It is appropriate that we should be studying today the growth in the functions and powers of the state. Whether we look at our federal, our provincial, or our municipal governments, whether we look abroad at our sister democracies or toward the less democratic régimes, the same phenomenon is evident; everywhere there is occurring an enlargement of the role in society which is being played by the political organisms created by man for his security and welfare. Political man is at last resurrecting himself, and political science seems likely to challenge the erstwhile supremacy of her dismal sister, economics. As this paper is being written, a second attempt is being made to build an international organization endowed with important functions in the world society, an attempt which, if successful, will add a supra-national authority to the existing state organs on the national plane. Whatever the end result may be, it is apparent that the trend away from an individualistic and unplanned society toward one that is more integrated and organic is not only continuing but is greatly accelerating.

Such a development both within and between the nation states puts a strain upon national constitutions. New functions for the state mean new organs for the fulfilment of those functions, or new uses for old organs. New organs must be added to an existing structure, causing shifts of power and frequent disequilibriums. Legislative processes designed for a smaller sphere of state duties and a more leisurely pace of social change are found inadequate for the increased responsibilities of governments, and a rapid, sometimes alarming, expansion of administrative processes results. No type of state escapes these pains of adjustment, be it unitary or federal. But in the federal state a special aspect of the problem arises, with respect to the distribution of the new functions between the central and local governments. Many fear that a growing centralization may tend to destroy the regional autonomy which is a fundamental part of the federal idea.

The great expansion of governmental activities into social and economic affairs during the last few decades has led to an enormous increase in the amount of “delegated legislation” or “administrative law.” The necessity for such delegation and the dangers to individual liberty which it involves have been fully explained elsewhere. It is the purpose of this article to discuss these problems in so far as the Board of Transport Commissioners is concerned. Known for thirty-four years after its inception in 1904 as the Board of Railway Commissioners, this body is not only the oldest but by far the most important administrative board in Canada. A study of its powers and performance should reveal the strengths and dangers of this type of administrative authority.

The chief function of the Board is to control steam railways under the jurisdiction of the Dominion government including those which, according to the terms of the B.N.A. Act, have been declared to be “works for the public advantage of Canada.” All other railways come under the Board where their connections with, or their crossing of, a Dominion railway is concerned and with respect of navigable waters. The Board also controls the rates charged by certain telegraph, telephone, and marine cable companies and the tolls of express companies and international bridges. It has authority to license ships operating between certain ports of Canada including control of their rates, and from 1938 to 1944 it supervised transport by air. Where water-power has been acquired under lease from the Crown, the Board may fix the quantity to be developed and the price to be paid in case of dispute. Authority for every order of the Board must be found in the Railway Act as amended. The Board is limited by certain Special Acts notably the Crow's Nest Pass Agreement, as amended, and the Maritime Freight Rates Act.

The large part of Canadian experience with controls affecting primary products has been acquired under the peculiar conditions of war. With expanding income in the hands of consumers, prices generally rose rapidly during 1941, and the general price ceiling was established in December of that year. Since then the incomes of consumers have continued to expand, and the general ceiling has been supported by taxation, borrowing, and informal and formal rationing. However, given the ceiling and the level of spendable incomes on the one hand, and the supplies of labour and equipment available to producers on the other, producers' prices were frequently too low to induce sufficient production to prevent the necessity of more extended formal rationing; to provide for desired expansion in domestic consumption, and to meet the urgent need for food for export. Producers' prices have therefore been supported; the object of the supports being primarily to direct production in line with the national policy, and only incidentally to raise producers' incomes. In a few cases, notably, wheat and apples, supported prices have been applied to maintain incomes against a decline in demand. The price of wheat has been supported by stock accumulation, quotas, and acreage reduction. Apples have been purchased and diverted to alternative markets.

In 1942, wheat, dairy products, hogs, cattle, and poultry products together provided more than 70 per cent of the gross, cash income from the sale of farm products in Canada. Wheat has been purchased by the Canadian Wheat Board at a fixed statutory price. Minimum prices have been established for beef and butter, which are sold mainly on the domestic market; export contracts assisting in clearing the Canadian market of surpluses. Prices of hogs, cheese, and eggs have been supported by contract prices agreed upon by the British Ministry of Food, and financed largely under the provisions of Mutual Aid.

