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A fire in Salem, Mass., in 1914 and an explosion in Halifax, N.S., in 1917 provide an opportunity to explore working-class institutions and organizations in the United States-Canada borderlands. In a historical moment in which the state greatly expanded its responsibility to give protection and rescue to its citizens, after these two disasters ordinary survivors preferred to depend on their friends, neighbors, and family members. This dissertation examines which institutions--including formal organizations like unions and fraternal societies as well as informal groups like families and neighborhoods--were most relevant and useful to working-class survivors. Families, neighbors, friends, and coworkers had patterns and traditions of self-help, informal order, and solidarity that they developed before crisis hit their cities. Those traditions were put to unusual purposes and extreme stress when the disasters happened. They were also challenged by new agents of the state, who were given extraordinary powers in the wake of the disasters. This dissertation describes how the working-class people who most directly experienced the disasters understood them and their cities starkly differently than the professionalized relief authorities. Using a wide array of sources--including government documents, published accounts, archived ephemeral, oral histories, photographs, newspapers in two languages, and the case files of the Halifax Relief Commission--the dissertation describes how elites imposed a progressive state on what they imagined to be a fractured and chaotic social landscape. It argues that "the people" for whom reformers claimed to speak had their own durable, alternative modes of support and rescue that they quickly and effectively mobilized in times of crisis, but which remained illegible to elites. By demonstrating the personal, ideological, political, and practical ties between New England and Nova Scotia and Quebec, it also emphasizes the importance of studying American and Canadian history together, not only comparatively but as a transnational, North American whole.

Vancouver’s early twentieth century mainstream newspapers captured a feminine culture of the young woman worker caught in a moral paradox of naïveté and willing impropriety. Through images and narratives, the tumultuous social and economic changes of the day were rendered “class-based girl problems.” By contrast, radical labour newspapers represented women workers as “rebel girls” and valiant helpmates to the working class movement. This examination of images and narratives prompts consideration of how these class and gender discourses influenced real women workers. In particular, the telephone operators’ activism during Vancouver’s 1919 sympathetic strike demonstrates how women workers re-created discourses of class and gender in ways that brought greater control and meaning to their lives. While early twentieth century newspapers framed contemporary discourses of class and gender through images and narratives, they were unable to capture the resonance and pertinence of these discourses to the everyday lives of working women.

In mid-1930s Vancouver, city authorities launched a campaign to ban white waitresses from Chinatown cafes. Canadian historians have overlooked this campaign because of the tendency to treat the Chinese in Canada as a separate history from working women and to focus on discourse analysis rather than experience. This obscures the importance of sexuality and cross-racial interaction to the lives of both Chinese “bachelors” and white working women in Canada. This paper shows how white waitresses, Chinese restaurant owners, and Chinese patrons created and defended a social space of cross-racial intimacies in Vancouver’s Chinatown cafes. By examining a variety of sources, including mainstream and labour newspapers, mayor’s and police records, oral histories, and Chinese-language newspapers, this paper considers the perspectives of the four groups involved in the campaign. City authorities constructed the cafes as immoral spaces, where white waitresses were enticed into prostitution by Chinese men. In the name of protecting white womanhood, they drew a gendered and racial line around Chinatown. Despite policies of racial and gender equality, labour organizations also viewed the campaign through this lens of morality. For the white waitresses and Chinese customers, on the other hand, these cafes opened up a social space to explore cross-racial intimacies. In the cafes, they flirted, formed friendships, and began sexual relationships. The Chinese “treated” the waitresses to dinner, gifts, or money in exchange for sexual intimacy. Some of these intimacies were purely functional, while others developed into relationships that fulfilled mutual interests, needs, and desires. Through these intimate practices, they created choices and opportunities not available outside of Chinatown. The ban forced the Chinese, and especially the white waitresses, to become self-reflective about their experience in the cafes. The Chinese condemned the ban as racial discrimination. Fifteen white waitresses marched on city hall, where they defended their rights as workers, their respectability, and their Chinese employers. The waitresses articulated why the Chinatown cafes held value in their lives and in Vancouver. They had lost their jobs and their reputations, but they took a political stand.

