I am aware that economically, Canadians were not as prepared after WWI as WWII, which contributed to the Great Depression. How was the economic handling of WWII different?
In addition, both wars had issues of conscription that served to divide the nation on lines of ethnicity and region. How were the conscription crises different in each war?
Also feel free to talk about any other ways in which the wars differed in their effects on the nation, these are just two ways I am already vaguely aware of.
Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie-King was a gifted and shrewd politician, and his management of Canada's wartime economy from 1939-1945 was masterful. During the First World War inflation was rampant as the government shelled out huge amounts of money in order to fund the war effort. King introduced wage and price controls in 1941 and thereafter inflation averaged 7%/year, which was quite manageable. Furthermore, King passed Order-in-Council 1003 (1944) which allowed unions to officially negotiate on behalf of workers, which eased labour relations in Canada. As a result, union membership doubled in Canada from 1939-1945. Moreover, the large scale sales of war bonds throughout WWII helped to boost the Canadian economy.
King also took the opportunity provided by the full employment of wartime to lay some of the foundations of the Canadian welfare state. The Unemployment Insurance Act (1941) provided stipends to those who found themselves out of work. The Family Allowances Act (1944) provided a bonus to families with newborn children, which would contribute in a minor way to the Baby Boom. The Veteran's Charter (1944) also provided a variety of benefits for returning soldiers, who had been treated shamefully when they returned home in 1918. Canada got it right following WWII, with veterans received a "cash-out" for their time spent overseas, as well as free post-secondary education, and for -- those who already had jobs in 1939 -- a guarantee that they could have their old positions back. Canada's manufacturing capacity also expanded hugely during the Second World War. Canada produced 815 000 military vehicles, 16 000 aircraft, hundreds of warships, as well as munitions. By the end of the war, Canadian manufacturing industries had grown the expertise and the capital necessary to transition to a powerful peacetime economy. Wage and price controls, lower inflation, social welfare reforms, and the growth of the manufacturing industry during the war allowed for Canada to maintain the wartime boom past 1945.
Mackenzie-King had been a Liberal MP back in 1917 when the Conscription Crisis rocked Canada. Essentially the only real issue of the 1917 election campaign was conscription, and Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden welcomed both Conservatives (his own party) and Liberals (the opposition, led by Sir Wilfird Laurier) to run as Union MPs, united by their support for conscription. Borden won a landslide victory. However, Laurier and the majority of his Quebec MPs opted not to join the Union government, and instead served as the opposition. King and the other MPs boosted their own reputations by being one of Laurier's "Loyal Liberals".
It is not surprising then that Prime Minister King promised at the outbreak of WWII that he would not conscript Canadian men for overseas service. As a leader of the Liberal party it would be political suicide for him to support conscription, since his power base was in Quebec where the population was staunchly against conscription, and where memories of Borden's betrayal in WWI still ran deep. His mantra, which has gone down as one of his most famous lines, was indicative of his tendency to compromise: "conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription". However, by 1941 many English-Canadians were demanding that conscription be put in place. King was astonished, since Canadian forces were not nearly suffering the same losses they had been in WWII, and even in French Canada recruitment was not very far below the national average.
King decided to compromise, and called for a plebiscite in January 1942 to address the issue. King asked Canadians whether they would release him of his previous promise to avoid conscription, and 2/3 of Canadians voted in favour of conscription. However, almost all of Quebec voted against it. Instead of enacting general conscription, King decided to utilize manpower resources that were already available. The National Resources Mobilization Act (1940) had allowed the government to conscript men for home defence purposes. As many as 100 000 men were conscripted for things like guarding harbours and coastal areas, and they received the same training as regular troops.
Taking advantage of this, in November 1944 King allowed for the NRMA "zombies" as they were called to volunteer for overseas service. Since these men were already away from their families, a lot of them volunteered simply to receive the better pay of full soldiers. Around 16 000 of these semi-conscripts went overseas, and by the time they reached Europe the Allies were already racing towards Berlin.
King successfully avoided a national outcry the likes of which had rocked the nation in 1917. Also, Canada was the only major Allied power to go the duration of the war without general conscription.
Sources:
Morton, Desmond. A Military History of Canada.
Durflinger, Serge and Jeffrey Keshen eds. War and Society in Post-Confederation Canada.