A History of Canadian Income Tax Volume II, 1948-71

Our second optional extra is Colin Campbell and Robert Raizenne, A History of Canadian Income Tax Volume II, 1948-71, published by the Canadian Tax Foundation.  Colin Campbell is a Professor of Law at Western University and Robert Raizenne is a partner at Osler’s. This book follows up on the same authors’ Volume I, published by the Osgoode Society in 2021. This is a very thoroughly researched study of the drafting and implementation of the 1948 Act and its amendments, viewed through the lens of the top bureaucrats and various ministers of finance who played the biggest role in shaping the Act. The book also chronicles the policy debates on various discrete issues in the tax system, making comprehensive use of the parliamentary debates, government records and materials generated by the Canadian Tax Foundation. Tax law, although obviously important in itself, is not treated as a hermetically sealed field, but is grounded in the general history of the period, especially the economic history but also the politics, including leading figures Wilbur Jackett and Douglas Abbott.