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Canada's Balance of International Payments, 1940–5
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
The long delay in making peace and in economic reconstruction threatens to bring upon the world an acute scarcity of United States dollars. Countries overseas, particularly on the continent of Europe, have not made the progress in production and exports which would make possible the balancing of their transactions with dollar countries, except at levels so low as to be ruinous to world trade and a most serious threat to the prosperity of North America. In this situation Canada's role is a dual one. We share with the United States a productive power enhanced by war; other nations need our products in replacing war's destruction; to countries overseas Canadian dollars are as scarce as American dollars. Yet when the United States looks abroad at the ranks of the countries to whose need for American dollars it must seriously attend, Canada is to be found in the line-up.
The familiar features of Canada's economic structure, together with American commercial policy, have conspired to bring it about that our trade with the United States, while naturally greater than with any other country, is an unbalanced one; we buy there more than we are permitted to sell. We must sell others more than we buy from them and use the proceeds to settle our debts in the United States. We are dependent therefore upon the free convertibility and a high value of sterling in New York. When sterling has fallen there, so has the Canadian dollar; when the convertibility of sterling into American dollars has been restricted, rigid control of the use of American dollars has been forced upon us. Thus important policy decisions may well await us in the not too distant future. It is appropriate therefore that we should look again at our past for possible guidance.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , August 1947 , pp. 345 - 362
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1947
References
1 Foreign Exchange Control Board, Report to the Minister of Finance (Ottawa, 03, 1946), pp. 24 ff.Google Scholar
2 Dominion Bureau of Statistics, The Canadian Balance of International Payments, Preliminary Statement, 1946 (Ottawa, 1947), pp. 26, 33.Google Scholar
3 Foreign Exchange Control Board, Report to the Minister of Finance, p. 20.Google Scholar This amount is in United States dollars.
4 Stettinius, E. R. Jr., Lend-Lease, Weapon for Victory (New York, 1944), p. 84.Google Scholar
5 Dominion of Canada, Debates, House of Commons, 1944, vol. III, p. 2227. (04 21, 1944).Google Scholar
6 Ibid., p. 2226.
7 Ibid., 1941, vol. III, p. 2286. (Apr. 28, 1941).
8 Ibid., 1944, vol. III, p. 2227. (Apr. 21, 1944).
9 Ibid., 1942, vol. II, pp. 1425 ff. (Mar. 18, 1942).
10 Ibid., 1943, vol. III, p. 2441. (May 6, 1943).
11 Ibid., 1941, vol. III, p. 2338. (Apr. 29, 1941).
12 Ibid., 1942, vol. II, p. 1420. (Mar. 18, 1942).
13 Ibid., vol. IV, p. 3573. (June 23, 1942).
14 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 1416 ff. especially pp. 1419, 1422, and 1423. (Mar. 18, 1942).
15 Ibid., 1943, vol. III, pp. 2544 ff. (May 11, 1943).
16 Ibid., vol. III, pp. 2446 ff. and 2473 ff. (May 6, 1943).
17 Canadian Mutual Aid Board, Final Report, 1946 (Ottawa, 1947), p. 22.Google Scholar
18 Ibid., p. 32.
19 Ibid., p. 9. Total Mutual Aid amounted to $2,471 million of which $2,112 million was allotted to the United Kingdom.
20 Dominion Bureau of Statistics, The Canadian Balance of International Payments, 1926–1945 (Ottawa, 1947), p. 21.Google Scholar
21 Dominion of Canada, Debates, House of Commons, 1943, vol. I, p. 841. (03. 2, 1943).Google Scholar
22 Ibid., 1944, vol. III, pp. 2226 ff.
23 Foreign Exchange Control Board, Report to the Minister of Finance, p. 20.Google Scholar
24 Ibid.
25 Dominion of Canada, Debates, House of Commons, 1944, vol. III, p. 2227. (04 21, 1944).Google Scholar