David Lewis (politician)

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David Lewis (politician) : biography

June 23 or October, 1909 – May 23, 1981

Make this your Canada

In 1943, Lewis co-wrote Make this Your Canada with F.R. Scott, then the CCF’s National Chairman. The book’s main argument was that national economic planning had proven itself during wartime with the King government’s imposition of wage and price controls through the Wartime Prices and Trade Board.Lewis & Scott, 1943, pp.5–16 Lewis and Scott further argued that its wartime success could translate to peacetime, and that Canada should adopt a mixed economy.Lewis & Scott, 1943, pp.122–137 They also called for public ownership of key economic sectors, and for the burden to be placed on private companies to demonstrate that they could manage an industry more effectively in the private sector than the government could in the public sector.Lewis & Scott, 1943, pp.126–132 The book also outlined the history of the CCF up to that time and explained the party’s decision-making process. By Canadian standards, the book was popular, and sold over 25,000 copies in its first year of publication.Make This Your Canada was re-printed in 2001, by the Hybrid Publishers Co-operative Ltd. – in time for the pivotal federal New Democratic Party convention in Winnipeg.

1943 Cartier by-election

Lewis first ran for the CCF in the 1940 federal election in York West. He placed a distant third, receiving 8,330 fewer votes than the second place Liberal candidate, Chris J. Bennett. Despite his poor showing in his first election, the party asked Lewis to run in the 1943 by-election in the Montreal, Quebec, federal riding of Cartier, made vacant by the death of Peter Bercovitch. Lewis’ opponents included Fred Rose of the communist Labour–Progressive Party. It was a vicious campaign, immortalized by A.M. Klein in an uncompleted novel called Come the Revolution.Smith, p.299 The novel was broadcast in the 1980s on Lister Sinclair’sSinclair co-wrote Ontario CCF leader Ted Jolliffe’s "Gestapo" speech during the 1945 Ontario general election, that lead to the appointment of the LeBel Royal Commission. Ideas programme on CBC Radio One. If the Communist rhetoric could be believed, "Lewis was a Fascist done up in brown."Smith, p.301

Rose won and became the only (as of 2011) Communist to sit in the House of Commons. Lewis placed fourth. The sizable Jewish vote mostly went to Rose. The leftist "common front" punished Lewis by supporting Rose, who was seen to be of the community; Lewis lived in Ottawa at the time. It took Lewis many years to recover from this campaign, and its reverberation coloured Lewis’ decision on where to run.Caplan, p.191

1945 elections: disappointment and defeat

The Canadian federal and the Ontario elections of 1945 were possibly the most crucial to Canada in the 20th century. They took place at the beginning of the welfare state, and the elections would set the course of political thought to the end of the century and beyond. The year was a disaster for the CCF, both nationally and in Ontario. It never fully recovered, and in 1961 would dissolve and become the New Democratic Party. As NDP strategist and historian Gerald Caplan put it: "June 4, and June 11, 1945, proved to be black days in CCF annals: socialism was effectively removed from the Canadian political agenda."

The anti-socialist crusade by the Ontario Conservative Party, mostly credited to the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) special investigative branch’s agent D-208 (Captain William J. Osborne-Dempster) and the Conservative propagandists Gladstone Murray and Montague A. Sanderson,Caplan, pp.168–169 diminished the CCF’s initially favourable position:Caplan, p.193 the September 1943 Gallup poll showed the CCF leading nationally with 29 percent support, with the Liberals and Conservatives tied for second place at 28 percent. McHenry, pp.135–137 By April 1945, the CCF was down to 20 percent nationally, and on election day it received only 16 percent.

Another factor in the CCF’s defeat was the unofficial coalition between the Liberal Party of Canada and the communist Labour-Progressive Party.Caplan, p.148 It guaranteed a split in the left-of-centre vote.Caplan, pp.157–158