Topic: Canadian Army
Canadian Politicians, Opinions of Soldiers, c.1930s
In Defence of Canada; From the Great War to the Great Depression, James Eayrs, 1964
The Great Depression sharpened the contrast between the situations of the permanent force officer and the unemployed citizen (or the citizen employed in one of the officers' relief camps at the rate of twenty cents a day). The General Staff was variously accused of being over-paid, over-manned, and preoccupied by trivia. "I was almost staggered," J.S. Woodsworth declared in February 1932, "when I compared the salaries received by people in the Department of National Defence … We have no fewer than one hundred and thirty-nine people receiving between $4,000 and $4,900; thirty people receiving between $5,000 and $5,900; fifteen people receiving between $6,000 and $6,900." [Canada, H.C. Debates, 1932, vol. I, p. 575] The salary of the Chief of the General Staff, which was $10,000 per annum, came under fire in the House of Commons on several occasions. It was not just that, in the eyes of the critics, these salaries were high; it was that their recipients did not earn them. "We have here," J. S. Woodsworth remarked, "an army of swivelchair generals." "I cannot think what these generals or colonels or whatever they are can be doing," Agnes Macphail stated a few days later. "It seems to me we have a general staff capable of handling an army of half a million men.'' [Ibid., p. 761] The initial exemption of Service officers from the Bennett Government's across-the-board 10 per cent reduction in the salaries of civil servants did not enhance their public reputation. "If there are people who do not earn their salaries," Martial Rhéaume, the Member for St. John-Iberville, stated in the House of Commons, "they are the army officers … I wonder what is their occupation. I suppose they are busy doing pretty much the same thing as those in my county: a little riding jolt of one or one hour and a half in the morning, and the day's work is over." [Ibid., p. 781] "I think perhaps the greatest close corporations we have in Ottawa," remarked F.G. Sanderson (South Perth), in March 1935, "is the staff down at the Woods Building … I go further. I say that the staff in the Woods Building is overmanned. You cannot get into the place; they are like an army of chocolate soldiers down there." [Ibid., 1935, vol. II, pp. 1546-9]
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