The Economic Council of Canada was an independent economic advisory body established as a federal Crown Corporation by the Government of Canada in 1963. Its purpose was to report on a wide range of pressing matters relating to Canada's economic development, focusing on five main economic objectives: full employment, sustained economic growth, price stability, equitable distribution of rising incomes, and a viable balance of payments. The council was dissolved alongside six other government organizations in 1993.
Governance, staff and budget The council was overseen by a chair (actually, "Chairman"), two deputy chairs and directors (with one deputy position being Director only until 1987), and not more than 25 part-time board members. The chairs and deputies were appointed by the prime minister and the board members by the governor in council. The chair was the chief executive officer and had responsibility for supervision over and direction of the work of the staff. All signed the reviews and research reports, with dissent being rare. The council reported to a minister of Parliament "as may be designated by the Governor in Council to act as the Minister responsible for purpose of the Act.""House of Commons Bills, 26th Parliament, 1st Se... - Canadian Parliamentary Historical Resources". parl.canadiana.ca. Retrieved 2023-02-20 Initially, this minister was Maurice Lamontagne, secretary of state, who had strongly supported the establishment of the council; by the mid-1960s it was the prime minister of Canada whom the council reported to. All the council's funding came from the federal government, via the finance and industry ministers. There were six chairs (plus one interim), as follows:
John J. Deutsch (1963–1967) Arthur J.R. Smith (1968–1971) André Raynauld (1972–1976) George Post, Interim (1978) Sylvia Ostry (1978–1979) David W. Slater (1980–1985) Judith Maxwell (1985–1992)
The Chairs were appointed by the prime minister for seven years, but most served for four years, and four of them served as a deputy chair for several years before being appointed as Chairs. Four of them were experienced public servants: Deutsch, Post, Ostry, and Slater. Deutsch stepped down when he was appointed Principal of Queen's University. Smith went on to lead the Conference Board of Canada and several corporate boards. Raynauld was a University of Montreal professor, who left the council to serve a term in the Quebec National Assembly, and then went back to the university. Before the council, Ostry had been head of Statistics Canada and after leaving she took up a number of senior positions at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the then Department of International Trade, and some universities. Slater had been a senior Department of Finance official before being appointed to the council. After the Council closed in 1992, Maxwell founded another think tank, the Canadian Policy Research Networks
Council Board members were appointed to represent their province and their sector of society – business, labour, agriculture and consumers. The first members were appointed in December 1963 and the first meeting of the council, along with the Chairs and Vice-chairs, was conducted in January 1964. They were expected to participate in a consensus process to set priorities for the council's research and analysis and were collectively responsible for the conclusions and recommendations contained in its major reports and statements. Members were also able to write a dissent to be included in the final report.
For the fiscal year 1965–66, the number of council staff was reported as being "about 100 including some 40 professionals drawn from federal and provincial department and agencies, business firms, labour organizations, universities and internal institutions"Economic Council of Canada, Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1965-66 (Queen's Printer: Ottawa, June 1966), p 8 For that year, expenditures were about $1,254,000 (all current dollars), compared to about $947,000 in 1964–65, its first full year of operation.Economic Council of Canada, Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1965-66 (Queen's Printer: Ottawa, June 1966), p.27. By 1973, staff numbered 128, comprising 72 researchers and other professional staff and 56 support staff, with another 71 persons being engaged in 62 external contracts.Economic Council of Canada, Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1965-66 (Queen's Printer: Ottawa, June 1966), p 8. Expenditures were just over $3 million in 1972–73.Economic Council of Canada, Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1965-66 (Queen's Printer: Ottawa, June 1966), p. 38. In 1983, there were 60 economists.
Roles and origins The council served three main roles, as follows:
research/analytical: its staff of economists and specialists assessed medium/long-term economic prospects compared to potential, and gathered data for conducting in-depth economic analyses and studies of various economic issues and trends; consultative: it encouraged maximum consultation among, and sought the advice of, labour and management, agencies of federal and provincial governments, and the Canadian public and academia, often by convening major conferences and colloquia; and advisory/planning/educational: Council leaders and staff produced reports and papers and then held press releases, gave speeches, and sponsored and attended conferences about its research and policy recommendations, in order to increase the level of understanding and debate on economic issues and forward-looking potential solutions among the public (federal and provincial) and private policy-makers, as well as the press and the public at large.