Child and Youth Work is an emotionally demanding profession with an extremely high burnout rate. Previous research has shown that there are a variety of factors that contribute to high rates of burnout within this profession. This thesis begins by exploring topics related to stress, burnout, emotional labour and vicarious trauma, providing a context to understand the inherent issues and challenges faced by workers in this field. The prevailing beliefs and values underlying neoliberal policies resulting in funding restrictions within the social services are then considered in relation to the impact of these policies on experienced levels of worker stress and burnout with the residential care field. Lastly, this thesis looks at the introduction of new organizational methods, specifically Total Quality Management and New Public Management, as strategies implemented by agencies to cope with funding limitations, and the resulting impact on levels of stress and burnout of front line residential child care workers. In addition to the three key areas of focus, the role and impact of unions within residential treatment settings is considered as a potential avenue for positive change within these workplaces.

In several parts of the world, the number of poor people in rural areas surpasses the capacity of agriculture to provide employment opportunities. The increasing role of off-farm income has highlighted the importance of rural migration, both within Mexico and to the United States (US) and Canada, as a vehicle for poverty reduction. A significant number of Mexican migrants are participating in guest worker programs, performing mainly agricultural activities. These programs allow Mexicans to enter the US and Canada through formal channels. Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Workers' Program (CSAWP) lets Mexican farmers enter Canada to work legally in agriculture, and participants in this Program send remittances home that are an important contribution to rural development. The main reasons to participate in guest worker programs relate to economic factors, such as the opportunity to earn a relatively high, stable income abroad and the lack of employment opportunities in Mexico, particularly in rural areas. The number of Mexican agricultural workers temporally migrating to Canada through CSAWP has increased significantly over time and now exceeds 12,000 annually. In Mexico, the program provides an estimated C$70 million in remittance income annually, mainly directed to rural and poorer regions. In these regions, this fungible income supports consumption activities and expenditures on family education. However, there are also investments in farming activities, in turn enhancing agrarian incomes. This research explores the impact of remittances on farm investments by migrant workers participating in CSAWP, which in turn impact farm income levels. The results highlight the extent to which temporary migrant labour to Canadian agriculture allows Mexican farmers to enhance their agricultural activities through increased farm investments, such as buying better seeds, fertilizer and farm equipment. The results show that, on the one hand, remittances can significantly enhance farm investments in Mexico that in turn increase farm incomes and, on the other, remittances increase non-farm incomes in Mexico, allowing farm migrants to expand their income portfolio. Hence, these results support the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) hypothesis that remittances relax the liquidity constraint in production/investment decisions. Furthermore, family labour availability counterbalances any temporary labour loss because of migration.

Social benchmarking is an evaluation method in which the performance levels of different public social programs are compared, either relatively to each other or to an absolute value. The first part of this research discusses the use of social benchmarking for the evaluation of active labour market policies. This part also develops a social benchmark model, which can be used to assess the performance of active labour market policies in general, and work-based employment programs in specific. The second part of this research consists of the actual benchmarking of the work-based employment programs in five countries: Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Le groupe des jeunes voyageurs combinant le travail dans leur expérience de voyage constitue le segment du marché touristique mondial qui enregistre la croissance la plus importante cette dernière décennie. Certaines économies régionales dépendent de cette force de travail temporaire. C'est le cas de l'industrie agricole des vallées de l'Okanagan-Similkameen et de Creston en Colombie-Britannique qui accueille annuellement des milliers de migrant fruit pickers provenant majoritairement du Québec. Ce mémoire porte sur le quotidien de ces jeunes québécois et s'attarde à comprendre le sens qu'ils accordent à leurs projets de mobilité. Sur la base d'entretiens, je dégage l'imaginaire commun, les mythes, les idéaux et les représentations qui ont incité les jeunes à partir: Les résultats indiquent que ces jeunes inscrivent leur mouvement dans une double logique de quête et de fuite et que le sens attribué à l'expérience de vacances-travail diffère entre les nouveaux arrivants et ceux qui reviennent d'année en année.

