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This book brings together and interprets the information relating to Canada's contacts with Asiatic countries since the beginning of the Second World War. Lucidly written and freshly presented, it will be of great interest to everyone concerned with international affairs. As Canada's policies in the Far East and Southeast Asia are the result of Canadian policies in general, Dr. Angus discusses the general policies first and then their particular application. He deals with the nature of Canadian nationalism; the war years and post-war adjustment; Canadian Far Eastern policy and the United Nations; the peace settlement with Japan and security; trade policy and access to resources; economic assistance and the forms it takes; cultural intercourse, human rights, and immigration; and Canadian opinion about the Far East. Dr. Angus' book is published by the University of Toronto Press for the Canadian Institute of International Affairs

This book brings together and interprets the information relating to Canada's contacts with Asiatic countries since the beginning of the Second World War. Lucidly written and freshly presented, it will be of great interest to everyone concerned with international affairs. As Canada's policies in the Far East and Southeast Asia are the result of Canadian policies in general, Dr. Angus discusses the general policies first and then their particular application. He deals with the nature of Canadian nationalism; the war years and post-war adjustment; Canadian Far Eastern policy and the United Nations; the peace settlement with Japan and security; trade policy and access to resources; economic assistance and the forms it takes; cultural intercourse, human rights, and immigration; and Canadian opinion about the Far East. Dr. Angus' book is published by the University of Toronto Press for the Canadian Institute of International Affairs.

Modern legislation, in Canada as elsewhere, has entrusted important functions to boards or commissions and has conferred very wide powers upon them. The basic purpose of such legislation is to supplement legislatures, courts of law, and ministers of the Crown by providing these venerable institutions with subordinate agencies which, within a strictly limited sphere, can act more effectively.The legislative functions of a board consist in making regulations with the force of law. These regulations often require the approval of the supreme executive authority. They provide a necessary type of legislation which our legislatures, let us say it quite brutally, are not competent to consider in detail.A second function of boards is to decide disputes. Not only do they supplement the action of the legislatures in cases in which it is likely to be cumbersome or ineffective, but they also replace judicial action in cases in which it is disliked or distrusted. Although control by courts of law may remain formally unimpaired, boards acting within the scope of the law which creates them are able to interfere, ostensibly in the public interest as they themselves define it, with many established or traditional rights.A third function of boards is administrative. They are in principle able to act with complete immunity from the political pressures to which a minister of the Crown may quite properly be exposed. Their administrative work is facilitated by their legislative and judicial powers and part of their usefulness derives from their ability to combine three functions which cannot be conveniently—and perhaps cannot be safely—combined at higher levels.

The question underlying the tax agreements is whether the advantages of uniformity in the three chief progressive taxes outweigh the disadvantages involved in restricting provincial autonomy. The federal government can use the taxes in question not only to control the economy but also to avoid the injustice of double taxation and the waste of unequal taxation. In 1867 customs duties and excise taxes were handed over to the federal government for much the same reasons. They could be used to control the economy and it was desirable that interprovincial trade should be free. In both cases the problem had to be faced of ensuring to the provinces revenues adequate for their needs.Although the tax agreements have increased the de facto autonomy of some provinces by enabling them to find money for social services which have come to be considered essential in Canada, they have involved some restriction of provincial autonomy in two important respects. By depriving the provinces of the taxes which can most easily be made progressive they prevent them from placing the burden of new social services on the shoulders best able to bear it; for example, the cost of hospitalization in British Columbia is defrayed by a sales tax. In the second place the federal government has made some of its payments to the provinces conditional and has thus encouraged and, indeed, almost compelled them to accept the priorities in expenditure chosen by the federal government. This process is sometimes called buying control. Conditional subsidies do not have this effect when the federal government and the provincial governments are substantially partners in a matter of common interest. However, a subsidy given in aid of any service which is distinctively provincial, for example, education, might easily carry conditions giving effect to federal policy. It is in these two ways that the tax agreements are a threat to provincial autonomy and a serious modification of the Canadian federal system.