The effects of the war on the prairie economy can best be considered against a background of three elements—one of them general and two more specific. The first, and most general, of these elements is the historical position of Canadian agricultural groups and agricultural communities in war-time situations. The second is the specific position of the prairie economy in relation to the First World War. The third is the familiar record of prairie agriculture throughout the depression of the nineteen-thirties. These background elements will be sketched in briefly.

Canadian agriculture conforms historically to the typical pattern of agriculture developed within a mercantilistic framework. Though traditionally solacing itself, and being solaced, with the belief that it is Canada's basic industry, Canadian agriculture has most readily attracted attention and secured encouragement and support in situations where mercantile or industrial groups have considered that agriculture should be encouraged and supported. The French fostered the original agricultural settlement on the St. Lawrence in order to secure their fur-trade route against the Iroquois. The English considered agricultural settlement to be an indispensable adjunct to their military strongpoint, Halifax. United Empire Loyalists were welcomed to the upper St. Lawrence after 1780 so that they might settle around the frontier posts at Cataraqui, Niagara, and Detroit and thus strengthen the respective garrisons. Plans for the settlement of the prairie regions, put forward before and after Confederation, envisaged the establishment of a strong and vigorous agricultural community north of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude, a community which would forestall the threat of economic and even military occupation of Rupert's Land by the Americans. These historical examples illustrate the extent to which Canadian agricultural communities have derived significance from situations involving war or the threat of war.

In this paper it is proposed to discuss the post-war economic problems of New Zealand, not so much because of their intrinsic importance, as because they raise questions of some general interest and fairly widespread application. It is not intended to pursue an elaborate statistical enquiry and as far as possible the facts selected will be confined to those having a direct bearing on problems and policies.

As elsewhere, the nature of these problems will be determined by the “fundamental” characteristics of the economy, the changes which have occurred during the war, and the nature and intensity of the forces which impinge on it from the world at large. The nature of the response to those forces will be greatly influenced, of course, by the prevailing political attitudes and the sort of administrative machinery and techniques to which the country has been accustomed.

Production and Trade. Since New Zealand is a small country with a population of less than 1,700,000 people, and with a comparatively simple economic organization, its problems tend to be sharp in outline, and readily amenable to analysis. Production is highly specialized. On the average of the ten years prior to the war somewhat over 60 per cent of the value of physical production was provided by farm products (when processed). About 53 per cent of the value of all production consisted of grass land products, in respect of which New Zealand has enjoyed unique comparative advantages.

This paper is primarily an account of Canadian relations with the War Production Board and with the Office of Price Administration, and with their antecedent agencies. Large sections of the Washington scene, with which the writers had no special familiarity, are completely omitted. In particular there is little reference to the agencies controlling shipping and overseas trade, or to the armed services themselves. Further, there is no account of relations with the War Food Administration, or with the Combined Food Board on which the United Kingdom is represented as well as the United States and Canada. Even the two Combined Boards dealing respectively with production and resources (on which Canada is represented) and with raw materials (where it is not) are omitted although relations with these Boards are almost indistinguishable from relations with the War Production Board which supplies their United States membership. In short, this paper is concerned almost entirely with relations between Canada and the United States in regard to supplies moving directly between them. In this all-important field the relations amounted to a co-operation so close, continuous, effective, and friendly that the two sovereign nations might in many respects have been two parts of one country.

It is convenient to consider first relations in the field of war supplies because it was in this field that war-time co-operation and collaboration first became necessary. Here a pattern was established for subsequent collaboration in the field of civilian supplies.

There is current in Canada very little accurate information about the evacuation of Japanese from the defence area of the Pacific coast between February and October, 1942. Widely in use across the Dominion, but in the process of change, are the pre-war stereotypes of Japanese character which are still basic to some proposed solutions for the settlement of the so-called Japanese problem. This paper deals with aspects of the problem on which there is no recorded information, namely the reaction of the Japanese people to the handling of the Japanese problem since December 7, 1941.

