bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Political Principles of Federalism
Authors: Rogers Norman McL. 
Published: June 2006

Federalism has been described by Dicey as “a political contrivance intended to reconcile national unity and power with the maintenance of ‘state right’”. Dr. Schmitt, a contemporary German student of federal institutions, has stated that “the nature of union consists in a dualism of the political existence, in a combination of federative common existence and political unity on the one hand with the continuance of plurality, of a pluralism of political individual unities, on the other”. Lord Bryce had expressed the same thought in more picturesque language in his earlier study of federal institutions in the United States.The central or national government and the State governments may be compared to a large building and a set of smaller buildings standing on the same ground yet distinct from each other. It is a combination sometimes seen where a great church has been erected over more ancient homes of worship. First the soil is covered by a number of small shrines and chapels, built at different times and in different styles of architecture, each complete in itself. Then over them and including them all in its spacious fabric there is reared a new pile with its own loftier roof, its own walls, which may rest upon and incorporate the walls of the older shrines, its own internal plan. The identity of the earlier buildings has, however, not been obliterated; and if the later and larger structure were to disappear, a little repair would enable them to keep out wind and weather, and be again what they once were, distinct and separate edifices.
Social Reform and the Constitution
Authors: Claxton Brooke 
Published: June 2006

Between 1867 and 1934 over 136 constitutional cases have faced the Privy Council with the task of saying what the Canadian constitution means. Despite those cases, or because of them, it is still quite certain that unless legislation falls clearly within one of the specific heads of s. 91 or s. 92 of the B.N.A. Act, it is virtually impossible to guess where legislative authority over any question will finally be found to reside. In practice this depends not only on the Act and the cases but in part on the way the issue is raised and presented and in part on each judge's personal inclination towards federal or provincial authority. The further circumstances that the form of the proposed reform legislation has not been finally settled at the time of writing increases the difficulty of even describing fairly the constitutional issues raised by the government's social legislation which is the subject of this paper. It is like guessing what attitude the Privy Council in England will take to a series of constitutional earthquakes that have not yet happened.In all this uncertainty one thing at least appeared to be certain. This was that everything proposed in Mr. Bennett's policy of social reform was beyond the powers of the Dominion. Out of all those who considered the question before the current session of Parliament, only four authorities seem to have thought it possible that the Dominion might have jurisdiction. The situation was recognized by Mr. Bennett last August when he wrote to the provinces indicating his intention to call a Conference to discuss, among other matters, the question: “Are the provinces prepared to surrender their exclusive jurisdiction over legislation dealing with such social problems as old-age pensions, unemployment and social insurance, hours and conditions for work, minimum wages, etc., to the Dominion Parliament? If so, on what terms and conditions?” But the provinces' cool response to this letter led to the proposed Conference being abandoned, and in January Mr. Bennett in five radio speeches broadcast the policy of reform. In introducing the Employment and Social Insurance Act on January 29, 1935, Mr. Bennett set under way the coach and four he was starting to drive through current conceptions of the constitution, if not through the constitution itself. It might almost seem that his reading of the speeches of the Fathers of Confederation led him into the error of thinking that the constitution was what they intended it to be.
The Pulp and Paper Industry
Authors: Forsey E. A. 
Published: June 2006

The pulp and paper industry has fallen on evil days since 1929. It is still our largest manufacturing industry both in value of output and amount of payroll, and still ranks second only to wheat among the export staples on which our economic life is built: in the calendar year 1934, wheat provided just over 20 per cent, of the value of our exports; pulp and paper, 17¼ per cent, a gain of 4¼ per cent, since 1930. Unhappily it is also second only to wheat in the calamities which have overtaken it. In 1933, its salary payments were barely 68 per cent, of the pre-depression figure, its wage bill not quite 50 per cent., its bond and debenture interest payments less than 15 per cent., its dividends about 9 per cent. Mr. C. P. Fell, in his valuable chapter in The Canadian Economy and its Problems, says that “mills having 58 per cent, of the total Canadian [newsprint] capacity are in bankruptcy or receivership, or are passing, or have recently passed through, some form of reorganization; … they include five out of eight of the larger newsprint manufacturers in North America.”The general decline in prices and consumption will explain only a small part of the disaster. It is tempting to dismiss the rest as no more than an instance of the common plight of all export industries; especially as the only section of the pulp and paper industry in a reasonably satisfactory financial position is the small group of firms producing fine paper and specialty goods for the protected home market. But this explanation also is hardly adequate. The Canadian wheat grower has had to contend against the vagaries of nature, against foreign tariffs, quotas, and other such restrictions, against a considerable expansion of home production in his chief markets, and against the formidable competition of exporters from countries with depreciated exchanges. The Canadian newsprint manufacturer, on the other hand, faces no such obstacles. On the contrary, he has free entry into the United States market, and, until the worst of the depression was past, enjoyed the advantages of a depreciated exchange, netting him at times as much as $8.00 a ton, and an average of $3.00 in 1933. It is necessary, therefore, to look deeper to discover why the industry has suffered such exceptionally severe losses.
Economic Implications of the Report of the Royal Commission on Price Spreads
Authors: Taylor K. W. 
Published: June 2006

