The Military Service Act, 1917 was an Act passed by the Parliament of Canada in an effort to recruit more soldiers.
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Background
The First World War was going badly, casualties were enormous, and Canada's contribution in manpower compared unfavourably with that of other countries. Voluntary enlistment had been uneven, and the military believed they could not maintain the Canadian Corps at full strength without conscription. Encouraged by English Canadians and the British, Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden introduced the Military Service Act. Riots broke out in Quebec.
The Militia Act, 1904 already provided for military service for all male British subjects between the ages of 18 and 60, but the calling-up was by levée en masse, which would have caused massive disruption through the pulling of skilled workers from agriculture and industry.
Administration
Under the 1917 Act, the male population of Canada was divided into several classes for the purpose of being called up for military service, from which certain exceptions were available:
A system of local and appeal tribunals was in place for determining exemptions claimed under the Act.
The men of Class 1 were called up to report for military service on November 10, 1917, with the deadline delayed until December 12, 1917 for those living in the Yukon Territory (who did not need to report for duty until January 7, 1918).
Men within any class who, after August 4, 1914, had moved to the United States or elsewhere were also required to submit to the provisions of the Act.
Further regulations issued on April 30, 1918, required all persons claiming an exemption to carry documention supporting such a claim, with lack of documentation resulting in detention without recourse to habeas corpus, and public notices of these regulations were published across Canada. This left farming operations across Canada short of much-needed labour.
Impact
The act was unevenly administered, and there were numerous evasions and many exemptions. By the end of the war only 24,132 conscripts had reached the front. The Act's military value has been questioned, but its political consequences were clear. It led to Borden's Union government and drove most of his French Canadian supporters into opposition, as they were seriously alienated by this attempt to enforce their participation in an imperial war. Conflicts between the government's calls for greater agricultural production and conscription would lead to the rise of the farmers' movements of the 1920s, and would have more lasting effects in rural and Western alienation. Lessons learned from the First World War experience were used in framing the National Resources Mobilization Act that was passed in the Second World War.