Setting the Scene: The Post-WWII Canadian Economy

The Second World War and the reconstruction period that followed gave a great impetus to the profession of business economics. During the war, economists, although few in number, played prominent, even decisive roles in many wartime operations.2 The main centres of such activity were the small but powerful staff of the Bank of Canada; the even smaller but more powerful staff of the Department of Finance; the economic planners and managers of the Foreign Exchange Control Board and the Wartime Prices and Trade Board; the key Munitions and Supply Department, run by its legendary minister, C.D. Howe; and a small group at the Dominion Bureau of Statistics (as Statistics Canada was then called).