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The National Policy Tariffs: Industrial Underdevelopment Through Import Substitution*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Glen Williams
Affiliation:
Carleton University

Abstract

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Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1979

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References

1 Creighton, D. G., Canada's First Century (Toronto: Macmillan, 1970).Google Scholar

2 Dales, J. H., “Protection, Immigration and Canadian Nationalism,” in Russell, Peter (ed.), Nationalism in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1966).Google Scholar

3 While it would be difficult to isolate the tariff as the only, or even principal, cause of early Canadian industrial growth, it clearly played a central role. During the period following the proclamation of the National Policy tariffs of 1879, many small inefficient enterprises either disappeared or were merged into more productive units. As a consequence, the total number of industrial establishments engaged in secondary production fell by approximately one-third between 1880 and 1929. Meanwhile, the total capital invested in secondary industry had increased, in relation to constant 1935–39 dollars, by three and a half times between 1890 and 1910 and doubled again between 1910 and 1929. The decade 1900 to 1910 saw the highest rate of expansion of output in secondary industry before World War Two, featuring an average growth rate of 6.2 percent per year. In summary, by the Great Depression, the basis for Canada's future as a modern industrialized nation had been secured. Bertram, G. W., “Historical Statistics on Growth and Structure of Manufacturing in Canada, 1870–1957,” Canadian Political Science Association, Conference on Statistics, 1962 and 1963Google Scholar Tables 1 and 3: and “Economic Growth in Canadian Industry, 1870–1915: The Staple Model,” in Easterbrook, W. and Watkins, M. (eds.), Approaches to Canadian Economic History (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967), Table 2.Google Scholar

4 Levitt, Kari, Silent Surrender (Toronto: Macmillan, 1970), chap. 4.Google Scholar

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9 Notably: Michael Bliss, “Canadianizing American business: the roots of the branch plant,” in Lumsden (ed.), Close the 49th Parallel, 27–42; Field, F. W., Capital Investment in Canada (3rd ed.; Toronto: Monetary Times, 1914), 2335Google Scholar; Hobson, J. A., Canada Today (London: Fisher Unwin, 1906), 5355Google Scholar; Scheinberg, S., “Invitation to Empire: Tariffs and American Economic Expansion in Canada,” in Porter, G. and Cuff, R. (eds.), Enterprise and National Development (Toronto: Hakkert, 1973) 80100.Google Scholar

10 Bliss, “Canadianizing American business,” 32.

11 This is based on an estimate of the value of US branch plants in Canada in 1913 of $135 million presented in Field, Capital Investments, 25, and the total value of capital invested in Canadian industries in 1910 of $1,248 million presented in Canada, Census, 1911, Vol. 3. If other US industrial investments reported by Field of $90 million were included, it would increase its total ownership share to somewhere between 16 and 18 per cent.

12 R. W. Acheson, “Changing Social Origins of the Canadian Industrial Elite, 1880–1910,” in Porter and Cuff (eds.), Enterprise and National Development, and “The National Policy and the Industrialization of the Maritimes, 1880–1910.” Acadiensis 1 (1972); MacDonald, L. R., “Merchants Against Industry: An Idea and its Origins,” Canadian Historical Review 56 (1975), 263–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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15 Ibid., 41.

16 Ibid., 38.

17 Canada, House of Commons, Journals, 1874, Appendix 3, Report of the Select Committe on Manufacturing Interests, 11.

18 Bliss, , A Living Profit: Studies in the Social History of Canadian Business, 1883–1911 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974), 145. Bliss argues that such business publications “were almost certainly faithful representatives of their readers’ opinions. They were self-consciously published in the interests of their constituency. Unlike the general press, all of their news and editorial columns were designed to appeal to readers in a specific occuption; circulation and advertising depended on the success of that appeal.”Google Scholar

19 Monetary Times, June 16, 1882, 1541.

20 Journal of CommerceFinance and Insurance Review Nov. 12, 1875, 298–99 and Nov. 26, 1875, 370.

21 Not in the sense of the national interest but rather from the perspective of the accumulating units—individual capitalists and corporations.

22 Gerschenkron, Alexander, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 354.Google Scholar

23 Hirschman, A. O., “The Political Economy of Import Substituting Industrialization in Latin America,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 82 (1968), 46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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26 Ibid., 60.

27 Ibid., 61–64.

28 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, March 7, 1878. 861. Hereafter cited as Debates.

