ABSTRACT
The Dominion Bureau of Statistics (DBS—now called Statistics Canada) began the systematic collection of economic data only in 1919, and the first DBS-produced set of national accounts is for 1926. Statistical testing of economic hypotheses concerning the period before 1926 is thus much more difficult than for recent years. A major part of Canadian economic historians’ research during the 1960s and 1970s has consisted of attempts to organize the earlier historical data into national accounting categories so that they can be used to test hypotheses drawn from economic theory. For some concepts this was relatively easy (e.g., foreign trade data were quite good), but for aggregates like total output of goods and services (GNP) there are large gaps. In order to assess the reliability of historical estimates it is necessary to have some knowledge of the quality of the primary data and to judge the appropriateness of the gap-bridging assumptions. In this chapter we examine first the major source of primary data, the censuses, and then the available estimates of important economic magnitudes. The aim is twofold: to provide a quantitative summary of Canadian economic growth and development since the mid-nineteenth century and to consider the implications of the quantitative data for the various approaches described in the previous chapter.
