Canada. Military Hospitals Commission : At the outbreak of the First World War there was no organization in Canada to care for sick or wounded soldiers. Until 1915 the Department of Militia and Defence took responsibility for matters relating to Canadian veterans. Although a publicly-subscribed Canadian Patriotic Fund was organized in August 1914, it had responsibilities strictly for soldiers' families. On 1 June 1915 the government approved plans by which the Red Cross would manage convalescent homes and the St. John's Ambulance would operate the tented hospital constructed at Valcartier as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force's mobilization. On 30 June an order-in-council (P.C. 1540) proclaimed the autonomous Military Hospitals Commission "to deal with the provision of hospital accommodation and convalescent homes in Canada."
The Commission soon extended its authority beyond the care of sick and wounded to the retraining of returned servicemen and even the manufacture of artificial limbs. Almost all its responsibilities belonged constitutionally to the provinces, and a federal meeting with provincial premiers and ministers in October 1915 led to the establishment of provincial commissions as well. By that time the Military Hospitals Commission was operating 11 hospitals and convalescent homes with a total of 350 beds. Recovering soldiers were returning from overseas at a rate of a hundred a week. By October 1916 the Commission had 2,193 beds in 47 institutions, most of them with more modern facilities than the original convalescent homes. The enormous casualty lists from the Battle of the Somme, totalling over 24,000 Canadians, three-quarters of them wounded, caught the Commission unaware. Shiploads of wounded began arriving home from Great Britain in early 1917. By mid-year the Commission had 5,600 beds and by year end, 13,802, as well as 16 hospital rail cars to move patients, and some 2,800 employees. The patient population had grown to 11,981.
The Military Hospitals Commission consisted of ten commissioners, chiefly businessmen. The President was Senator Sir James Alexander Lougheed. The Commission did not meet between September 1916 and October 1917 because Lougheed disliked conferring with his fellow commissioners. The Secretary, and effectively chief executive officer until the end of 1916, was Ernest Henry Scammell. Samuel Allan Armstrong became first Director of the Commission in December 1916. Lougheed and Armstrong became Minister and Deputy Minister respectively of the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment upon its formation.
Throughout 1917 the Military Hospitals Commission was increasingly in conflict with the Department of Militia and Defence's medical service regarding the employment of Canadian Army Medical Corps personnel under civilian direction in the hospitals. At last, on 21 February 1918, three orders-in-council (P.C. 432, 433 and 434) created a Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment, transferred most of the hospitals to the Department of Militia and Defence and re-named the Military Hospitals Commission to the Invalid Soldiers Commission, within the new Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment, and charged it chiefly with retraining and the provision of artificial limbs. The new Department was ratified in the Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment Act, 24 May 1918 (8-9 Geo. V, ch. 42).
