When the Canadian Parliament met in 1910, Sir Wilfrid Laurier
submitted a Naval Service Bill, providing for the establishment
of local fleets, of which the smaller vessels were to be built in
Canada. The ships were to be under the control of the Dominion
Government, which might, in case of emergency, place them at the
disposal of the British Admiralty. The bill was passed in March.
In the autumn two cruisers, the Rainbow and the Niobe, were
bought from Britain to serve as training ships. In the following
spring a naval college was opened at Halifax, and tenders were
called for the construction, in Canada, of five cruisers and six
destroyers. In June, 1911, at the regular Imperial Conference of
that year, an agreement was reached regarding the boundaries of
the Australian and Canadian stations and uniformity of training
and discipline.
Then came the reciprocity fight and the defeat of the Government.
No tenders had been finally accepted, and the new Administration
of Premier Borden was free to frame its own policy.
The naval issue had now become a party question. The policy of a
Dominion navy, a policy which was the logical extension of the
principles of colonial nationalism and imperial cooperation which
had guided imperial development for many years, was attacked by
ultra-imperialists in the English-speaking provinces as
strategically unsound and as leading inevitably to separation
from the Empire.
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