Canada on the World Stage: From Colony Toward Autonomy

From follower to partner

In 1914, Britain decided for Canada whether Canada was at war. By 1931, Canada controlled its own foreign policy. That change did not happen in one moment. It came in steps, driven by Canada's sacrifices in the war, by prime ministers who pushed for more independence, and by changing ideas about the Empire. This lesson covers expectation B2.2: the significance of, and perspectives on, Canada's international relations.

War brings a voice

• 1917: Britain created an Imperial War Cabinet where dominion prime ministers, including Robert Borden, discussed war policy. At the Imperial War Conference, Borden helped pass a resolution recognizing the dominions as autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth.
• 1919, Paris Peace Conference: Borden argued that a country that had lost more than 60 000 people had earned a voice. Canada had its own delegates, and Canada signed the Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919) separately, though within the British Empire's group of signatures. Canada also joined the new League of Nations as a member in its own right.

The treaty's terms blamed Germany for the war (the "war guilt" clause), forced it to pay reparations, took away territory and colonies, and limited its army. Many Germans felt humiliated. In the next unit you will see how extremist leaders, including Adolf Hitler, used that resentment to win support.

Saying "Parliament will decide": the 1920s

• The Chanak Crisis (1922). British troops at Chanak, in Turkey, were threatened, and Britain asked the dominions to send soldiers. Opposition leader Arthur Meighen said Canada should answer "Ready, aye, ready". Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King replied that Canada's Parliament would decide. No Canadian troops were sent. For the first time, Canada did not automatically follow Britain into a possible war.
• The Halibut Treaty (1923). Canada and the United States signed a treaty to protect halibut stocks in the North Pacific. Canada's minister Ernest Lapointe signed it without a British signature, the first treaty Canada negotiated and signed on its own.
• Imperial Conferences. In 1923 the conference agreed that dominions could make their own treaties. In 1926 the Balfour Report declared Britain and the dominions to be "equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another".
• 1927: Canada opened its own diplomatic mission (a legation) in Washington, led by Vincent Massey.
• 1931: the Statute of Westminster made this equality law (you will study it in the next unit).

The King-Byng affair (1926) (B2.3)

In 1925, King's Liberals won fewer seats than Meighen's Conservatives but stayed in power with support from the Progressive party. In June 1926, facing a vote of censure over a customs scandal, King asked the Governor General, Lord Byng, to dissolve Parliament and call an election. Byng refused, and asked Meighen to form a government. Meighen's government lost a vote within days, and an election was called after all. King campaigned on the idea that a British-appointed Governor General should not overrule an elected Canadian prime minister. He won in September 1926.

Consequences: at the 1926 Imperial Conference, it was agreed that a Governor General represents the Crown, not the British government, and acts on the advice of the dominion's own ministers. Constitutional experts still debate whether Byng was right; many argue he acted within his powers.

Other perspectives on Canada's international role

Isolationism. After the war, many Canadians wanted to avoid future foreign wars. At the League of Nations in 1924, Canadian delegate Raoul Dandurand said Canadians lived in a "fire-proof house, far from inflammable materials". Canada pushed to weaken the League's promise that members would defend one another.

Imperialists like Meighen still believed Canada's strength lay in unity with Britain.

Deskaheh and the Haudenosaunee. Deskaheh (Levi General), a Cayuga chief and speaker for the Six Nations Confederacy Council at Grand River, argued that the Six Nations were a sovereign ally of the Crown, not subjects of Canada. In 1923 he travelled to Geneva on a Haudenosaunee passport to ask the League of Nations to hear the case. Some smaller countries supported him, but Britain and Canada blocked the appeal. In 1924, the Canadian government replaced the Confederacy Council at Six Nations with an elected band council under the Indian Act, using the RCMP. Many Haudenosaunee people still regard the Confederacy Council as their legitimate government. Deskaheh's journey is a powerful example of Indigenous diplomacy on the world stage, and it shows that Canada's push for its own sovereignty did not extend to the sovereignty of the Nations within its borders.