Conscription and the Crisis

By definition, conscription is the compulsory enlistment of citizens for service in the military. In the later years of World War I, conscription was introduced in Canada and became a fiercely debated topic. This debate divided the nation, thus creating the Conscription Crisis of 1917.

Dropping Enlistment Numbers

In 1914 when the war had just started, Canadian volunteers were plentiful and 30,000 Canadians enlisted in that year alone. At the start of the war, Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden said that Canada would not need to enforce conscription. Soon, this all changed and enlistment numbers began to decrease. From July 1916 to October 1917, only 2810 Canadians volunteered for the infantry.

There are many possible causes for this drop in numbers. At the time, Canada only had a population of 7.5 million people and a sixth of Canadian men between the ages of 15 and 44 had already joined the infantry. Thousands more were in other military branches like artillery, forestry and railway units, engineers, medical corps, and Royal Flying Corps. A large portion of the people who were capable of fighting had already joined.

War had also turned out to be less glamorous than many had originally thought. People back home in Canada could feel this as food and supplies were limited and the war had dragged on for longer than originally thought. Most had expected a short war with troops returning by Christmas of 1914. New technology also brought new and more brutal ways of fighting that, for the most part, had not been foreseen.

Borden's Decision

In 1916, Prime Minister Robert Borden visited London for the Imperial War Conference where he spent time in military hospitals and spoke with wounded soldiers. He was moved by what he saw and became determined that Canada would send over more soldiers to allow the wounded ones to return home, as they might have had to return to the trenches if no replacements could be found.



Borden pointed out that Australia had more soldiers fighting in the war than Canada in spite of Australia’s smaller population. In his 1916 New Year’s message, he pledged 500,000 Canadian soldiers. It is possible that he was acting on emotional instinct without properly thinking it through because 500,000 was not an entirely realistic number for a country with a population of 7.5 million people and a sixth of men capable of fighting already in the infantry.

Another possible motivation could have been because Borden himself had a personal connection to the war and the Canadian military. His cousin was a commanding officer of a battalion in France and he is pictured inspecting the battalion when he visited Europe to see the situation for himself. Because of his personal connection through his cousin, the war would have hit closer to home for him and probably would have given him an extra motivation to help and give support to the soldiers fighting in the frontlines.

Military Service Act

The Military Service Bill was introduced to the House of Commons in June 1917 and passed August 28th, 1917. It was enforced after Borden was reelected in the federal election that took place on December 17th, 1917. It made military service compulsory to all men between the ages of 20 to 45 until the end of the war.

This one act would greatly influence Canada in the years to come.