The Whisky King by Trevor Cole

Author:Trevor Cole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2017-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

18

INDAGINE

Investigation

ONCE A ROW OF DOMINOES BEGINS TO FALL, IT BECOMES unstoppable. It wasn’t obvious yet, but with the launch of the Commons committee investigation into smuggling Canada was headed toward a political crisis. Given the events that unfolded over the next few months, it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that as two of the leading figures in bootlegging, Rocco and Bessie Perri played a role in bringing down the federal government. The repercussions would not leave them unscathed.

The Commons committee ultimately heard from 224 witnesses. Its findings weren’t a complete surprise; even Prime Minister King knew the customs department was, in his words, “a sink of iniquity.” But when the committee made its sweeping recommendations—which included dismissing half a dozen top customs officials, reorganizing its preventive service, ordering an audit of distillery export practices and imposing excise and sales taxes on all exported Canadian liquor—it triggered a kind of political avalanche.

The committee’s submission of its report to the House of Commons on June 18, 1926, provoked a series of dramatic political manoeuvres. Conservative MP Harry Stevens, the chair of the committee, attempted to amend the report to include an official censure of the minority Mackenzie King government. Hoping to avoid censure and the parliamentary defeat it would bring, the government proposed a Royal Commission to investigate the customs mess. That led to further manoeuvres and more drama, as MPs from the Progressive Party, which had been propping up King’s Liberals, began to peel away. Amendments and sub-amendments competed for votes. One suggested that the House adopt a version of the report that included both a Royal Commission and censure. The press described the political mood as “heated and dangerous.”

Ultimately the machinations brought Prime Minister King to the doorstep of Lord Byng, the governor general. To King it seemed now that an election was his best option; there was at least a chance his Liberals could win it outright. So, over tea and buttered bread, he asked Byng to order the dissolution of Parliament. Traditionally, a governor general acceded to such a request, and King argued for it forcefully, but Byng refused. He thought the Conservative Party—which actually had more seats than the Liberals—deserved the chance to govern. This was the infamous “King–Byng” affair, which led to King’s resignation and the very brief Conservative government led by Arthur Meighen.

All of those events, from the introduction of the smuggling committee’s report to the change of government and the swearing-in of a new prime minster, took just eleven days. And through that entire crisis, as well as through the general election that soon followed (which Mackenzie King’s Liberals did win), one thing survived: the demand for a Royal Commission into bootlegging, border corruption and distillery shenanigans. The Royal Commission on Customs and Excise got under way officially on November 17, 1926.

Had they been aware of the commission’s early progress, through Ottawa, Victoria and Vancouver, Rocco and Bessie might have been amused at all the political commotion. If they took any notice as its

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