Whatever may be regarded as the immediate motives which impelled the Price Spreads investigation it will be generally agreed that a careful examination of the Canadian economy as a whole is long overdue, and that present conditions and current trends require the formulation of intelligent and co-ordinated economic policies. We are now in the sixth year of a major industrial depression and, while there has been a substantial measure of recovery from the low points of 1933, there is no clear indication of continued improvement and there is at least a possibility of the crumbling of the statistical ledge to which we have been rather precariously and nervously clinging for the past twelve months. Canada, with its large measure of dependence on the exports of two or three staple products, has always been in a vulnerable position, but this has been greatly accentuated by the widespread trend towards economic nationalism and self-sufficiency. Our professional optimists to the contrary, Canada has been one of the heaviest sufferers during the past five years and the outlook for the future is still uncertain and still threatening.It is not necessary to elaborate the familiar problems of the Canadian economy: an income that fluctuates violently with the volume and value of our exports, and expenses that are made highly rigid by the dominating factors of heavy overhead costs; the wide differences in the technological problems of the several major industries; the concentration of staple industries in specialized geographical areas and the growing political and cultural domination of metropolitan centres which accentuate political and economic sectionalism, and at the same time a high degree of concentration of the control of finance, commerce, and manufacturing on a national scale—a concentration to which it is difficult to apply social regulation and control within the present framework of the British North America Act.
The Working of Confederation
Authors: Brossard Roger , Angus H. F. 
Published: June 2006

The word “Confederation” is often used in a restrictive sense to refer merely to the “British North America Act”; in this restricted sense, it refers to the constitution of Canada. In its broader sense, it should refer to the union of the entire population of Canada, grouped together, on the one hand into provinces, and on the other hand into Canadians of French and English descent, for the attainment, the development, and the protection of interests common to all, while safeguarding for each group, whether province or race, the rights and traditions peculiar to it. These two understandings of Confederation are indispensable for a better comprehension of the attitude of French Canada towards it.Two lines of thought as to the understandings, agreements, pacts, or contracts—call them what you like—which were satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily formulated by the British North America Act must be noted. While for the majority of Anglo-Canadian constitutional authors the pacts of 1864, 1865, and 1866 were primarily made between provinces, one of which happened to be populated for the most part by Canadians of French descent, for French-Canadian constitutional writers these pacts were at one and the same time agreements between the four original provinces on the one hand and between the two great races on the other hand. The fact that Sir George Etienne Cartier and other French Fathers of Confederation did not, at the time, foresee that at some future date the provinces of Canada other than Quebec would also be populated by an important number of French Canadians, and that they consequently directed all their efforts for the safeguarding of the rights of French Canadians to securing for the province of Quebec the largest possible amount of independence, does not, in our opinion, change the above views on the matter.
Problems of Public Finance in the Prairie Provinces
Authors: Waines W. J. 
Published: June 2006