Dès la fin des années 1960, se développe une nouvelle tendance socialiste au Québec dans un contexte marqué par l'épuisement de la Révolution tranquille et par une ébullition idéologique sur la scène internationale. Dans ce climat politique, des groupuscules marxistes-léninistes (m-l) de tendance maoïste voient le jour au Québec, principalement dans la deuxième moitié des années 1970. Au même moment, sur le front syndical québécois, la lutte est intense entre travailleurs et employeurs. Les fronts communs de 1972 et 1975 et d'importantes grèves en font foi. De plus, de nombreux chefs syndicaux n'hésitent pas à s'attaquer directement au patronat et à l'État dans des discours clairement nourris par l'idéologie socialiste. Le radicalisme politique, même s'il n'est pas homogène et généralisé dans les centrales québécoises, s'impose de plus en plus dans les syndicats locaux comme dans les instances supérieures. C'est précisément les liens entre ces deux mondes, celui des groupuscules marxistes-léninistes et celui des centrales syndicales, qui nous intéressent. L'originalité de notre travail tient au fait qu'il lie les historiographies du marxisme-léninisme et du syndicalisme, ce qui représente un angle intéressant afin de renouveler la réflexion dans ces deux champs de recherche, certes très proches, mais malheureusement trop souvent étanches. À l'aide de diverses sources écrites, notamment les publications des organisations m-l et les archives des mêmes groupes, mais aussi d'entrevues menées par l'auteur avec d'anciens militants syndicaux, nous observons les relations entre les deux principaux groupuscules marxistes-léninistes, à savoir En Lutte! et la Ligue communiste (marxiste-léniniste) du Canada, et les centrales syndicales québécoises entre 1972 et 1983. Effectivement, il nous semble pertinent de mieux comprendre la nature des liens et des influences réciproques entre ces acteurs sociaux. L'objectif premier de cette recherche est de mettre en relief le militantisme des marxistes-léninistes au sein de ces institutions syndicales. En effet, la structure ouverte des syndicats, c'est-à-dire démocratique et accessible à tous les travailleurs syndiqués, a permis à un grand nombre de membres et sympathisants m-l de s'y intégrer et d'y faire valoir des positions d'extrême gauche. Et c'est justement le militantisme soutenu des m-l qui, contrastant avec celui beaucoup plus passif de l'ensemble des membres syndiqués, leur a permis d'influencer les positions et les stratégies des centrales syndicales, du moins de s'y faire entendre et de susciter des débats, particulièrement entre 1975 et 1980. Notre recherche sur cet aspect du militantisme syndical des marxistes-léninistes québécois éclaire des zones d'ombre de l'histoire politique récente de la province. De plus, cette étude amène une connaissance plus profonde de la place du radicalisme dans la culture politique québécoise et une meilleure compréhension du militantisme et de ses rouages. Afin d'atteindre nos objectifs, nous analysons d'abord le discours des marxistes-léninistes au sujet du monde syndical. Il sera notamment question des critiques sévères lancées contre les chefs syndicaux, ainsi que de la lutte idéologique qui secoue les différents groupes marxistes. Nous étudions ensuite les stratégies et les actions des m-l face aux syndicats, comme la volonté de se présenter à des postes électifs. Finalement, ce mémoire tente de mettre en lumière le militantisme m-l dans les différentes instances de la Confédération des syndicats nationaux, tout particulièrement le Conseil central de Montréal.

For many years Canada has quietly rationalized importing temporary "low-skilled" migrant labour through managed migration programs to appease industries desiring cheap and flexible labour while avoiding extending citizenship rights to the workers. In an era of international human rights and global competitive markets, the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) is often hailed as a "model" and "win-win" solution to migration and labour dilemmas, providing employers with a healthy, just-intime labour force and workers with various protections such as local labour standards, health care, and compensation. Tracing migrant workers' lives between Jamaica, Mexico and Canada (with a focus on Ontario's Niagara Region), this thesis assesses how their structural vulnerability as non-citizens effectively excludes them from many of the rights and norms otherwise expected in Canada. It analyzes how these exclusions are rationalized as permanent "exceptions" to the normal legal, social and political order, and how these infringements affect workers' lives, rights, and health. Employing critical medical anthropology, workers' health concerns are used as a lens through which to understand and explore the deeper "pathologies of power" and moral contradictions which underlie this system. Particular areas of focus include workers' occupational, sexual and reproductive, and mental and emotional health, as well as an assessment of their access to health care and compensation in Canada, Mexico and Jamaica. Working amidst perilous and demanding conditions, in communities where they remain socially and politically excluded, migrant workers in practice remain largely unprotected and their entitlements hard to secure, an enduring indictment of their exclusion from Canada's "imagined community." Yet the dynamics of this equation may be changing in light of the recent rise in social and political movements, in which citizenship and related rights have become subject to contestation and redefinition. In analyzing the various dynamics which underlie transnational migration, limit or extend migrants' rights, and influence the health of migrants across borders, this thesis explores crucial relationships between these themes. Further work is needed to measure these ongoing changes, and to address the myriad health concerns of migrants as they live and work across national borders.

