Royal Commissions and Canadian Agricultural Policy

Abstract

Students of Canadian agricultural policy encounter many anomalies. Even superficial study indicates that Canadian farmers have not influenced governmental policy in any measure proportional to their share of Canadian population. Very little effort has been made to understand and explain the historical place of the Canadian farmer's voice in the councils of the nation. The hardy perennial verdict that agriculture is Canada's basic industry adds nothing to our understanding of the question.Within the scope of a brief paper only a few points can be touched upon. This analysis is limited to a consideration of the use of royal commissions of inquiry in the formulation of Canadian agricultural policy. It is further limited to the period after 1900. In fact the second limitation is embodied in the first, for, with negligible exceptions, only after 1900 were royal commissions used in the formulation of Canadian agricultural policy.We are to consider, then, the period during which the central economic fact for the Dominion of Canada was the establishment of the prairie wheat economy. The most cursory examination of the relationships which existed between farmers and the governments of this period calls attention to the very considerable number of royal commissions of inquiry appointed by Dominion and provincial governments to deal with some phase or other of what we loosely call “the agricultural problem.”