Canadian Price Control Since 1939

Abstract

FROM the beginning of the war until April 1, 1947, the official cost of living index for the Dominion of Canada rose not quite 30 per cent, against a rise of some 80 per cent in the comparable period of the First World War. Meanwhile the index of wholesale prices rose not quite 70 per cent, against 150 per cent in the earlier period. These relatively small increases since 1939 are a measure of the success of the Canadian Government in general and the Wartime Prices and Trade Board in particular in stabilizing prices and controlling wartime inflationary forces. Price changes since 1939 for both Canada and the United States are shown in the accompanying chart. The Wartime Prices and Trade Board was set up on September 3, 1939, one week before Canada declared war on Germany. As originally constituted and as later expanded, the Board possessed within its own staff and its committees an unusually representative group of persons, drawn from several different departments of Government, from private industry, from banks, insurance companies, universities, and the p ofessions of law and accounting. Finally, the special interests of housewives were represented by a separate division whose function was to present the viewpoint of consumers. This variety of composition of the Board and its committees was an important factor in co-ordinating the operations of the Board and the policy of the different departments of Government. Owing to heavy surpluses of many commodities and in view of the large reservoirs of unemployed labor and unused industrial capacity existing at the outbreak of the conflict, the Board at first was able to confine its attention to