Canada at War: THE DOMINION: For Tomorrow

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Foresighted Canada's new War Assets Corp. (TIME, Dec. 13) last week told what it intends to do. Under no illusions about the vastness of the job, W.A.C.'s new president, sensible, Scottish-born Steelmaker John Ballantyne Carswell, explained:

The Corporation will impound all war-material surpluses—machinery, tools, raw materials, even military and naval camps, barracks and flying fields—in one tremendous reservoir. Sales will be controlled. The trick will be to release material slowly enough to avoid a market glut and unemployment, fast enough to prevent equipment's becoming obsolete.

Said "Jock" Carswell, "Essentially, the Corporation's job will be one of compromise." There will be no "fire sales," he promised; no one will buy a jeep for $60.

That such an organization should be completely organized before the war is over might startle some Americans. But in Canada the shift from war production to peacetime manufacture is already methodically beginning (see col. 1).

Fewer Men. At Ottawa, the Munitions Department announced that no new corvettes or frigates will be laid down in 1944. Reason: the apparently permanent improvement in the antisubmarine campaign.

At Nobel, Ont., on the rocky shore of crisply blue Georgian Bay, one of the largest explosives plants in the British Empire —the Canadian Industries Ltd. factory—was closing down. Last week 300 of its 2,236 workers were laid off.

The layoffs will continue at a 500-a-month rate until only a 57-man maintenance and guard crew remains in a ghostly Nobel to keep the plant in condition. To W.A.C. will go the job of disposing, in the end, of the plant itself.

More Men. While some war industries already needed fewer men, peacetime civilian industries needed more. Example: Canada's gold mines.

Gold fields that spread from ancient-Nova Scotia to the once fabulously rich deposits along the Yukon's Klondike have made Canada the second largest gold-producing nation in the world (first, by a long shot: the Union of South Africa). But gold has been neglected almost since war's start. Draft-riddled companies have seen employment dive about 40%, have watched production skid from 5,879,696 fine ounces ($205,789,392 at $35 an ounce) in 1941 to 3,649,671 fine ounces last year.

Last week came a shot in the arm for gold mining. Selective Service Director Arthur MacNamara in Ottawa announced that more workers will now be made available. Purpose: to strengthen Canada's foreign credit for postwar trade with the world.