Economists From Canada

"We will need to dramatically reduce our reliance on the United States [...] We will need to pivot our trade relationships elsewhere, and we will need to do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations."

"We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful."

"The old relationship we [Canada] had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over. It's clear the US is no longer a reliable partner."

"Argue, the middle powers must act together, because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu."

"The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied – the WTO, the UN, the COP – the architecture, the very architecture of collective problem solving are under threat. And as a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy, in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains. And this impulse is understandable. A country that can't feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself, has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself."

"Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition."

"We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy."

"Therefore, now that the time has come, I am determined to try with all my strength to correct the working of the system in Canada so that present unemployment conditions may be put an end to. When I say I will correct the system, I mean that I will reform it, and when the system is reformed and in full operation again, there will be work for all. We then can do away with relief measures; we then can put behind us the danger of the dole. I am against the dole; it mocks our claim to progress. Canada on the dole is like a young and vigorous man in the poorhouse. The dole is a condemnation, final and complete, of our economic system. If we cannot abolish the dole, we should abolish the system."

"The time has come when I must speak to you with the utmost frankness about our national affairs, for your understanding of them is essential to your welfare. This is a critical hour in the history of our country. Momentous questions await your decision. Our future course must now be charted. There is one course, I believe with all my heart, which will lead us to security. It is for you to decide whether we will take it. I am confident that your decision will be the right one, when, with care and diligence, you have studied the facts. Then you will support the action which your judgment decrees to be imperative; you will strive for its success, for its success will determine the future of Canada."

"If there ever was an election conducted by a political party on the basis of wholesale and most unqualified promises and pledges to all classes and description, it was the Election through which we have just passed, and it is as a result of these promises and pledges that the Honourable gentlemen opposite are in office."

"There must be unity of purpose. There can be no success without it. I earnestly entreat you, be in no doubt upon that point. I am not. If I cannot have your wholehearted support, it is wrong for me to assume the terrible responsibility of leadership in these times. I am willing to go on, if you make it possible for me still to serve you. But if there is anyone better able to do so, I shall gladly make way for him. And it is your duty to yourselves to support him, and not me. Your country’s future is at stake. This is no time to indulge your personal prejudices or fancies. Carefully and calmly, look well into the situation, then pick the man and the policy best fitted to deal with it, and resolutely back that man and that policy. The nation should range itself behind them. In war you fought as one; fight now again as one, for the task ahead demands your war-time resolution and your war-time unity."

"The problem of unemployment has now ceased to be a local or provincial one, and it has assumed national proportions and it will be the duty of my Party to see that employment is provided for those of our people who are able to work... 1 will not permit this country with my voice or vote to ever baccate committed to the dole system."

"For I am working, and working grimly, to one end only: to get results. And so, honest support from every quarter, from men and women of good will, of every party, race and creed, I hope for and heartily invite."

"A sound partnership is founded on mutuality of interest. Good business is predicted upon reciprocal benefits. This is neither.... There is no true Canadian who would not gladly surrender some personal advantage to help the people of the parent state; Britain however neither needs nor asks for help like that. What she wants is what we want -- broader areas of trade developed through an alliance to which we each bring the powers which have made us what we are. She wants with us a greater empire of the future and for that we Canadians must build a greater Canada. I say now what I have said from youth, that the future of the Empire depends upon the upbuilding of Canada; it depends upon the development of the great resources of Canada. Any sacrifice that we may make of our position whereby we cease to be autonomous in the development of this great state is fraught with the gravest disaster not to us alone but to the Empire of which we form a part. What is good for one is good for both, and what is bad for one cannot avail the other."

"I stand for Canada and upon that issue of, Canadians before any other people in the world, I'm prepared to seek suffrage of my fellow men."

"We are living amidst conditions which are new and strange to us. Your prosperity demands changes in the old system, so that, in these new conditions, that old system may adequately serve you. The right time to bring about these changes has come. Further progress without them is improbable. To understand what changes and corrections should be made, you must first understand the facts of the present situation. To do that, you should have clearly in mind what has taken place in the past five years; the ways in which we have made progress, the ways in which we have not. To do that, to decide wisely, you must be in a position to judge those acts of government which have palliated your hardships, which have preserved intact our industrial and financial structure, and which have prepared the way for the reforms which must now take place."

"Because exporting and importing nations have conflicting goals, and the interests of individual countries within each group are not identical, United Nations efforts to regulate the industry have not been successful."

"During the war years, the United States government gave serious thought to acquiring a direct interest in Arabian [oil] reserves."

"Foreign oil companies suffered major expropriations of their property during the postwar period, usually without payment of full compensation to the private owners. These episodes—the most significant were in Algeria, Ceylon, Cuba, Egypt , Iran, Libya, and Peru—followed by many years the first major oil industry expropriation by the Bolshevik government of Russia in 1918 and a second major expropriation of foreign oil properties by the Mexican government in 1938. All illustrated the great latent power of governments over the international oil companies and the reality of the political risks inherent in the industry."

