Simple question, at least you’d think.
All I want to know is when, on what date, did Canada officially terminate its declaration of war in both World Wars? I know what date the hostilities ended, that is easy enough to determine. I want know when Canada formally declared peace.
This question was provoked by learning that the United States never ratified the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and was therefore still technically at war with Germany until 1921.
Canada did sign the Treaty of Versailles. Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, & Newfoundland all singed on their own as opposed having a signal imperial signatutre by the United Kingdom.
I know. I said that in my OP. The United States also signed the treaty, it is just that the Senate never ratified it. (This is my problem, was Canada at peace with Germany after WWI on 29 June 1919? Or was it sometime after that date, when Canada’s parliament or Governor General or whomever, officially ratified the treaty?)
The United States’ Senate refusal to sign the Versailles treaty is what provoked my question. Although Canada is obviously not at war with Germany or Japan anymore, when was peace officially concluded.
A treaty comes into force upon the “exchange of the instruments of ratification”. This ceremony took place for the Treaty of Versailles in Paris on January 10, 1920.
However, according to the New York Times story on the ceremony, Great Britain ratified for the British Empire as a whole. (This would perhaps make sense, since in 1914 the King declared war, on the advice of this British ministers only, on behalf of the Empire as a whole.) The parties ratifying on 1/10/1920 were Germany, the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Panama, Peru, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Siam, and Uruguay.
You would have to look up when the exchange took place for the other four treaties ending WWI with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey (St Germaine-en-Laye, Trianon, Neuilly, and Sevres).
The exchange of the instruments of ratification for the peace treaty ending WWII with Japan took place on April 28, 1952, and on that occasion of course both Canada and the United States participated.
There was no peace treaty ending WWII with Germany, because of the division of the country. Each ally terminated the war unilaterally. The US did so on October 19, 1951. Canada did so on July 10, 1951.
Canada never declared war in WWI. Under the constitutional structure of the Empire in 1914, Britain’s declaration of war brought the entire Empire into the war.
Under Canada’s Constitution, Parliament does not have to ratify a treaty for it to be binding - the consent of the executive is sufficient.
Colonel Lawrence Cosgrave signed the instrument of Japan’s surrender on Canada’s behalf, on September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri. That constitutes an agreement to cease hostilities, since he had executive authority to do so.
In the case of Germany the general instrument of surrender was signed by Walter Bedell Smith on behalf of Eisenhower, who has Supreme Commander wielded executive power over Canada’s forces.
Whether peace was formally declared by Canada or not with regards to Germany is sort of irrelevant because the state against which Canada was at war ceased to exist. The request to King George VI to declare war in 1939 specifically asked that Canada declare war against the “German Reich,” which ceased to be in 1945, and was eventually reduced in size and then replaced by two German states.
Thank you Freddy the Pig.
And thank you Northern Piper for the note that, in Canada, the consent of the executive is akin to legislative ratification. But I am wondering, is this always the case? I admit my own ignorance of my country’s governance in this matter, however, I thought / figured that some other government entity would be required to formally check the Prime Minister from committing Canada to say, the Kyoto Protocols.
In the case of Kyoto, Canada signed the treaty back in the 90s but we never ratified it until 2002.
Oh, governments can always find reasons why paperwork is relevant. As noted above, Canada issued the appropriate proclamation of peace with respect to Germany on July 10, 1951. I can’t find the text of the proclamation online, but you can read some of the reasons why it was necessary here.
Jeez, so late - more than six years after V-E Day. I had no idea. Was the delay due to the Allies’ interests in safeguarding West Germany against the Soviet hordes?
When the armistice was signed in 1945, it was expected that the winning powers would sit down in the near future and write up an official treaty. But the rapid cooling of the relationship between the Soviet Union and the western powers delayed this until finally everyone realized there would never be a single common treaty and everyone signed their own.
The problem was the complete dissolution of the German government followed by a messy interregnum between the very conflicted victors. (And it wasn’t just Western vs. Eastern powers. All three of US, UK and France had very different post-war agendas.) In order to sign treaties, there has to be an official government to counter-sign. And not everybody agreed as to what constituted an official German government.
They finally did in 1990 with the Two Plus Four Agreement.
The Canadian Foreign Affairs document that Freddy the Pig linked to indicates that the formal end of hostilities didn’t occur until the Federal Republic of Germany was up and running. If the Allies had formally ended hostilities before a German civil government was up and running, as a matter of international law they would not have had any power to control the German territory. Their power to do so came from the law of war - as victors in war, they had a legal right, recognized under international law, to govern the German territory.
The Canadian constitution on this point is modelled on the U.K. constitution, where the Crown has exclusive jurisdiction over international relations, as an aspect of the Royal prerogative. As a matter of law, the Crown has sole power to commit Canada to war and peace, or other international treaties. The Crown of course only exercises this power on the advice of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
However, the Prime Minister and Cabinet are politically responsible to the House of Commons, and must account for their advice on international matters to the Commons. This is not a form of ratification, but of political accountability. So for example, in 1939 there was a debate in the House of Commons after the Mackenzie King government declared war on the German Reich. The Commons passed a motion approving of the decision to go to war. If the Commons had refused to approve of the declaration of war, that would have been tantamount to a motion of non-confidence, leading to either the resignation of the King government or a general election. But that was a question of political accountability - as a matter of law, Canada was at war once the federal government issued the declaration under the Royal prerogative.
There’s a further legal limitation on the executive’s power to sign treaties on behalf of Canada. The executive has no power to legislate. If the treaty is what is called “self-executing” (i.e. takes effect without the need for legislation), then the decision of the executive is all that is needed. However, if it is necessary for legislation to be passed to implement the treaty within the country, the executive cannot do that itself. It must get the legislation passed by Parliament or the provincial legislatures, depending on which level of government has the authority over the subject matter of the treaty.