Canadian Social History

Leonard Marsh was the director of a social research programme at McGill University, when appointed director of the Committee on Post-War Reconstruction in 1941. In March 1943, the Report on Social Security in Canada was published with Marsh as its principal author.

Marsh argued that all Canadians “found work, remained healthy, and were properly fed, housed, and educated.” To achieve these goals it urged that the state take an active role in managing the economy and in providing minimum levels of social security.

John Maynard Keynes was a Cambridge economist whose writings provided a scientific analysis of economic cycles and showed how these economic cycles could be manipulated. The unemployed were not moral failures; rather, unemployment resulted from impersonal forces at work in the economy, forces that could be countered by state action.

Keynes argued for more government, rather than less. To inflate a depressed economy, Keynes argued that government needed to increase public investment.

Keynes’ ideas, although not embraced during the 193os, became widely accepted after the Second World War.