Future Unlimited

Said Albert Clifford Ashforth, president of the Toronto-Dominion Bank: "Canadians never had it so good. In 1955, they produced more, imported more, exported more, earned more, spent more, consumed more, borrowed more, saved more and invested more than in any previous year."

If Ashforth sounded a little more like a barker making a midway spiel than a banker making a year-end report, he had good reason. Any Canadian taking stock of the nation's economy at the close of 1955 was bound to be buoyant. The year had begun with some 500,000 unemployed, and with spreading fears that Canada's postwar boom might be collapsing. Not only did such fears turn out to be unfounded, but 1955 turned out to be the best year Canada ever had. In Ottawa last week, the chief watchman of the country's economy, Trade and Commerce Minister C.D. Howe, cited these indicators:

P: Canada's gross national product is now running 11% above the record set in 1953. Even at its present high rate, the output does not meet the demand. There are shortages of steel and cement for domestic use, and of newsprint, chemicals and metals for eager foreign customers.

P: Personal income went up 8%, and corporation profits before taxes 22%. With the cost-of-living index holding steady, every extra dollar of dividends or take-home pay bought a full dollar's worth of goods.

P: Exports increased 12%, even though wheat, a major export in past years, was hard to sell in 1955. Such new export items as uranium, iron ore and oil more than made up for the grain decline.

P: Imports rose 15% during the year, with nearly all of the increase in U.S. manufactured goods to satisfy the rapidly improving Canadian standard of living.

Unfilled Orders. In almost every part of the country, there was tangible evidence of industrial and business activity to back up Howe's statistics. In the Quebec wilderness, 325 miles north of Montreal, Canadian National Railways is building a $35 million line to Chibougamau, a newly developed copper field. At Hamilton, Ont., the big Steel Co. of Canada, which has spent $100 million on new mills since 1950, reported with rueful pride that it was a full year behind on some orders --and promptly laid on an additional $70 million expansion program. Western oil production increased nearly one-third during the year, and great new developments for Canada's petroleum industry lay right ahead: a $350 million pipeline eastward and a $120 million line southward to carry natural gas to Eastern Canada and the Pacific Northwest. In British Columbia, the Aluminum Co. of Canada decided that the new $300 million Kitimat plant was already outgrown and launched a $200 million expansion.

As could be expected, such capital growth called for heavy investment. Canada's busiest stock market, the Toronto Exchange, doubled its turnover of shares and share values during the year. About 85% of all the new investment was made by Canadians themselves, but foreign capital continued to flow into the country at a healthy rate, with full encouragement from the government. Said Minister Howe: "I have never believed in examining the nationality of a dollar bill."

Bare Shelves. Jobs were plentiful in the expanding economy. The unemployment problem of last spring evaporated in the busy summer months. Not only were last winter's jobless put to work, but 200,000 immigrants and new workers were added to payrolls as well. Employment prospects now look so good that the government has decided to reverse the usual policy and keep the immigration doors open all winter to skilled workers.

Retail sales, perhaps the most sensitive barometer of general prosperity, were 6.5% ahead of last year going into December, and near sellouts of Christmas goods were reported from almost every Canadian center. A little more than half the sales were for cash; the rest were bought on credit. But buyers and sellers alike had the confident word of C.D. Howe that work and money would be available to pay the bills later. "Canada's present growth is perhaps more solidly based than at any previous time in the postwar period," said Howe. "Indications seem to point to the continuation of all-out operations in 1956."

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