Canada's Greatest Wartime Muddle : National Selective Service and the Mobilization of Human Resources During World War II ISBN: 9780773569652 Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / McGill-Queen''s University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time Subjects: History;
In this exhaustively researched and carefully documented account, Michael Stevenson argues that National Selective Service (NSS) - the agency responsible for controlling the nation's military and civilian mobilization apparatus - failed in its attempts to regulate Canadian society. He challenges traditional views that Prime Minister Mackenzie King handled the conscription issue by creating a comprehensive, centralized, and efficient human resource mobilization strategy, carefully supervised by government bureaucrats in Ottawa. Stevenson argues instead that a fractured, de-centralized, and widely unpopular mobilization program often prevented NSS officials from channelling eligible men into Canada's system of compulsory training for home defence or allocating workers to essential industrial jobs.