Rosy Picture

A Royal Canadian Air Force C-5 transport lifted off Ottawa's snowy Rockcliffe Airport one morning this week, and headed south for Rio de Janeiro. Aboard the plane was C. D. Howe, Canada's go-getting Minister of Trade & Commerce, leading a group of government and business leaders on a five-week good-will tour of Latin America. The mission is the first of its kind Canada has sent to Latin America since 1946. Its announced purpose: "To present a picture of Canada's industrial growth and commercial aspirations so that business and government in the nine countries--will have their attention focused on Canada." The picture of Canada's economy that Howe can paint for his Latino hosts is one of continuing boom in 1952 and even better prospects for 1953. With a population of only 14,500,000, Canada in 1952 pushed its gross national product to an estimated $22,750,000,000, a per capita output second only to the U.S. More than $5 billion was poured into new industry and capital investment, 90% of it by Canadians themselves. Employment and personal incomes rose to record highs, while prices leveled off and the cost of living dropped for the first time since 1949. And in 1952 the Canadian dollar, symbol of the national economy, rose above the U.S. dollar (current rate: $1.03 U.S.) to become the world's hardest currency.

Among the other high spots of Canadian prosperity in 1952:

P: Exports climbed to $3,558 million in the first ten months of 1952, breaking all former records and piling up an estimated $300 million surplus on the year's trading.

P: Known reserves of Canadian oil, the industrial pacesetter since the discovery of Alberta's Leduc field in 1948, reached an estimated 1.7 billion barrels. More than $300 million was spent in exploration last year, and an even faster investment pace is planned for 1953.

P: Wheat bins are groaning with their greatest harvest in history: 687,923,000 bu. Estimated value of 1952 field crops: $1.9 billion.

P: Out of Canada's mines and mills rolled 4,800,000 tons of iron ore, 140,000 tons of nickel (90% of the free world's supply), 370,000 tons of zinc (an alltime record), 4,300,000 oz. of gold (worth $155 million), and an ever-increasing supply of uranium for the West's atomic-energy programs.

Canada's proudest achievement is the fact that its recent development has been carried out on a strict pay-as-you-go basis, a business method that has gone out of fashion in most other parts of the world. During 1952, Canada floated no foreign loans, relied entirely on outside risk capital (mostly from the U.S.) and on the savings of its own people to finance all its new ventures. As it has for the past six years, the national budget is heading for a surplus; the treasury was $292 million to the good as the old year ran out.

It was no surprise that Canada's Finance Minister Douglas Abbott, returning from the recent Commonwealth Economic Conference, could report that other delegates had peppered him constantly with questions about Canada's progress. "At no time in our history," said Abbott, "have we been the object of such interest and respect in the eyes of other nations of the free world."

* Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico.

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