This study applies an IPE approach to examine the economic conditions, motivations and interests which have driven the Canadian government and two sending countries, Mexico and the Philippines, to accept the terms and conditions of a regulatory framework encouraging short-term labour migration between them. The features of program development which underpin the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) and the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) have not been compared side by side. Nor have the two programs been compared for the relationship that has developed over the years between the Canadian government and the two sending governments of Mexico and the Philippines. The study's core research question asks how the process of regulating cross-border labour migration works and how it is coordinated between two or more governments that form part of a migration system. An important research finding that emerges from the comparison is the categorization of different types of migration systems. I argue that the SAWP and LCP differ in how they are administered because relations between the various actors differ. Furthermore, what defines these relationships is the set of geopolitical and economic interests that each government carries when it negotiates the regulation of cross-border labour migration. Findings suggest that the geopolitical and economic imperative which has driven the SAWP's development is not the same for the LCP.

New Brunswick nursing history is a little-known but significant story, and it helps us to understand women's paid work and how women organized to protect their interests in this occupation. While the profession's history demonstrates the importance of professional ideals, the New Brunswick, case also illuminates the struggle between these ideals and nurses' growing sense of dissatisfaction with wages and working conditions. In the mid-1960s in New Brunswick as elsewhere in Canada, nurses began to explore collective bargaining as a solution to poor wages and conditions and as a means to express concern for deteriorating patient care. This study examines the early stages of unionization among New Brunswick hospital nurses in 1965-1969. The evidence for this study is drawn from archival collections, interviews, newspapers, journals and secondary sources. Particular emphasis is placed on the pioneering efforts of the Social and Economic Welfare Committee (SEWC) of the New Brunswick Association of Registered Nurses (NBARN) and their efforts to educate members, lobby government, obtain outside expert advice and generally guide nurses towards a sense of collective identity that fostered a willingness to take collective action. By the end of the decade, nurses were included in a new Public Service Labour Relations Act, an outcome of the Royal Commission on Employer-Employee Relations in the Public Services (known as the Frankel Commission) which, among other features, greatly expanded the civil service and consequently the number of government employees with collective bargaining rights. Despite the fact that the new PSLRA had not yet been proclaimed, nurses in mid-1969 negotiated their first (if unofficial) collective agreement using the tactic of mass resignation to force a settlement. This thesis places the NBARN's early explorations of collective bargaining in the context of the political, economic and labour landscape of the 1960s.

This thesis explores the political participation of the Montreal ltalian-Canadian community in an urban context, from 1945-1990. Concentrating on the local level, it examines the ltalian-Canadian contribution to municipal politics, the Quebec labour movement, mobilization with regards to the language debate, and' feminist activism. This historical account relies mainly upon the Montreal-based, Italian-language newspaper, Il Cittadino Canadese, as well as papers published by Italian-Canadian community organizations. The first chapter exammes the role ltalian immigrant elites played in the construction of a politicized ltalian-Canadian identity, as well as the establishment of numerous community institutions in the city. As a result of their efforts, several politicians of ltalian descent were elected to municipal government. Addressing the 1960 to 1977 years, the second chapter investigates the ltalian-Canadian contribution to Quebec's labour movement and language debate. Provoking the unification of the collectivity's institutions, the linguistic conflict solidified the Italian-Canadian identity, while it, also, paradoxically, led to internaI dissent and political heterogeneity amongst community members. The focus of Chapter 3, ltalian-Canadian feminist activism illustrates another form of political schism, when' a group of young students came together in 1978 to found the Centra Donne Italiane. Disassociated from the collectivity's mainstream institutions, ltalian feminists formed their own community,equally as politicized. As this thesis concludes, though originating with the language debate of the1960s and 1970s, the political heterogeneity present amongst Italian immigrants only heightened with time. With their basic needs met and a reasonable level of integration attained, Italian-Canadians, could afford both literally and figuratively, to distance themselves from the established cominunity leadership.

