On March 9, 1964, the Hon. J. W. Pickersgill moved in the House of Commons the second reading of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Bill, a step of major constitutional importance which not only made provision for the first redistribution of Canadian federal constituencies since 1952, but provided that, for the first time, this task of redistribution would be taken out of the hands of parliamentary committees and entrusted to independent representation commissions. All this was long overdue and there was broad, if not unanimous, agreement that the creation of impartial representation commissions was a desirable reform. As Mr. Pickersgill said in the House next day:

The first and by far the most important of these [principles] was that we should not follow the pattern that had been followed in the first ninety years since Confederation, of having the readjustment of representation in this place done in this place by its members directly, but that it should be done by some body which would be as impartial as we in our collective ingenuity could provide and who would be as competent as we could find means to provide through legislation and subsequent appointment.

The following analysis is primarily concerned with definite mathematical expressions of the relationship between export and national income values in Canada as it developed during the inter-war period, with an attempt to measure the export multiplier and the influence of the barter terms of trade upon the national income, and to make tentative projections into the future.

The mathematical expressions for this relationship are alternatively based (1) on the time series for exports and national income and (2) on the deviations from the linear trends of exports and national income over the period 1923-38. The year 1939 is omitted as the war distorted the relationship even then. The years prior to 1923 are eliminated as their inclusion would lead to inverse correlations in individual cases owing to disturbances in currency relations, abnormal lags and leads in the equilibration of the respective balances of payment, and sudden shifts in the proportional evolution of domestic and foreign markets in the countries concerned.

In pre-war days corporations paid a Dominion income tax of 15 per cent on net income, or 17 per cent if they consolidated their returns with those of subsidiaries. In the case of unincorporated businesses—partnerships and sole proprietorships—income tax was levied on the individual incomes of the persons participating in the business; no tax was levied on the business as a unit. Under present taxation schedules, the corporation income tax stands at 18 per cent; 20 per cent for companies making consolidated returns. Proprietorships pay higher taxes through the steeply increased individual income tax rates. And, finally, the excess profits tax has been superimposed on the previous tax structure.

The excess profits tax applies to all businesses, incorporated and unincorporated. In addition to the taxes assessed under the Income War Tax Act, they have paid up to the present either a flat rate on their total profits (in 1940, 12 per cent for all businesses; in 1941, 22 per cent in the case of corporations, 15 per cent in the case of other businesses) or 75 per cent on profits in excess of pre-war profits, whichever tax was the larger. The provisions listed in the Income War Tax Act for the exemption of educational, charitable, labour, farmers', and other such organizations apply equally to this tax. Otherwise it was assessed in 1940 and 1941 against every business in Canada having a profit, before any payments to partners, proprietors, or shareholders, of more than $5000, with the proviso that any part of the tax which would reduce the profit thus defined to less than $5000 was not to be paid.

In his work on group settlement in western Canada Professor C. A. Dawson has described five major ethnic-religious groups but he has not treated one very distinctive Canadian people, the Hutterites, who prefer to be known as the Hutterian Brethren. There is a sociological study of this group by the Canadian Mental Health Association and several monographs on various aspects of Hutterite life have been published in the United States, but on their settlement in western Canada there is only an unpublished M.A. thesis. My purpose here is to outline briefly the coming of the Hutterites to Canada, their economic and social habits, and the problems they present to western Canada.

The first Hutterites came to Canada in a delegation of three which arrived in Winnipeg in May, 1898, to explore the possibilities of moving the seven existing colonies from South Dakota to western Canada. The delegation was welcomed by the Commissioner of Immigration in Winnipeg and was supplied with free transportation to see southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. On their return to South Dakota members of the delegation reported that though they had some doubts about the weather and the land they were “resolved to make a trial” at settling in Canada, if their requirements concerning schooling, military service, and freedom of religion were met by the federal government. Meanwhile a government agent was sent to the Hutterite colonies by the Department of the Interior to encourage the proposed move and to make a report on the Hutterities.

No apology need be offered for continuing the discussion of either civil liberties or emergency powers, exhausting and exhausted as the topics may now seem to have become. The very fact that such wide interest has been aroused by the agitation conducted by defenders of civil liberties in recent months indicates a growing realization that there is something at stake here requiring careful consideration and alert watchfulness. Whether one views civil liberty as flowing from numerous aspects of a well-balanced constitutional system of government, as the present writer does, or as the special area of distinctively designated fundamentals laid out to-protect individual rights, as many of the most vocal libertarians seem to do, every person must recognize the peculiar and intimate relation subsisting between civil liberty and constitutionalism. The preservation of the liberty of the subject is the distinguishing feature of all systems properly called constitutional and marks them off quite definitely from all forms of arbitrary government, no matter how the latter may be designated politically, socially, or economically. And at the present time no one can fail to observe that the unregulated and uncontrolled exercise of emergency powers constitutes one of the most serious threats to civil liberty as long understood and that it poses a most difficult problem for the constitutionalist.

