Over to Industry

In sharp outline Canadians saw this week how two World Wars had buttressed the Dominion's agricultural economy with a fine manufacturing industry. The lesson was recited by Reconstruction Minister Clarence Howe, who stood up in the House of Commons to give a final report on Canada's World War II output and an outline of peacetime industrial prospects.

The war record was impressive and well known : as an arsenal of the Empire Canada had produced 16,200 aircraft, 28,000 heavy field and naval guns, 1,500,000 machine guns and rifles, 8,000 ships, 800,000 vehicles, ammunition in the millions of rounds. To turn out these and scores of other items, Canada had doubled pig-iron production, tripled non-ferrous metal production, increased chemical manufacturing 233%. Said Howe with pride: "This unprecedented expansion . . . has resulted in manufacturing becoming the leading industry of the country . . , [and] on a production rather than an assembly basis." Turning to peacetime production, he pointed out that the Government had spent $720 million on land, plants and equipment during the war, three-quarters of it on facilities wholly owned by the Crown. At least two-thirds of this was suitable "for good use in peacetime," and "satisfactory progress" was being made in conversion. At the same time private industry, which spent half a billion dollars in war plant expansion, had now earmarked $200 million more to boost output.

Canada, Howe declared, "had gained a new place as an industrial nation." To hold that place in peacetime, the Dominion would have to probe new export markets, expand old ones.

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