Flax raising has become important in southwestern Ontario. The crop competes with the best Russian product. The Canadians use labour-saving devices to keep costs down to European levels.
But Toronto comes honestly by its independent spirit and bold experiments for the public welfare. The entire province of Ontario is imbued with the same tendency. With an area eight times that of New York, it is, next to Quebec, the largest province of Canada, and with three million people, mostly of British extraction, excels them all in population. It is richer in mineral wealth, agricultural resources, and industrial development than any other province. The people believe in their future and they show the courage of their convictions when it comes to going in debt to back public enterprises.
The province owns a railroad that taps the Cobalt silver mining district and the northern agricultural lands. The main line of the road extends from the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National lines at North Bay two hundred and fifty-three miles northward to Cochrane, where it meets the northernmost of the three transcontinental routes.
A few years ago Ontario increased its expenditure for good roads from two million dollars a year to nine millions. It created the Ontario Hydro-Electric Commission, which generates and distributes more electric power at lower rates than any other similar body in the world. The province pensions needy mothers, and its public health service furnishes serums and toxins free to the public.
The Ontario parliament has no upper house, but only a single chamber to which members are elected by the votes of both men and women. Not long ago the farmers’ organizations captured enough seats to give them control of the government.
In Toronto I have seen so many familiar names on the factory buildings that I have had to ask myself whether I was in a British Dominion or back in the United States. These are the “branch plants” of American firms, established here to be inside Canada’s tariff wall and to get the benefit of the preferential tariffs conceded by Great Britain and her dominions to Canadian products. From automobiles to silverware, and from bridge steel to fountain pens, many of our best known American goods are not only used but made in Canada. Some of the branch plants bear the same names as at home, but many adopt for Canadian use designations that give no trace of their American origin. For example, world-famous corporations that use “United States” or “American” as part of their names, are the “Dominion” this or the “Imperial” that in Canada. This policy caters to the growing movement among the people to buy only goods “made in Canada.” The American branch-plant system accounts in part for the resemblance of Toronto to American cities. On every hand I see electric signs, window displays, and bill-boards bearing the same appeals to buy the goods that are so extensively advertised at home.
No one knows just how many American branch factories Canada has, but their number is well over one thousand. There are more than two hundred in Toronto alone, and as many more elsewhere in southern Ontario. Montreal has many American branch plants and American owned enterprises. Its largest hotel belongs to an American syndicate, and so does my hotel in Toronto.
Americans control nine tenths of the automobile accessory business of Canada, and in their branch plants they make three fifths of the Dominion’s automobiles. Practically all of our well known firms devoted to low and moderate priced cars have big factories in Canada, and they do practically all their exporting to Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, and South Africa through their Canadian branch plants. This export business amounts to more than twenty-five million dollars a year, while the cars made here for the Canadian market represent a value three times as great.
In other lines American capital is conspicuous. Half of the Canadian rubber factories are owned by Americans, and nearly half of the meat packing, paint, brass, condensed milk, car construction, and electrical apparatus industries represent American money. American controlled concerns do more than half of all the oil refining, while two hundred and fifty million dollars of our money is invested in the pulp and paper industry.
Altogether, it is estimated that American investments in government loans, corporation bonds, land mortgages, and industrial enterprises amount to two thousand five hundred million dollars. Our stake in Canada has been increasing rapidly ever since 1914, and now it nearly equals that of the British. Within a few years it will probably be much greater. Nearly one sixth of all the money we have invested in foreign countries is in Canada, and in return for the capital Canada is now buying from us more than three fifths of her annual thousand million dollar purchases abroad. In fact, her people are our best customers; their purchases of us amount to eighty-three dollars per capita a year as compared with five dollars for all Europe and fifty cents for China.