This thesis explores the emergence and initial evolution of the British Columbia Nurses Union from 1976 to 1992. The thesis argues that class and gender framed interrelated processes of organizational change, labour action, and political consciousness for British Columbia’s nurses. These changes took place in the context of a historical struggle between professionalism and trade unionism in nursing, and during a turbulent and transformative era for western capitalism and the role of the capitalist state in the 1970s and 1980s. This thesis argues that class, as a socioeconomic relationship and as lived experience, was the driving force behind organizational, economic, and political change in the nursing occupation. This central assertion stands in sharp contrast to claims that class has ceased to be of socioeconomic or political importance in postindustrial, capitalist society.

This study traces the efforts of British Columbia teachers as they endeavour to have increasing input into the educational policies of the Department of Education. It is grounded in a study of primary archival records and written in the form of an historical narrative. Primarily, I focus on the English Teachers' Association in B.C.: I trace its growth as a professional organization and follow its increasingly strident attempts to address the growing professional interests of English/Language Arts teachers in response to government policies, especially those affecting curriculum. Three main interrelated themes permeate the study: the professionalization of B.C. English/Language Arts teachers, the growth in the political power of teacher associations in B.C., and the effects of the B.C. government's changing educational policies in English/Language Arts classrooms. My study follows the English teachers' association from its beginning in 1959 when it was known as S.A.T.E., the Secondary Association of Teachers of English; during the years of 1971-1994 when it was called B.C.E.T.A. , the British Columbia English Teachers' Association; to its later years as B.C.T.E.L.A., the British Columbia Teachers of Engli sh Language Arts. The study reveals that as the decades pass, the association becomes increasingly persistent in its efforts not only to further the professional interests of English teachers but al so to provide input to the government on curricular decisions affecting Engli sh/Language Arts classrooms. It al so becomes increasingly persistent in its dealings with the government as their philosophies of education become more diverse.

This thesis examines the Service, Office, and Retail Workers' Union of Canada (SORWUC), an independent, grassroots, socialist feminist union that organized unorganized workers in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. It looks at SORWUC's role in Canadian labour history in general, and its efforts to organize unorganized workers in particular, focusing on SORWUC's efforts to organize workers at a pub and a restaurant in British Columbia. The central thesis of this work is that SORWUC's socialist feminist unionism and commitment to organizing unorganized workers positioned the union as radically different from much of the 1970s Canadian labour movement, and that this difference both helped and hindered the union in its efforts to organize the unorganized. By examining SORWUC from this neglected perspective, this thesis ultimately aims to demonstrate SORWUC's importance to the historiography of class and labour organizing in Canada.

During the interwar years, friends Annie Buller and Beckie Buhay established careers with the Communist Party of Canada and forged a uniquely Communist militant femininity that led to their eventual canonization by the Party as ideal comrades. Using a biographical approach to women’s working-class history, this thesis examines these women’s significant contributions to the CPC’s political project as gendered work. It also demonstrates that although their representation of themselves as comrades was organized around their understanding of themselves as workers, it was shaped too by particularities of ethnicity, gender, and other factors that were all subsumed in the Party’s egalitarian rhetoric. Additionally, in exploring how their lifelong friendship supported their construction of Communist militant femininity, and thus enabled their work, this thesis contributes to a developing historiography of friendship that focusses on its work rather than its nature, and that is inclusive of the friendships of working-class women.

Changes to the global economy over the past few decades along with growing support for neo-liberal policies in Canada have led to an increase in precarious, low-wage frontline service work. These kinds of occupations often involve sustained interaction with clients and have high job demands, low job control and insufficient monetary reward. Further, many of these jobs also tend to be gendered (i.e., they involve a large degree of ‘emotional’ labour or care work that is predominantly carried out by female workers). Working conditions such as these can have a negative impact on the mental health of frontline service workers leading to psychological distress and depression. Chronic stress or cumulative stressful life events can also increase vulnerability to depression. While these stressors can be exacerbated by poor working conditions, they can also exist independently of them. Comparative research across two or more frontline service occupations, similar in broad strokes but differing in workplace characteristics, is especially needed to understand how structural and contextual factors in the workplace and over the life course interact to produce depression. This thesis presents data from my supervisor (Dr. Cecilia Benoit) and colleagues’ 4-wave longitudinal study entitled “Interactive service workers’ occupational health and safety and access to health services” (Benoit, Jansson, Leadbeater & McCarthy, 2005). This is a study of three types of frontline service jobs – two in the formal economy (hairstyling and food and beverage service) and one in the shadow/informal economy (sex industry). Results of this secondary analysis demonstrate that not only do working conditions have a significant impact on the mental health of frontline service workers but that stressful life events also have very strong explanatory power in understanding why certain workers experience depression more than others. The findings indicate that sex workers have the highest levels of depression, in comparison to stylists and servers. Yet sex workers report protective factors in their jobs, including higher comparative decision latitude, that contradict much of the current literature on sex work. The thesis concludes with policy recommendations and gives direction for further research in the area of frontline service work and depression.

