King-Byng Affair
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The King-Byng Affair was a Canadian constitutional crisis that occurred in 1926 when the Governor General of Canada, Lord Byng of Vimy, refused a request by the Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, to dissolve parliament and call a general election.
The crisis was watched closely by both the Canadian and British governments, and came to redefine the role of Governor General not only in Canada but throughout the Dominions. It was also a major impetus in negotiations at Imperial Conferences held in the late 1920s that led to the Statute of Westminster, 1931.
According to British Empire constitutional convention, the Governor General once represented both the Sovereign and the British government, but the convention had evolved with Lord Byng's predecessors, and the Canadian government, as well as the Canadian people, into a tradition of non-interference in Canadian political affairs.
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[edit] Request for dissolution
In September 1925, King requested a dissolution of Parliament to call an election, which Lord Byng granted. In the election the Conservative Party won 116 seats to 99 for King's Liberals. Counting on the support of the Progressive Party (which had 24 seats) to overcome the Conservative plurality, King did not resign and remained in office in a coalition with the Progressive Party, as a minority government.
A few months later, one of King's appointees in the Department of Customs and Excise was revealed to have taken bribes. The Conservatives alleged that the corruption extended to the highest levels of government, including the Prime Minister. King fired the Minister of Customs, Jacques Bureau, but promptly recommended that Byng appoint him to the Senate, creating even more dismay among the members of the Progressive Party, who had already been withdrawing their support from the Liberal government.
Having already lost two previous votes on questions of procedure and afraid of losing a third on a question of government corruption, King went to Byng seeking a dissolution of Parliament. Byng used his reserve power to refuse the request. He argued that the Conservatives, as the biggest single party in Parliament, should have a chance to form a government before he could call an election. Byng was also wary of dissolving Parliament while the Commons was debating a motion of censure: such a dissolution could be seen as the Crown interfering with the Commons' freedom of speech. King requested that before any decision was made, Byng consult the British government. Byng again refused, saying the matter should be settled in Canada without resort to London.
The next day, King presented Byng with an Order-in-Council seeking the dissolution of Parliament, which Byng refused to sign. Believing that he no longer had enough support to stay in office, King resigned (convention requires a prime minister to either drop the writ or resign when he loses the support of the House of Commons). Byng then invited Conservative leader Arthur Meighen, who had been Prime Minister from 1920 to 1921, to form a government. Meighen did so, but made his ministers only "acting" ones; they were not sworn into office because the government still had to win a confidence vote in the House of Commons and under the laws of the time new ministers would have to seek re-election. The Liberals were furious, and were able to get the Progressives to join them in a drive to bring down the government. This was successful, and Meighen was denied confidence by only one vote. Meighen requested a dissolution of Parliament, which was granted by Byng, and an election was called.
In a letter to King George V, Byng expressed surprise that King, a staunch nationalist, had requested that Byng consult the Colonial Office in London over the matter, which Byng refused to do, seeing the responsibility to resolve the crisis as belonging to the Governor General.[1] Byng said "I have to await the verdict of history to prove my having adopted a wrong course, and this I do with an easy conscience that, right or wrong, I have acted in the interests of Canada and implicated no one else in my decision."[2]
[edit] Legacy
Much was made of the 'Byng-King Crisis' during the election campaign, which King conducted rhetorically as a campaign for Canadian independence from Britain even though it was King who demanded that Byng consult London, something Byng refused to do. However, the Liberals were returned to power with a clear majority and King as Prime Minister. Once in power, King's government sought at a Commonwealth conference to redefine the role of Governor General as a representative of the Sovereign and not of the British government. The change was agreed to at the Imperial Conference of 1926. As a result of the Balfour Declaration of 1926, Commonwealth Governors General ceased to be the agents of the Imperial or British government in each Dominion — this role was to be assumed by a British High Commissioner, whose duties were soon recognized to be virtually identical to those of an ambassador.
Leaving Canada on 30 September 1926, Byng returned to England. Despite the political crisis, he left a much-respected man. Many historians have agreed that Byng was constitutionally obligated to refuse King's request, as King had not been in office for sufficient time and merely wanted to avoid a motion of censure.
The King-Byng Affair was the most controversial use of a Governor General's reserve powers until the Australian constitutional crisis of 1975 in which the Governor-General of Australia, John Kerr, dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
The King-Byng Affair is occasionally called the "King Byng Thing" or the "King Byng Wing-Ding" by Canadian political scientists and historians in casual conversation or informal writing.[citation needed]