“All economic problems which are concerned with overhead costs, whether those of the individual farm enterprise or those of communities or governmental bodies, are rendered active or quiescent by the fluctuations of net agricultural income.” Herein, lies the fundamental economic problem of the West. It is the purpose of this paper to examine provincial and municipal finance in the Prairie Provinces in the light of this fact, in an attempt to reveal some of the more important problems and possible lines of attack on them. The area designated as the Prairie Provinces, however, is not a unit with uniform geographic and economic characteristics. Therefore, the factors of diversity, as well as those of variability, constitute the background against which the problems of government finance should be examined. Since these factors are vital to a consideration of the problems, there must be some preliminary account of them.The prairie economy is “exposed” to the fluctuations characteristic of a variable climate, of extreme specialization, and of dependence upon prices determined in world markets. The contrast between an almost exclusively agricultural and an agricultural-industrial region, sheltered by a kindly federal government, is most marked. The climatic and economic instability of the West has been thoroughly studied by Professor Mackintosh in two volumes in the series “Canadian Frontiers of Settlement”. The instability reflected in variable community income is highly significant, because it is the net income “which must carry the fixed charges of both the individual enterprise and the agricultural community at large”.
Allied Wheat Buying in Relationship to Canadian Marketing Policy, 1914–18
Authors: Sharp Mitchell W. 
Published: June 2006

At the outbreak of war in August, 1914, plans to cope with a possible food scarcity in the Allied countries were of a rudimentary character. For example, in the War Book of the British Government, there was only one measure dealing directly with food, and that a measure for obtaining information. In France the only legislation on agriculture or foodstuffs existing at the outbreak of war was a law of the period of the Revolution, dating back to July, 1791, which authorized the fixing of retail prices for bread and meat. Hence, methods of procedure had to be improvised as difficulties arose and it was not until well on towards the close of hostilities that anything like a comprehensive food policy had been devised.As the central foodstuff in the diet of the peoples of the western Allied powers, bread came to play a leading role in the development of food policy. In the words of the body that was later to dominate world import trade in wheat, bread was “the only diet which sufficed in isolation and was therefore, indispensable.” Other foods might fail or be in short supply, but starvation seemed a long way off so long as there was enough bread. In the United Kingdom an implicit “breadstuffs policy” underlay the whole structure of food policy. Though never expressed in any one document, that policy has been stated in these words: whatever else was allowed to be in short supply, whether for human or for animal consumption, there should be a sufficiency of breadstuffs to meet in full all demands for them without rationing. In the other European Allied countries the direction of policy is not so clear but, with surprising unanimity, efforts were directed to keeping bread cheap and plentiful.
Mortality Tables in Life Insurance Management
Authors: Campbell J. A. 
Published: June 2006

In all popular discussions of death rates or of the probable duration of human life one finds the phrase “according to the mortality table.” Sometimes it even appears that a writer is assuming that a definite law of mortality has been discovered from which deviations are not to be expected and which has been embodied in the mortality table. Every serious student of the subject knows that this is far from the truth and that there are many mortality tables, each representing the mortality which was experienced by a specified group of lives during a specified time.To the actuary, any mortality table is simply a mathematical tool with which to study such problems as population growth or change, or to calculate the monetary values of benefits dependent on life contingencies. It is a tool in the same sense that a gauge is a tool for a machinist. In some parts of a machinist's work only the most accurate precision gauges are acceptable, and similarly in calculating premiums for non-participating insurance or rates for life annuities, the actuary must use the most accurate and up-to-date mortality table available. On the other hand, a machinist may use a less exact gauge for other types of work where conditions are suitable. For certain purposes such as calculating policy liabilities, the actuary has a corresponding choice, for, as will appear later in the paper, reserves by all mortality tables are remarkably similar.
The Social Significance of Recent Trends in Economic Theory
Authors: Roll Erich 
Published: June 2006

The story of the relation between political philosophy and economics records many curious twists and turns, anachronistic survivals, and striking anticipations. But nothing is more astonishing than the contrast between the current preoccupations of economists and their tacit methodological beliefs. During the last war and today economic enquiry has inevitably been harnessed to problems of government. But even during the two decades of armistice the bulk of the work of economists has been intimately related to policy. Not only has activity in the empirical and applied fields increased greatly, but purely theoretical analysis, too, has had a strong practical bias. Probably the three outstanding topics in theoretical discussion during the last few years have related to the problems of crises, monopoly, and planning. All three, even when debated in the most abstract terms, have an obvious “tendency to use,” in the sense that they envisage the application of measures of control by government or other social agencies.Thus, judged by their choice of topics, economists seem to have given up any implicit unquestioning belief in the virtues of laissez-faire, and, to some extent, even in the capitalist system. Yet there seems still to be lurking in their minds an inherited regard, if not for the Smithian “hidden land,” at least for the so-called economic case for laissez-faire as expounded by such members of the first generation of modern economics as William Stanley Jevons, Philip Wicksteed, and J. B. Clark. There are left, it is true, only a few citadels which would put up a full-bodied defence of this case. But a great many of the less intransigent economists still appear to subscribe to it when they are asked explicitly to discuss it.
The Earning Power of Canadian Corporate Capital, 1934-40
Authors: McDougall J. L. 
Published: June 2006

