Canada's Industrial Future.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 4, 1 February 1906, Page 76

Canada's Industrial Future.

A great expansion of commerce and a considerable growth of manufactures are being looked forward to by those who have Canada's best interests at heart, including, among others, the Hon. Clifford Sifton, ex-Mmister of the Interior, who has lately been attempting to outline what will be the industrial history of that country within as short a time as the next five years. He prophesies a great commercial development, basing his opinion upon the completion of new railway systems, of an increase of from one to two millions m population, the opening up to development and trade of the northern regions, the perfecting of the system of waterways, and the strengthening of the corps of consular commercial agents aboard. Heartily we trust that this pleasing forecast will be completely realised. Undoubtedly this authority is right also when he emphasises the necessity that exists for improving the waterways. While great strides are, he admits, being made in the development of systems of transportations by land, Canadians, he considers, have not yet succeeded m making the outlet to the seaboard what it ought to be for the purposes of commerce. Canada is, he declares, and must continue to be, an exporting nation, and the channels of its exports must be the cheapest, freest, and most economical possible. It should be a national sentiment, he further urges, that the route of their commerce to the sea should be made as perfect as the latest developments of science would enable money to make it. He had said to his former colleagues, and would say to them again on every possible occasion, that one thing the people of Canada would justify them m doing was " the spending of sufficient money on the St. Lawrence to make it as safe as the ocean route to New York and Boston." If British engineers and machinists can give Canada any assistance m the great work of improving the St. Lawrence, which scheme is now engaging the attention of a Canadian Commission, they will be only too pleased to render what help they can. To perfect the water route, and especially to thoroughly equip the different ports on the great lakes, will mean large sums laid out upon machinery and plant of various kinds, some of which might, we should think, very well come from the Mother Country. And , even if Canada supplies her own requirements in this respect, there is another way in which English machinery interests will benefit, for does not the improvement of Canada's exporting facilities mean a larger export of wheat, and does not a larger export of Canadian wheat mean more work for British-made flour-mill machinery, wherewith to grind it into flour ? Assuredly it does.