Canadian Titles Debate - Granting of Honours Resumed

Granting of Honours Resumed

On 30 January 1934, Prime Minister Bennett said, when speaking about the Nickle Resolution and the shelf-life of Canadian parliamentary resolutions (Canadian Hansard):

"It has been a matter of passing comment, as pointed out by an eminent lawyer not long ago, that a resolution of a House of Commons which has long since ceased to be, could not bind future parliaments and future Houses of Commons. "The power of a mere resolution by this house, if acceded to, would create such a condition that no principle which secures life or liberty would be safe. That is what Judge Coleridge pointed out."

Moreover, as a matter touching the royal prerogative, R. B. Bennett had already reported to the House of Commons the previous year, on 17 May 1933 (Hansard, p. 5126) that the Nickle Resolution was of no force or of null effect, stating:

"... it being the considered view of His Majesty's government in Canada that the motion, with respect to honours, adopted on the 22nd day of May, 1919, by a majority vote of the members of the Commons House only of the thirteenth parliament (which was dissolved on the 4th day of October, 1921) is not binding upon His Majesty or His Majesty's government in Canada or the seventeenth parliament of Canada."

On 30 January 1934, in speaking about his responsibility as Prime Minister to advise the King as the King's first minister, and about his own advice to the King that as prime minister he wished to continue the custom of advising His Majesty to bestow royal honours on His Majesty's Canadian subjects (which Conservative and Liberal administrations had chosen not to exercise for almost 15 years), Prime Minister Bennett said:

"The action is that of the Prime Minister; he must assume the responsibility, and the responsibility too for advising the Crown that the resolution passed by the House of Commons was without validity, force, or effect, with respect to the Sovereign's prerogative. That seems to me to be reasonably clear."

To these official statements of Prime Minister R. B. Bennett can be added what he wrote in a 1934 letter to J. R. MacNicol, MP when he stated his view that:

"So long as I remain a citizen of the British Empire and a loyal subject of the King, I do not propose to do otherwise than assume the prerogative rights of the Sovereign to recognize the services of his subjects."

Moreover, as Bennett stated to Parliament about the Nickle Resolution (see Hansard):

"That was as ineffective in law as it is possible for any group of words to be. It was not only ineffective, but I am sorry to say, it was an affront to the Sovereign himself. Every constitutional lawyer, or anyone who has taken the trouble to study this matter realizes that that is what was done."

R. B. Bennett's government submitted honours lists to the King every year from 1933 until its defeat in 1935, recommending that various prominent Canadians receive knighthoods, including the Chief Justice of Canada, Sir Lyman Poore Duff, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Commissioner Sir James Howden MacBrien, Sir Frederick Banting, the discoverer of insulin, and Sir Ernest MacMillan, composer and conductor.

When a vote was called on 14 March 1934, on a private member's (Humphrey Mitchell, Labour, East Hamilton) resolution to require the prime minister to cease making recommendations to the King for titles, this renewed Nickle-like Resolution was defeated 113 to 94. The Canadian House of Commons, by this vote, refused to reaffirm or reinstate the Nickle Resolution or its attempts to prevent the Prime Minister's involvement in the exercise of the Royal Prerogative of granting titles to Canadians. This is the last time that the lower house of Parliament ever voted on the issue.