It is unnecessary to enter here upon any consideration of the nature or elements of civil liberty; still less is it necessary to embark on a defence of liberty or to ask why freedom matters. Liberty has been claimed on so many grounds —religious, rational, economic, national, and ethical—and has spawned such a volume of defences, from Milton's Areopagitica to Laski's Liberty in the Modern State, that one is entitled to assume that adequate exposition has been made and the goal denned in general terms acceptable to all sharing the historic concepts of western civilization. Nevertheless, it ought to be noted that the very same sources from which libertarian doctrines emanate are also quite frequently the springs of its repression, namely, some religious dogmas, some economic doctrines, some national cults, and social gospels of various types.

Varied programmes of research are now commonplace in, or in connection with, the military establishments of most of the larger countries of the world. In the United States, and to some extent in Canada, this is true also of the social sciences. The institutional setting of research is of peculiar interest to sociologists, particularly since rapid and extensive changes have recently been characteristic of military organizations. The main concern of this paper is, therefore, to describe and interpret some of the processes of change observed in the course of the work of the Defence Scientific Service with the Canadian Army during the past five years. A brief introduction notes the recent growth of the Army, the involvement in military affairs of large numbers of scientists, including some social scientists, and suggests the importance of the military as an area for the sociological study of work.

I have interpreted the rather facetious title given me by the programme committee as permission to speak rather light-heartedly, even irresponsibly, about a few of the changes in the formal methods of analysis in the field of economic theory; to speak of fashions in tools, fashions in gadgets, fashions, if you will forgive me, in models.

In the 1920's Professor J. M. Clark supported the thesis that economic theory has developed by replacing worn and outgrown half-truths by new half-truths, that correspond more closely with increased knowledge, changing points of view, and different circumstances. Sir Dennis Robertson reviewed the first volume of the Survey of Contemporary Economics, called his review “A Revolutionist's Handbook,” and enumerated seven revolutions; but his phrasing is ironical. In his posthumous work on the History of Economic Analysis Professor Schumpeter has contended, with some success I think, that advances in economic analysis have been more consistent and less fluctuating than changes in the field of economic doctrine, economic systems, or economic thought. Fashions change, then, even in the methods of economic theory, but there is a good deal of continuity too. Many of the most widely useful tools of economic theory have changed very little in the last generation, or even in the last century; some have been in use for many centuries. Nevertheless, there have been many important changes too. Periodically, as attention comes to be focussed on a particular sort of problem, old tools are repaired, polished up, and put in the shop window; or new ones are invented.

Dominion aids to Canadian wheat marketing extend back at least to the beginnings of the western wheat trade and have been of three traditional types, viz.: (1) regulation, (2) investigation, and (3) elevator operation on a limited scale. Regulation of the Canadian grain trade has long been of a quality unsurpassed in other grain producing countries and has evolved in recent decades through repeated revisions of the Canada Grain Act. Investigation dealing specifically with the western wheat trade has involved a notable series of royal commissions commencing with the present century. Elevator operation by the Dominion Government started in 1913 with experimentation and compromise as its objects, and the Dominion Government still retains substantial interests in interior and other terminal elevator plants. In addition to the customary federal aids to wheat marketing before 1929, mention should be made of the exceptional intervention accompanying the Board of Grain Supervisors, which marketed part of the 1916 wheat crop and the crops of 1917 and 1918, and the first Canadian Wheat Board, which marketed the crop of 1919.

Important as the above-mentioned aids have been in shaping the destiny of the Canadian grain trade, they form a striking contrast in simplicity compared with the interventions of the decade4 herein considered. Dominion regulation, investigation, and elevator operation have continued to the present time, but the notable innovations in Dominion activity after 1929 lie beyond the traditional categories and include more or less sustained sorties in attempted stabilization, in bonusing, in international consultation, and in various types of wheat board operation. Dominion aids to wheat marketing, of special significance from 1929 to 1939, may therefore be classified as follows: (1) stabilization activities, (2) bonus payments, (3) international consultation and agreement, (4) wheat board operations; and since several important federal investigations of the grain trade took place within the decade, there should be added (5) investigation. These topics have, for the most part, been analysed individually and at short range in various current writings, so that factual material may here be reduced to a minimum and the emphasis placed upon interpretation in perspective.