Monetary and Fiscal Thought and Policy in Canada, 1919-1939

In this careful and thorough study of a Canadian field which has

been relatively untouched in recent years, Dr. Brecher records and comments on the

development of monetary and fiscal thinking in Canada in the inter-war period, and

its impact on public policy in the federal sphere. Examining Canadian opinion about

economic theory during this time, the author draws on four fields of thought: that

of government and other public officials; of businessmen, such as bankers, and their

views on what should be done about the depression; of the "radical group",

such as those prominent in the formation of the CCF and Social Credit parties; and

of economists, prominent in the universities.

Dr. Brecher points out in his

preface that his inquiry is rooted in the conviction that the problems associated

with cyclical fluctuations remain sufficiently complex to make an understanding of

the developments of the twenties and thirties an indispensable condition for

effective stabilization policy. He finds the twenties distinguished only in the

superficial and imperfect diagnosis of and remedial suggestions for unemployment,

made chiefly by a relatively small handful of thinkers associated with the

Progressive and United Farmers movements, then emerging in the West. It was the

thirties which, under the impact of the depression, witnessed the first real

stirrings of careful economic analysis in cyclical terms, and of statistical

techniques for measuring the value of annual productive activity and income receipts

in the Dominion.

The author has attempted to appraise the evolution of the

Canadian policy of monetary and fiscal stabilization within the thought environment

in which it was conceived and implemented, and on the basis of the standards set by

modern income-employment theory.