“I have mentioned these difficulties in the inverse order of their importance,” said Sir Frederick. “Our loss of population is not only the most serious problem, but it grows out of the other two. Here we are, a nation of some eight million people. To the south of us is your country, with a population twelve times as great. You are the richest country in the world to-day. Canada occupies the north end of the continent, and while she is larger than the United States in area, and can match you in some of her natural resources, there are some things that we lack. For example, we cannot grow cotton. We have no hard coal. Most of our soft coal lies on our coasts, while a great part of our industry and population is located in the eastern and central sections of the country. This year, I believe, our bill for coal from the United States will be something like one hundred and twenty-five million dollars, or nearly thirteen dollars per capita of our total population.
“We used to be a country of low costs and low taxes,” continued Sir Frederick. “Now we are nearly up to you with regard to both the cost of living and high taxes. On the other hand, you have created a partial vacuum in the United States by your restrictions on immigration. These do not, however, apply to Canadians. Just as great bodies exercise a certain power of attraction upon smaller ones, so your one hundred and ten millions draw upon our eight millions. You are admitting fewer immigrants than your country could easily absorb, with the result that you afford opportunities to our people to better their condition. Strange as it may seem to you, there are many of us who prefer, no matter what happens, to live our lives under the British flag, but there are also others to whom this does not seem so important. It is they who drift over to you.”
While Sir Frederick thus outlined the problems confronting his country, his further remarks made it quite clear that he firmly believes in her future and is proud that he has a part in her development.
In talking with business men, I find that they consider that Canada has been especially fortunate in the extension of her banks abroad. The Royal Bank of Canada and others have branches in the United States and Great Britain, as well as in France and Spain. The branch banks of Canada furnish the entire banking system of Newfoundland, and I have myself done business with their branches in the course of my travels in South and Central America, the British and other European West Indies, Cuba, and Mexico. Canada’s branch banks have gone to those countries with which the Dominion has the largest foreign trade, and are an important factor in promoting Canadian business abroad. They furnish Canadian exporters with first hand data on markets, tariffs, and credits in foreign countries. They help to finance exports and also aid the importers to secure materials they need from other lands. An American banking expert has made the statement that with the exception of Great Britain, Canada has the best banking facilities for foreign trade of any country in the world.
I find that the Dominion is gaining in financial strength. In the last ten years the assets of her banks have increased seventy per cent., and the bank deposits have practically doubled. At the same time the value of her production, both in agriculture and industry, has mounted far above what it was before the World War. There is much evidence to show that the people themselves are better off than they used to be. For one thing, they have nearly two thousand million dollars on deposit in the chartered banks, an average of one hundred and eighty-eight dollars per person. They are buying more life insurance than ever before, the total value of the policies now in force in Canada amounting to over three thousand five hundred millions of dollars. If they continue to increase at the present rate, by 1947 the lives of Canadians will be insured to the amount of more than twelve thousand millions. This insurance represents a sum that will be sufficient to buy three million homes, to keep in comfort sixteen hundred and eighty thousand people, or to educate about four million Canadian children.
“From my window overlooking the wooded ravine through which the Rideau Canal descends in locks to the Ottawa River. I can see the towers of the university-like quadrangle of government buildings.”
The library of Parliament stands on the high bank of the Ottawa River, a bit of old England in the Canadian capital. It survived the fire that destroyed the House and Senate chambers.