The private English language training industry in Canada has grown rapidly in recent years. While subject to influences of market competition, ESL schools have had little educational or labour regulation. This study presents life history interviews with four teachers who became involved in forming unions at their workplaces because of their experiences with just labour practices. The findings show that teachers sought union protection to deal with a pervasive sense of insecurity in their jobs. Through unions, they established clearer processes for dealing with such issues as the allocation of work and the resolution of grievances, a forum for communicating concerns to management, and a peer support structure. Additionally, these teachers have gained significant increases in salary and benefits. These narratives also show teachers, both individually and collectively, engaging in resistance as they confront the daily infringement of business priorities on their capacities to develop and practice as educators.

This thesis addresses the topic of electronic employee monitoring in non-unionized workplaces in Canada. Electronic employee monitoring is defined as including (1) the use of electronic devices to review and evaluate employees’ performance; (2) ‘electronic surveillance’; and (3) employers’ use of computer forensics. Detailed consideration is given to a variety of technologies, including computer, internet and e-mail monitoring, location awareness technologies (such as global positioning systems and radio frequency identification), as well as biometrics, and the developing case law surrounding these innovations. Analogies are drawn to the jurisprudence developing with respect to unionized workplaces and under statutory unjust dismissal regimes. This analysis leads to the conclusion that legislative reform is necessary, either through(1) the creation of parallel private sector privacy regimes, such as those in British Columbia and Alberta, mirroring existing federal legislation; (2) amendments to existing employment standards legislation; or (3) the enactment of a stand-alone surveillance statute.

The 1880s were turbulent years in the Dominion. Under the auspices of the National Policy, Canada was in the midst of a social and political ‘transformation.’ The social and cultural aspects of this transformation became a source of public debate as the ‘Labour Question’ and the relations between labour and capital reached a high mark of political and economic significance. Waves of strikes and the emergence of large international labour organizations challenged many liberal Victorian ideas about a strictly limited state. Many looked upon the federal government as responsible not only for economic growth, but also for protection from the more pressing problems of industrial life. The Royal Commission on the Relations of Capital and Labour is a testament to not only the turbulent economic relations in late-Victorian Canada, but the emergence of the Canadian state’s active role in social relations. Its very title envisioned a dual role for the Canadian state: to “promote the material, social, intellectual and moral prosperity” of labouring men and women, and to improve and develop “the productive industries of the Dominion so as to advance and improve the trade and commerce of Canada.” However, this thesis argues that the Labour Commission was more subtly designed to enhance the prestige of the Canadian state and install Ottawa as an authority on, and mediator of, industrial relations in Canada. Attention to the formation, activities, and impact of the Labour Commission suggests that, rather than an exercise in addressing a mounting social polarization between “labour” and “capital,” the Commission lends insight into the emergence of a Canadian middle class. It was a carefully-constructed exercise in the assertion of middle-class cultural hegemony whereby such values and understandings as respectability, morality, manliness, worth and expertise were naturalized. In the process, the tension between labour and capital was diminished and in its place were developed visions of social reciprocity and mutual interest. It is in this way that the Labour Commission was an exercise in ‘commissioning consent:’ it placed oppositional voices and wrenching exposés about industrial life in a framework that worked to quell rather than stimulate far-reaching critiques of the established order. The Commission’s formation, methodology and language functioned like an industrial exhibition rather than a pointed social investigation. The evidence presents a thriving economy that had grown exponentially under a wise and paternal government. It also presented a vision of the Dominion whereby the disturbances that occurred between labour and capital could be handled within a conventional language of liberal politics. In addition, social and intellectual elites were fully ensconced in the formation and legitimization of these social and moral understandings. Because it was up to the state to select who would speak for labour and capital, the Commission’s message was not one of class polarization. Thus, exploring who became ‘labour’ and who ‘capital,’ and what sorts of things they said to each other, sheds light on to the emergent strategies of the Canadian state as it sought to understand and influence civil society. The Commission is an indication, even anticipation, of a more activist and energetic state.