government then passed the Unemployment Relief Act that provided $20 million for public works at the federal and local levels. In 1931, Bennett's government increased tariffs and passed the Unemployment and Farm Relief Act to invest in further public works and direct relief; similar acts would be passed each year until he left office in 1935. The Conservative Party's pro-business and pro-banking inclinations provided little relief to the millions of increasingly desperate and agitated unemployed. Despite the economic crisis, "laissez-faire" persisted as the guiding economic principle of Conservative Party ideology; similar attitudes dominated worldwide as well during this era. Government relief to the unemployed was considered a disincentive to individual initiative, and was therefore only granted in the most minimal amounts and attached to work programs. An additional concern of the federal government was that large numbers of disaffected unemployed men concentrating in urban centres created a volatile situation. As an "alternative to bloodshed on the streets", the stop-gap solution for unemployment chosen by the Bennett government was to establish military-run and -styled relief camps in remote areas throughout the country, where single unemployed men toiled for twenty cents a day. Any relief beyond this was left to provincial and municipal governments, many of which were either insolvent or on the brink of bankruptcy, and which railed against the inaction of other levels of government. Partisan differences began to sharpen on the question of government intervention in the economy, since lower levels of government were largely in Liberal hands, and protest movements were beginning to send their own parties into the political mainstream, notably the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and William Aberhart's Social Credit Party in Alberta. Trade with Britain At the 1930 Imperial Conference in London, England, Bennett unsuccessfully argued for an imperial preference free trade agreement. The proposal stunned the British government, despite them being pro-free trade. The British newspaper, The Observer, asked, "Empire or not?" The Statute of Westminster in 1931 gave Canada and other dominions autonomy in foreign affairs. Despite Bennett declaring, "We no longer live in a political Empire", he favoured "a new economic Empire"; he still wanted the imperial preferential trade arrangement. Britain introducing a general tariff of 10 percent gave Bennett hope. Bennett hosted the 1932 Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa; this was the first time Canada had hosted the meetings. It was attended by the leaders of the independent dominions of the British