Canadian Capitalism Timeline

Canadian capitalism, from the 1500s to the present

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Breakout room #1

History of capitalism in Canada 1500s – 1800s

European settlers displace Indigenous peoples, exploit the people and the land, establish a continent-wide trading economy, enrich Europe

  • Canada is built on stolen Indigenous land. The original, first nations have been displaced by colonization
  • The economic history of this land begins with hunting, fishing, agriculture and trading by Indigenous peoples
  • In the 1500s, Europe was struggling. So European rulers sent teams around the world to find resources to exploit. The social and economic development that happened during the Renaissance in Europe was paid for by colonizing these lands, stealing the resources and massacring the people.
  • This is the foundation of Canada’s politics and economy and the roots of Canadian capitalism. The colonial economy was based on mining, forestry, furs, and agriculture
  • The fur trade created the first transcontinental trading economy here and those trade routes were also used by Christian missionaries.
  • Wealth was concentrated in the hands of white settlers and exported to Europe
  • Indigenous people were assimilated or killed. This is the era when residential schools were first created. Indigenous economic and political structures are outlawed and destroyed

 

Breakout room #2

History of capitalism in Canada 1850s – 1930s

The economy moves from agriculture, resources extraction and craft trades to mass manufacturing. This leads to liberalism, wealth inequality, and the rise of the working class

  • In the next phase of the economy, we have the industrial revolution, when we move from an economy that is based on agriculture and building things by hand, to one that is dominated by factories and machines.
  • This leads people to move from family farms in rural areas to towns and cities and where they will work in factories.
  • This is when we see the birth of the working class, people who make their living by working for someone else and earning a wage.
  • It’s also when we see the rise of the capitalist class. Individual people own factories and become many times wealthier and more powerful than the people who work in them. Banks grow and freely lend money to capitalists.
  • There are very few regulations over any parts of the economy, which is called liberalism or a laissez-faire economy (meaning “let it be”).
  • Working conditions are bad. Workplaces are dangerous, crowded, and dirty. Industrial accidents are common, wages are low, and the hours are long. Child labour is also common.
  • By the late 19th century, workers have had enough. The Toronto printers’ strike of 1872 leads Prime Minister John A McDonald to create the Trade Unions Act, which makes unions legal.
  • The labour movement grows and we see events like the Winnipeg General Strike
  • One result of all this laissez-faire, “anything goes liberalism” is The Great Depression. Without regulation the economy the economy swings wildly and we get the crash of the stock market, unemployment, homelessness, hopelessness, starvation.

 

Breakout room #3

History of capitalism in Canada 1940s – 1970s

Tempering the influence of the market, more power to working people, fairer distribution of wealth, capital class held in check by regulation

  • There is a shift in philosophy after WWII.
  • After the disasters of the Depression and the war, the welfare of people is seen as important. Full employment and ending poverty become priorities.
  • The g
  • overnment starts to play a bigger role in the economy, protecting and promoting the economic and social well-being of its citizens.
  • It is guided by ideas from an American economist, John Maynard Keynes. Keynes believed that if private companies (like factories or mines) can’t produce enough jobs, then the government should create jobs by investing public money and building things like roads, bridges, and public utilities.
  • Tax rates for corporations and the rich are high.
  • Social movements and unions are strong. There are important wins for all people, not just union members. Many of the social programs we know today were created during this period:
    • Unemployment insurance – 1940
    • Universal public healthcare – 1962
    • CUPE! – 1963
    • Canada Pension Plan – 1965
    • Maternity leave -1971
  • The goal in this era was not to get rid of capitalism. Instead, the government tried to protect people from swings in the economy by providing social programs and keep the economy from falling into another Great Depression.

 

Breakout room #4

History of capitalism in Canada 1980s – present

Capitalism strikes back: de-regulation, dismantling of social programmes, privatization of public institutions, greater inequality

  • But towards the end of the 1970s, capitalism in Canada goes through another transformation.
  • In the two decades after WWII, workers were empowered by a long stretch of full employment and higher wages. A confident working class won a larger and larger slice of the economic pie. People were benefiting from the collective action that gave us those social programs and were demanding changes in the workplace and society.
  • That’s bad news for the capitalist employers who would rather have a weaker, less expensive workforce.
  • Rich capitalists were also not happy with the higher taxes and the stricter regulations that were imposed on them, or with the inflation rates that were eating into their massive wealth.
  • So, they fought back. And that brings us to the era of Neoliberalism.
  • In the early 1970s, the Bank of Canada—following the trend set by the US head of the Federal reserve, a man named Volcker—enacted a policy to shock the economy and change its course to make it better for capitalists and worse for everyone else.
  • To fight inflation, the Bank of Canada raised interest rates so high that in 1981 they reached 22.75%. This brought the economy to a screeching halt. Canada was in its first major post-war recession. Unemployment shot up to almost 13%. Tens of thousands of people lost their homes and their jobs.
  • This was a deliberate policy, not just bad luck in the economy. The goal was to create a permanent shift in the economy: mass unemployment keeps workers and worker demands in check and puts downward pressure on wages.
  • This new capitalist order is cemented by the election of conservative governments, in Canada, the US and the UK (Mulroney, Reagan and Thatcher) who passed laws that were great for rich capitalists and bad for workers.
  • It’s a more extreme version of the laissez-faire, from the pre-war era. The government removes a lot of rules and regulations that protected worker rights and social well-being and let corporations operate as they would like.
  • Taxes on the rich and corporations drop. Governments cut social programs.
  • Rules that kept the economy in check are removed (de-regulation) and the government stops public investment, selling off Air Canada, Petro Canada, the Canadian National Railway
  • Labour and social movements fight back, but there is a constant struggle to preserve workers’ rights and the social programs.
  • That’s where Canada—and much of the world—is today.