Twice a month, Le Devoir challenges enthusiasts of philosophy and the history of ideas to decipher a current issue based on the theses of an outstanding thinker.
After the Second World War, large consumers of metals of all kinds, the United States was thirsty for iron. The possibility of another major conflict prompts Uncle Sam, whose main deposit in Mesabi, Minnesota, is beginning to show signs of exhaustion, to look for another source of hematite. Known since the end of the 19th century, the iron reserves of the Labrador Trough (a strip of land running from the former town of Gagnon to Ungava Bay) are proving to be a very interesting solution for the United States. , since they are located in an easily accessible allied country.
Apostle of laissez-faire in economic matters, Prime Minister Maurice Duplessis was quick to pass, barely 16 days after the capitulation of the Nazis, a law allowing the executive to concede, at its discretion, large swathes of of Quebec territory to mining companies. As early as January 1946, he used the powers he granted himself to authorize the Hollinger North Shore Exploration Co., of the Ontario Jules Timmins, associated with the MA Hanna Co., of Cleveland, to begin exploratory work on the lake. Knob, on whose banks would rise the town of Schefferville eight years later.
The mining proselytism of the head of the Union Nationale, however, was not going to pass like a letter in the post. The question of Ungava (a region roughly corresponding to present-day Nunavik) was fiercely discussed not only during the 1948 election campaign, but also during that of 1952 and even, despite the completion of the project, during that of 1956.
This debate, which raged as much in the Legislative Assembly as in the columns of the newspapers, was the occasion for a confrontation between the two main Quebec parties and their sympathizers. On the right side: the National Union, with part of the regional press (often belonging to people close to power). On the left side: the Liberal Party, with The duty and a few other newspapers. Examination of the press of the time shows that the controversy over the iron of Ungava brings out very distinct value systems, but which nevertheless include an unsurpassable common base. It wouldn’t occur to anyone, for example, to question the validity of the capitalist system, based on unlimited growth.
The novelist Harry Bernard, columnist at the Courier of Saint-Hyacinthea weekly newspaper owned by Unionist MP Ernest-Joseph Chartier, rejoiced that “very fruitful prosperity is fast approaching in New Quebec [équivalent de l’Ungava] to reflect on the entire province” and that “we have no idea of the heights where we will reach [sic] “.
The director of To have to, Gérard Filion, agrees: “We have never criticized Mr. Duplessis for promoting the development of the natural resources of New Quebec. We are happy that this is happening: it is an element of material progress. »
The two camps do not s’écharpent more on the role of the State in the economy. In front of an assembly of capitalists from here and elsewhere, Duplessis delivers his credo thus: “The current government does not have confidence in nationalization as a general rule. It is irrevocably tied to private enterprise. This is our policy before, during and after the elections. The Liberals agreed in the same direction through the voice of their new leader Georges-Émile Lapalme, who, in 1951, reiterated his attachment “to individual initiative and private enterprise”.
Where is the problem then? In 1954, the Minister of Industry and Commerce, Paul Beaulieu, argued before an audience of wealthy owners in New York that “Canada is a young country with immense natural resources and [qu’]it needs foreign capital to develop”.
Two years later, on the eve of the last elections in which Duplessis was to take part, his friend Cyrus Eaton, an Anglo-Canadian industrialist eyeing a piece of land in Ungava soil, did not say otherwise during a banquet in Quebec: ” One cannot get enough money in Canada to open mines, build the necessary roads, railways, airports, factories, seaports, telephone and power lines, etc. Without a doubt, Canadian capitalists should be encouraged to put their money in Canadian companies […]. But foreign capital will always be needed to finish the job. »
This is the bone of contention for opponents of Duplessis. To open the door to foreign capital is to alienate part of the national territory and its resources. Gérard Filion was alarmed by this in 1948, in the wake of the Union Nationale leader’s first trip to Lake Knob, claiming that “it is not the premier of the province of Quebec who is going to visit a territory on which extends his authority; they are financiers who deign to invite the premier of the province of Quebec to their home. […] Ungava is not part of the territory of the province, it is a sanctuary where only those who are dressed in the nuptial robe can enter”.
More than just the presence of a foreign company in our acres of snow, it is what it takes with it that arouses the ire of the government’s adversaries. We then speak of the misappropriation of a “national heritage” (Lapalme), of a “heritage” (the Liberal deputy Jacques Dumoulin) or even of a “right of primogeniture” (Pierre Vigeant, of the To have to).
After seeing a freighter full of iron from Ungava pass on the St. Lawrence, the Liberal leader says, dramatically: “It was like a shred of flesh torn from our province. »
Selling resources
This could have gone, to the limit, if the English-speaking capitalists had paid fair compensation to the community, as would be required, according to Gérard Filion, by Newfoundland, Minnesota and Venezuela. But the agreement concluded between Duplessis and Hollinger (which soon became the Iron Ore Company) only required a payment of $100,000 per year, regardless of the quantity extracted from Quebec’s underground. As the company expects to leave with ten million tonnes of iron annually, the calculation is simple for the editor of the To have to André Laurendeau, who then speaks of “iron at 1 c. the ton”, an expression which quickly became a leitmotif among opponents of the government.
The North star de Joliette, however, quickly flew to the aid of those in power: this “dishonest calculation” constituted for him a “huge lie”, “the greatest electoral fraud” ever seen, even an “odious legend”. Unionist MP and future Prime Minister Daniel Johnson explains for his part that “if we add up all the benefits resulting from the exploitation of the Ungava deposits and the work between 1948 and 1958, sales taxes, new railway , royalties [sic]et cetera, the province of Quebec will have withdrawn from the enterprise more than any country in the world has withdrawn from any other operation of the same kind”.
Its leader is full of praise for this project, emphasizing the creation of jobs (mostly temporary) and the hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure (railway, factories, city of Schefferville, etc.) built by the company. When the first shipment of iron left Sept-Îles in 1954, the Prime Minister maintained that “for centuries, a territory representing the extent of the old province of Quebec remained uninhabited, useless, unused, far from civilization and far from progress”, ignoring the indigenous populations who have frequented the place for millennia.
The irony of André Laurendeau then becomes biting: “Imagine all the possibilities of patronage that have slept there for decades of decades. For the Montreal liberal weekly Authority“the iron deposits of Ungava […] bring so much to the electoral coffers that it is not surprising that the Mauritian thinks of taking them out of paganism”. Gérard Filion’s conclusion is scathing. By paraphrasing a Union Nationale election slogan, the director of the To have to launches that “Duplessis gives his province”.
The leader of the Union Nationale, who considered himself a pragmatist, was pained by these accusations. At the end of the series DuplessisDenys Arcand had the former Prime Minister say, flying over the Knob Lake mine: “All we can do is negotiate our dependence [aux Américains] at the best possible price. […] That’s all we have, our natural resources. I sell them at the best price I can. »
The disappearance of Duplessis and the arrival of the Quiet Revolution, with its “Maîtres chez nous”, were they really going to change things? Just seven years ago, The duty revealed that Quebec was a “Canadian dunce” in terms of mining royalties, which at that time reached 1.9% of the gross value extracted, compared to 4.5% for the rest of Canada. It is therefore 2.4 times less money in the pockets of the Quebec community.