What was the Conscription Crisis of 1917?

The Conscription Crisis of 1917 was a political crisis when Sir Robert Borden's Conservative federal government introduced compulsory military service through the Military Service Act of August 29, 1917. The crisis deeply divided English Canada (which largely supported conscription) and French Canada (which largely opposed it), reshaping Canadian politics for a generation. The crisis remains the most consequential French-English political confrontation in 20th-century Canada before the Quebec sovereignty referendums of the 1980s and 1990s.

Canada's First World War effort had relied on voluntary enlistment until 1917. About 425,000 Canadians had volunteered by mid-1917, including disproportionately high enlistment from English-Canadian Protestant and recent British immigrant populations. French-Canadian enlistment was significantly lower (about 35,000 from a population of 2 million Quebecers, compared to about 350,000 from a population of 4 million in English Canada). Reasons included the absence of the Catholic church's endorsement, the war's distance from Quebec interests, the limited use of the French language in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and Henri Bourassa's nationalist criticism of Canadian involvement in British imperial wars.

By spring 1917, casualties at Vimy Ridge (April), Hill 70 (August), and Passchendaele (October to November) had eroded the Canadian Expeditionary Force's strength, with about 60,000 dead overall by war's end. Borden returned from the April 1917 Imperial War Cabinet meeting in London committed to maintaining the four-division Canadian Corps of about 100,000 troops. He concluded that voluntary recruitment could no longer meet the demand and introduced the Military Service Act (7-8 George V, c. 19) on June 11, 1917. The Act received royal assent on August 29, 1917 and required all male British subjects in Canada aged 20 to 45 to register for potential conscription.

The Act provoked vehement opposition in Quebec. Easter riots in Quebec City from March 28 to April 1, 1918 killed four civilians when soldiers fired into a crowd protesting conscription enforcement. Borden's December 1917 federal election was won decisively by the Union government (a coalition of pro-conscription Conservatives and Liberals), with 153 of 235 seats; Wilfrid Laurier's anti-conscription Liberals won 82 seats, almost all in Quebec (62 of Quebec's 65 seats). The Wartime Elections Act and Military Voters Act of 1917 had skewed the electorate by enfranchising women soldiers and female relatives of soldiers (likely pro-conscription) while disenfranchising recent immigrants from enemy countries (likely anti-conscription). Conscription produced about 124,500 soldiers, of whom 99,651 were sent overseas. Estimates suggest about 27,000 reached the front before the Armistice on November 11, 1918. The long-term political effect was the alienation of Quebec from the Conservative Party, which lost Quebec almost entirely until the 1980s. The Conscription Crisis is often cited alongside the 1885 Riel execution as a turning point in French-English Canadian relations.