Once a month, The duty challenges history buffs to decipher a current topic from a comparison with a historical event or person.
Public debate is difficult in the age of social media due to the growing polarization of opinions. Ideas are regularly judged according to their position on the left-right axis and their place within the programs of political parties.
Far from constituting a novelty, these two blinders obstructed the debates long before the arrival of the instant discussions. The Dr Philippe Hamel, dentist in rue d’Aiguillon in Quebec City, experienced this in the 1930s when he tried to convince Quebecers to break the monopoly of power companies and to nationalize hydroelectric power.
If the idea of nationalizing public services was not unknown in 1930, it was with Hamel that it took off in Quebec. Among other things, he inspired a young René Lévesque, who will always remember his speech given in the courtyard of the Gaspé seminary during the Quebec elections of 1935.
Nationalization on the right
Hamel’s crusade against the electricity monopoly began in 1929, when the challenge of a simple bill from the Quebec Power company led him to launch a vast investigation. The result is appalling. Families in Quebec pay two to three times more for their electricity than those in other Canadian cities. A bill of 180 kWh amounts to about $ 5 in Quebec, where electricity is private, against $ 2 in Toronto, where it is municipal. Hamel’s conclusion is that the solution to the electricity problem lies in nationalization.
As the threat from the Soviet Union grows, any attack on capitalism risks being seen as a communist idea. Hamel is however inspired by the teachings of the Catholic Church, more particularly the encyclical Quadragesimo anno, in which Pope Pius XI explains that certain goods cannot remain private property without endangering the public interest. This text allows French-Canadian Catholics to consider the nationalization of electricity as a Christian proposition. This will not prevent opponents from calling its promoters communists.
A pious Catholic and socially conservative, Hamel certainly did not see himself as a progressive. In his eyes, the nationalization of electricity was, on the contrary, a conservative measure. The only way to preserve social order is to ensure that everyone can live there with dignity.
If the capitalists keep the workers in poverty to quench their thirst for profit, the workers risk succumbing to the temptation of socialism. It is by improving the lot of the “working poor” that we will maintain their attachment to private property, to the family and to Christian values.
Alliance
While the Catholic press provided good coverage for Dr Hamel, the liberal newspapers are fiercely hostile to him. Electricity companies fund the Liberal Party. Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau sits on the board of directors of some of them, and some members of his family are employed as engineers or lawyers.
Nationalization is not an option in the eyes of the liberals. Some see it as a socialist measure contrary to the principle of private property, others as a maneuver of “blues” disguised as defenders of the widow and the orphan.
Philippe Hamel is the man of a cause and not of a political party. He would be ready to support the Liberal Party if Taschereau were eliminated in favor of a leader like Télésphore-Damien Bouchard, mayor of Saint-Hyacinthe who himself municipalized electricity.
Hamel is also trying to win over the Conservative leaders Camillien Houde and his successor, Maurice Duplessis, to his cause, but they seem to favor the defeat of the liberals over the fight against the monopoly. Hamel is finally on the side of the National Liberal Action (ALN).
The ALN is a resolutely progressive party formed by a group of young Montreal liberals frustrated by the Prime Minister’s refusal to carry out the reforms they feel are necessary to bring Quebec out of the Great Depression. They are headed by Paul Gouin, son of former Prime Minister Lomer Gouin. The new party proposes in particular an old-age pension program, the reduction of electricity costs and the eradication of electoral corruption.
Gouin invited Hamel to join the party on the eve of the 1935 elections. In return, the dentist demanded that the leader make a written commitment to implement his program on electricity as soon as he came to power. Gouin signs and Hamel joins the ALN. Deprived of political ambition, he initially refused to run and contented himself with offering his public support to the party. It was the difficulty in recruiting candidates that convinced him to become a candidate in Quebec-Center (Jean-Talon), where he would be elected. An alliance between the ALN and the Conservative Party of Duplessis made it possible to considerably weaken the liberal majority.
Realpolitik
In 1936, Paul Gouin and his lieutenants from the ALN gave up their alliance with the Conservative Party. Hamel was then one of those who chose to trust Duplessis, who operated the merger between the two parties to form the National Union. Duplessis manages to convince Hamel that he is even more determined than Gouin to nationalize electricity.
Once elected, Duplessis caused surprise by excluding his star from Quebec from his Council of Ministers. Hamel gives him the benefit of the doubt for a while, but realizes the new prime minister has no plans to attack the power companies.
Philippe Hamel leaves the National Union with four of his fellow deputies to found the National Party. Their program is that of the ALN. However, creating a third party in Quebec is proving to be a difficult undertaking. Unlike the Liberal Party and the National Union, the National Party cannot count on funding from large companies.
The political game is more violent than today. The first assembly of the National Party, in Saint-Pascal (Kamouraska region), was interrupted by a hundred agitators, some of whom jostled and beat the speakers. In the Legislative Assembly, even members who sought reconciliation between Hamel and Duplessis are hostile to dissidents now that they have formed their own party. National deputies are constantly interrupted and heckled by elected members of the National Union.
Pencils, notepads and shoes fly towards the opposition benches when Hamel and his colleagues speak. On more than one occasion, members of the National Union threaten to come to the fists to defend the honor of their leader, attacked by his former colleagues.
Hamel himself does not hesitate to use violence when he deems it necessary. In 1936, he hit the liberal lawyer Fernand Choquette in the face when he accused him of hiding in the skirts of the clergy. For the liberal newspapers, this is another opportunity to accuse the dentist of encouraging disorder and violence. For Hamel, it is simply a question of defending his honor as well as that of the clergy, which he refuses to see sullied by political struggles.
Disgust
Philippe Hamel’s ideas remain essentially the same as in 1936, but their reception changes considerably. Several deputies of the National Union make fun of Hamel and his “fixed idea” on the question of electricity. Minister François Leduc goes so far as to accuse him of spreading communism through his attacks on private companies. On the liberal side, where Hamel was accused of being a rookie disguised as a personal vendetta against Taschereau, he is now recognized as a great patriot with sincere concerns.
In 1939, Hamel realized that his party had no chance of winning and that running candidates for election would only divide the opposition vote in favor of the National Union. The National Party is scuttling itself. Two of its deputies, Oscar Drouin and René Chaloult, are running for the Liberal Party of Adélard Godbout. Hamel, for his part disgusted with parliamentary politics, is content to give them his support. The Liberals are delighted with the support of this star they boasted three years earlier.
Godbout keeps his word. In 1944, the Liberal government created Hydro-Québec by nationalizing the Beauharnois and Montreal Light Heat & Power electricity companies. Hamel died in 1954, too early to witness the nationalization of electricity by René Lévesque and Jean Lesage. Duplessis recognizes his “indisputable sincerity” as well as his “ardent patriotism”, an ironic testimony from the man who tried everything to silence him.
The popularity of Hamel and his ideas is confirmed by the attention paid to him by political leaders, sometimes to use him as a moral guarantee, sometimes to silence him. It is at least in part to his efforts that we owe the creation of Hydro-Québec. It is regrettable, however, that his proposals have long been rejected on ideological and partisan grounds. Philippe Hamel’s story demonstrates the importance of judging ideas in themselves rather than for their political repercussion.
To submit a text or to make comments and suggestions, write to Dave Noël at [email protected].