Ground rent for provincial forest land in Ontario, dating back as it does to the mid-nineteenth century, is among the earliest means whereby the provincial government has sought and obtained revenues from the forest. As this charge on licensees of Crown timber-lands has been established for so long, it is pertinent to review its history and to record its place in the annual revenues yielded by the province's forests over the past century.

These annual forest revenues have in the past come chiefly from stumpage—the price paid for timber cut on Crown lands. Forest revenues have also included, besides ground rent, bonuses paid by licensees in order to acquire their limits at auction from the Crown, tolls for the use of certain timber slides built by the government, and small sums collected as penalties for trespass and other infractions of the law. Slide tolls ceased to form a part of provincial revenues after Confederation as they were then collected by the Dominion government. Today the province's revenue from the Department of Lands and Forests comes from a variety of sources. For comparison with the forest revenue of early days, forest revenue in this study is equated with the revenue of the Department's Division of Timber Management. This includes stumpage—the chief component and now comprising Crown dues and the Crown evaluation and bonus payments—ground rent, fire tax, mill licence fees, certain payments for scalers, and sundry other small items.

In many countries of the Western Hemisphere the nineteenth century witnessed the gradual expansion of the franchise. This development was made possible in the English-speaking world by the fact that the political creed of the power élite—liberalism—created a climate of opinion favourable to a belief in the inevitability of progress and the perfectability of man. The decision about who was to govern, and in general terms the way in which government was to be carried out, was to be made by the majority of the adult population. The necessity of deciding such important matters would, it was thought, induce the voters to rise to the occasion demanded by their new responsibilities: they would, on the whole, become politically educated, informed, and wise. In casting their ballots men were expected to bear in mind the public good, not private gain. John Stuart Mill, for example, in opposing the secret ballot, argued that a person's vote

is not a thing in which he has an option; it has no more to do with his personal wishes than the verdict of a juryman. It is strictly a matter of duty; he is bound to give it according to his best and most conscientious opinion of the public good. Whoever has any other idea of it is unfit to have the suffrage; its effect on him is to pervert not to elevate his mind. Instead of opening his heart to an exalted patriotism and the obligation of public duty, it awakens and nourishes in him the disposition to use a public function for his own interest, pleasure, or caprice. … In any political election … the voter is under an absolute moral obligation to consider the interest of the public, not his private advantage.…

Any study of local government in Newfoundland requires some consideration of the general historical, political, economic, and geographical background and environment which, to a great extent, have shaped its structure and dictated its peculiarities and problems.

The most startling fact about Newfoundland's local government is that apart from the capital city of St. John's, there were no local-government bodies in the island until 1938. The fisheries have been the all-important factors in the shaping of its political, economic, and social life from its discovery in 1497, determining its destiny and endowing it with its unique character.

Although various settlements were formed under a series of charters as early as the reigns of James I and Charles I, so little progress was made towards colonization that by the middle of the seventeenth century Newfoundland contained less than 2,000 inhabitants scattered along the eastern shore in tiny settlements. By that time it was considered contrary to national policy to allow fishing communities to spring up in Newfoundland or to permit seamen to winter there. The policy was formulated first on the theory that the fishing banks were “a nursery for seamen” whose return to Britain in the autumn of each year was of fundamental importance in maintaining the maritime prosperity and naval supremacy of the mother country, and second because of the influence of the West of England fishing merchants who wanted to maintain their monopoly of the fishery and resisted any attempt at colonizing Newfoundland. Thus a series of restrictive charters was issued by the Privy Council discriminating against settlers in Newfoundland. Nevertheless, by 1783, approximately 10 thousand settlers lived there, even though no indefeasible title to property existed on the island.

Membership in an élite group implies a role by virtue of which the individual has the power to make effective decisions and to co-ordinate activity in a particular sector of the social structure. In simpler types of social structure, or the “folk” society, decision-making roles tend to be fused with other roles such as headship of kinship units or magical and religious functions. In industrial types of social structure with a great differentiation of social life, decision-making and co-ordinating roles are assigned to members of élite groups. The élite groups which can be distinguished are the economic, political, bureaucratic, military, and, where the ideology has a strong religious component, church hierarchies. Where the ideology tends to be secular, the position held by church hierarchies is taken over by an intellectual élite. The spheres of influence of the several élite groups are not always clearly defined, but in general they correspond to essential social functions.

Such a scheme of élite groups has been suggested by Professor Aron as a more useful analytical device in the study of power than the classes of Marxian theory. It might be added that a scheme of élite groups is also more useful than the “Warner” system of classification which is more relevant to prestige than to power. Hollywood film stars might be considered both “capitalists” and “lower-uppers” but they do not exercise power, although the élite groups who do exercise power might use them for purposes of prestige in the way that advertising and political campaigns suggest.

On October 1, 1950, Canadian authorities abandoned the policy of maintaining a fixed rate of exchange for the Canadian dollar for the first time since the beginning of the Second World War. Thereafter the dollar was allowed to fluctuate with little interference from official quarters. The significance of this event extends beyond the evolution of exchange policy in Canada, for it must have affected the attitudes of those countries that have been studying a more flexible exchange system than the one envisaged by the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund.

