How Did The Great Depression Affect Canada

The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downfall starting in 1929 and ending in the late 1930s or early 1940s for different countries. It was the largest and most important economic depression in the 20th century, and is used in the 21st century as a lesson and example of how far the world's economy can fall. The Great Depression desecrated many economies, but one country arguably suffered more than any other was Canada. The Great Depression affected many countries in the world but Canada was one of the major countries that was hit the hardest by the downfall. The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s was a social and economic trauma which of left millions of Canadians unemployed, hungry, and in which case left these people homeless

Since Canada’s economy was so closely linked with the United States, that when the depression hit the United States Canada’s economy suffered as well. Canada was, and still is, a country dependent on trade. In the 1920s, products, such as wheat and lumber were important, and when the US president Herbert Hoover signed the Tariff Act, it raised the taxes on many imports to very high levels. This led to a drastic reduction of trade around the world, especially in Canada. It was estimated back in the thirties that 33% of Canada's Gross National Income came from exports. The four western prairies were very dependent on the export of certain crops, so the very low amount of money they brought in for their crops did not cover production costs, farm taxes, and interest on the debts that farmers were building up. The net farm income fell from $417 million in 1929 to $109 million in 1933. This was particularly very harmful to Canada, America’s largest trading partner, because the export prices drastically dropped for Canada due to no country being able to afford the products any

A drought hit this area which caused the departure of farmers in the area. Starting in 1929 and continuing all the way until 1937 the rainfall was below average and the soil began to dry up and turn into dust. The drought and the insect invaded farms led to the departure of people and devastated them. By 1936 over 14,000 farms in the southern area of the prairies were given back to nature and were left abandoned. As the depression progressed, the Federal and Provincial governments financed land recovery projects which also worked on recovering and protecting the soil, developed water and irrigation systems, and promoted new types of farming more suitable for the