Social Credit Board

The Social Credit Board was a committee in Alberta, Canada from 1937 until 1948. Composed of Social Credit backbenchers in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, it was created in the aftermath of the 1937 Social Credit backbenchers' revolt. Its mandate was to oversee the implementation of social credit in Alberta. To this end, it secured the services of L. Dennis Byrne and George Powell, two lieutenants of social credit's British founder, C. H. Douglas.

After requiring all Social Credit Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) to sign loyalty oaths to it, the Social Credit Board proceeded to recommend radical legislation regulating banking, taxing banks, and restricting freedom of the press and access to courts. Most of this legislation was either disallowed by the federal government or ruled ultra vires (beyond the powers of) the province by the Supreme Court of Canada; these defeats and the advent of World War II made the Social Credit Board increasingly irrelevant. In its later years it became highly anti-Semitic, and it was dissolved by the government of Ernest Manning in 1948.

William Aberhart's Social Credit League won the 1935 Alberta general election on a platform of ending the Great Depression by implementing social credit, a new economic theory that posited that poverty could be ended by increasing citizens' purchasing power. By 1937, many Social Credit backbenchers in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta were becoming frustrated with the government's lack of progress. This frustration became the 1937 Social Credit backbenchers' revolt. As a condition of regaining the rebels' support, Aberhart agreed to create the Social Credit Board, to be composed of five Social Credit MLAs and responsible for the implementation of social credit in Alberta. The chair of the Social Credit Board was Glenville MacLachlan; he and three other members had been insurgents during the revolt, while the fifth member, Floyd Baker, had remained loyal to Aberhart.

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