Canadian monetary authorities have been pursuing a policy designed to reduce changes in the value of the Canadian dollar. Official policy has been described as follows: “Transactions of the Exchange Fund Account in the market in United States dollars were directed to helping to maintain orderly conditions without preventing basic supply and demand factors from determining the level of the rate.” It is argued in this paper that a stabilizing agency that operates according to the commonly accepted principle of resisting all movements in the rate does not, in fact, contribute to that rate's stability. An examination of the operations of the Canadian Exchange Fund Account from September, 1950, to December, 1954, supports this argument. An analysis of the meaning of stabilizing policy will precede the discussion of Canadian experience.

Ten years ago, almost to the day, a memorandum describing the conceptual framework of Canada's National Accounts was presented at a special session of the annual meeting of this Association held in Kingston and its substance appeared soon afterwards as chapter 1 of the first of the series of publications on the National Accounts, Income and Expenditure issued by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. The present occasion therefore marks the tenth anniversary of Canada's National Accounts, and it seems appropriate to commemorate it with something of a stock-taking and a glimpse into the future. We have been prompted to undertake this task not merely by reasons of sentiment but primarily by a very practical consideration. For various reasons noted below, the Bureau is commencing work on a revised volume of the National Accounts which it plans to release two years from now. We hope that the present discussion will help to make this document as useful as possible by promoting a cross-fertilization of ideas between the users and producers of the data.

However, not all the matters discussed here will be incorporated in the forthcoming volume. Indeed much of the work in progress described here is developmental and will take many years to complete. Furthermore, some matters to be discussed are still speculative and hypothetical, introduced primarily to illustrate interesting possibilities which may or may not take the form of published statistical series. It is difficult to draw the line clearly or with confidence in all cases but we hope that, in general, it will appear from the context which parts are likely to be included in the forthcoming report, which parts represent developmental work that eventually will see the light of day, and which parts have a more uncertain fate.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to place within the context of Canadian historical development an economic institution that has been relatively neglected. This institution is the customs administration. The justification for introducing it into the main stream of Canadian history is to be found in its ubiquity and pervasiveness, its antiquity and traditionalism, and its consequent conservatism and resistance to change. Such an institution seems capable of providing a strong element of continuity in Canadian development, and thus to invite analysis.

The English customs administration was transplanted from a European island economy to a continental environment which contained elements markedly unfavourable to easy transition and adaptation. The administration has been called upon to meet constantly changing conditions, and, in so doing, has had to deal with a commercial community which must exist, for the greater part, on the basis of short-run decisions. As the administration has struggled toward long-run stability and uniformity of procedure, it has produced anomalies. It has had serious effects on business expectations by creating delay and uncertainty, and, on occasion, by insisting on excessive formality. The incidence of the burden imposed by the customs administration was probably not determinable, but its net effect has been to contract international trade.

The customs is of ancient origin, and by the time it became relevant to Canadian history it had already undergone, in Europe, a great deal of scleriasis. It is the English customs that we are to be concerned with mostly in this analysis, since the Canadian customs, not surprisingly, is of pretty strictly Anglo-Saxon origin. According to Professor Gras, “the English Customs originated at home, on the initiative of the king, through prerogative right, and in money dues rather than prises.”

Partly because of the extensive range of his thought and partly because of the diffuseness of his style, Veblen is a difficult thinker to classify. Several writers have made passing references to traces of anarchism in his works but most of them consider it a minor aspect of his thought. The thesis of this paper is that Veblen's political and social thought can be most clearly understood and evaluated in terms of philosophical anarchism.

Anarchism is as old as society itself; at least it has been traced back to Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoic philosophy. The Greek derivation of the word is “without a ruler,” not “without order.” Elements of anarchism form a more important part of many political theories than is sometimes recognized, and it has found able exponents in Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Thoreau, and Whitman. What distinguishes the anarchists from other political philosophers is the degree to which they carry their attack on existing institutions and believe in a principle of harmony in nature or human nature which will emerge if these institutions are eliminated. This principle, if followed, will eliminate the need for coercion and the state which they think is based on coercion. Only voluntary functional associations will remain in the anarchist's society but the principle of harmony will prevent the emergence of chaos. Quite clearly this is a philosophy of extremes and suffers the advantages and disadvantages of such a philosophy. In a unique way it forces its critics to examine their fundamental assumptions afresh. But because of the extreme assumptions made, anarchists' writings in general, and Veblen's in particular, abound in contradictions between freedom and authoritarianism.

On February 21, 1951, in reply to a question in the House of Commons which rather pointedly raised the issue of the Government's attitude and intentions with regard to more direct “bargaining” with the staff associations, the Prime Minister stated: “From the very nature of employment in the public service, there can be no bargaining agent for the nation comparable with the employer in industry who has at his disposal funds derived from payments for goods or services. The funds from which salaries are paid in the public service have to be voted by parliament and parliament alone can discharge that responsibility.” Having presented this formal position with its hint of the “sovereign employer” theory, Mr. St. Laurent went on to say that the Government was not contemplating any steps to provide its employees with the same facilities for negotiation as are provided for private employees “… because it is considered that the appropriate machinery for these purposes was set up by P.C. 3676 of May 16, 1944, which established the National Joint Council of the Public Service of Canada, and the subsequent Treasury Board Minute of March 8, 1945, approving the constitution of the Council.” The latter part of the Prime Minister's statement provides the text for this paper. What is the National Joint Council? How has it worked out in practice? To what extent does it provide an acceptable alternative to collective bargaining?

