The Manitoba Legislative Assembly.

• Author: Grafton, Emily Katherine
• Position: Report

Manitoba exhibits both classical characteristics of Canadian political life and unique developments that are strikingly Manitoban. Accordingly, the development of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly has reflected the range of divisions within Canadian political society, including east/west tensions, Francophone/Anglophone relations, struggles between Aboriginal lifestyles and European colonialism, urban/rural divisions and of course the continuing legacy of immigration--multiculturalism. While exhibiting these traditional Canadian elements of nation building, Manitoba has also developed a distinct identity. The Metis and First Nation heritages, the timing and settlement patterns of immigration waves, the small provincial population, the province's have-not status and its difficult climate all contribute to the political environment. As the province's principal representative institution, the Manitoba Legislative Assembly is unique and reflects both the distinctive social and political context of Prairie politics and the complexities of the modern Western world.

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When one looks over the history of Manitoba's Legislative Assembly, three distinct phases of development emerge: the province-building phase, 1870 to 1921; the non-partisan coalition phase, 1921 to 1969; and the modern era, 1969 to the present.

Manitoba attained provincial status in an unusual and hasty manner due to the Riel Rebellion of 1869. When Louis Riel, a Metis leader, seized power in the Red River area, the federal government used the tactic of conferring provincial status as a tool to dismantle the Riel movement. In 1869, Riel created the "Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia" made up of 12 representatives of the Anglophone parishes and 12 from the Francophone parishes. Riel was elected president and created a constitution that balanced the competing influences of English- and French-speaking settlers. The membership of the executive also reflected this divide. The Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia created a "List of Rights," including a grant of provincial status, which it demanded the Canadian Government enact. On July 14, 1870, Manitoba became the first 'Canadian-made' province. Riel's "List of Rights" was used as the template for the Manitoba Act, the Legislative Assembly's first tool of governance. To some Manitobans, Riel is still a champion of the first government chosen by the local people and this status has been recognized by the erection of a statue of him on the grounds of the Legislative Assembly in 1970 and by the establishment of a provincial holiday in his honour, Louis Riel Day, in 2007.

This hasty approach to Manitoba's province-building placed limitations on the new Legislative Assembly. There was no period to acclimatize to this new status, and the Legislative Assembly did make mistakes. Indeed, according to Murray Donnelly, it was "astonishing that the parliamentary system worked at all..." (1) At the same time, the federal government intervened directly in the functioning of Manitoba's new political institutions: the Lieutenant Governor and Cabinet were appointed by the federal government to provide experience and to ensure governance that met Ottawa's standards. This heavy-handedness further contributed to existing antagonism between Manitoba's citizenry and the national government. The first two lieutenant-governors, Adams Archibald and Alexander Morris, both easterners, played a role quite unlike that of their equivalents in other provinces. They did not restrict themselves to standard duties. The Lieutenant Governors attended Cabinet meetings and their assistants attended House sessions, enabling Ottawa's policy direction to supersede local wishes, thus interfering with business of exclusive reserve to the legislature.

The first decade of the Manitoba Legislature, from 1870 to 1882, was a nonpartisan era during which debate took place not between ideologically opposed parties but according to religious and linguistic factions. The chamber was initially bicameral, organized with 7 members in the Legislative Council (upper house) appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor and 24 elected members in the lower house. These 24 members reflected the Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia organization, with 12 seats designated to the English-speaking population and 12 to the French-speaking community, again along parish lines.

During this time, taxation was limited and revenue came almost exclusively from the federal government. Seventy percent of provincial expenditures were consumed by the operational costs of the legislature. Partially as a cost-cutting measure and partially because of lack of public support, the legislative council was abolished in 1876.

Throughout the 1870s, the Lieutenant Governor's involvement in the decision-making process and Cabinet declined as House proceedings began to mature. In the 1880s the first party delineations, between Liberals and Conservatives, emerged. Three major waves of immigration had significant impacts on the political culture of Manitoba. The first was migration from rural Ontario. By the 1890s, Manitoba was an image of western Ontario politics or "liberal with a Tory touch" and this was strongly apparent in decision-makers' ideology until the 1960s.

British settlers, primarily from working class backgrounds, formed the second wave of immigration. These immigrants brought with them working class ethics and socialist politics, and mostly settled in urban centres. This wave quadrupled Winnipeg's population between the years 1901 to 1915, significantly defining the political identity of the city.

The population boom around the turn of the century initiated a shift in Manitoba life. The economy and means of transportation were transformed from "the fur trade and Red River cart era to one of grains and trains," (2) bringing new challenges to Manitoba's society. Economic pressures on the growing wheat industry led to the development of a provincial agricultural consciousness. In 1905, a new political party, the United Farmers of Manitoba (UFM), was created to help mitigate agrarian problems, particularly concerns about farmers' retaining control of their product within the market. The UFM quickly became an important political fixture in rural Manitoba. A significant divide was emerging between Manitoba's urban and rural political ideologies as the lifestyles and economic interests of these two spheres became increasingly divergent.

The third wave of immigration to influence Manitoba's political arena came from continental Europe, primarily Eastern and Central Europe. The City of Winnipeg has since been an incubator of leftist ideology, including Canada's first Independent Labour Party (ILP) (British socialist) and the Communist Party (continental European). Additionally, those with "Non-Anglo American origins have, in their voting, helped make or break governments," (3) and thus political parties have continually vied with one another to gain this influential vote.

These immigration waves have defined Manitoba's electoral map, by forming strong political cleavages between rural and urban ridings and by contributing to the development of the province's political parties. In turn, these developments have influenced the Legislative Assembly. Today, the electoral map is generally predictable with constituencies north of Winnipeg predominantly voting New Democratic Party (NDP) and those south voting Conservative. The ridings in Winnipeg are less predictable and it is here that elections are often won and lost.

Non-partisan Coalition Building 1921-1969

In the 1922 election, a large number of farmers entered politics with a platform that party politics were ineffective and unproductive in the overall structure of legislative governance. This perception was a direct response to the province's growing expenditures and debt, and the rigid partisanship of the Roblin and Norris regimes. This shift was also a response to growing discontent with Cabinet domination of the Legislative Assembly. Thus, when the UFM, which had transformed itself from an agrarian movement into a political party, won a majority government in the 1922 election, the top-heavy decision-making structure and party model were at once dismantled.

The UFM was able to create a stable coalition government for the first 30 years of this second phase of legislative development. Over time, the UFM transformed itself into the Progressive Party of Manitoba, and the Liberals joined the Progressives to later become the Liberal-Progressive Party. These changes were implemented to avoid handing power to the Conservatives. Under this coalition regime, John

Bracken held the premiership from 1922 to 1943, Stuart Garson from 1943 to 1948, and Douglas Campbell from 1948 to 1958. The stability of this regime provided Manitoba with "... simple, honest, straightforward government, uninspired but not unprogressive." (4) Coalition governments--defined as governments in which more than one party holds Cabinet seats (as distinguished from alliances in which one party consistently supports another party in the legislature)--are rare in Canada. Thus, with a Cabinet constructed of ministers from more than one party, policy direction was not set by one party's platform, but by negotiation of ministers' diverse ideological values. The three and a half decades of coalitions experienced in Manitoba stand as by far the longest stretch of coalition government...