Pensée économique au Québec: The economics of survival

dence, Smith to Justice Langley, January, 1887 (London, 1913) 195. 48. Nation, September 29, 1875. 49. Smith, Foster Memorial, introduction; see also W. S. Wallace, "Canadian National Feeling", 141. 50. Toronto Globe, May 10, 1905, September 15, 1906. 51. Foster, "Canada First Scrapbook", Denison to Mowat, January 22, 1904. 52. Frank Underhill, "Development of National Political Parties in Canada", CHR, XVII ( 1936) 384. Pensee economique au Quebec: the economics of survival R. F. NEILL PART II THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The beginning of the twentieth century in Canada was marked by industrialization and the emergence of a new, north-south trade axis that increasingly drew the country into closer economic and political ties with the United States. The National Policy of east-west continental development came to fulfillment under the influence of these new forces. They were bound to reverse its centralizing effect. As the century progressed national development gave way to provincial development and the role of the federal government became primarily manipulative in a Keynesian sense. National banking. and the controlled price system created a new kind of centralization, almost as intense as that of the pre-eighteen sixty-seven union government. Nothing in the British North America Act anticipated the conflicting new roles of the provincial and central governments with the result that increasingly severe strains characterized the Canadian federal system. The problems of federalism in Canada as a whole most seriously aggravated the problems of Quebec. Economic thought in Quebec faithfully reflected the situation . 26 53. Foster, "Canada First Scrapbook", Preface. 54. Frank Underhill, "Conception of Our National Interest ~, C]EPS, I ( 1935) 396-98. . 55. Nation, April 30, 1874, June 25, 1874, August 15, 1874, September 17, 1874; Smith Papers, PAO, Smith to Ross Robertson, December 17, 1905. 56. Nation, February 15, 1875, April 13, 1875; Goldwin Smith, Canada and the Canadian Question, (Toronto , 1891) 253. The era began with the new approach of the sociologist Leon Gerin. His work was further evidence of that tendency for social science in Quebec to veer into immediate consideration of values and behavior patterns. Indeed, after him, sociology grew to a position of predominance among the social sciences in Quebec. Inspired partly by the work of Gerin, Robert Errol Bouchette inaugurated the new age in economics by asserting that industrialization was the proper focal point for French Canadian patriotism. His work marked the beginning of the metamorphosis of the colonization movement. In the background to Bouchette's manifesto a number of social action groups connected with the Church came to life. Through the work done in and by these organizations there was created a climate of opinion that was open to new attitudes and policies in economic affairs. The Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (H.E.C.) in Montreal, born of the new spirit, began to take inventory of Quebec's wealth as a preliminary to industrialization, if not nationalization. This was economic geography rather than economic history , but there was some of that too as Quebec, along with the rest of Canada, became aware that it had passed through an era. In the first decades there was a certain lack of self consciousness. It was all new and unreflecting . Not until the ninteen-thirties was there a definitive transition into the new age. Separatism and a sense of the injustice of Canadian federalism were latent in the new approach to economic policy after 1900; but in 1936 they were made explicit in Victor Barbeau's Measure de notre Revue d'etudes canadiennes taille. From this point on two or three different types of economics began to appear, however haltingly, in French Canada. The most noticeable type, the economics of separatism, embodied much of the romantic fire of nineteenth century Quebec. Partly in opposition to the first type, there has appeared some literature that is Canadian rather than Quebecois, at least as Canadian as the literature of other parts of Canada. Thirdly there has been some evidence of the growth of academic economics as a relatively objective and scientific discipline. An Age in Preparation Pierre Le Play was the god-father of the new age in French Canada. His importance in regard to the work of Gerin-Lajoie has...