The year 1954 was an active one in the development of Canada's financial system. Important revisions were made to banking legislation. The statutory minimum cash reserve ratio required of the chartered banks was changed from a fixed daily ratio of 5 per cent to a daily average of 8 per cent which the banks must achieve for the calendar month. The central bank was granted another tool of monetary control—the right to alter the minimum cash reserve ratio. The chartered banks were admitted to new fields of lending. In June another step was taken to broaden the short-term money market when the chartered banks commenced to make day-to-day loans. These developments reflected a desire on the part of the monetary authorities to increase the sensitivity and flexibility of the nation's financial system.

Meanwhile Canada's fourth housing act was passed. The National Housing Act, 1954, marked the federal government's twentieth year of continuous assistance to housebuilding. Like its forerunners, the Dominion Housing Act of 1935 and the National Housing Acts of 1938 and 1944, the new act provides assistance primarily through the medium of the mortgage market. All the acts have been concerned with the provision of mortgage credit for housebuilding at terms more favourable to the borrower than those prevailing in the conventional loan market.

Sociologists have formulated a number of general theories to explain the residential mobility of immigrants in American cities and the formation of immigrant colonies. One such theory, brought forth by the Chicago school of sociology, conceived the residential mobility of immigrant groups in reference to subsequent waves of immigration. According to that theory, an immigrant group, upon first arriving in a city, tends to settle in a compact community near the centre of the city which is usually a deteriorated area, a slum. As the individual immigrants improve their economic position, they move from this settlement to more desirable neighbourhoods; their place in the old colony, however, is taken by new immigrants. In such a process the older ethnic group may invade a new area near the centre of the city or it may move out entirely from that part of the city to be succeeded there by another ethnic group. This wave theory was successfully applied to Canadian cities to explain the foreign islands of Montreal and the Jewish community of Winnipeg.

Recently Walter Firey has put forth another theory that regards the foreign colonies as more static formations in the ecology of large cities. His study of the Italian settlement in the North End of Boston has showed that Italian immigrants localize social solidarity in their ethnic area. They gather in a section of the city where they are among themselves and may maintain rather undisturbed their special type of life with its old system of values. Thus, the theory of localized social solidarity would imply that ethnic groups show less residential mobility than the native-born population and do not fall in line with the constant “filtering process” whereby the average resident tends to filter, according to his socio-economic success, into better residential districts with higher rents.

Increasingly in the last few years, and more particularly in recent months, the effectiveness of compulsory government-sponsored conciliation in labour disputes has been called into question. Unions and employers alike have begun to ask not only whether the delays required by Canadian law make a worth-while positive contribution to the settlement of disputes, but whether in some cases they do not actually impede the reaching of a settlement.

In the midst of this debate it is of interest to recall that the principle of compulsory delay and conciliation has had a prominent and generally respected place in Canadian labour law for fifty years. The original Industrial Disputes Investigation Act of 1907 introduced the then revolutionary idea that an enforced waiting-period, accompanied by investigation, would so modify the perspective of the parties in a labour dispute that many stoppages of work would be avoided; and this principle has stood virtually unaltered in Canadian law ever since. The significant changes which have taken place since 1907 have been in the application of the principle rather than in the principle itself. As Professor Woods pointed out to this Association last spring, the use of compulsory conciliation and delay, originally meant to encompass all types of dispute, has come to be limited to one of the four main types, namely, negotiation disputes. At the same time, the range of industry in which the principle is being applied has been greatly extended. In the original I.D.I. Act, it was applied compulsorily only to industries held to possess the character of a public utility; it was applied to other industries only when desired by both parties.

Radio's pre-eminent position as a medium of news is one factor often mentioned as tending to ensure its continuing vitality. There are indeed no reasons for questioning radio's present advantages in that field. First among these, though perhaps only temporarily, is the elementary fact that radio, as compared with television, enjoys nearly universal coverage. Well over 95 per cent of all households in Canada have radios but not quite 50 per cent have television. Moreover, radio has a certain flexibility in reporting news. It can provide up-to-the-minute bulletins more frequently and more quickly than the newspaper, and it can be set up for on-the-spot coverage where access via television would be much more difficult, costly, and time-consuming. The greater flexibility of radio also stems from the way it is used: newscasters do not have to choose between news value and picture value when covering or selecting a story. Finally, there is the great advantage over print that radio shares with television: the listener is given less opportunity to evade the actual content of the news than the newspaper reader, who is free to ignore items dealing with “serious” news if these fail to interest him. Furthermore, the amount of attention given to items in radio news bulletins, even if exposure is casual and non-deliberate, is determined more by the presentation than by the dispositions of the listeners.