Politics of Base Selection
The
act of political patronage has often been alluded to in the process
of base selection during the British Commonwealth Air Training
Plan (BCATP). However, until recent years, no one had taken
a close look at official files and found any sort of conclusive
evidence. In 2000, Carleton University student Rachel Lea Heide completed a paper entitled “The Politics of British
Commonwealth Air Training Plan Base Selection in Western
Canada”. Through her research of government documents, she
came to realize although many believed ridings that
elected Liberal candidates were awarded air bases, evidence
to support that claim simply does not exist.
Heide
reconstructs the base selection process through researching
Department of Transport (DoT), Royal Canadian Air Force
(RCAF) and Aerodrome Development
Committee (ADC) files.
It seems that communities were awarded bases only if their
sites met technical criteria and were cost effective. Officials
would not budge on their decisions, even with extensive
lobbying efforts.
This did not, however, stop various communities from trying.
In fact, Heide discovers lobbying occurred to such
an extent that she breaks it down into segments. In what
she calls the early lobbying years, Heide describes
lobbyists as altruistic. The correspondence on file documents
community sentiment to be eager to participate in the war
effort by hosting an air base. As base selection continued,
correspondence from communities became more insistent. The
people in the lobbying communities wanted to participate
in the war effort, but expressed that this opportunity was
inaccessible to them because the government had not presented
them with an air base from where to do so. Later still,
these communities lobbied on the premise that they simply
deserved a school because of their political affiliations
to the Liberal government. When this approach didn’t work,
lobbyists became even more aggressive, threatening to discontinue
their support for the government if they did not receive
an air base. Even still, base selection officials did not
waver.
Another
reason for Heide’s conclusion of lack of partisan politics
in base selection is that decisions about base selection
were made by RCAF officers and elected officials merely
signed their recommendations. The site selection reports,
final decisions and reasons for awarding or rejecting a
site illustrate the effort to meet technical criteria, not
political ends. In evaluating which constituencies were
awarded aerodromes, no political pattern can be found. Liberal
ridings were not awarded air bases any more or less than
ridings that had elected members of other parties.
Source
Heide, Rachel Lea. The Politics of British
Commonwealth Air Training Plan Base Selection in the West,
M.A. Thesis. (Ottawa: Carleton University, 2000).
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