L'orientation culturelle des Canadiens-français est devenue une des questions les plus importantes de l'analyse sociologique de ce groupe ethnique. Ainsi une des tâches principales des sociologues qui se sont intéressés à la question a été le développement d'une définition de la culture canadienne-française. Cependant, malgré l'ampleur et le nombre des travaux publiés, il n'existe pas de synthèse permettant une vue d'ensemble de la question. Notre but dans cet article est de formuler les étapes nécessaires à une présentation synthétique de la culture canadienne-française du point de vue de ses fondements sociologiques. Ce que nous allons dire ne prétend pas être une analyse complète de la question. Nous avons voulu retenir dans notre présentation, et de l'ensemble des situations et des problèmes susceptibles d'être examinés, seulement ceux qui nous semblent soit particulièrement importants, soit nettement révélateurs. Nous avons donc conscience d'être incomplet, mais nous pensons pouvoir présenter l'essentiel de la question.

Pour les fins de la présentation nous avons divisé notre article en trois parties que nous jugeons d'égale importance. Les deux premières parties consistent en une analyse: premièrement, de la tradition culturelle de la Nouvelle-France; et deuxièmement, des traditions culturelles nées après la Conquête de 1760. La troisième partie consiste en une analyse de la conjoncture culturelle actuelle. Il existe une raison fondamentale à faire précéder l‘analyse « synchronique » par une analyse « diachronique »: sans l'analyse des traditions culturelles il est pratiquement impossible de saisir la conjoncture sociologique actuelle, et ceci en raison des ambiguités qui existent aussitôt que l'on veut définir ce qu'est le Canada français du point de vue politique ou géographique, ou même purement sociologique. Mais, en partant de l'analyse des traditions culturelles il est possible d'établir les grandes lignes de ce qu'est présentement le Canada français du point de vue de la culture canadienne-française. Nous procéderons de la même manière dans l'analyse de chacune des parties de la présentation. Nous essaierons de faire le point sur la documentation en existence et nous émettrons des conclusions.

In this paper I propose to examine the placement policies of Canadian life insurance companies, and the campanies' place in the Canadian capital market, during the period of rapid agricultural and industrial development which preceded the First World War. It is no longer possible to maintain, as Buckley could maintain in his study of capital formation, that before the War Canada had a very undeveloped domestic capital market. McIvor's recent work has increased our knowledge of Canadian financial history, a subject strangely neglected since the work of Shortt and Breckenridge some sixty years ago. Kilbourn's study of the Steel Company of Canada has provided valuable evidence on the early stirrings of our capital market. I have argued elsewhere that these stirrings were both vigorous and significant for Canadian economic development before 1914, and that particularly in the field of government finance they cannot sensibly be ignored. The following pages discuss selected aspects of the financial history of this most interesting period. I shall try to show not only what the life insurance companies were doing with their funds but why they were doing what they did. The paper concludes with some reflections on the social rationality of their investment policies.

First, some description of the Canadian life insurance companies themselves. By 1895 they already bulked large on the domestic scene, though not so large as the chartered banks. Their assets were valued at $32,000,000 in 1895, and their annual premium income then amounted to $5,703,000 from domestic business and $595,000 from foreign business. By 1914 the companies' assets were worth $257,800,000, their annual domestic premium income was $26,047,000, and their foreign premium income was $12,680,000. Throughout this period they faced vigorous competition from British and especially from American firms, which collected 45 per cent of the total Canadian life insurance premia in 1895 and 40 per cent in 1914.

Broadcasting is the most pervasive, and therefore one of the most powerful, of agents for influencing men's thoughts and actions, for giving them a picture, true or false, of their fellows and of the world in which they live, for appealing to their intellect, their emotions and their appetites, for filling their minds with beauty or ugliness, ideas or idleness, laughter or terror, love or hate.

The truth of this statement from the Beveridge Committee on British broadcasting is not now questioned. Indeed the danger today is that governments, instead of ignoring the power of radio to influence opinion, will exaggerate it and take needless precautions against the “contamination” of the public mind. Such an attitude has long been recognized as characteristic of totalitarianism, but in this paper I am concerned to show that the “fundamental freedoms” of speech and of the press do not always extend to the broadcasting services, even in states with otherwise strongly established democratic traditions. In the two countries examined, Great Britain and New Zealand, broadcasting is a government monopoly, operated in Britain through the British Broadcasting Corporation, a semi-independent public corporation, and in New Zealand through the New Zealand Broadcasting Service, a government department under the control of a minister. According to a recent announcement from New Zealand, however, the Government intends “to end direct state control of radio and television in New Zealand and create an independent three man corporation to assume control from 1st April 1962.” The governments of both countries have demonstrated that they regard broadcasting rights as a privilege not to be extended to all who might claim access to them.

Few areas of taxation have been the subject of more controversy than capital gains and losses. In some countries, Canada for example, capital gains are excluded from the concept of taxable income, while in others such gains are partially excluded or are subjected to preferential tax rates. This article is divided into two parts. The first deals with the economic nature of capital gains and the relation of these gains to ordinary income. The second examines critically the arguments for and against the taxation of such gains. Basically, it will be argued that there is no fundamental fiscal difference between capital gains and “ordinary” income which could justify preferential tax treatment of the former. While the two types of personal economic accretion exhibit superficial distinctions, these are of little, if any, relevance from the standpoint of the income tax. It is admitted that more complete taxation of capital gains will present some complications. While the problems are suggested, their solutions are properly left to the lawyer, accountant, and legislator. Suffice it to say that solutions exist.

The conceptual distinction between capital gains and ordinary income has been described as follows:

In both law and common speech, capital gains are generally regarded as the profits realized from increases in the market value of any assets that are not a part of the owner's stock-in-trade or that he does not regularly offer for sale; and capital losses, as the losses realized from declines in the market value of such assets. Ordinary profits and losses, in contrast, are realized on the sale of goods and services that are a part of the seller's stock-in-trade or that he regularly offers for sale.