A Wartime Finance Minister

J.L. Ilsley, federal finance minister from 1940 to 1946, was responsible for financing Canadian participation in the Second World War. A Wartime Finance Minister tells the story of how his efforts to do so transformed the tax system and established the financial basis of the modern welfare state.

Between 1939 and 1943, Canada's war effort boosted federal spending and revenue tenfold, a commitment Ilsley financed by borrowing through Victory Bond campaigns and extending income tax to most of the working population, at sharply progressive rates. Agreements made with the provinces in 1941 became the foundation of modern federal-provincial fiscal relations. Ilsley preached that the war required high but fair taxes, wage and price controls, and frugality, winning public confidence in the measures partly through his own example of self-sacrifice.

As this compelling account of his life and career reveals, Ilsley's promotion and defence of these policies brought lasting benefit to Canada.

Colin Campbell is an associate professor of law at Western University and a former partner in the Toronto firm Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP. Among his numerous publications are, with Robert Raizenne, two volumes of A History of Canadian Income Tax; with Colin J. Campbell, Political Ideologies in Canada; and, with William Christian, Parties, Leaders, and Ideologies in Canada. He was the chair of the Canada Revenue Agency Offshore Compliance Advisory Committee from 2015 to 2019.