These functions corresponded to research needs perceived in the early post-World War II period that the council was designed and established to address.Much of the following is taken from: Scott Gordon, "An assessment of the role of the Economic Council of Canada and an appraisal of its second annual Review," 1966, Canadian Trade Committee and Private Planning Association. https://openlibrary.org/search?q=%22economic+council+of+canada%22+scott+gordon&mode=everything The first concerned economic research and policy-making capacity. In 1963, just prior to its establishment, a Royal Commission had found that little economic research was being carried out by the federal governmentRoyal Commission on Government Organization, in its survey of government economic and statistical services, 1963, https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2014/bcp-pco/Z1-1960-4-3-1-eng.pdf and there were few non-governmental, non-academic research bodies doing the same.Newton, Keith. "National Economic Planning: The Role of the Economic Council of Canada," Conference Paper Series No 16, Bureau of Labour Market Research, Address to the Economic Society of Australia, Canberra Branch, March 3, 1983. The commission also identified a lack of economic data, weak understanding of the principles of economic analysis, and meagre economic reporting in the press,Royal Commission on Government Organization, which gaps the council would be able to fill. Indeed, the council's Annual Reviews were immediately seen as contributing to public information, as Canada had not, until the council's inception, a body of informed economic policy critics that would attract attention from the government.Scott Gordon, "An assessment of the role of the Economic Council of Canada and an appraisal of its second Annual Review," 1966, Canadian Trade Committee and Private Planning Association. https://openlibrary.org/search?q=%22economic+council+of+canada%22+scott+gordon&mode=everything Also, there was apparent need to address a wider range of economic issues than just poor productivity growth, which was the focus of the council's predecessor organization, the National Productivity Council,An Act for the Establishment of a National Productivity Council, The House of Commons of Canada, Bill C-52, December 12, 1960, First Reading: https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.bills_HOC_2404_1/355?r=0&s=1) which was disbanded with the creation of the council.
Moreover, there had been a perception of insufficient research focus on longer-term economic and social problems leading to ad hoc policy and program treatments. Thus, the Economic Council was mandated to provide medium/long-term outlooks on a range of economic and social issues. This more or less institutionalized the work of periodic Royal Commissions, such as the 1957 Royal Commission of Economic Prospects (Walter Gordon), which typically had a longer-term focus in terms of research and policy-making. Short-term policy-making was left to the Department of Finance and other federal departments, as it had been. However, when the Council realized the difficulty in separating short- from long-term policy objectives and adopted shorter term horizons using three-year performance indicators in 1972,Economic Council of Canada, Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1971-72, p. 3 tension between it and Finance arose and remained.
The second major need the council addressed was that, in the 1950s and early 1960s, there was growing interest in consultation and consensus-building. The Progressive Conservative Party (in power from 1957 to 1963) and the Liberal Party (before it was elected in 1963) had developed ideas for broader business and labour participation in economic decision-making.To address these gaps, a resolution and bill were introduced in November 1962 in the House of Commons by the governing Progressive Conservatives to establish what was to be called a National Economic Development Board (NEDB) (Hansard, No. 28, 1962, p. 2109 and Bill C-87: https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.HOC_2501_109_01/316?r=0&s=1). Then, upon the Conservatives' electoral defeat in 1963, the NEDB bill was re-introduced in somewhat altered form by the Liberals in June of 1963 as Bill C-72, "An Act to provide for the establishment of an Economic Council of Canada". House of Commons Bills, 26th Parliament, 1st Session, 1963: https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.bills_HOC_2601_1/542?r=0&s=1) Moreover, many began to recognize that economic growth was falling behind that of the European countries which relied more systematically on tripartism.In 1962, the National Productivity Centre (NPC) sent a mission to Europe to gather information on the economic advisory and planning bodies operating there as they were thought to be contributing positively to then what was seen as a European economic advantage over Canada's. The mission's final report recommended that a new institution be established to serve as a representative consultative body similar to ones in Europe (Source: Parliamentary discussion and NPC Labour-Management-Government Mission to Europe). This lay the ground for consideration of a government body with a wider, consultative economic mandate, like the Council Thus, consultation with business and labour was to be an important aspect of the council's work. It was this lack of ideological positions and its consultative nature, along with its independence, that stood the council apart from other economic research organizations of the time and lent greater weight to its research and policy conclusions and prescriptions.