There are two approaches to questions of earning power, the first, annual, which is the one adopted in this paper, the second, a whole-life study. Of the two the latter is incomparably superior. A study of annual rates of earnings is inevitably biased by the fact that it can include the surviving corporations only. Those which fail make no reports, nor are the capital losses in failure offset against the profits of the survivors to show the net return to capitalists as a class upon their ventures. In addition, the rates of earnings of any year are affected by the business conditions of that year. It is only when one has a series extending over a full business cycle that one has material from which to compute a “normal” rate of return, subject to the inclusion therein of a bias which is not open to any reasonably dependable estimate.In the whole-life study the rate of return found is that rate which will equate the in-payments of capital by investors to the corporation with the dividends paid to investors including therein the liquidating dividend(s) if the corporation is wound up (or the current market value as a reasonable substitute therefor if it still continues). The beauty of this method is that it avoids the whole problem of allocating earnings to particular time-periods and escapes the illogicality of showing as earnings what never reaches the owner. Its disadvantage is that it is applicable to long periods only. A decade is probably the minimum and two are preferable. It is the only method of determining earning power which is logically defensible; but for many purposes the annual data, with all their imperfections, are still useful and it is for such uses that this study is presented.
The Impact of War Taxation on Eighty Canadian Corporations
Authors: Morgan Lucy 
Published: June 2006

In pre-war days corporations paid a Dominion income tax of 15 per cent on net income, or 17 per cent if they consolidated their returns with those of subsidiaries. In the case of unincorporated businesses—partnerships and sole proprietorships—income tax was levied on the individual incomes of the persons participating in the business; no tax was levied on the business as a unit. Under present taxation schedules, the corporation income tax stands at 18 per cent; 20 per cent for companies making consolidated returns. Proprietorships pay higher taxes through the steeply increased individual income tax rates. And, finally, the excess profits tax has been superimposed on the previous tax structure.The excess profits tax applies to all businesses, incorporated and unincorporated. In addition to the taxes assessed under the Income War Tax Act, they have paid up to the present either a flat rate on their total profits (in 1940, 12 per cent for all businesses; in 1941, 22 per cent in the case of corporations, 15 per cent in the case of other businesses) or 75 per cent on profits in excess of pre-war profits, whichever tax was the larger. The provisions listed in the Income War Tax Act for the exemption of educational, charitable, labour, farmers', and other such organizations apply equally to this tax. Otherwise it was assessed in 1940 and 1941 against every business in Canada having a profit, before any payments to partners, proprietors, or shareholders, of more than $5000, with the proviso that any part of the tax which would reduce the profit thus defined to less than $5000 was not to be paid.
Early Theories of Parliamentarism
Authors: Eulau Heinz H. F. 
Published: June 2006

In contrast to the numerous expositions and commentaries concerning the origin, history, and nature of the doctrine of the separation of powers, early theories of parliamentary government have failed to attract the attention of historians of political thought. This negligence arises from two factors which must not be under-estimated. In the first place, it is generally asserted that Walter Bagehot was the first to appreciate the true nature of parliamentarism. Indeed, the penetration and lucidity of his famous essay on the English constitution overshadowed earlier attempts to grasp theoretically the mechanism of parliamentary government. In the second place, historians of political theory have been less prone to trace the roots of the theory of parliamentarism than those of the doctrine of the separation of powers because parliamentary government, although gradually introduced into a number of countries in the course of the nineteenth century, was not reduced to writing in any organic law prior to the World War. The development of the theory of parliamentary government is, therefore, one of the most neglected chapters in the history of constitutional ideas.While the English to the end of the fifties of the last century looked upon and appraised their constitution through the eyes of Montesquieu, Blackstone, and De Lolme, continental theorists were busy in elaborating a new theory about the nature of the English constitution. The early history of parliamentary theory is determined, therefore, to no small extent by the way in which continental theorists observed and conceived the operation of English government. It was in France and Germany that the true nature of the English constitution was first discovered and a theory of parliamentarism formulated for the direct purpose of introducing the parliamentary system into those two countries.