Dominion Aids to Wheat Marketing, 1929-39

Abstract

Dominion aids to Canadian wheat marketing extend back at least to the beginnings of the western wheat trade and have been of three traditional types, viz.: (1) regulation, (2) investigation, and (3) elevator operation on a limited scale. Regulation of the Canadian grain trade has long been of a quality unsurpassed in other grain producing countries and has evolved in recent decades through repeated revisions of the Canada Grain Act. Investigation dealing specifically with the western wheat trade has involved a notable series of royal commissions commencing with the present century. Elevator operation by the Dominion Government started in 1913 with experimentation and compromise as its objects, and the Dominion Government still retains substantial interests in interior and other terminal elevator plants. In addition to the customary federal aids to wheat marketing before 1929, mention should be made of the exceptional intervention accompanying the Board of Grain Supervisors, which marketed part of the 1916 wheat crop and the crops of 1917 and 1918, and the first Canadian Wheat Board, which marketed the crop of 1919.Important as the above-mentioned aids have been in shaping the destiny of the Canadian grain trade, they form a striking contrast in simplicity compared with the interventions of the decade4 herein considered. Dominion regulation, investigation, and elevator operation have continued to the present time, but the notable innovations in Dominion activity after 1929 lie beyond the traditional categories and include more or less sustained sorties in attempted stabilization, in bonusing, in international consultation, and in various types of wheat board operation. Dominion aids to wheat marketing, of special significance from 1929 to 1939, may therefore be classified as follows: (1) stabilization activities, (2) bonus payments, (3) international consultation and agreement, (4) wheat board operations; and since several important federal investigations of the grain trade took place within the decade, there should be added (5) investigation. These topics have, for the most part, been analysed individually and at short range in various current writings, so that factual material may here be reduced to a minimum and the emphasis placed upon interpretation in perspective.