The Act to Protect the Province Against Communistic Propaganda (French: Loi protégeant la province contre la propagande communiste), commonly known as the "Padlock Law" or "Padlock Act" (French: La loi du cadenas), was a law in the province of Quebec, Canada that allowed the Attorney General of Quebec to close off access to property suspected of being used to propagate or disseminate communist propaganda.[1] The law was introduced by the Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis and made it illegal to "use [a house] or allow any person to make use of it to propagate Communism or Bolshevism by any means whatsoever". This included printing, publishing or distributing of "any newspaper, periodical, pamphlet, circular, document or writing, propagating Communism or Bolshevism". Violations of the Act subjected such property to closure by the Attorney General, including the locking of access doors with padlocks, against any use whatsoever for a period of up to one year and any person found guilty of involvement in prohibited media activities could be incarcerated for three to thirteen months.
The law was extremely vague; it did not define Communism or Bolshevism in any concrete way.[2] It denied both the presumption of innocence and freedom of speech to individuals. There were also concerns[by whom?] that the law would be used in order to arrest individual activists from international trade unions. Two union leaders were nearly arrested in that period.[3]
The federal government under Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King could have used its power of disallowance to nullify the Padlock Law, as it had done to overturn equally controversial laws that had been passed by Alberta's Social Credit government around the same time.[4] However, King chose not to intervene in Quebec.
The Supreme Court of Canada's 1957 decision in Switzman v Elbling struck down the law as ultra vires of the provincial government because it was an attempt by the province to enact a statute respecting criminal law, which is the exclusive domain of the federal parliament under the Constitution of Canada.[5] In their concurrence, justices Ivan Rand, Roy Kellock and Douglas Abbott also argued the law was ultra vires because it contravened an implied bill of rights that underlies the Canadian constitution, but this view was not shared by the rest of the majority.[6]
^Black, Conrad (1977). Duplessis. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. pp. 162. ISBN 9780771015304.
^Keith, J. E. (August 1, 1937). "Is Quebec going fascist?". Maclean's. Retrieved July 25, 2020.
^Rouillard, Jacques (1989). Le syndicalisme québécois : Deux siècles d'histoire. Montréal: Éditions Boréal, at page 68. ISBN 2-89052-243-1
^Editorial, "Democracy in Danger", in Canadian Forum, Vol. XVII, No 206 (March 1938): 403.
^Forsey, Eugene A. (February 7, 2006). "Padlock Act". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
^MacLennan, Christopher (2003). "The decade of human rights and the bill of rights movement". Toward the Charter: Canadians and the demand for a national bill of rights, 1929–1960. Montreal & Kingston: McGill–Queen's University Press. pp. 109–125. ISBN 077352536X.
propagande communiste), commonly known as the "PadlockLaw" or "Padlock Act" (French: La loi du cadenas), was a law in the province of Quebec, Canada that allowed...
protest methods. Quebec put its PadlockLaw into place in 1937, in a further attempt to quell the spread of communism. This law gave prosecutors the power...
Congress of Canada (TLC). He introduced several laws opposed by the unions, most notably the PadlockLaw, which prohibited the dissemination of communist...
Asylum Act) of 1909 governed mental institution admissions until 1950. The law stated the mentally ill could be committed for three reasons: to care for...
A law governing the usage of the flag was later officially adopted by the Quebec Parliament on March 9, 1950. A more recent version of such a law was...
using his government's apparatus. Communists were persecuted under the PadlockLaw, which Duplessis authored in 1937. Duplessis's legacy remains controversial...
against the Duplessis regime, which made the party illegal using the PadlockLaw, and to organize the unorganized. The election of Fred Rose in Cartier...
1936 election (20th Leg.) Union Nationale (Ldr. 1936) MLA for Trois-Rivières PadlockLaw. — (2 of 2) Adélard Godbout (1892–1956) 8 November 1939 30 August 1944...
to repress communists was passed during the first term, known as the PadlockLaw, and the government passed regulations weakening organized labour. During...
as the "PadlockLaw", was ultra vires of the provincial legislature. The Court held that the PadlockLaw was a statute respecting criminal law, which is...
A love lock or love padlock is a padlock that couples lock to a bridge, fence, gate, monument, or similar public fixture to symbolize their love. Typically...
Court of Canada struck down the PadlockLaw as unconstitutional in 1957. In 1962, the U.S. state of Louisiana passed a law identifying communist propaganda...
to create the repressive padlocklaw in 1937 against the CPC and all supposedly communist groups. Duplessis quickly padlocked the offices of the CPC's...
Duplessis, the conservative Union Nationale premier of Quebec, passed the PadlockLaw (the Act to Protect the Province Against Communistic Propaganda), which...
Witnesses being persecuted under Quebec's PadlockLaw. During his tenure as dean of the University of Western Ontario's law school he was reluctant to hire a...
Union Nationale (Action libérale nationale) Great Depression in Canada PadlockLaw (Switzman v Elbling) 1939 election (opposition to conscription) Return...
hospitals. The authoritarian Duplessis used the provincial police and the "PadlockLaw" to suppress unionism and gave the Montreal-based Anglo-Scot business...
Quebec governments (see Section 98 of the Criminal Code of Canada, the PadlockLaw and the War Measures Act) . The only Canadian communist federal MP, Fred...
specific A motorbike license. Each model was available in 3 options: Premium, City (with padlock), and Executive (with padlock + ABS). Peugeot Motocycles...
of Fascists, and the National Unity Party of Canada, opposed Quebec's PadlockLaw, protested the persecution of Jews in Europe, and called for a boycott...
parks were tied up and padlocked to prevent their use. Similar laws formerly applied to cinemas, pubs and parks. Since 2007, blue laws were enacted and resulted...
the Province Against Communistic Propaganda (commonly known as the "PadlockLaw"), which banned the printing, publishing or distributing of "any newspaper...
reinforced doors with certified locks and door bolt locked with a certified padlock, equipped with an electronic alarm connected to armed private security...
Global Information
