Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
The principal differentia of the Canadian economy are familiar. Because of the nature of her resources and her situation, Canada depends chiefly upon the production in quantity of a few staple commodities for export to those regions having less specialized resources and more diversified economies. Canada is thus subjected, willy-nilly, to a violent alternation of boom and depression by the fluctuation of demand in her foreign markets. Geography, moreover, has afflicted Canada with a transportation problem, which has two phases: in time of boom, the problem is how to obtain quickly more and cheaper transportation; in time of depression, how to pay out of her shrunken national income the heavy fixed costs incurred by the construction of transportation facilities.
This: paper is based on work done while holding the Maurice Cody Fellowship at the University of Toronto.
2 For statistics on crops in Canada before Confederation, see the Canadian Census for 1871, vol. IV.Google Scholar
3 “Three Reports from the Select Committee on Trade and Commerce” (Upper Canada, Journal of Assembly, 1835, appendix, vol. I).Google Scholar
4 On this crisis, see Tucker, G. N., The Canadian Commercial Revolution, 1845-1851 (New Haven, 1936).Google Scholar