29 Debates, March 14, 1879, 413–14.

30 Clark, S. D., Canadian Manufacturers’ Association (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1939), 67.Google Scholar

31 Debates, April 22, 1879, 1440.

32 Ibid., 1417.

33 Ibid., 1442.

34 Ibid., 1426.

35 Debates, May 12, 1887, 400.

36 Journal ofCommerce, February 4, 1881, 792.

37 Morgan, H. J. (Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 1898 [Toronto: Briggs, 1898], 769) recorded that this journal, originally published by F. Nicholls, president of Canadian General Electric, was the “official organ and spokesman of the manufacturing interests.”Google Scholar

38 Canadian Manufacturer, August 24, 1883, 605.

39 Ibid., 606–07.

40 Canadian Manufacturer, January 2, 1885, 866.

41 Journal of Commerce, March 11, 1881, 111.

42 Journal of Commerce, May 25, 1883, 1305.

43 Journal of Commerce, July 26, 1889, 151–52.

44 Canadian Manufacturer, August 15, 1890, 119.

45 Canadian Manufacturer, June 3, 1892, 324–25.

46 Opposition was by no means universal in this industry. Report of the Select Committee on Manufacturing Interests, 40, 57.

47 Report of the Select Committee on the Causes of the Present Depression, 128.

48 Ibid., 127.

49 Ibid., 123.

50 Canadian Manufacturer, October 5, 1894, 338–39

51 Canadian Manufacturer, July 19, 1895, 55–56.

52 Canadian Manufacturer, July 21, 1893, 49.

53 Canadian Manufacturer, November 15, 1901, 13.

54 This is not to suggest that the Canadian bourgeoisie was never to develop an export strategy. Indeed, it was anticipated during the first thirty years of the twentieth century that the logic of domestic import substitution could be exended to the other white Dominions in the form of Imperial Preference for US branch plants and licensees in Canada—that is, import substitution for the Empire. This strategy was, however, inevitably doomed to collapse as soon as the internal markets of these countries grew large enough to permit the initiation of a local import substitution industrialization.

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57 Computed from Naylor, History of Canadian Business, 2, 46, Table X(l).

58 R. T. Naylor exhaustively documents many of the most significant licensing agreements of this period in History of Canadian Business, 2, chap. 10.

59 Canadian Manufacturer, December 7, 1894, 543.

60 Canadian Manufacturer, January 15, 1892, 38.

61 Canadian General Electric was organized in 1892 with a majority of shares held by the parent US company. Ownership passed to the Canadian shareholders in 1895 primarily because of a capital shortage in the US firm. However, production in Canada was organized by means of patent and license agreements with the US firm until 1923 when American General Electric repurchased a majority interest. Marshall, H., Southard, F. and Taylor, K., Canadian-American Industry: A Study in International Investment (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Carleton Library Edition, 1976), 7273.Google Scholar

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63 Computed from Buckley, Kenneth, Capital Formation in Canada, 1896–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1955), 130–31.Google Scholar

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66 Naylor, History of Canadian Business, 2, 59.

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69 Monetary Times, November 5, 1926, 6.

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75 Source *, Table 3.

76 Source * *, Table 3.

77 Computed from Caimcross, A. K., Home and Foreign Investment 1870–1913 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 185Google Scholar and Statesman's Year Book, 1913 (London: Macmillan, 1913), 107, 123, 242.Google Scholar

78 Cairncross, Home and Foreign Investment, 231.

79 Computed from Buckley, Capital Formation in Canada, 22, 135, 136.

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81 Computed from Buckley, Capital Formation in Canada, 132, 135.

82 Table 6

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88 Ibid., 9.

89 Ibid., 7.

90 Ibid., 12.

91 Great Britain, House of Commons Papers, “Correspondence Respecting the Canadian Tariff,” August 1887, No. C-5179.

92 Ibid., 4.

93 Poulantzas, Nicos, Political Power and Social Classes (London: NLB and Sheed and Ward, 1973).Google Scholar

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95 Ibid., 167.

97 Ibid., 197.

98 Canadian capitalists also stressed that British industrialists were welcome to jump the tariff walls and transfer their production to Canada by establishing branch plants. To illustrate, the Journal of Commerce (June 17, 1887, 1327) contrasted the Canadian and Russian protective tariffs from the point of view of British industry: “But while the younger one desires the introduction of blast furnaces no matter by whom erected, and is prepared to cheerfully welcome foreign capital to develop her natural advantages, the other endeavours to erect a Chinese wall to keep such capital out, and prefers to allow her mines to be undeveloped unless they can be developed by her own subjects.”

99 Great Britain, House of Commons Papers, 1864, No. 400, 12.

100 Great Britain, House of Commons Papers, “Dispatch from the Governor General of Canada respecting the New Customs Tariffs,” April 1879, No. C-2305, 19.

101 Great Britain, House of Commons Papers, 1887, No. C-5179, 39–40.

102 E. J. Hobsbawn, Industry and Empire, 146. For a full discussion of the issues involved as they relate to class and state in Britain see T. Nairn, “The Twilight of the British State,” New Left Review, No. 101–102, February-April 1977.

103 Ibid.

104 Saul, S. B., Studies in British Overseas Trade, 1870–1914 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1960), 220.Google Scholar

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107 Great Britain, House of Commons Papers, “Conditions and Prospects of British Trade in Canada,” 1907, No. Cd. 2868, 30S/B 3868.

108 Great Britain, House of Commons Papers, 1887, No. C-5179, 40.

109 Great Britain, Parliamentary Debates, March 3, 1904, 32.