In 1932 the Conservative government of R.B. Bennett introduced a Relief Act to assist the provinces with the funding of relief. The relief camps were for unemployed single men where mandatory work was done for twenty cents a day under the supervision of the Department of National Defense. They resisted doing anything else and fully expected that the natural forces of the market would put everything to right.

Unemployed men working for relief in a gravel pit, 1933, National Archives Neg. no. PA35229.