The main weapon in the economic arsenal of Canadian governments in the depression was the protective tariff: imposing duties on goods entering the country. If the rate of the tariff were raised high enough, it was argued, it would prevent Canadians from buying foreign goods and hence would preserve Canadian jobs. It would also have the helpful side-effect of handing the Canadian government a bargaining tool for negotiations with foreign governments. Unfortunately, Canada was a small country whose importance in world trade was sometimes exaggerated for domestic consumption. Worse, many if not most countries in the world tried the same policy, which was essentially one of attempting to export one country's economic miseries to another: the so-called Beggar-my-neighbour" policy. International trade declined and Canada, a nation heavily dependent on exports, suffered more in relative terms than any country except the United States. Arch Dale, the cartoonist of the Winnipeg Free Press, satirized R.B. Bennett's devotion to this dubious policy which led him to raise Canada's tariffs to their highest rates ever without raising levels of employment.
