page_title: Economic history of Canada
section_title: The Great Depression
hierarchical_section_title: Economic history of Canada / The Great Depression
caption_attribution_description: English: (Relief Projects - No. 62). Road construction at Kimberly-Wasa, British Columbia. The federal government established Relief Projects in 1933 during the height of the Great Depression for unemployed single men. Although they were not compulsory, they were often the only alternative for many ment at a time when social assistance was unavailable. Work camps provided food and meagre accommodations but the work was unpaid, a situation that would lead to protests and demonstrations in 1934. These workers improved infrastructure of Canada by building roads, airfields, parks, and restoring historical ramparts
context_page_description: Canadian historians until the 1980s tended to focus on the history of Canada's economy because of the far fewer political and military conflicts present in Canadian history than in other societies. Many of the most prominent English Canadian historians from this period were economic historians, such as Harold Innis, Donald Creighton and Arthur R. M. Lower.
  Scholars of Canadian economic history were heirs to the traditions that developed in Europe and the United States, but frameworks of study that worked well elsewhere often failed in Canada. The heavily Marxist influenced economic history present in Europe has little relevance to most of Canadian history. A focus on class, urban areas, and industry fails to address Canada's rural and resource-based economy. Similarly, the monetarist school that is dominant in the United States also has been difficult to transfer north of the border.
  Instead, the study of economic history in Canada is highly focused on economic geography, and for many years the dominant school of thought has been the staples thesis. This school of thought bases the study of the Canadian economy on the study of natural resources.
context_section_description: Canada was hard hit by the Great Depression.  When the American economy began to collapse in the late 1920s the close economic links and the central banking system meant that the malaise quickly spread across the border.  The world demand fell for wheat, lumber and mining products; prices fell, profits plunged, and unemployment soared.
  In May 1930, US raised the tariff with the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act. Canada retaliated by imposing new tariffs on 16 products that accounted altogether for around 30% of U.S. exports to Canada. Following Britain's lead, Canada then forged closer economic links with the British Empire via the British Empire Economic Conference of 1932.
  By 1933, 30% of the labour force was out of work, and one fifth of the population became dependent on government assistance.  Wages fell as did prices; debts did not fall and they became more burdensome.  Gross National Expenditure had declined 42% from the 1929 levels.  In some areas, the decline was far worse.  In the rural areas of the prairies two-thirds of the population were on relief.  Population growth contracted markedly as immigration slowed, and birth rates fell as people postponed marriage and family life until they were more secure.  Crime rates increased, and a new class of unemployed vagrants appeared.
  Canada remained in depression far longer than the United States, not passing 1929 levels until 1939, with the outbreak of the Second World War.  There was no national recovery program similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
caption: Road construction at Kimberly-Wasa, British Columbia. The federal government established Relief Projects in 1933 during the height of the Great Depression for unemployed married men of British descent
exif: {}