Ontario Legislature, and asked the Attorney General ]Roy McMurtry
Roy is a masculine given name and a family surname with varied origin.
In Anglo-Norman England, the name derived from the Norman ''roy'', meaning "king", while its Old French cognate, ''rey'' or ''roy'' (modern ''roi''), likewise gave rise to ...
to reopen the Commission on 2 December 1981.[ McMurty refused to reopen the case, because almost everyone involved was dead and the commission already made its ruling in 1945.][
]
Endnotes
References
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*{{cite book
, last = Young
, first = Walter D.
, title = The Anatomy of a Party: The National CCF, 1932–61
, publisher = University of Toronto Press
, year = 1969
, location = Toronto
, isbn = 0-8020-5221-5
, url = https://archive.org/details/anatomyofpartyna0000youn
Royal commissions in Canada
Government reports
Government of Ontario
1945 establishments in Canada
1945 documents