History of Saskatchewan - Tommy Douglas and CCF

Tommy Douglas and CCF

A new political movement emerged, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF); its 1933 manifesto promised to eradicate capitalism and put in place a "full program of socialized planning which will lead to the establishment in Canada of the Co-operative Commonwealth." Tommy Douglas (1904–86), a Baptist minister from working class origins, led the CCF to power from 1944–61. Douglas headed the first socialist government elected in Canada, and is recognized as the father of socialized medicine and the leader who put democratic socialism in the mainstream of Canadian politics.

The Saskatchewan CCF won in June 1944 with a "Pocket Platform" calling for home ownership and debt reduction; increased old age pensions, mother's allowances, and disability care; medical, dental, and hospital services; equal education; free speech and religion; collective bargaining; and the encouragement of economic cooperatives. The CCF, while rhetorically socialist, did not nationalize banking or industry; it sought a mixed economy, including public, private, and cooperative sectors, with a strong role for private ownership in innovation and competition. In its first term the CCF passed a farm security act, and introduced the most pro-labour trade union act in North America. Saskatchewan became the first province to allow civil servants to organize unions (1944), the first to enshrine a bill of rights prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, colour, or creed (1947), the first to implement compulsory government automobile insurance (1946), and the first to institute a hospital insurance plan (1947).

The CCF was committed to efficiency-oriented planning. Douglas set up an Economic Advisory and Planning Board (EAPB), a cabinet committee with a supporting secretariat, charged with planning economic development strategies for the province and evaluating overall policies and programs. The EAPB evolved into two new agencies: the Budget Bureau and the Government Finance Office. The former was the secretariat for the Treasury Board, the committee of cabinet in charge of allocating budgetary expenditures. In addition, the Budget Bureau had an Organization and Methods unit, which surveyed the operations of various government departments and made recommendations on how they could be managed more effectively. Budgeting became more than the mechanical exercise of allocating money; it became the meeting point of the decision-making process, where all the Douglas government's diverse priorities were integrated.

The CCF set up eleven small Crown corporations including power and telephone utilities bus and airline companies, and ventures into sodium sulfate mining, a woolen mill, and a shoe factory. By 1949 the eleven corporations employed 3,000 workers and had annual revenues of $25 million.

Prosperity returned after 1945, and the population increased gradually. More dramatic was the movement from farms to towns and cities as farming became more mechanized and capital intensive. Increased production of oil, gas, and uranium, and the beginnings of a potash industry helped diversify the economy beyond just wheat.