"How did it come about that only a few international oil companies held concessions to all of this region Middle East at the end of World War II? The answer lies in the bitter struggle of the United States government to gain an entrance for its nationals into the British-dominated Middle East, a struggle which very significantly shaped the structure of the industry as it emerged from World War II."

"The multinational corporation is, beyond doubt, the most powerful agency for global economic unity that our century has produced. It is fundamentally an instrument of peace. Its interest is to emphasize the common goals of peoples, to reconcile or remove differences between them. It cannot thrive in a regime of international tension and conflict. The instrumentality of multinational business is man’s best hope of achieving political unity on this shrinking planet."

"In a world market that was free of all taxes, royalties, or other governmental constraints, and in which competition was effective, the price of oil would be very low. But the real-world market for oil is dominated by high taxation by the oil-exporting nations, and, since 1972, by concerted efforts of the members of the OPEC to raise prices and to restrict output. Because of effective competition in the industry and the power of OPEC, an international oil company today has relatively little influence on the price of oil to consumers."

"Motivated partly by the decision to convert its navy from coal to oil, the British government ultimately acquired a major interest in what was then the only oil-producing company in the Middle East."

"The multinational corporation is leading Europe toward a more egalitarian, homogeneous, and democratic society. While traditionalists will deplore the gradual blurring of class and national distinctions, such segmentations cannot in the end withstand the onslaught of technological and economic changes."

"World energy problems entered the headlines during 1973 and 1974 when members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) unilaterally quadrupled the price of crude oil. Concurrently, members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) cut back production and imposed a temporary embargo on shipments to the United States for political reasons. Suddenly, the industrialized nations awoke to their heavy and increasing dependence upon the abundant supplies of oil from Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America."

"A second drastic reduction in the political power of American corporate business occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. This crisis shook the faith of the American people in the capability of its industrial and financial leaders, even in the enterprise system itself… Roosevelt sought to make political capital of the popular disillusionment with business; and he made business a scapegoat for errors of federal economic policy that had deepened and prolonged the depression."

"[ Proposition 13 ] would precipitate a revolutionary reform—one long overdue—in California state and local finance… People’s incomes are not closely related to their ownership or use of housing. Hence, the present tax system unjustly burdens the young family with large housing needs and the older couple who want to live in their family home or their retirement pensions. Stability of home or apartment occupancy is an important social goal. The present tax system weakens our society by threatening to force people out of their homes."

"The foreign oil industry was radically affected by World War II. The burden of meeting Allied military requirements fell largely on the United States. Between December of 1941 and August of 1945, nearly 7 billion barrels of oil were produced to meet the requirements of the United States and its allies, almost 6 billion barrels of which came from the United States."

"In 1949 coal met nearly two-thirds of the world’s energy needs, oil less than one-quarter, and natural gas about one-tenth, with water power a residual 2 percent. By 1971 the use of coal had dropped to one-third of world energy consumption, while the use of oil had risen to 43 percent and natural gas to 21 percent."

"Proven crude oil reserves in the foreign non-Communist world were estimated to be just under 41 billion barrels at the end of 1948; they had increased sixfold to 250 billion barrels by 1962 and then more than doubled this amount to 522 billion barrels by 1972. This increase over a twenty-four-year period was equivalent to an average annual compound growth rate of 11.2 percent—a spectacular expansion of the non-Communist world’s oil stock outside the United States and Canada."

"The Soviet Union, as might be expected, conducted a ceaseless campaign to persuade the less-developed countries to nationalize their petroleum industries, by deprecating the record of private oil enterprises and extolling the virtues of governmental petroleum monopolies."

"The 4,400 business corporations that disappeared by merger during 1968 were a small number compared with the 12,000 that disappeared by failure, or the 207,000 new corporations that were formed. Even the $43 billion in securities exchanged in mergers that year were only 3.3 percent of the market value of corporate securities."

"Modern management science has made it feasible for corporations to expand the scope and variety of their operations. It has created new economies of scale through which larger aggregations of men, materials, and funds can be efficiently deployed and controlled over larger areas."

"A fourth factor underlying the merger wave of the 1960’s was the steep rise in the load of corporate income taxation since World War II. In 1940, the effective federal corporate income-tax rate was 27 percent; in 1968, it was 50 percent. Rates of state and local taxes on business incomes have risen commensurately."

"The largest corporations, like companies of lesser size, are a changing rather than a static group. Their annual turnover rate reflects the rise or decline of management and the vagaries of business fortune. Of the hundred largest industrial corporations in 1909, only thirty-six remained on this list in 1948. And, of the top hundred companies in 1948, only sixty-five continued to hold this ranking in 1968."

