A Federal Fiscal History

The robust and lengthy economic growth of the era after World War II, combined with an ideological shift about the role of govern- ment in the economy, led to the eventual relaxation of this discipline in the 1960s; and the result was the putting in place of expenditures that would grow faster than revenue once the growth of the economy began to slow down in the 1970s. [...] The periods of the Great Depression and the world wars generate large upward spikes in the size of the federal public sector but generally it is the era after World War II that sees a sustained period of growth of the federal public sector relative to the economy. [...] Deficits and surpluses The difference between revenue and expenditure is the deficit(−)/surplus(+) and figure 5 and figure 6 plot the deficit to GDP ratio and the value of the real per capita deficit for the period 1870 to 2017. [...] These periods are: [1] the nation-building phase of the Canadian economy from 1867 to 1913, during which Canada embarked on the development of a national infrastructure and settlement of the West; [2] the period of economic tumult marked by two world wars and the Great Depression from 1914 to 1945; [3] the post-War boom era and golden age of growth from 1945 to 1973; [4] the productivity slowdown [...] The building of the Canadian Pacific Railway was an important fiscal issue for the new country and its construction demonstrates the government’s philosophy of encouraging the participation of the private sector in the building of national infrastructure.