CHAIRMAN’S ADDRESS. 695 
climatic records that he inclined to regard 200,000 square miles of the whole 
300,000 square miles comprising Assiniboia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, 
as these regions were then defined, as lying ‘ outside the districts of profitable 
wheat-growing,’ while even of the remainder it was apparently suggested 
that it would take thirty years from 1898 to place as much as 18,000,000 acres 
under all grain crops. Can we here to-day, with another ten years’ experi- 
ence, reach a somewhat greater accuracy in this search into the possibilities 
before us ? 
As illustrating the remarkable discordance of view hitherto existing, it is 
well to have before us, as a starting point for debate, some specimens of later 
but still most widely varying estimates of the capabilities of this country. 
These I quote from the cautious report rendered by Professor Mavor to the 
- British Board of Trade in 1904, midway through the decade now closing. 
More or less speculative as it is fully acknowledged all estimates must be 
which purport to define the area ‘ physically or economically susceptible of 
wheat production,’ that painstaking investigator set aside, as of little value, 
hypothetical curves setting forth the ‘ northern limit of cereal production,’ 
reliable data for which ‘ were not forthcoming, and if they were they would 
be constantly changing.’ After enumerating under fourteen different heads 
and sub-heads a formidable list of distinct but materially qualifying ‘ con- 
ditions’ or factors covering questions of soil, of temperature, and meteoro- 
logy, of moisture, sunshine, and acclimatisation of the plant, Professor 
Mavor suggests that, broadly speaking, the cleavage of the areas of different 
fertility runs obliquely from south-east to north-west through the great 
quadrilateral of the Canadian North-West. Alike in the north-eastern 
and in the south-western angle the conditions seemed to him more or less 
unfavourable. The south-eastern and north-western corners and the belt 
connecting them, however, presented relatively favourable conditions; av 
exception qualifying this sub-division was, however, suggested in the extrem 
north-west. 
The vagueness of the statistical basis on which any numerical estimate 
of future wheat areas must rest cannot better be shown than by briefly refer- 
ring to the results of five independent estimates which are quoted in this 
report. For the details of these estimates it is necessary to refer any student 
of the report to the analysis of each, differing as they do materially in 
their methods and in the classification of the areas comprised within the 
Manitoba, Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, and Alberta of that date. As regards 
the total area for settlement and for annual wheat-growing respectively, 
the first three of these estimates varied in placing the surface fit for settle- 
ment or susceptible of cultivation as low as 92,000,000 acres, and as high 
as 171,000,000, the annual surface available for wheat in these districts 
ranging from 13,750,000 acres to 42,750,000 acres, and the resultant possible 
produce from 254,000,000 bushels to 812,000,000 bushels. 
It should be added, to make these figures clear, that all the estimators 
quoted assume as a condition precedent to their accomplishment such an 
influx of population and settlement of the country as would be adequate to 
secure the cultivation of the hypothetical cultivable area. 
With Professor Mavor, we may think that both the lower estimates are 
over-cautious and the third perhaps over-sanguine, while most properly he 
reminds us that beyond the physical capacity of any region, the question of 
economic advantage remains to be solved, under what may be conditions 
prevalent at a distant time, what effect a rise of price might have, and 
whether the farmers of the future would devote so much of their land as is 
here suggested, and so much of their working capital, to wheat alone. I 
ought to add that a fourth estimate referred to in the report takes the 
graphic form of a map, distinguishing the suggested area where the wheat 
crop is certain, where less certainty exists from the effect of summer frosts, 
and where, again, the crop is uncertain from insufficient moisture. Yet 
