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The poor and destitute have traditionally been ther esponsibility of municipalities in Canada.This responsibility became ananachronism with the mass industrial unemployment of the 1930's. Lacking the resources to provide relief alone, municipalities became dependent on help from the senior governments. Annual Relief Acts of the dominion government gave assistance, but stressed always municipal and provincial responsibility for relief. For the municipalities each new Act demanded both administrative and financial changes which had to be complied with in order to receive the badly needed help. Of all the three levels of government the municipalities bore the brunt of the unemployment problem of the 1930's. Local councils were in daily contact with the unemployed and their plight. Responsibility rested with them. Yet their inflexible and diminishing revenues did not allow them to take the initiative in solving the problem of unemployment. In British Columbia the problems of transients and of Vancouver City have absorbed most attention. Unknown or ignored is the impact of the depression years on the surrounding suburbs. In 1930 Vancouver's bedroom suburbs were Burnaby, North Vancouver City, North Vancouver District and West Vancouver. In the winter of 1932 to 1933, in the depth of the depression, the first three defaulted on bond payments and were taken over by a provincially appointed commissioner. West Vancouver in contrast retained solvency and hence local responsibility and control. The Dominion Acts were not designed to counteract the disparities between provinces and municipalities either in the incidence of unemployment or in their ability to cope with it. Burnaby, North Vancouver City and North Vancouver District were predominantly working class suburbs, many of whose residents and taxpayers lost their jobs. West Vancouver, by contrast, was a consciously middle class, residential suburb whose residents were much less susceptible to unemployment. As suburbs, unlike a city, have no major industries to compensate for non-payment of taxes by their residents, this basic occupational difference led to bankruptcy in Burnaby and North Vancouver City and District. The history of the attempts of these suburban councils to provide relief for the growing numbers of unemployed between 1929 and 1933 not only contrasts the difficulties of providing relief in working class and middle class suburbs, but also illustrates the problems that arose from insistence on municipal responsibility for relief. Daily contact with the growing numbers of unemployed and the obvious inadequacy of municipal and even provincial revenues convinced municipal officials in British Columbia that the dominion government should take control and assume responsibility for unemployment relief.They were not merely 'passing the buck'. The worldwide nature of the depression supported their contention that unemployment was not a local problem with a local solution. Neither the provincial nor dominion governments would accept primary responsibility for relief. Only in the municipalities which wentbankrupt was a senior government forced to assume responsibility and take control.

OCLC: 688667663