ABSTRACT
During the Second World War, Canada rebuilt its merchant marine. As the Second World War drew to a close, the state, labour and enterprise supported the framing of a Canadian maritime policy to preserve the merchant shipping capacity developed during the war. Within the next decade, however, the Canadian-flagged merchant marine had collapsed. The general disappearance of the non-specialized merchant marines of the leading economic and industrial powers following the Second World War does not serve as an appropriate explanation for the collapse of the Canadian oceanic merchant marine. Beside the Canadian case, only the US merchant marine suffered a reduction during this period; however, whereas the US merchant marine suffered a minor reduction in total tonnage, Canada experienced an 85 per cent decrease.1 The markedly unstable labour conditions of the Canadian merchant fleet which contributed to this collapse have had their share of chroniclers.2 Rather than re-examining these labour issues, it is maintained that while labour costs and union activism clearly played a role in the collapse of the Canadian merchant fleet, neither separately nor combined do they account for the particular pattern of right-sizing that afflicted the Canadian merchant fleet.3 The collapse is in part illusory. By 1957 the bulk of Canadian oceanic fleet operated under UK registry. This turn of events was directly related to actions by the Canadian Government to harmonize Canada's competing commercial shipping interests with the state's strategic interests, particularly the NATO shipping pool agreement.
