False Alarm

Some Canadian economists have worried about the great tide of U.S. capital flooding their country in recent years. Their warning that U.S. financiers were grabbing control of Canada's economy sounded like a false alarm last week, after publication of a government blue book on foreign investment in Canada.

U.S. investment in Canada has indeed grown fast--from $5 billion to an estimated $7.2 billion since 1945--but the overall Canadian economy has grown faster. While Americans took the risk of financing such spectacular enterprises as the Alberta oil boom, Canadians were investing at an even faster clip in bonds, plant expansions, and other less dramatic developments of. the national economy. Result: the proportion of U.S. ownership is shrinking, not growing. The Canadian economy is freer of foreign control now than at any time in the country's history.

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