VOTE FOR UNITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 October 1939, Page 5

VOTE FOR UNITY

QUEBEC ELECTION RESULT HEAVY DEFEAT OF DUPLESSIS PARTY. DOMINION GOVERNMENT SUPPORTED. By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright. QUEBEC, October 26. The final figures in the Parliamentary elections for Quebec Province are: — Liberal Party 68 Union Nationale 18 National Party 1 Independent 1 One result has been deferred. Though Mr Duplessis is elected, al least five of his Cabinet have been defeated (stated an earlier message). The Liberal Leader, Mr Godbout, will take the Premiership, which he has held previously. The Dominion Attorney-General, M. Lapointe, in a statement thanked the voters and said he will remain at his post. The Liberal Party, which supported the Dominion Cabinet in its war policy, has secured a sweeping victory, a radio message reports. Its 68 seats compare with 19 previously. The Union Nationale’s 15 seats compare with 71 in the previous Government. The result is interpreted as a gesture by the people of Quebec in support of the Dominion Cabinet’s actions to help Great Britain in the war. The Prime Minister, Mr Mackenzie King, commenting on the result, said: “No stronger evidence of Canada’s solid support of Great Britain and France could possibly have been given.” DOMINION PARLIAMENT LIFE MAY BE EXTENDED. ON ACCOUNT OF QUEBEC RESULT. (Received This Day, 9.45 a.m.) OTTAWA, October 26. Newspapers here state that without the Quebec election there doubtless would have been a general election in 1940, but since the Government’s war record was to a considerable extent the issue in Quebec, Mr Mackenzie King may consider the same a vote of confidence sufficiently convincing to warrant his asking Parliament to extend its life beyond five years, in the same way as at the outbreak of the world war. Dominion officials acclaimed the Liberals’ victory in the Quebec election as a sweeping endorsement of the Government’s war policy. The Prime Minister, Mr Mackenzie King, 'asserted that it was impossible to exaggerate the significance of the voting, “which has shown that the people of Quebec share the determination of their fellow Canadians that a united Canada shall co-operate on the side of Britain and France in the war to defend freedom and resist aggression.” The defeat of Mr Duplessis’s Government has eased a tense situation in the Dominion Cabinet, from which three Liberal from Quebec said they would resign if the party were de-' feated. Seven members of the Duplessis Cabinet were defeated.