This week’s deadly heat wave, with its new record temperatures, is just one example of how the country’s economy seems to be embroiled in change this Canada Day.
Urgent plans to speed the switch to electric cars and the painful process of moving away from Canada’s dependence on carbon-producing fuels are part of a longer list of economic earthquakes.
The country is currently adapting to a string of extraordinary events:
A recession caused by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.
The return of inflation after a decades-long absence that some expect will lead to a rise in interest rates.
Government intervention in the economy not seen since the decades after World War II.
But as difficult as it is to be sure of the country’s economic future in such changing times, historians are struggling to re-examine Canada’s economic past.
As former economic heroes, such as Henry Dundas, Egerton Ryerson and John A. Macdonald, are knocked off their pedestals, the discovery of Indigenous children’s unmarked graves and the past year’s Black Lives Matter movement are opening people’s eyes to long-standing economic injustices.
The founding narrative
One of the leaders of that re-examination is Angela Redish, an economic historian and a professor at the University of British Columbia, who, like most who studied Canada’s economic history in past decades, was educated almost exclusively on “the founding narrative” of the European extraction of Canada’s resources through the St. Lawrence and its role in creating a powerful industrial economy.
But as Redish began doing her own research, she also began to realize what the economic history texts had left out.
“Everybody knew about the Treaty of Paris and what that meant for the Canadian economy,” said Redish, referring to the 1763 agreement that turned a big chunk of North America over to Britain.
“All the treaties of the Indigenous nations weren’t even in the books,” she said.
The deaths of children at Canada’s residential school is a tragic reminder of another side of Canada’s economic history. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Canadians weaned on the heroic narrative of explorers discovering abundant empty lands and building a rich country from sea to sea to sea may have been shocked by recent revelations that Indigenous children were abused and died here.
But the brutal displacement of the land’s original people by European settlers is well known to historians. It is a process now being described by the Canadian Historical Society as genocide.
That simply hasn’t been the focus of the traditional story, said Kris Inwood, an economic historian at the University of Guelph.
“It’s unfortunate that it takes the kind of spectacular spectacle of unmarked graves being discovered to bring it to people’s attention,” Inwood said in an interview this week. “But it’s clearly a good thing for people to have their awareness drawn to, by our standards today, how horribly people behaved in the past.”
In 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, author Charles Mann describes a densely populated Indigenous North America devastated by the spread of European diseases first introduced by Spanish colonizers, leaving the continent appearing far less populated than it had once been.
The extent of that disease effect, though, is still being disputed by economic historians.
As Inwood points out, death rates in Canada were high for everyone in the 1800s and children suffered the most, but no one began collecting mortality data until the 1920s.
Recent research by University of Victoria economic historians Donna Feir, Rob Gillezeau and Maggie Jones disputes the idea that Indigenous people were weakened before Europeans came to the Great Plains and killed off the bison.
World’s tallest people
“Once the tallest people in the world, the generations of bison-reliant people born after the slaughter were among the shortest,” they wrote in a much-quoted paper on the plains inhabitants.
Not only that, but being deprived of the means of their economic success had a long-lasting effect.
“Today, formerly bison-reliant societies have between 20 to 40 per cent less income per capita than the average Native American nation,” says the paper.
As one of the authors of the popular textbook A History of the Canadian Economy, Herb Emery has an intimate view of how changing perspectives can alter the understanding Canadians have about their economic history.
“The stories we tell are about the importance of property rights and legal systems to ensure an efficient and successful capitalist economy,” said Emery in an email. “The blind spot is in the initial expropriation.”
Before Europeans came and killed off the bison, the Indigenous people of the Great Plains were among the tallest in the world. After the slaughter, they were the shortest. (Three Lions/Getty Images)
As Feir points out, while the system of declaring ownership may have been different and was sometimes disputed in border conflicts, Indigenous groups had well-established title to agricultural or hunting lands. When the Europeans arrived with their much celebrated property rights, they simply ignored the existing property rights.
“So to talk about an abundance of land is bizarre,” she said.
In fact, as Gillezeau points out, the ejection from their traditional lands that provided a good living cannot be separated from Indigenous peoples’ ability to fight off European diseases.
Right up to today, poverty leads to negative health outcomes.
As shown with the plains bison hunters, Gillezeau said, the loss of the things that made them economically successful can have a lingering effect that’s been shown to last generations.
Improving the lives of many Indigenous people and other people of colour can be expensive and difficult.
