ABSTRACT
Among the countries classified by the United Nations as "industrialized market economies, Canada is surely one of the most highly regionalized and its economy is accordingly one of the most badly fragmented. The Canadian government has over the past forty years introduced a wide array of regional development measures. Some of these include revenue sharing schemes with the provinces, regional industrial incentives programs and efforts to tailor national policies and programs to meet regional economic circumstances and conditions. Canadians have imported both regional development theories and policy prescriptions from abroad. During the period from Confederation to the mid-1950s, the federal government had no explicit policy of regional development. It directed its economic policy essentially toward the development of the national economy. Harold Adams Innis maintained that theories developed in, say, Europe could hardly apply very well in Canada given its distinct historical, political and economic development.
