Adam Shortt began teaching political economy at Queen's University in the late 1880s. His theories attracted students and faculty who were interested in applying the new tenets of economics and political science to questions of Canadian public policy. The concerns of the group that formed around Shortt were broad and self-consciously cumulative, a perspective promoted particularly by Shortt's colleague and successor O.D. Skelton. The group encouraged reassessment of the role of the social scientist in the university and society, and analysed contentious economic and political questions of the day. Addressing economic policies such as industrialization, foreign investment, labour-business relations, and prairie settlement, they examined the political and governmental ramifications of economic problems, concentrating on the role of political parties, the broad role of government, the place of the public service, and ethnic, class, and regional political relations. Ferguson demonstrates that Shortt, Skelton, Clark, and Mackintosh clearly argued on behalf of the new liberalism, emphasizing individual rights and positive government. He suggests that their ideas reveal an intellectual position which differed from the imperialist and continentalist alternatives that dominated Canadian thinking at the time.

Banking Associations, as business associations representing the interests of its members (banks) at the national level, in today’s changing regulatory and economic environment have an increasingly important role not only in the Banking sector but in the wider economy. Their increasing importance is deriving from their mission, structure and capabilities to obtain and promote different interests in the economy and wider society. It is important to understand their mission, vision and activities and ideally to include Banking Associations in the market decision making process. Countries where that had previously been the case were observed to achieve a higher level of mutual understanding of different stakeholders, and thereby produced greater value-added.

An intriguing view of the Canadian economy before WWI, this study fills a gap in the existing literature on the economic history of Canada. Using improved monetary statistics, the author explains how the business cycle worked under the gold standard, and takes an in-depth look at the roles the banks, the government and the public played in relation to Canada's balance of payments and the gold stock.

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