which provided evidence of Duplessis's interest in appearing tough on communism. World War II Duplessis called an election shortly after Canada declared war against Germany. Federal Cabinet Member Ernest Lapointe, the Quebec lieutenant of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, promised that no one would face conscription if voters supported the Liberals. The pledge was devastating to the Union Nationale, which lost the 1939 election. While serving in His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, the party opposed Women's suffrage which was enacted by the government of Adélard Godbout in 1940. Second term in office The Union Nationale enjoyed a surge after a majority of Canadian voters allowed the federal government to pass conscription. Duplessis, who would later create a provincial income tax equal to 15 per cent of the federal income tax, claimed that the Godbout government failed to impose the strict respect for the principles established in the British North America Act of 1867. The Liberals won a plurality of the vote in the 1944 election, finishing one point ahead of the Union Nationale. However, since rural areas were significantly overrepresented, the Union Nationale won 48 seats to the Liberals' 37, allowing Duplessis to return as premier. World War II prosperity kept unemployment low. Machine politics, fiscal conservatism and a program of rural electrification consolidated the dominance of the Union Nationale over the province. The Duplessis government adopted the current flag of Quebec to replace the Union Jack. It won a landslide victory in the 1948 election. The Liberals were decimated; nearly all of their 14 MNAs were from Montreal's West Island. Godbout himself lost his own seat, leaving the Liberals without a full-time leader in the legislature. On the debit side, Duplessis' relations with labour in general and trade unions in particular were difficult and led to a number of strikes. The government was also accused of being too strongly aligned with the Catholic clergy. Indeed, many priests openly supported the Duplessis government and attacked the Liberals by using the slogan Le ciel est bleu, l'enfer est rouge (Heaven is blue, hell is red)--a reference to the primary colours of both parties (blue for the UN, red for the Liberals). The government was also accused of discrimination against Jehovah's Witnesses, receiving insufficient royalties for the extraction the province's natural resources and allowing election fraud for its own benefit. Nonetheless, the Union Nationale was re-elected in the 1952 election with a