Acknowledgments Preface 1: The Meaning and Context of Aging 2: Labour Market Issues 3: Pensions and Income Maintenance 4: Education 5: Health Care 6: Housing 7: Economics and Politics 8: Social Services and Other Concerns 9: Inevitable Changes and Critical Decisions List of Sources

From the back cover: Canada can compete in international markets, but not, the authors contend, under the present national economic strategy. Policies that redistribute income and allocate resources through government fiat have weakended Canada's ability to transform its manufacturing sector to meet the new competititve challenges. D'Cruz and Fleck compare the performance of seventy-one Canadian industries from 1967 to 1981 with industries in Japan, the United States, Britain and France. To enhance the competitiveness of Canadian manufacturing, the authors propose a differential industrial strategy, one that emphasizes growth and development. Government, they say, must play a "hands-off" role in Canada's market economy, limiting itself to establishing the rules of the game. The authors recommend, in addition, macro-economic policies that would reduce the federal deficit, restrain wages for public servants, preserve low differentials between Canadian and American interest rates, and maintain the Canadian dollar at 70 cents U.S.

This study provides important empirical background to the continuing debate on Canadian industrial policy and trade. The analysis is based on primary data derived from a unique survey of individual firms, both Canadian and foreign-owned, conducted early in the 1981-1982 recession. The main purpose of the study is to assess whether recent changes in tariffs, exchange rates, wage rates, and other factors in Canada and the world economy suggest the need for any significant modification in the earlier analyses and conclusions. The study presents prior evidence on costs, specialization, and trade; assesses current costs and productivity, and presents new information on how increased exports and specialization would affect cost performance and international competitiveness; examines non-production costs and other non-cost influences on specialization and export performance; and suggests strategies for the private sector to consider in order to survive in the changing trade environment of the 1980s.

Over the past several years Canadian and international trade policy has been the subject of intense public debate, and near the top of Canada's publicpolicy agenda. The present volume is offered as a further contribution topublic understanding of the policy issues involved. It represents theoutcome of a study over the past two years of how heightened internationalcompetition moves governments, on the one hand, to reinforce barriers toimports as a means of protecting domestic producers and, on the other hand, to encourage and assist producers to adjust to change.