Canada. Wartime Industries Control Board : From April 1940 the Minister of Munitions and Supply was responsible for mobilizing, conserving and coordinating the economic and industrial facilities of Canada for the war effort. To further these goals, in June 1940 the Minister, Hon. C.D. Howe, appointed a Timber Controller, a Steel Controller and an Oil Controller. To provide an organization through which the acts of the controllers could be coordinated, an order-in-council (P.C. 2715, 24 June 1940) established the Wartime Industries Control Board, "to consist of the Controllers from time to time appointed by the Governor-in-Council on the recommendation of the Minister of Munitions and Supply." The Chairman was initially elected by the controllers.
As new controllers were appointed, it became almost impossible to take any action of consequence without affecting the fields of jurisdiction of other controllers or other government agencies. A further order-in-council (P.C. 6835, 29 August 1941) established the Wartime Industries Control Board Regulations. The Chairman was then also appointed by order-in-council, and general orders of individual controllers or the Board only became valid with his signature. As well, a closer relationship with the Wartime Prices and Trade Board, which the work of the controllers intimately affected, was established, particularly through interlocking memberships and appointment of most of the controllers to be administrators of the Wartime Prices and Trade Board.
The membership of the Board increased, not only with the creation of new controls, but also with the inclusion of other officers of the Department as well as the Chairman of the Wartime Prices and Trade Board; the Deputy Minister of Labour; the President of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation; the Transport Controller, Department of Transport; and ultimately the Official Representative, Department of Reconstruction. The Board was a large organization. With its staff at its greatest strength, in July 1943, it numbered 1,353 persons.
"It was the function of each controller to try to meet the war demand for the goods or services under his jurisdiction. He had to increase the production of the goods or services he controlled and he had to divert wherever and whenever necessary, scarce materials or services from civilian to war use." [J. de N. Kennedy, History of the Department of Munitions and Supply; Canada in the Second World War, Vol. 2, p. 6.] Most controls were exercised through orders-in-council, along with some judicial sanctions and export and import permits.
As early as the autumn of 1943 it became possible to relax controls on such important materials as steel, aluminum, magnesium and some chemicals. Further controls were relaxed or removed in the spring of 1944. A few days after V-E Day limitations on bus routes and schedules were cancelled, rationing of radio tubes was discontinued, the gasoline ration was increased, restrictions on trucking were eliminated and controls were removed from chemicals such as freon and penicillin and from fuel oil deliveries to private dwellings. Further relaxations occurred with the end of the war with Japan. The final meeting of the Wartime Industries Control Board was 21 November 1945 and the Board dissolved effective 1 December 1945 (P.C. 7156, 29 November 1945). However, controls remained in effect on coal, construction, motor vehicle distribution, power, priority procedures, rubber, timber and radioactive substances.
"The war was a more nearly total war than any previously known. As it progressed, the line between war and civilian needs became more and more difficult to draw. There were few materials and products which were not to some extent directly required for military use. A stage was reached when each cut in the civilian economy was directly reflected in its ability to produce for war." [Kennedy, Vol. 2, p. 39.]
The Chairmen of the Wartime Industries Control Board were Hugh Day Scully, July 1940 - August 1941; Richard Coulton Berkinshaw, August 1941 - September 1942; Henry Borden, October 1942 - November 1943; and J. Gerald Godsoe, November 1943 - December 1945.
