The Defence of Canada Regulations were a set of emergency measures implemented under the War Measures Act on 3 September 1939, a week before Canada's entry into World War II.
The extreme security measures permitted by the regulations included the waiving of habeas corpus and the right to trial, internment, bans on certain political and cultural groups, restrictions of free speech including the banning of certain publications, and the confiscation of property.
Section 21 of the Regulations allowed the Minister of Justice to detain without charge anyone who might act "in any manner prejudicial to the public safety or the safety of the state." [1]
The Regulations were used to intern opponents of World War II, particularly fascists (like Adrien Arcand) and Communists (including Jacob Penner, Bruce Magnuson and Tom McEwen) as well as opponents of conscription such as Quebec nationalist and Montreal mayor Camillien Houde. It was under the regulations that Japanese Canadians were interned and their property confiscated for the duration of the war. German Canadians were required to register with the state and some German and Italian Canadians were detained. The Regulations were also used to ban the Communist Party of Canada in 1940 as well as several of its allied organizations such as the Young Communist League, the Canadian Labour Defence League, the Canadian League for Peace and Democracy, the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association, the Finnish Organization of Canada, the Russian Workers and Farmers Clubs, the Polish Peoples Association and the Croatian Cultural Association, the Hungarian Workers Clubs and the Canadian Ukrainian Youth Federation. Various fascist groups were also banned such as the National Unity Party and the Canadian Union of Fascists as well as numerous ethnic German associations linked with the Nazi Party. [2] Non-communist labour leaders like Charles Millard were also interned. In 1942, the Canadian Youth Congress was banned. [3]
A number of prominent Communist Party members were detained until 1942, the year after the Soviet Union joined the Allies. Fascist leaders such as Adrien Arcand and John Ross Taylor were detained for the duration of the war.
The War Measures Act was a statute of the Parliament of Canada that provided for the declaration of war, invasion, or insurrection, and the types of emergency measures that could thereby be taken. The Act was brought into force three times in Canadian history: during the First World War, Second World War, and the 1970 October Crisis.
The Communist Party of Canada is a federal political party in Canada. Founded in 1921 under conditions of illegality, it is the second oldest active political party in Canada, after the Liberal Party of Canada. Although it does not currently have any parliamentary representation, the party's candidates have previously been elected to the House of Commons, the Ontario legislature, the Manitoba legislature, and various municipal governments across the country.
Adrien Arcand was a Canadian fascist politician, writer, and journalist. He founded and led the far-right National Unity Party of Canada from 1934 until his death in 1967. During his political career, he proclaimed himself as the "Canadian Führer".
The National Unity Party of Canada (NUPC) was a Canadian far-right political party which based its ideology on Adolf Hitler's Nazism and Benito Mussolini's fascism. It was founded as the Parti national social chrétien du Canada (PNSC) by Nazi sympathizer Adrien Arcand on February 22, 1934. The party's activities were originally limited to Quebec, but it later expanded to Ontario and Western Canada. Party membership swelled in the mid-to-late 1930s as the party absorbed smaller fascist groups across the country. Following the outbreak of World War II, the Canadian government banned the NUPC on May 30, 1940, under the Defence of Canada Regulations of the War Measures Act. Arcand and many of his followers were consequently arrested and interned for the duration of the war.
Defence Regulation 18B, often referred to as simply 18B, was one of the Defence Regulations used by the British Government during and before the Second World War. The complete name for the rule was Regulation 18B of the Defence (General) Regulations 1939. It allowed the internment without trial of people suspected of being actively opposed to the ongoing war with Germany during World War II such as separatist elements or were otherwise suspected of ideological Nazi-aligned sympathy. The effect of 18B was to suspend the right of affected individuals to habeas corpus.
The Canadian Union of Fascists was a fascist political party based in the city of Toronto in the 1930s with its western Canadian office in Regina, Saskatchewan.
Timothy Buck was the general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada from 1929 until 1962. Together with Ernst Thälmann of Germany, Maurice Thorez of France, Palmiro Togliatti of Italy, Earl Browder of the United States, and Harry Pollitt of Great Britain, Buck was one of the top leaders of the Joseph Stalin-era Communist International.
The Communist Party of British Columbia is the provincial section of the Communist Party of Canada in British Columbia. From the 1945 election to the 1956 election, it was known as the Labor-Progressive Party, initially due to the Communist Party having been banned under the Defence of Canada Regulations.
John Ross Taylor was a Canadian fascist political activist and party leader prominent in white nationalist circles.
The Young Communist League of Canada (YCL-LJC) is a Canadian Marxist–Leninist youth organization founded in 1922. The organization is ideologically aligned with, but organizationally independent from, the Communist Party of Canada. The organization's members played a leading role in the On-to-Ottawa Trek and made up a significant portion of the Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion, which fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
Charles Brandle Crate was a Canadian fascist who was the leader of the Canadian Union of Fascists.
The Dominion Communist–Labor Total War Committee was a front organization of the then-banned Communist Party of Canada. The Committee originated as the "Tim Buck Plebiscite Committees" which were organized by the party in 1942 to campaign for a "yes" vote in the 1942 referendum on conscription.
Numerous internment camps and concentration camps were located in France before, during and after World War II. Beside the camps created during World War I to intern German, Austrian and Ottoman civilian prisoners, the Third Republic (1871–1940) opened various internment camps for the Spanish refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Following the prohibition of the French Communist Party (PCF) by the government of Édouard Daladier, they were used to detain communist political prisoners. The Third Republic also interned German anti-Nazis.
The Association of United Ukrainian Canadians is a national cultural-educational non-profit organization established for Ukrainians in Canada. With branches throughout Canada it sponsors such cultural activities as dance groups, orchestras, choirs and children's activities, and is involved in social justice and solidarity activities in partnership with other ethnocultural organizations, peace groups, and community organizations.
Fascism in Canada consists of a variety of movements and political parties in Canada during the 20th century. Largely a fringe ideology, Fascism has never commanded a large following in Canada, however it was most popular during the Great Depression.
Thomas Alexander McEwen was a Canadian labour organizer and Communist politician.
Charles Frederick Watts was a member of the British Union of Fascists who was interned during the Second World War.
The Canadian League for Peace and Democracy, founded in October 1934 as the Canadian League Against War and Fascism, was an anti-fascist mass organization chaired by A. A. MacLeod and allied with the Communist Party of Canada. It gained prominence as a leading organizer of opposition within Canada to Nazi Germany following Hitler's rise to power and as an opponent of fascist groups organizing within Canada in the years leading up to World War II. It was dissolved in 1940 following the implementation of the Defence of Canada Regulations.
The Canadian Youth Congress was a left-wing youth movement that existed from 1935 until 1942, when it was declared illegal under the Defence of Canada Regulations. It was founded in Toronto in May 1935 as an organization to mobilize youths and youth-oriented organizations across Canada to lobby the government for change in the face of mass unemployment during the Great Depression in Canada. At its height, it had a constituent membership of over 400,000 and offices across the country and held annual congresses that attracted several hundred delegates.