Freedom to Trade?

For Canadians the biggest fact of 1944 was that in their fifth year of war they had still managed to produce more and ship more abroad than ever before. Canada was now second only to the U.S. as an exporting nation.

Russia was using tanks built in Montreal. Chinese soldiers fought with Toronto-made Bren guns. The British Army rolled on trucks from Oshawa, Ontario. U.S. pilots flew in Curtiss Helldivers from Fort William. The wheat from the great prairies, the salmon from British Columbia's deep blue inlets and cod from Nova Scotia's offshore fisheries fed Britain.

More than Enough. For a country that had almost a tenth of her manpower in uniform and fighting overseas, Canada had done more than enough. In the first eleven months of 1944, Dominion exports totaled $3,173,000,000--80% of it war business.

The U.S., not Britain, was now Canada's best customer ($1,174,000,000). But Canada's exports to Britain still ran a very close second ($1,157,000,000). A large share of these exports were outright gifts from the Dominion, financed by the Canadian Parliament's $800,000,000 appropriation for Mutual Aid--the Canadian version of Lend-Lease.

In looking back over this record at year's end, Ottawa bigwigs were, as usual, issuing hopeful statements. But Canadians knew that, more than for most countries, this war-swollen trade was the biggest question mark in Canada's future. The Dominion's 12,000,000 people could never consume all that her fisheries, farms and machines could produce.

Where were the postwar markets? The new factories could make many things that Canadians once bought from her two best customers--the U.S. and Britain. A dollar country, Canada needed dollars. But her best chance for postwar sales seemed to be in countries where the pound governed the flow of trade. One solution might be for Canadians to try to divide their trade into tight compartments. The Dominion could thus reduce her sterling balances by buying more from Britain, try to build up her dollars by selling to the U.S. and competing with the U.S. in Latin America. But not many Canadians wanted this solution.

As 1945 dawned, Canadians still hoped against hope that victory would mean a free market in a free world.

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