How Did The Great Depression Affect Canada

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. During these years 1929-1945 the Great depression had started and World War 2 was approaching. Many Canadians at that time were unemployed and homeless, but not only people were in trouble, but so was the financial markets. This is where Canada was known as the Dirty Thirties, due to Canada’s heavy dependence on raw material and farm exports they couldn’t make a lot of income because of the spread crippling Prairies drought. Like for wheat farmers when depression started, in 1930 the price of wheat dropped below $1 a bushel. Three years later it was down to about 40 cents and the price of other farm products had dropped at the same level. Prairie farmers were the hardest hit because they relied on cash crops, and because of drought it brought crop failures and a lack of feed for livestock. Stats show that the cash income for prairie farmers dropped from a high of $620 million in 1928 to a low of $177 million in 1931 and did not reach $300 million until 1939. Disaster also struck many industrial workers which they ended up with no jobs. Unemployment statistics were not reliable partly because there was no unemployment insurance and so no bookkeeping records. After this depression is where the governments started to rise up. Citizens turned to the government for an economic security that the system could not provide. As a result of …show more content…
He believed the unemployment problems were seasonal and did not require any action from the government. King began to face doubts from both the public and the Conservative opposition. On April 3, 1930, when King gave what would be known as his "Five Cent Speech" in front of the Canadian Parliament. King purposefully stated he would refuse to give federal unemployment benefits to provincial governments that were opposed to the Canadian government. He ended his speech by saying he would not even give them a