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Finally, the evils of fluctuating exchanges are especially injurious to Canada because of the importance of foreign trade in our national life. With only ten million people, Canada ranks fifth among the nations in imports and sixth in exports, whereas on a per capita basis we rise to third place in exports and to third or fourth in total foreign trade (depending on the year selected). Normally, about 20 per cent of our productive activities, it is estimated, are directly involved in commodity exports. Nor, as was pointed out in other discussions this morning, is the major portion of this foreign trade with Empire countries. In 1930, for instance, 46 per cent of our exports of Canadian produce went to the United States and 67-9 per cent of our total imports came from that country. With the whole British Empire, on the other hand, the proportions were only 33 per cent for exports and 20-3 per cent for imports. For Canada, therefore, stable exchanges with gold standard United States as well as with the Empire countries are a vital necessity. With our Southern neighbours, also, tourist expenditures and other forms of commercial and social intercourse bulk large. Invisibles play an important part in our international balance of payments. Tourist expenditures in this country, for instance, have amounted to from $200,000,000 to $250,000,000 annually. Our new production of gold has also been a matter of great importance to us. Although we have not been on the gold standard since 1929 in the sense of maintaining a free market for gold, we have been obliged to meet in terms of gold the external payments referred to. Our production of gold last year was $55,000,000 and the present rate of production is about $5,000,000 a month. You can realize how important this has been to us. I have said enough to indicate the importance which Canada is bound to place upon the solution of the problems of price instability and of unstable exchanges. In particular we believe that it is imperatively necessary to put a stop to the persistent decline in commodity prices which is paralyzing private enterprise, choking off international trade, multiplying unemployment and social distress, and menacing the stability of our present social and economic order. We also believe it urgently desirable to encourage in every way that can be accepted as sound and practicable, a rise in prices to a height more in keeping with the fixed or highly rigid cost elements in the existing economic structures of most countries. Moreover, we regard it as necessary to eliminate, as soon as possible, the wide and erratic fluctuations in exchange rates which are impeding the free flow of commerce and of capital between the nations and which undermine and confuse the normal workings of tariff rates and tariff preferences. I am not proposing any specific remedy—indeed I do not know how far it is possible to go in endeavouring to raise prices and to effect a stabilization of exchange rates. There are people in my country, and I suppose you have the same type in yours, who think it would be very easy to raise prices. They would see no reason why it should not be possible by a little printing and engraving to issue fifteen million dollars in Dominion notes to pay for unemployment relief in our municipalities. They maintain that the basis of currency is the real estate, the wealth and the resources of this country, and surely these are sufficient to meet a fifteen million dollar payment. But unfortunately or fortunately, as a friend of mine has pointed out, it is not possible to lift up a piece of this real estate to pay a debt in New York. Nor would the foreign creditor accept it. Personally I cannot see how we can carry on business with the world at large unless there is some commodity or yardstick of universal acceptance. I confess that gold seems to me to be the commodity which can perform this function most effectively but others may disagree with me. In that connection I would call your attention to the fact that the British Empire produces about 80 per cent of the world's gold supply. In so far as stabilizing exchange rates is concerned, there, have been, as you know, various proposals by which it was hoped this object could be achieved. One of these schemes you will remember called for the use of an Empire exchange pool with a credit of half a billion dollars to maintain stable exchanges between the various parts of the Empire. I would not undertake to pass judgment on such proposals but there is a conviction that something should be done if possible to stabilize exchange within the Empire, notwithstanding the difficulties of distances and different conditions. Anything that could be done would be of great benefit to the economic life of Canada and would facilitate the conduct of international trade as well as help to render effective any system of Empire preferences.