Canada from France

preneurship in some organized way. The view is essentially that the multi-national firm offers too much to warrant rejecting it, so long as it respects our sovereignty, but we ought to try harder to match it and to increase the gain from it. I do not accept the comment that the Task Force's approach maximizes government intervention per se. The intervention which occurs is designed to make the market work (as in stronger combines enforcement, tariff reduction and disclosure), to aid labour and capital in the difficult short-term problems raised by rationalization, to improve the quality of Canadian factors, and to protect Canada's sovereignty. With our long experience with government-business relations, it should not be impossible to devise a CDC which is consistent with with our traditions in such matters. I do not accept the view that the Report discriminates against foreign investors and may therefore hamper our access to such funds. On the contrary, Canada from France R. D. MATHEWS Robert Lacour-Gayet, Histoire du Canada: Fayard, Paris, 1966. Robert Lacour-Gayet is a much published French historian who has recently won the Prix Historia for his Histoire du Canada. The work, the result of three years preparation, was undertaken only after much hesitation, at the prompting of the publisher. Its scope is large: from Jacques Cartier to Daniel Johnson. One suspects the book was projected as a result or as a part of renewed French interest in Canada. M. LacourGayet suggests himself that "our Canadian friends might like to read what a French historian thinks of their past." For a Canadian reader the history has a number of special implications. A prize winner in the Fayard series of major historical studies, it will obviously be an important work of reference in France. Is there a French view of Canadian history ? Does a French perspective throw new light upon or offer new insights into the meaning of 56 almost every proposal, such as disclosure, rationalization , and minority share issues, applies to both sets of firms. Where improvement in Canadian inputs is recommended, as in research and development and via a CDC, the Report was careful to include subsidiary firms as participants . The only cases where the proposals involve only the foreign-owned firms are cases where the problems apply uniquely or at least largely to them, as with extra-territoriality and tax shifting among international affiliates. This non-discriminatory approach is as it should be, both in terms of recognizing the benefits from foreign investment and the fact that many of the problems allegedly associated with it are problems of our own making. And this is the hopeful note about this issue on which I would like to close. For if the problems are often of our own making, the solutions also lie in significant part in our hands. Canadian history and its future? Can the texture of Canadian life, which we often take easily for granted, be grasped as a whole by someone not Canadian bringing professional understanding and a sincere desire to do a fair job? M. Lacour-Gayet approaches Canadian history and the magnih1de of his task with refreshing humility, and he makes clear he believes that Canada has a truly exciting story beset with enormous subtleties through which even the most dedicated historian must tread with tact. He claims to present nothing new in the way of research discovery, and in fact dedicates the book to Canadian historians and librarians. Where the History is at its best, it is alive, astute, and generously balanced. It is well-written and almost always stylistically satisfying. Where it is not at its best, the work reveals French prejudice about the "English" that tends to mask reality rather than to find a special way of opening it up. One sees, too, in the less successful parts, a man whose knowledge of Canada is finally, academic mostly. And one feels in some portions the futility of almost anyone attempting to "do Canada" in about Revue aetudes canadiennes 550 pages of text, especially where source material is not chosen with absolute tact. To this reader, the book becomes progressively less successful and less assured as it...