Finding a shared narrative
While economists may differ on which events are most important, Gillezeau said he has not seen a backlash in Canada against the idea of expanding our concept of economic history. But the fact that the revisions are almost entirely being made by settler scholars may skew those decisions.
“The profession is not as diverse as it should be, and if you don’t have voices at the table, the conversation goes a lot more slowly,” said Gillezeau. “Having more Black economists is going to change the profession.”
Redish has the same concern about the lack of Indigenous students in economics, something she is trying to rectify at UBC.
Contrary to the popular idea of history being a single and unchanging narrative, the economic historians I spoke to described it as a dynamic process that must take account of new developments, like climate change, new historical understandings and changing public values. It is a process that takes time.
“We should be working on a shared narrative,” said Redish. “I think that’s what we have to do. But it’s very challenging.”
OTTAWA – Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says the government is making some changes to mortgage rules to help more Canadians to purchase their first home.
She says the changes will come into force in December and better reflect the housing market.
The price cap for insured mortgages will be boosted for the first time since 2012, moving to $1.5 million from $1 million, to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
On Aug. 1 eligibility for the 30-year amortization was changed to include first-time buyers purchasing a newly-built home.
Justice Minister Arif Virani is also releasing drafts for a bill of rights for renters as well as one for homebuyers, both of which the government promised five months ago.
Virani says the government intends to work with provinces to prevent practices like renovictions, where landowners evict tenants and make minimal renovations and then seek higher rents.
The government touts today’s announced measures as the “boldest mortgage reforms in decades,” and it comes after a year of criticism over high housing costs.
The Liberals have been slumping in the polls for months, including among younger adults who say not being able to afford a house is one of their key concerns.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales rose 1.4 per cent to $71 billion in July, helped by higher sales in the petroleum and coal and chemical product subsectors.
The increase followed a 1.7 per cent decrease in June.
The agency says sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector gained 6.7 per cent to total $8.6 billion in July as most refineries sold more, helped by higher prices and demand.
Chemical product sales rose 5.3 per cent to $5.6 billion in July, boosted by increased sales of pharmaceutical and medicine products.
Sales of wood products fell 4.8 per cent for the month to $2.9 billion, the lowest level since May 2023.
In constant dollar terms, overall manufacturing sales rose 0.9 per cent in July.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
TORONTO – Strength in the base metal and technology sectors helped Canada’s main stock index gain almost 100 points on Friday, while U.S. stock markets climbed to their best week of the year.
“It’s been almost a complete opposite or retracement of what we saw last week,” said Philip Petursson, chief investment strategist at IG Wealth Management.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 297.01 points at 41,393.78. The S&P 500 index was up 30.26 points at 5,626.02, while the Nasdaq composite was up 114.30 points at 17,683.98.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 93.51 points at 23,568.65.
While last week saw a “healthy” pullback on weaker economic data, this week investors appeared to be buying the dip and hoping the central bank “comes to the rescue,” said Petursson.
Next week, the U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut its key interest rate for the first time in several years after it significantly hiked it to fight inflation.
But the magnitude of that first cut has been the subject of debate, and the market appears split on whether the cut will be a quarter of a percentage point or a larger half-point reduction.
Petursson thinks it’s clear the smaller cut is coming. Economic data recently hasn’t been great, but it hasn’t been that bad either, he said — and inflation may have come down significantly, but it’s not defeated just yet.
“I think they’re going to be very steady,” he said, with one small cut at each of their three decisions scheduled for the rest of 2024, and more into 2025.
“I don’t think there’s a sense of urgency on the part of the Fed that they have to do something immediately.
A larger cut could also send the wrong message to the markets, added Petursson: that the Fed made a mistake in waiting this long to cut, or that it’s seeing concerning signs in the economy.
It would also be “counter to what they’ve signaled,” he said.
More important than the cut — other than the new tone it sets — will be what Fed chair Jerome Powell has to say, according to Petursson.
“That’s going to be more important than the size of the cut itself,” he said.
In Canada, where the central bank has already cut three times, Petursson expects two more before the year is through.
“Here, the labour situation is worse than what we see in the United States,” he said.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.61 cents US compared with 73.58 cents US on Thursday.
The October crude oil contract was down 32 cents at US$68.65 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was down five cents at US$2.31 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$30.10 at US$2,610.70 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents US$4.24 a pound.
— With files from The Associated Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