In the process of working out a status for people of Japanese ancestry in British Columbia, the main historical effort of the Caucasians has been to limit as much as possible their acceptance in British Columbian society. These desires for total rejection have been supported by three major stereotyped rationalizations: the Japanese maintain a low standard of living, the Japanese are penetrating peacefully into this country, and the Japanese are unassimilable. We did not know before the Pearl Harbor attack just how widely these stereotypes were distributed, nor did we know their potency. But as a result of years of agitation and manipulation by politicians together with the breakdown of international security, vague fears, although not always verbalized, came to be widely held. Thus the war crisis made the historically developed stereotypes suddenly effective among many more people than they were before Pearl Harbor. As a result, attitudes based upon traditional conceptions of rights of citizenship and civil liberties were more than neutralized: they were completely ineffective in the presence of individual and organized demands for stringent action, justified by these rationalizations, especially by the one regarding peaceful penetration.

The second part of my journey in north-west Canada began when I left Tuktuk on July 25 for Aklavik and Norman Wells. I had hoped to fly from Aklavik to Norman Wells, and so save a week's delay, but the planes are very irregular to the north of Norman Wells and it did not seem advisable to leave the Distributor until I was back in the regular “flying area.” We left the flying field at Norman Wells at 4 p.m. on August 1, and flew across the river to Canol. Here, after a short stop to pick up passengers, the plane proceeded south to Fort Simpson, which we reached in about two hours. We flew at a height of about 10,000 feet at about three miles a minute, so that it was impossible to make detailed notes. There was, of course, no settlement, and the only variations in scenery were in the character of the streams and sloughs. Occasionally outcrops of rock were visible, reminding one of whitish rounded scales in a green hide.

We waited only twenty minutes at Fort Simpson Airport, which is some distance from the settlement, and then flew south-west over unoccupied country to Fort Nelson on the Alaska Highway. We could make out the “winter road,” at times crossing from lake to lake, with one group of huts near Petitot River about sixty miles from Nelson. We landed at the huge airport of Muskwa (Fort Nelson) about 8 p.m. I stayed a day at Fort Nelson, and made a survey of the old fur-trading settlement, but it will be more convenient to consider this district after the Yukon area has been described. The distance from Nelson to Whitehorse is about five hundred miles, and we flew this between 8.30 p.m. and midnight.

The development of a region can obviously not proceed faster than transportation facilities will permit. In an area of the vast extent of the Canadian northland, isolation remains the predominant characteristic in nearly all portions, and no part can expect to advance economically unless it has efficient and cheap transportation to the outside world.

The present transportation facilities in the western part of sub-arctic Canada are surprisingly good when one considers the limited volume of traffic they handle, yet the transportation routes follow in the main only the major water routes running northward. Great stretches of country to the east and west of these waterways are without transportation. However, in the present state of our knowledge there has been little if any thought of development in these large “dead” areas.

The first question to be asked, probably, is whether existing traffic can be handled adequately by the existing means of transportation. Before the war the answer would undoubtedly have been “yes.” American activities in Yukon Territory and the Mackenzie District since the United States entered the war have increased the volume of tonnage moving in the North enormously. Transportation has been improved by highway construction, the addition of railway rolling stock, water craft, and aeroplanes, and by the introduction of tractor trains. For the handling of a special commodity, oil, the Canol pipe-line has been built. Despite these improvements northern transportation is still under a strain, but is meeting its difficulties with about the same degree of success as is wartime transportation elsewhere.

Statistics provide data for action. A statistic which will not be used was not worth the trouble of collecting. I consider this a part of the definition of the subject and will not undertake to support it here. The action of course need not follow immediately; it may not be taken until the results of many other observations are available.

Specifically, statistics deal with random variation. In any practical situation, after we have accounted for every variable which can be brought under control, we still cannot say exactly what will happen. In manufacturing a coil spring, we may use metal of fixed chemical specification, even from the same heat, have a fixed setting on the machine which coils the spring, the same time and the same temperatures in tempering it, and still the tensions of the successive springs which are produced will vary. Given a variety of wheat whose seed is the purest strain we can procure, we plant a number of plots in soil of the same chemical composition, apply the same manurial treatment, see to it that the slopes and the irrigation are the same, plant the seed and cultivate the grain in the same way, and yet we find that the yields vary. In no practical case can theory provide an exhaustive account of the relevant variables, our physical control of real situations is never perfect, and consequently we are never in a position where the result will come out exactly to order.