The Midwestern Case: Canadian Gas and the Federal Power Commission

Abstract

The historian of the future, in attempting to interpret developments in the middle years of the twentieth century, may well be appalled by the mass of documentary evidence that confronts him. Particularly is this likely to be the case if he is foolhardy enough to explore the decisions of governmental regulatory agencies and the processes by which such organizations undertook to define the public interest. These public bureaucracies, exposed to strong political pressures and staffed largely by lawyers, characteristically accumulate very large masses of testimony, oral and written, in the course of their hearings. Partly for reasons of expense, this testimony is seldom published, and the lay inquirer, if he delves into the morass, is more than likely to find himself confused rather than enlightened by the unfamiliar phraseology and by the sheer bulk of the record.Nevertheless, such agencies have come to play a very significant role in determining the rate and direction of economic development in the United States and Canada, and it is important that we should understand the kind of reasoning that underlies their decisions. The present inquiry stemmed initially from an interest in the Canadian natural gas industry, and from curiosity about the impediments that seemed to be delaying the export of Canadian gas to the United States.