Walter Frederick Kuhl (June 25, 1905 – January 11, 1991) was a teacher and a Canadian federal politician. Born in

Spruce Grove Spruce Grove is a city that is west of Edmonton, Alberta in Canada. The city is adjacent to the Town of Stony Plain and is surrounded by Parkland County. With a 2021 population of 37,645, Spruce Grove is the ninth-largest city in Alberta. ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, Kuhl was elected under the

Social Credit Social credit is a distributive philosophy of political economy developed by C. H. Douglas. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made them. To combat what he ...

banner to the House of Commons of Canada in the 1935 Canadian federal election. He defeated incumbent Member of Parliament and former

Premier Charles Stewart to win the new

Jasper—Edson Jasper—Edson was a federal electoral district in Alberta, Canada, that was represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1935 to 1968. This riding was created in 1933 from parts of Peace River riding. The electoral district was abolish ...

electoral district. Kuhl would stand for re-election in the

1940 Canadian federal election The 1940 Canadian federal election was held March 26, 1940, to elect members of the House of Commons of Canada of the 19th Parliament of Canada. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberal Party was re-elected to their second consecuti ...

this time under the

New Democracy New Democracy, or the New Democratic Revolution, is a concept based on Mao Zedong's Bloc of Four Social Classes theory in post-revolutionary China which argued originally that democracy in China would take a path that was decisively distinc ...

banner. He was re-elected defeating 3 other candidates winning by less than one hundred votes. Kuhl would stand for re-election for a 3rd term this time once again under the Social Credit banner he would be re-elected in the 1945 Canadian federal election. Kuhl would be defeated in the 1949 Canadian federal election by Liberal candidate John William Welbourn. During his time in Parliament, he tried to get

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

a new and distinguished flag and constitution he introduced a private members bill to amend the '' British North America Act''. In 1945, he delivered a speech in which he argued, based on constitutional theories by self-published author R. Rogers Smith, that the

constitution of Canada The Constitution of Canada (french: Constitution du Canada) is the supreme law in Canada. It outlines Canada's system of government and the civil and human rights of those who are citizens of Canada and non-citizens in Canada. Its contents a ...

was defective and needed to be amended. The speech was reprinted and distributed as a booklet, ''Canada a country without a constitution''. Kuhl's arguments implied that the federal government had no

taxation A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, o ...

authority - which formed a basis to refuse to pay

income tax An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income. Tax ...

- and that all other government jurisdictions remained with the

provinces A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

; in subsequent decades, these concepts were used as references by Canadian

tax protester A tax protester is someone who refuses to pay a tax claiming that the tax laws are unconstitutional or otherwise invalid. Tax protesters are different from tax resisters, who refuse to pay taxes as a protest against a government or its policie ...

and

pseudolaw Pseudolaw consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be based on accepted law or legal doctrine, but which deviate significantly from most conventional understandings of law and jurisprudence, or which originate from non-exis ...

communities, which eventually gave birth to the "Detaxer" and

freeman on the land The freeman on the land movement (sometimes spelled freeman-on-the-land or abbreviated as FOTL), also known as the freemen of the land, the freemen movement, or simply freemen, is a loose group of individuals who adhere to pseudolegal concepts a ...

movements. Kuhl's speeches in Parliament on the constitution are also referenced by modern Alberta separatists.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kuhl, Walter 1905 births 1991 deaths Social Credit Party of Canada MPs New Democracy (Canada) MPs New Democracy (Canada) candidates in the 1940 Canadian federal election Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Alberta