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1941: George Britnell joins Wartime Prices and Trade Board
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On October 18, 1941, Prime
Minister Mackenzie King, driven by sharply rising prices and the fear of an
inflationary spiral, announced “an experiment hitherto untried on this
continent” – comprehensive wage and price controls. These controls were to come into effect on December 1. As King acknowledged, this would require “a
new and complicated administrative machinery” and “impose irksome restrictions”
– but Canadians were asked “to accept cheerfully the limitations imposed upon
them as a necessary contribution to Canada’s maximum war effort.”1 This “administrative machinery” was to be
managed by the Wartime Prices and Trade Board (WPTB). George Britnell, a
professor of Economics and Political Science with a growing reputation in
agricultural economics, was asked to join the Board as economic adviser to the
Foods Administration of the WPTB. It appears
that the appointment was made rather hurriedly. Britnell confirmed on 29 September 1941 that he had been granted
an indefinite leave of absence from the University, but wrote to the Secretary
of the Board: “I have very considerable qualms in leaving the University to
undertake this work. I am obviously
leaving a position which I know I can do reasonably well, to go to a position
of which I don’t even know enough about to know whether I can do it at all. ...
I gathered from our conversations that the Board was anxious that no time be
lost. ... It seemed most sensible, in the circumstances, to come prepared to
stay as soon as I could get away at all, and, despite the general
inadvisability of leaps in the dark, to hope for the best.”2 Britnell planned to arrive in Ottawa in mid
October, and he stayed there until the end of the war. While he had hoped to return immediately to
the University, he first extended his leave (for part of 1945) to become
chairman of the new CCF government’s Saskatchewan Economic Advisory Committee.
Related Collections | |
G.E. Britnell fonds, MG 41
See also: Audio: 1941 broadcast (MP3 file) The broadcast was interrupted by the announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbour; George Britnell was a member of the panel. From the Wartime Radio 1941 page of the Internet Archive.
Images | |
1941a: G.E. Britnell. Photograph Collection, A-3270.
1941b: Telegram from K.W. Taylor, Secretary of the Wartime Prices and Trade Board, 29 September 1941, and Britnell’s response. G.E. Britnell fonds, Correspondence, MG 41, file I(a)(6).
Sources | |
1. Quotes from Prime Minister King’s speech in G.E. Britnell fonds, Wartime Prices and Trade Board, Press Clippings, MG 41, file V(a)(9)).
2. G.E. Britnell fonds, Correspondence, June-Dec. 1941, MG 41, file I(a)(6).
3. Spafford, p. 156.
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