"In assessing business performance, we must keep in mind that ours is a pluralistic society. Indeed, the maintenance of pluralism by the diffusion of power among diverse institutions is itself a national goal. In such a society, each institution tends to specialize in the performance of those tasks in which it has a comparative advantage. The society is a highly complex system of interacting subsystems and institutions, in which the performance of each is affected by that of others. Hence, the business corporation should be assessed primarily with reference to the performance of its unique function of production, taking into account the effects of other institutions, such as governments and labor unions, upon its performance; no institution in a pluralistic society should be evaluated in isolation."

"The growth of the British company population was not interrupted, as it was in the United States, by the economic depression of the 1930’s and World War II. By the middle 1960’s, the United Kingdom was more densely populated with companies in relation to its human population than was the United States, although the reverse had been true in 1935."

"It comes as a shock to many, therefore to learn that the majority of the labor force in the United States works for government, unincorporated business, nonprofit institutions, or are self-employed. Less than half of the total labor force was employed in the entire corporate sector in 1969.Less than one-quarter worked for ‘large companies,’ defined for present purposes as those employing more than two hundred people."

"Because some conglomerate, and other, mergers have proved to be unsound and failed. It has been proposed that government should prohibit such mergers. But there is no feasible way to identify bad mergers in advanced; only time and the test of market competition reveal them."

"At the end of 1968, the United States contained about 1.6 million active, profit-seeking corporations and about 200 million people—one corporation for each 126 persons."

"Even the population of business enterprises does not provide a comprehensive measure of ‘entrepreneurship’ in the United States because it excludes farmers, professionals, and other persons devoting at least part-time to selling their services in markets and who have neither an established place of business nor employees. A conservative estimate of the ‘entrepreneurial’ population is given by the number of individual income tax returns filed reporting income from self-employment. An estimated 11.1 million persons did so for 1968, one for each 18 persons in the United States."

"The American credo is one of faith in institutional pluralism and of mistrust of large size and concentrated power, political or economic. The growth of giant institutions has always been viewed with apprehension, even though it has been for the most part the natural product of rising populations and income, and of technological changes that created economies of larger scale."

"It is widely believed that big business firms collectively own the preponderance of America’s wealth and are steadily expanding their share. The facts show the contrary. Corporate business owns about 28 percent of the tangible wealth of the United States, and its share has not changed much during the past fifty years. The bulk of the nation’s tangible wealth is held by the household and government sectors of the economy and is not employed in profit-seeking enterprise, corporate or noncorporate. …If the character of a society were to be designated by its major wealth-holding institution, the United States could more appropriately be described as a ‘household state’ than a ‘corporate state’."

"During the recent nineteen-year period from 1950 to 1969, corporate profits, both before and after taxes, formed a shrinking proportion of the national income."

"Still another trend supports greater emphasis upon the social responsibilities of business firms and greater interest in the interactions between business and public policies. The great problems of contemporary society, such as environmental pollution, waste disposal, unemployment, poverty, urban renewal, and mass transit, are most likely to be solved by combining the organizational discipline of the action-oriented business corporation with the legal and taxing powers of government. Private corporations will more frequently be used to attain public purposes. At the same time, the public has made it clear that it will no longer tolerate the thrusting of private cost upon itself."

"During 1968, more than forty-four hundred companies disappeared by mergers involving an estimated $43 billion in securities—an all-time record. In this tidal wave of mergers, which subsequently crested and receded, conglomerate firms accounted for either a substantial or a preponderant fraction, depending upon the definition of ‘conglomerate’ adopted."

"Property tax bills are rising much faster than family incomes…. They threaten to erode away that foundation of American society: the American-owned home…. We must deliver an unmistakable message to our elected representatives that no longer will we permit misuse of the property tax to finance welfare, health, educational and other governmental services that serve all people in our state. Such government spending programs should be paid for by revenues collected from all the people."

"Private business investment is inherently superior to governmental aid as an instrument of development because it combines transfers of managerial and technical assistance with that of capital."

"The Multinational corporationis, among other things, a private ‘government,’ often richer in assets and more populous in stockholders and employees than some of the nation-states in which it carries on business. It is simultaneously a ‘citizen’ of several nation-states, owning obedience to their laws and paying taxes to their treasuries, yet having its own objectives and being responsive to a top management that may be located in another nation. Small wonder that some critics see in the multinational corporation an instrument of irresponsible private economic power, or even an agent of economic ‘imperialism’ by its home country. Others view it as an international carrier of advanced management science and technology, an agent for the global transmission of cultural values, bringing closer the day when a common set of ideals will unite mankind."

"Although the Marxist antithesis to the capitalist thesis has been vigorously advanced for more than a century, it has never gained significant support in the United States. Marxist voices have, during recent years, been drowned out by the complaints of the Reformers, on the one hand, and of the Utopian critics, on the other."