There is much contention surrounding the history of the Bank of Canada making advances to the federal government and provinces. Some claim it never happened, that although there were provisions in the Bank of Canada Act (article 18 (i) and (j)) for advances, this provision was never used. That is incorrect, it was indeed used, multiple times. The reason it took so long to confirm this is because the information was not on the Stats Canada tables of the Bank of Canada balance sheet (which does not go earlier than 1953), it was buried in the Canada Gazette archives. Below is a chart of every time the BoC made advances to governments, the last being in 1961. As you will see, the BoC had no issue giving its biggest advance for the war effort.
| Date | Level of government | Amount | 2017 dollars | Per Capita |
| April 1935 | Federal | $3,000,000 | $54,000,000 | $4.98 |
| June 1935 | Federal | $4,301,562 | $77,965,811 | $7.19 |
| July 1935 | Federal | $1,240,625 | $22,486,328 | $2.07 |
| Aug 1935 | Federal | $1,246,563 | $22,593,954 | $2.08 |
| Sept 1935 | Federal | $2,759,375 | $50,013,671 | $4.61 |
| Oct 1935 | Federal | $15,724,750 | $285,011,093 | $26.28 |
| Nov 1935 | Federal | $2,223,375 | $40,298,671 | $3.72 |
| Dec 1935 | Federal | $3,465,812 | $62,817,842 | $5.79 |
| Jan 1936 | Federal | $2,195,875 | $38,724,552 | $3.54 |
| April 1936 | Provincial | $2,000,000 | $35,270,000 | $3.22 |
| May 1936-Sept 1936 | Provincial | $3,000,000 | $52,910,000 | $4.83 |
| Oct 1936 | Provincial | $1,000,000 | $17,640,000 | $1.61 |
| April 1938 | Federal | $7,000,000 | $117,120,000 | $10.50 |
| Sept 1940 | Federal | $32,000,000 | $522,000,000 | $45.86 |
| Jan 1953 | Federal | $15,000,000 | $138,830,000 | $9.35 |
| Nov 1961 | Federal | $9,000,000 | $74,810,000 | $4.10 |
If you’d like to see the balance sheets from the Canada Gazette for yourself, check them out here:
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